A Dream of Ice

E
xile.

The word stuck in Azha's memory like an angry barb. The only thing that stung more was the name and face of the traitor, that serene lunatic who had assumed rights and powers no Galderkhaani should ever possess.

We trusted each other with everything
, she thought angrily,
but now I alone pay for his sins
.

Wisps of wet cloud and red hair whipped across Azha's face as her airship glided east, hundreds of feet above the white, icy surface. Balanced on the rigging with several dogbane-fiber ropes looped over her forearms in case she lost her footing, the former Cirrus Farm commander sidled along while completing her scan of the enormous inflated
hortatur
skin above her. She did not like what she saw.

Cursing it all—but at this moment, mostly the ship—she climbed down to the gondola as carelessly as she dared, her movements as natural and familiar to her as breathing. She dropped the last few feet. The seventy-foot-long, wicker-ribbed basin was empty but for two other people: Dovit, her man with black dreadlocks to his waist and touches of gray at his temples, and Azha's younger sister, Enzo, her short-cropped hair black as coal.

As Azha leaped the last few feet into the gondola, she cursed again in frustration.

“I couldn't see any leaks so there must be one higher up,” she groaned. “Naturally, the bastards gave me the oldest ship in the fleet.”

“Exile was not designed for comfort,” the man remarked.

“And these ships were not designed for this much travel over land,” Enzo added cautiously. “It dries the fabric. The ocean's thermal updrafts are what really keep them aloft—”

“Enough!” Azha slammed her hand down hard on the console. “What I need are solutions, not a discourse in cloud farming.” She glared at Dovit and then her sister. “I don't even know why you came! You had your own life, your own—people.”

“Because I couldn't let you face this alone!” Enzo said.

“Neither of us could,” Dovit said, putting a hand on Azha's arm. “And my ‘people,' as you call them, supported me in my love for you.”

“Love,” she said, pushing his fingers off. “Is that all?”

“What more?” Dovit asked.

“Nothing,” Azha said, glaring at her sister again, her red hair rising and twisting in the wind like slender serpents. “This is my doing, my choice, but it's a sign of how perverse our society has become. I'm banished for trying to stop someone from committing genocide.”

“You were banished for trying to enter the Technologist Inner Quarter with a spear, two knives, and a grapnel,” Dovit said, correcting her. “There are far more legal and far less dramatic ways to express dissent.”

“Dissent,” Azha muttered, glancing up at the swaying balloon. “It wasn't about ‘dissent,' Dovit. It was—an impulse. I learned the facts and had to do something.”

“A legitimate reaction,” Dovit agreed. “But, as I said, there are legitimate forms of redress.”

“None that would have worked in time,” Azha said.

“So say you,” the man replied.

“Dovit,
you
were on the Technologist Council. You heard that someone was going to initiate the Source before the council decided it was ready.”

“We all heard those rumors, mostly from Priests.”

“You know how I hate to side with those people, with
any
of your mad allies,” Azha said, “but they
weren't
rumors.”

Dovit shrugged. “That is irrelevant. Most did not accept the rumors as true. They still don't. Action requires belief.”

“It was true, it
is
true,” Azha said, turning to face him. “And it will kill them all.”

“We went through all of this at your hearing,” Dovit replied patiently. “You offered no proof.”

Azha's gaze fell. “I couldn't.”

“
Why?
” Enzo pleaded, bracing herself against the rocking gondola. “There is no harm in telling us now—we're not going back.”

Azha looked at her sister and then at the man who meant so much to her, especially now. She didn't wish to reward his sacrifice with hurt.

“Azha?” Dovit asked, reading her mood—as always. “Please tell me. What is it?”

“You really want to know?”

“That
is
why I asked,” he said with a wary smile.

Azha sighed, casting her eyes past the proud, formidable quarry master toward the distant spires. “Dovit, before you and I were lovers I was joined as a lover with the man who planned this treacherous scheme.”

Dovit looked at her with surprise—and understanding. “And you still are.”

“Yes.”

“And yet,” Dovit said, “you were armed for murder.”

“Yes.”

Dovit and Enzo shared a look. He hurt for Azha more than he hurt for himself.

“There was no other choice,” Azha said. “He refused to hear arguments against it and is surrounded by too many influential people who will cover for any misdeeds,” Azha said. “Of course, I threatened to take his plan to the others, to his people, but we both knew the truth: they would have descended on me like buzzing
punita
on the remains of the dead. That is why I had to try to stop this act the old-fashioned way.”

Dovit looked at her with a blend of sadness and regret. “I wish you had trusted me. I and my lovers also have powerful friends.”

