“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she muttered now, as something warm and wet grazed her lip. She touched her hand to it, and it came away red. Lila rubbed the blood between her fingers.
Perhaps she couldn’t wrap her will around the ice. But there were other ways to break it. She was Antari, after all.
“Hey Captain,” called Vasry, “maybe we should—”
She didn’t hear him after that. She pressed both hands to the ice, hissing at the brutal cold. Her teeth chattered as she said the words.
“As Staro.”
Break.
As soon as the sound left her lips, a deep vibration rang through the ice. A deafening clap, and cracks ran out to every side. And beneath her feet. Lila braced herself, balanced on the bobbing floe as her ship swayed, the wind in the sails dragging it free. One pace, then two.
And then, to her horror, the ice re-formed, not at a natural rate, but as if her magic had been a spool of yarn, unwound, and now another hand was drawing it just as swiftly back. In seconds, her work was undone.
“Son of a bitch,” she hissed, bowing her head.
Boots thudded onto the ice nearby, and the next thing she knew Kell was there beside her, wrapped in the hooded grey coat that had appeared like a warning the night before.
“Lila, stop,” he said, holding out a gloved hand to steady her. “It isn’t working.”
She knocked the hand away. “It will. With enough force.”
Kell studied the ship, and she could see the shadow cross his face, the way it did sometimes when he stared down at his own hands, studying them as if they were useless now, as if they couldn’t still hold a rope, or wield a sword. As if magic was the only thing that mattered.
He cleared his throat. “Maybe it’s been long enough.”
Lila grimaced, but said nothing. It had been three months since they left London. Three months since the battle with Osaron had shattered Kell’s magic. Three months in which he had not reached for his power, convinced it simply needed time to heal. As if it were a broken limb.
Maybe he was right.
Maybe—but she doubted it. She knew what it was like, to have a piece of yourself torn away without your accord. Remembered well still those first few weeks after she’d lost her eye, the impotence, the denial, the rage. It hadn’t come for Kell yet, but it would.
Until then, she resolved to give him space.
“Don’t bother,” she said, brushing off her hands. “It’s stuck.”
She shoved her numb fingers in her pockets and looked around. The sun should have broken free by now, but it still hung in the same way, just beneath the horizon. As if they were trapped inside a snow globe, stuck in time as well as ice.
“Have you noticed—” she started, then stopped. Kell’s attention had cut past her. His eyes narrowed. “What is it?”
He frowned, voice dropping to a whisper. “Someone’s coming.”
Lila started to point out how ridiculous that was, the idea of a stranger finding them out here, in the middle of a frozen sea. But then she turned, and saw that he was right. A figure was indeed shuffling toward them. At first, she thought it might be a bear. It was massive, and shaggy, its clawed steps cracking heavily against the ice. But then it drew near, and the shape resolved into a large man wearing a hooded coat. He had no claws, but boots with spikes that gripped the frozen surface.
Lila’s cold fingers drifted to her nearest knife. The man was smiling at them as he approached, but that meant nothing. Plenty of pirates and murderers smiled before they struck.
Stross, Vasry, and Tav stood watching from the bow above, and she didn’t have to see the glint of steel to know that they were armed. She tipped her head to one side, a silent order to hold.
“Skalsa!” the man called out in a musical voice, in a language she didn’t know. He was even bigger up close, his hair and beard pitch black beneath the fur-lined hood, his skin so pale it looked the same shade as the ice in the eerie light. His gaze was a startling blue, and as it swept over them, Lila was grateful she’d worn her brown glass eye to bed, grateful that Kell’s hood was up, his black eye hidden in the thin predawn light.
The man was still talking in a fluid stream, the sounds little more than highs and lows in her ears. It sounded like a speech, something formal and rehearsed. When he reached the end, he stopped, and stared, clearly waiting for their answer.
Lila looked from the man to Kell and back again, was about to explain that she had absolutely no idea what he was saying, when Vasry leaned over the side of the ship and said, “Is he speaking Fresan? I was with a Fresan girl once. Great fun. Cold hands, but—”