A Cavern of Black Ice Read Online Free PDF Page B

was just a
boy had burned the enamel from them. Whatever the cause, Iss made it
his habit to speak, smile, eat, and drink without ever drawing back
his lips.
    With one quick movement Iss found and
pressed the curve of Ash's left breast. He weighed the small globe of
flesh and then pinched it. "You can't stay a child forever,
Asarhia. The old blood will show soon enough."
    Ash felt her cheeks burn. She didn't
understand what he meant.
    Iss regarded Ash for a long moment, his
green silk robe switching colors in the fierce light of burning
kerosene, before releasing his hold on her nightgown and standing.
"Tidy yourself up, child. Do not force me to lay hands on you
again."
    Ash kept her breath steady and tried
not to let her fear show. Questions piled on her tongue, but she knew
better than to ask them. Iss had a way with answers. He gave them,
they sounded perfectly logical, but then later when you were alone
and had time to think, you realized he had told you nothing at all.
    As Iss moved away, Ash got a whiff of
the smell that sometimes clung to her foster father. The smell of
old, old things locked away so tightly that they dried to brittle
husks. Something shifted at the edge of Ash's vision. All the hairs
on her body bristled, and against her will she was drawn back to her
dream…
    Reaching, she was reaching in the
darkness.
    'Asarhia?"
    Ash snapped back. Penthero Iss was
looking at her, his long, skinned-man's face showing the faintest
sheen of excitement. Light from his lamp sent his shadow flickering
across the watered-silk panels on the walls. Ash could still remember
the soft marten and sable furs that had once hung in their stead. Iss
had sent a brother-in-the-watch to tear them down and replace them
with smooth, bloodless silk. Furs and animal hides were distasteful
to him; he called them barbaric and would have none hung in any
chamber he might chance to enter in the massive, sprawling,
four-towered fortress that formed the heart of Spire Vanis.
    Ash missed the furs. Her chamber seemed
cold and bare without them.
    'You are not well, almost-daughter."
As Iss spoke, his hands came together in a smooth knot of knuckle and
flesh that was peculiar to him alone. "I will sit with you
through the last hour of night."
    'Please. I need to rest." Ash
rubbed her forehead, struggling to keep her mind in the now. What was
wrong with her? Raising her voice, she said, "Go. Just go. I
have to use the chamber pot. I drank too much wine at dinner."
    Iss remained calm. "Yes, wine…
and to think Katia informed me that you refused both the pewter
containing the red and the silver she brought later with the white."
A dull metal tap sounded: Iss kicking the empty chamber pot that lay
at the foot of Ash's bed in the center of a hill of cushions. "And
somehow you managed to wait until now to relieve yourself."
    Katia. Always Katia. Ash scowled. Her
head ached, and her body felt as tired and shaky as if she'd spent
the night running uphill rather than sleeping in her bed. She
desperately wanted to be alone.
    I Surprisingly, Iss crossed over to the
door. Fingers slipping into the vacant bolt holes, he turned to face
Ash and said, "I will have my Knife stay outside your door
tonight. You are not well, almost-daughter. I worry."
    The idea of having the Knife camped
outside her chamber frightened Ash nearly as much as her dream.
Marafice Eye scared her—he scared at lot of people in Mask
Fortress. That was, she supposed, the main reason her foster father
kept him around. "Can't we call Katia instead?"
    Iss began shaking his head before Ash
finished speaking. "I think our little Katia might not be a
wholly reliable guardian. Take tonight: You said you drank wine, yet
she swore you didn't, and of course I must take my daughter's word
over that of a common servant. So I have no choice but to conclude
the girl reported wrongly and might easily do so again." A cold
smile. "You are not well, Asarhia. Ill dreams trouble you,
headaches