I looked from building to building along the boulevard. Silver and electrum threaded through the edges of their roofs, making them gleam even on this gloomy day. And the most opulent building of all—the Snowmount—stood at the end.
The dogs slowed at the steps of the Snowmount. Legends ran that the Snowmount had once been a cave in the ice. Sjiotha, the goddess of winter, had protected the first settlers of Kylma Above by shielding them from the wind and snow. But when spring came, her jealous brother, Morvoi, had broken the ice and dragged citizens to Below to become his worshippers beneath the lake. When the Avenkos had learned the secrets of magic, they turned the cave into a temple, and every duke found a way to make it more impressive. It had five domes and a monastery, and the roof was shingled with electrum, copper, and gold.
The archimandrite waited at the top of the stairs to the temple. She’d exchanged her white-and-silver robe for a black one. The cloak that covered it was stitched with pearls. Her staff tapped out seconds on the ice.
I dismounted from the sled, inadvertently pulling Inkar with me. The archimandrite stood straight as a pillar while we disentangled ourselves. The cloak dragged on the ground as I walked up the steps to the entrance of the Snowmount, as though Morvoi was trying to pull me under. If there’s any time to do it, it’s now, I prayed.
Inkar followed me to the steps and imitated the bow I gave to the archimandrite. The archimandrite did not bow back.
“Welcome,” she said in a voice that told me I most certainly was not.
She held out a gloved hand, and I hesitated over her rings. I opted to kiss the largest one, and she didn’t complain. She beckoned, and we followed her through the pale doors, into the Snowmount.
The wide hall was all curves and soft angles, like the black structures Below. Ice buttresses fluted from columns carved with roses and wolves and bears and strung through with electrum thread. A shrine to Morvoi was ornamented with ice fish, nonmagical pearls, and a messenger bowl. Inkar’s eyes widened as she took in the carved relief on the walls depicting Sjiotha, a wild-haired, wind-tousled goddess riding a sleigh pulled by bears.
At the altar of Sjiotha burned the eternal torch, the light of which was said to have been given to us by the goddess and had never been extinguished. I pushed back my hood and leaned toward the flame.
“Come,” the archimandrite said in a voice of iron. I stiffened at her tone. As we started to follow her, she held up a hand. “The candidate only,” she told Inkar. “You may stay and contemplate the matter of your conversion.”
Inkar raised her eyebrows. “My what?”
The archimandrite turned and walked away without answering. I tried to shoot Inkar a look that was pleading and reassuring and confident all at once, then hurried after the archimandrite.
We left the main hall of the church through a side door, coming out into a small, open space where winter poppies did their best to bloom through the snow. From there we entered another hall and passed into Sjiotha’s monastery, where the buildings were low and the walls bare.
As we walked, the archimandrite spoke. “The coronation trials are a chance to renew faith and cooperation with the church. My blessing is required to pass the trials, and I will give it to only one of you. Three grand dukes I have blessed. You would be the fourth.”
“Only until my father—”
“I have always despised your family’s method of succession,” the archimandrite interrupted. “Your grandfather sacrificed his father to Morvoi.” That was a fancy way of saying that Grandfather pushed his predecessor into the moat. “Your father poisoned your uncle, and I have not forgotten it. But I have never known a candidate to kill so many at once. Your brother Svaro was only eight. Did you really have to kill him?”
“He’s not dead. I haven’t killed anyone,” I protested.
“What difference does it make? They cannot rise. They cannot work; they cannot rule. You think this is better than murder?”
“Yes,” I snapped. Because I was going to wake them up.
Give her what she wants, Eirhan had urged me. I took a deep breath. Nasal. Premaxilla.
The archimandrite led me into a room without a fire grate. “Sjiotha has been known to speak in this room,” she said. “We will commune together.”
She tapped her staff on the floor. A door opened, and two acolytes came in, bearing wooden cups. I tried not to sigh. The sour wine served by the archimandrite at mass was worse than Sigis’s Drysian offerings.
An acolyte held my glass in one hand and a round mollusk shell in the other. In its dark and shining center, two fat pearls glistened.
My heart skipped a beat. Magic. Did the archimandrite hold the secret to its refinement?
The archimandrite picked up a pearl and dropped it into her cup. I hesitated, then imitated her. I tried not to breathe in the wine’s bitter scent as I drank. I felt a solid mass slide between my lips, burst against my teeth. My tongue tingled, but I couldn’t know whether that was the effect of the wine or the magic.
I exhaled softly. I closed my eyes and bent my mind toward creation and control, thinking of the winter flowers we’d passed on our way in. I thought of light, the way Meire had painted my skin with it. I thought of the tapestry animals, dancing with life. And finally I felt the same pull as the night before, the tug of magic drawing something out of me.
I opened my eyes. No glowing fingertips, no flowers. Nothing but a bit of loose thread that looked as though it had unraveled from the bottom of my dress. Half my mouth felt numb. Before me, the archimandrite stood with her arms out, palms up, eyes closed. Something thick and black oozed from her mouth, dripping off her chin and coalescing on the floor in a sludge. She began to sway. Was that what a message from the goddess ought to look like?
I checked myself for sludginess, or murmuring voices, or anything. All I heard was the wind whistling through gaps in the ice. All I saw was the archimandrite. Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe that explained the way the archimandrite seemed to sway. Maybe it explained the way the threads on the ground turned to ice and began to grow, pressing in on my dress, swirling into shapes reminiscent of thorns.
By the time the archimandrite opened her eyes and wiped the sludge from her chin, the ice had come up to my shoulders, and I was no longer convinced it was a hallucination. “Sjiotha has spoken,” she said in a raw voice.
She has? I shook out my arms and shoulders. The ice around me broke with a delicate tinkle. “What did she say?”
“You could win her favor, but she needs a declaration of devotion to her cause. A new bell tower, with new bells.”
Give her what she wants. “Fine,” I said, hoping Minister Bailli wouldn’t start with some When your father was grand duke speech.
“She requires twenty pounds of raw magic as well.”
“Okay.” That was going to cause an uproar on the council.
“And I want to sit on your council. And reinstate the warriors of Sjiotha.”
I laughed. My great-grandfather had disbanded the warriors of Sjiotha when they’d tried to overthrow him. They’d nearly outnumbered the men in our standing army—hardly a feat, to be fair—and the religious tithe they’d collected from the craftsmen of Kylma had been good for no one but the archimandrite. “No on the warriors. I’ll think about putting you on the council.”