The fourth constable had fought. Freezing blood twinkled on his halberd's point. He'd then apparently received a cut that hacked his knee. A second to his face.
This last, like the first to die, had lost his head… Patience had given none the time to toss a warning whistle-ball into the Gate's gulf.
… The Shrikes, Baj and the others following, went down the Fourth Tier, and Fifth, circling… circling always to the right. Then, the Shrikes stood still on the steps.
"Light," Nancy said, her voice hard to hear in the vibrating drone of upwelling air, air now even richer with odors of life and life's doings.
"light," Patience agreed, from emptiness just above them. "Lamplight below, and Boston-town." She came to settle – the morning's sun a distant brightening disk over her shoulder – came down, stumbled on a step, and recovered in Richard's swift grip. "It is, despite everything foolish, everything cruel, the wonder of the world."
"How bad?" Richard said to her, considering blood on a halberd's point.
"Caught a little skin along my ribs." Patience slid her hand beneath her open coat, brought the hand out stained dark. "I think he knew me, knew I had no business here any longer."
"What of that light?" Dolphus-Shrike, climbing back to them.
A soft rich red-gold glow lit the last tier of steps far below, so the steps' chipped ice glistened.
"Last tier," Patience said, raising her voice a little for the other Shrikes to hear. "Another turn and we will be on North Gallery… And below that gallery is a boulevard-thoroughfare – Adams – and a muster yard."
"Constables…"
"Yes, Dolphus. Their Formations, the headquarters for North Gate is held there."
"How many?" Baj said.
"Three Formations. Over seven hundred men, with officers and band."
"… Then we certainly wait," Baj said, "until the Wolf-General moves against the city, and those people march south."
"Or we're discovered here," Dolphus-Shrike tapped his javelin's butt on an ice step, "and someone throws a fucking whistle-ball down. Then 'those people' will come up and cut us into bait."
"Have a busy time," Richard said, "coming up against us on these steps."
"Not as busy," Baj said, "as we would have, trying to go down against them."
"The Watchers are dead," Patience said, "and no relief till after-noon. No one will climb the steps to meet us… Take your people down, Dolphus, but carefully."
"On your head, lady." Dolphus-Shrike started down to his people. "On all our heads…"
The last few steps – no longer Steps-Forever – Baj became worried for Nancy, a slip now seeming somehow more likely, so he gripped the hood of her parky as they went, Errol capering below them.
Then he saw Shrikes stumble down the way, saw them stagger at being on a level at last, so they stepped oddly for a distance.
… Eleven final steps counted, and he and Nancy and Richard did the same, stepped down and stumbled, their leg-muscles cramped – but cramps easing as they marched along on evenness at last through what seemed an ice-tunnel, a tunnel wide as a royal road. "Thank Frozen-Jesus," Richard said, "for being off those fucking stairs."
Then Patience, running from behind as fast as if she flew, coat flapping, called softly loud, "Leave them!"
The Shrikes, ahead, held still as she and the others caught up. Nancy reached to grip Errol's arm, keep him with her.
In warming light, in a steady draft of odorous air, Dolphus and the other Shrikes held javelin points to six brown-furred bulks clinging to the ice of the tunnel's wall. Baj saw great yellow incisors, small black-button eyes looking down at them, observant, apparently unafraid… There were clawed, black, thin-fingered hands, and splayed clawed feet, webbed, clinging to the tunnel's ice. Each strapped a leather sack and small steel adze from a rounded shoulder… There was a sharp and oily odor.
"Leave them!" Patience jostled the Shrikes aside. "They're Carver-Persons – they shape the town's ice, keep it proper."
"I've heard of these, but why let them live?" Dolphus kept his javelin-point at one Person's throat.
"Because…" Patience took hold of the javelin shaft, pushed it aside, "Because they are beaver-bred, and not for sense – only for chipping ice and removing what they've chipped. They don't speak… and will give no warnings."
"Still, why leave them, perhaps to come behind us?"
"They make and remake Boston, is why, Dolphus. Leave them."
Dolphus-Shrike sighed a small cloud of frost, said, "As you say, lady," and raised his javelin's point as the other tribesmen raised theirs.
CHAPTER 26
Into growing brightness and richer-scented air – but air still freezing cold – they traveled the tunnel to a glittering blaze of light, then stopped, huddling there.
"North Gallery," Patience said. "Dolphus, move – move your people. There'll be no one. The gallery's for Change-of-Watchers… for Carvers."
The Shrikes stayed reluctant, shading their eyes from the light. Baj stepped past them… and walked out into openness, glitter, sparkle, so he squinted down the gallery – narrow, and vanishing into distance – and out past its carved-ice railing into a towering vaulted space, a brilliant dream of ice columns ranking away, ice ceilings past any bow-shot's reach, and reach again. And this apparently only the first in a succession of great chambers along a wide avenue of frosted ice – public spaces grand as any he'd seen in Island's stone.
"Lady Weather…!" Nancy come with Errol to stand beside him. "I never saw this. Only the Pens…"
It was impossible at first to look with open eyes into the gleam and glare of hundreds… perhaps thousands of great whale-oil lamps, each apparently backed by panels of mirror glass, and hung high in chain-looped chandeliers down those great halls, reflecting and re-reflecting off walls of polished clear ice, columns of ice shaded green or blue, roofs frosted a brilliant silver… The brightness flared, and seemed to chime, as if too much for sight alone. Beneath these clustered lamps, occasional great tethered banners – black and white, red and yellow, rippled out on a steady frigid wind, so a sky of blazing light and shifting color was made for Boston-town.
Baj had imagined the city – but not imagined well enough.
He raised a hand, as all the others except Patience raised their hands, to shade their eyes until they grew accustomed. But still he saw well enough, over a carved-ice balustrade, to make out Sunriser true-humans a bow-shot below – men, women, and children – some calling out in Patience's crisp accent exactly, and all hurrying along the ice-paved boulevard. Hurrying… and some, running.
"They know," Richard said. "They know the Guard has come to South Gate."
Many of the Boston people wore only colored-cloth skirts or trousers dyed in bright blues, yellows, and reds, so women's breasts and men's chests were bare; others – and all the children – were wrapped thick in furs, furs also brightly colored, many dyed in stripes to show like snow-tiger pelts… Most men and women seemed to wear their hair combed out long, to their shoulders – except that some young men wore a single thick braid, with colored ribbons knotted in it.
The near-naked were Warming-talented, Baj supposed; the furred, those who were not. And needed furs against the bitter breeze blowing down the gallery… blowing through the great high-ceilinged spaces and along the roadway below – the freezing guarantee of Boston's columned halls of ice despite lamp-warmth, and human warmth, beneath the great glacier's overbearing.
It was… as if a scene from dreaming, but brilliantly bright. Baj took off a mitten, and gripped the gallery's ice rail, so the shock of cold might wake him.