A Dream of Ice

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Exile.

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.

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