“In the wrong places,” Azha said. “Agriculture, tile masonry, seafaring, the stars . . .”

Dovit moved cautiously in the swaying basket to Azha's side, fresh urgency in his voice. He glanced back to the high stone tower from which they had departed a short sun-arc ago. “Listen to me. If you
are
telling the truth, and the Source isn't ready, then yes—it could take a great many lives! There are things, many things outsiders do not know about.”

Azha gave him a look. “What things, Dovit?”

“The reach vents for instance, and the conduits have been expanded—extensive work that was done underground.”

“Underground?” Azha shot back. “How was
that
accomplished?”

“In great secrecy and in remote regions,” the Technologist replied. “We must go back.”

Azha regarded the man with pity. “
Now
you reveal this.”

“There are people I would protect too,” he said.

Azha shook her head. “This frail vessel will not make it. Even if it could, very soon it will be too late.” She paused, took a deep breath, and looked at the open sky. “Breaking exile means incarceration. I would rather die up here.”

“Airships fall,” Dovit said, indicating the ground far beneath his feet. “You will die down there.”

“A figure of speech,” Azha replied.

“Sister, many will die if we do not try!” implored Enzo.

“They brought it on themselves,” Azha said coldly. “They wouldn't listen and there is nothing more to be said.”

Silence fell upon them as the truth of her words and the fate of countless Galderkhaani settled on them like a heavy mist.

Azha pushed past her companions to the side of the gondola. Leaning far over and looking up, she surveyed the charcoal-gray surface of the balloon again. A huge ripple crossed the side of it.

Moving toward her, Enzo pleaded, “Please, Azha, let's turn back.”

“To save lives, or so you can go back to your crazed mentor, to Rensat?”

“She is an enlightened soul,” Enzo said defensively.

“She is a fanatic with a Candescent obsession.”

“
She
is a fanatic?” Enzo laughed. “We have long believed that
you
are the fanatic.”

“Isn't every expeditionary commander?” Azha shot back. “Do you think it is easy pushing the boundaries of our farming efforts farther and farther from the city where the winds and cold are—”

“That isn't what your sister means,” Dovit interrupted. “Your well-known defiance of—”

“The Candescent Doctrine?” Azha cut him off, adding hand gestures to her words, small but emphatic arcs and angles.

“Farmers complained that you preached it on every voyage you ever took, while they were aloft in the ropes where they could not escape hearing,” Dovit said. “ ‘Seed the clouds with jasmine, don't search the tiles for bones. Embrace the breath of life, not the stones of death.' ”

“Mine was a voice of moderation”—Azha poked her own chest—“something to balance the street-corner oratory of
all
your mindless followers. You and your kind are ripping us apart!”

“You talk of rigid pragmatism as if
it
were the only way,” Enzo said accusatorily.

“It is
my
way,” Azha said. “I accepted exile not only for my deed but because I've had enough! The Technologist Source may work,
some
day, and perhaps so will the
cazh
of the Priests,
some
day.” She gestured angrily to the sky. “But the Candescents? There is no proof that they are up there. There is no evidence that they are listening for you, or for you, Dovit. You simply believe, based on legends, that they are waiting to absorb you. And while you seek them, you miss life itself.”

“The word of a naysayer is not evidence,” Enzo said.

“How about the fact that they're
gone
?” Azha muttered. “Is that not evidence? If they ever lived at all.”

“They lived,” Enzo said. “And what is ‘gone'?” Enzo asked temperately, before answering her own question. “Only their bodies. Only that.”

“ ‘Only their bodies,' ” Azha sneered. “That's all? You're ridiculous.”

“Azha,” Dovit said gently. “That is not appropriate, or fair. And you know, I have always listened to
both
sides. I have advocated the Source and I have advocated the
cazh
.”

Azha could feel her anger rising and she began making larger gestures to communicate that. She turned, shook her head slowly. “And that is why I love you, Dovit. You
are
a moderate voice.”

The wicker basin shuddered. The trio looked up, out, and then back at each other.

“A deadly antique,” Azha sighed.

Dovit smiled. “It is so old it smells of the jasmine fleet it used to lead.”

Azha moved to the ropes, tugging in frustration, and cast her eyes with conviction and longing to the east, away from the city, toward a darkening horizon. “We must set down before long. It's strange but I have long wanted to explore the vast ice-locked eastern lands. The great birds of air and land survive somewhere out
there
, outside our great oasis.”

“We will find it and learn to live as they do,” Dovit said confidently.
“Eating fish, creating water from ice and sun, making clothes from the dead of the sea.”