Long Live the Queen (Book 5 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Thirty One: Stakes-and-Nails

Jack hammered on the black rock that had slammed in front of his face. He knew better than to expect a handle, or hinges, or the thinnest, hairline crack where the opening had been, but he thought Elsie could still hear him. He raised his voice until it was almost a howl. "No, no, no, no, no! Elsie!"

The rock rose up into the clouds overhead, a sheer black cliff-face whose top he couldn't see. He tried kicking out at it with his feet, dislodging stones, trying to get a foothold, as if he thought Broad Street would still be there if he could just get over this rock to the other side. He even reached back for the axe in its holster, but he realized with a shiver that it wasn't there – that he had shoved the knife-box in its place – that Gram was on his back now, leering over his shoulder, snickering at his predicament.

Flecks of white were streaking across his vision, getting in his eyes. Worse, there was steam clouding the rock-face in front of him, making it slippery with condensation. It was a while before he realized that it was his own breath, that his body was aching with shivers, that snowflakes were stinging his skin like an angry swarm of bees.

He swung round heavily and saw a vast plain in front of him, white with snow – but not bright, because there was no sun to light it. It stretched on forever, broken by the occasional outcrop of rock, under a dull, reddish-orange sky.

He turned back and hammered with his fists on the rock until there was blood staining the snow, trying to keep the snowstorm and the vast distance behind him from swallowing his screams. He had to get back before it was too late.

He took a breath, and the thought slammed into his stomach like a brick: it was already too late. If an hour in the demon realms was equivalent to a week up above, how much time had already passed? A day? Had Ellini's arm been cut off? Was Myrrrha already Queen of the demons?

And if Elsie hadn't had a change of heart by now, when would she? Maybe Elsie was dead.

No, there would be some kind of sign, wouldn't there, if the little mother was dead? Weren't all the other demons supposed to collapse as soon as the thread of her life had been cut?

But there were no other demons here. The snow would go on piling up here, in this god-forsaken corner of the demon realms, no matter who was dead. Myrrha could be the Queen of hell by now – could have skinned all his loved ones and reduced Oxford to ruins – and he would never know it. Even her appetite for destruction wouldn't stretch this far.

Jack set his teeth and tried to drag his thoughts away from these topics. He couldn't get back the way he had come – he had torn his nails to bloody tatters just trying. And time was too pressing to wait. He would have to walk. He would have to try and find another way out.

Those dragons had plucked him from one level of hell and flown him up to another. Maybe he could find a way to Faustus's cave, or back to the land of black sand, with its portal to the Faculty's entrance hall.

God, if only he had learned how to call them! If only he'd taken the trouble to train them to commands. Could they have found him down here? But no – those slim, silvery things would have died in this storm. He was going to die in this storm.

He stopped short for a second, startled by the thought, and realized he believed it. He had believed it ever since he'd wheeled round and seen those snow fields. Ever since his panic had ebbed long enough for him to feel the bite of the cold. He was going to die here.

He went on anyway, folding himself up against the cold, until his march became a trudge, and his trudge became a stagger. Soon he was dragging what felt like numb stumps through the snow.

"This – is – the – worst," he said, between lurching steps. He had to force the breath between his teeth to say it. And the condensation was snatched up by the wind and torn to shreds so fast, he might just as well not have spoken.

He wanted to laugh, but he didn't have the breath to spare. His lungs were too frozen to expand. He had the wild, weary feeling that they'd shatter inside his chest if they tried it.

The bitterness was gone now. Maybe the wind had snatched that up and torn it to shreds too.

Granted, this was not how he had imagined his death. It was not how a soldier liked to die. He was far away from the battle – in space and time, most likely. He couldn't be of any use to the people he loved. The fate of the world would be decided without him. This was not a happy ending by any stretch of the imagination. But people put too much stress on endings, didn't they? They tried to make it mean something, when it never could. What use could the dying be to the living? What qualifications did they have for making speeches? What was the point, anyway, when from their perspective, the world might just as well have ended at the same time their lives did?

He'd had his happy ending – it was just that he'd lived through it. And now the ultimate ending was – was this. Meaningless. Marginalized. Lonely.

He could feel his breathing slowing, his muscles unbunching. He could feel the ground beckoning to him with every step, promising to catch him with such loving softness when he fell.

Where did he know loving softness? What had it reminded him of, just then? He couldn't recall.

He didn't remember stopping. He didn't remember lying down. He felt the snow crowding in, filling up all the space in front of his eyes, until it was all whiteness, and he didn't know whether his eyes were open or not.

It didn't hurt anymore. He supposed cold was like fatigue, and it only hurt as long as you fought it. He couldn't see anything but white.

It was horrible when it turned to grey – when something slammed into a stomach he'd forgotten he had, when he was dragged to the surface and shaken, and sound was forced into his ears.

His eyes would only open a crack – the lids had been frozen shut, perhaps – but he squinted resentfully as someone brushed the snow off limbs that he could only half-feel. He would have cried out in protest if his chest hadn't been frozen solid.

He couldn't see much – his vision was fragmented, as if he was peering through a block of murky ice. The figure who had pulled him out of the snow crooked its arm in a kind of beckoning motion, said something in a language Jack didn't understand, and then a long, slow shudder of sensation swept over him.

It was like the tingling, teetering moment before a sneeze. It was like pins-and-needles, only a hundred times worse. Stakes-and-nails. It didn't so much warm him as rip the cold out of him, as though a thousand ice-splinters were being drawn from his flesh.

But, for all the pain, it was an improvement. Jack's lungs started to expand again, his breath started to steam, his vision started to clear. He could see his rescuer now – if that was what he really was – and he was... strange. Multifaceted. Where other faces would have had curves, this man's had points. His cheekbones were spiky, as if they'd been broken in a fight and the bones were poking through his skin.

But no, it wasn't that. He was a man of ice – not transparent, but not opaque either. His skin was cloudy, greyish, dappled at points with grit and moss just under the surface, which made him look as though he had freckles. But his eyes were the purest, cleanest turquoise – the sort of colour you'd get in the heart of a glacier. His eyes were the ideal of ice, and the rest of his body was the reality.

The demon was holding him off the ground. Jack looked down, to where his feet were dangling an inch above the snow. Everything was sleek below him. Fresh snow had already covered the hole he'd been excavated from. He tried to look back over his shoulder to see his tracks, but his muscles were stiff from cold, and he knew, instinctively, that the storm had already swallowed them.

He raised a hand weakly, and then let it drop to his side. "How did you find me in all this?" he rasped. For some reason it was all he could think of to say.

"It's a talent of mine," said the demon.

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