Of Sorcery and Snow (23 page)

Miriam grinned. “On car trips, Philip used to kick the back of my seat and whine, ‘Are we there yet?' He still does that when I drive him to school sometimes.”

“When they were younger, Ima and Iggy used to steal my cloak,” said Hadriane, patting the polar skin. “They liked to play bear and knight. They tore three big holes in it once,” the dwarf princess added ruefully, showing us the black stitches mending it.

Miriam laughed. “God, little brothers and sisters are so much trouble.”

Solange had probably said that about Rapunzel, too.

I wondered if I would ever say that about Brie's baby. Or maybe I would end up like Jenny, who was so bossy that she drove Lena crazy. Then I remembered I wouldn't get the chance—I was hardly ever going to see Dad's new family after the birth.

“Yes, it's a wonder why we're going to so much trouble to get ours back,” said Hadriane. I didn't realize she was joking until she and Miriam burst out laughing again.

Forrel drew his reindeer alongside us. “Have you Characters heard the story of the day my captain earned her bear skin?”

“Uh,” I said, with extreme amounts of eloquence. “No.”

“It was just after Her Majesty the second queen passed away, and before the dwarves began the construction of Kiivinsh,” Forrel said. “The king took a small party here to the North—only his family and my captain's squadron. We were distracted with the city plans. We did not notice the twins wander off, and when we realized they were gone, we could not find them. Their white mourning clothes hid them from our eyes.”

He glanced at Hadriane to see if she was going to help tell the tale, but she just raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to get to the point.

“We split up to search. We called their names but heard no answer. We began to fear that they had disappeared into the frigid water. Finally the king and the squadron heard our captain cry,
‘Here! They're here!'

“And then we heard a roar so terrible it froze our blood in our veins.”

The bear.

“A great polar bear had come to shore, lured by the smell of the children, hungry for dwarf blood,” Forrel continued. “Ima and Iggy had hidden themselves under snow, afraid to run lest the bear see them. When our captain raised the cry, the polar bear attacked, knowing it was about to lose its meal. And our captain—alone, without armor, armed with only a spear and an axe—faced it.” He smiled. “And won.”

Wow. I wanted to be like the dwarf princess when I grew up.

“Ima and Iggy helped,” Hadriane said. “I told them to make snowballs and aim for the bear's eyes—to blind it.”

“There is nothing our captain wouldn't do to save the twins,” said Forrel, and I knew this was the point of the story. “She has buried her mother and her stepmother, but Ima and Iggy, she will not.”

I couldn't imagine losing both Mom and Brie, but I
could
imagine facing down a dragon or some trolls for the baby. I wouldn't even need to be in her life to save her.

Miriam turned to Hadriane. “And now you've graduated to taking on the Snow Queen.”

“Yes. Why do you think I've recruited such talented allies?” replied Hadriane, smiling like she was joking, but she wasn't looking at Miriam.

She was looking at Chase, Lena, and me.

No pressure.

ur wolf problem came back just as we began to climb the mountains. Chase pointed out a couple white ones sniffing around the frozen fields below, west of our trail. From this far away, it was impossible to tell if they were the regular kind or the kind that called the Snow Queen “Her Majesty,” but since we hadn't seen a ton of wildlife, I was guessing they were the second.

“What do we smell like right now?” Forrel asked Chase. Lena and Miriam both gave the dwarf weird looks.

Not Hadriane though. And not me.

Chase's glamours were strong enough to include a phony scent, perfect for fooling wolves, but I hadn't expected the dwarves to know.

“A family of polar bears.” Chase didn't meet anyone's eyes.

I wondered how long he'd been keeping the glamour up. Actually, I worried about how much magic he had left. Chase had already exhausted himself once on this quest.

“Not sulfur?” Miriam checked the smelly dragon scale in her hand.

“If we smelled like
Draconus melodius
, the wolves would report that some of Solange's pets had escaped,” said Forrel.

Someone was going to have to tell the dwarves that being half
Fey was Chase's secret. Lena didn't need to become any more suspicious. Behind Miriam and Lena's backs, I met Hadriane's eyes, pantomimed wings, and shook my head, eyes wide. She got the picture. I guess if anyone would understand Chase trying to pass for human, it would be a half-human daughter of a dwarf king.

“Better to—” continued Forrel, but Hadriane interrupted, “Enough. One thing is certain: they'll catch us if we stay in one place.”

Then she charged up the slope before anyone could argue with her.

I looked back once. Someone else had joined his two white packmates—a gray wolf with white paws, like socks. Mark sniffed around the other two and then skittered away to pounce on an especially big mound of snow.

Hopefully Chase wouldn't spot him. Otherwise he'd tell me that this is what happens when I insisted on not killing bad guys.

We stopped at the summit. A huge bay was spread out below us, the water nearly black in the dusk. The floating icebergs reflected the orange and gold sunset.

Lena unrolled her map, biting her lip. She didn't have good news. “It's still supposed to be frozen. I'm betting that a few nights ago, it
was
frozen, and”—she pointed right to the middle of the bay—“the Pied Piper led them straight to the Snow Queen's palace.”

“So spring struck early?” Miriam asked.

“Spring . . . or maybe General Searcaster's cane. She probably cracked the ice to keep a rescue party from following,” Lena said.

“Oh,” Chase, Miriam, and I said heavily.

“But we can still skirt the bay's edges,” Hadriane said.

Lena nodded glumly. “Yeah. Going around will just take us a little longer.”

Yay. More time in this cold. More time for Mom to worry.

So we made camp. Before we finished grooming and feeding the mounts, Hadriane and Forrel were arguing again. I wondered if this is how other people felt when Chase and I bickered all the time.

But we weren't
this
bad. We fought over how to do stuff all the time, but never for days in a row. Me killing enemies and him telling Lena were the only things we
kept
arguing about, and usually we did that when no one else was around.

“Let it go, Forrel,” said Hadriane.

“They'll say it was my influence,” Forrel said. “You'll lose all the popularity you've had since you earned your polar bear skin.”

“What people say won't matter as long as we return the twins. Who knows?” she added in a sly voice. She reminded me of Lena right before she tried to bribe Chase with one of her new inventions. “The people may be so grateful to get their heirs back that they'll restore your right to a beard.”

“I don't care about that,” said Forrel, who obviously did care. A lot.

When Lena's snow servants finished up, I slid inside the hut, hoping it would be quieter there, but the dwarves just followed us. The Lunch Box made the rounds.

“You actually need permission to grow a beard?” Miriam asked Forrel.

Lena flipped the snowmen tile upside down, and as she made tiny adjustments to the writing there, she explained in her tinny reciting voice,
“In most dwarf cities, a beard is not merely an object of pride. It is a mark of full-fledged citizenship, and every adult male
dwarf proudly remembers the day he won the right to grow his beard and became a true warrior. By extension, one of the harshest punishments in the dwarf cities is to force a criminal to shave his beard—for a month, or a year, or—”
She stopped, realizing what she'd kind of just accused Forrel of being.

Hadriane only looked amused. “She does this often, doesn't she? Speak like a history book?”

“Oh, all the time.” Miriam grinned fondly at Lena. “Drives her family nuts.”

Forrel, despite all his earlier grumpiness, didn't look offended. “Well, your speaking history book should know this too: The very
worst
punishments extend well past a dwarf's lifetime. Those are inflicted on his son and his son's sons. I inherited mine from my father.”

“Forrel has requested a repeal three times,” Hadriane whispered.

Even though I'm pretty sure we questers were
all
thinking the same question, not one of us said it out loud.

Hadriane grinned. “Forrel, it seems you've scared them. They won't even ask what your father did to deserve such a punishment.”

That actually cheered him up. “He entered the last war and fought alongside a great friend of his, the Frog Prince in your Canon.”

“Henry?” I said. The Frog Prince was super-old. He walked with a cane. He'd never struck me as the fighting type.

“My father died in battle, and his punishment fell on his children,” said Forrel. He didn't sound upset about it.

“That's not fair,” Miriam said.

“It isn't about fair. It was an example. My father's transgression
was very serious,” said Forrel. “The neutrality of our people was our only defense. We were in no position to enter a war, and as long as no dwarf of Living Stone joined a side, we would not be attacked.”

“But you're obviously allies of the Snow Queen
now
,” I said. Hadriane grimaced, like that thought made her dinner taste bad. “What changed?”

“Solange has planned her return for a long time,” Forrel told us. “She has courted many once-neutral parties, and that is why what we are doing now is so dangerous.”

“Forrel—” Hadriane said, in a warning kind of way.

“No, captain. They need to know what they've asked of you.” Forrel leaned in. “Our city is the closest free settlement to the Snow Queen's base. We will be the first to see war when it comes here. If a single dwarf joining an EASer could be considered suspicious, a princess joining a Character's quest will be deemed an act of war.”

I hadn't thought of that. I kind of wished I
still
didn't know.

“Stealing both our heirs—
that
was an act of war,” said Hadriane.

“And Solange's response will be to strike,” Forrel said. “If Searcaster can't reach our spell, troops will come, like those wolves this morning.”

“Well, you beat those wolves in, like, three minutes,” Lena said uncertainly. Maybe she had the same sinking feeling in her stomach that I did. Maybe she regretted getting the dwarves involved too. “If Kiivinsh has more warriors like you guys . . .”

Forrel shook his head. “
Skirmishes
are won with warriors. Battles are about tactics, but
wars
, they're won with numbers and weapons. Our numbers are small, and the numbers of the Characters are even smaller. If the Fey decide not to ally with you this time, it will be a grim war indeed.”