Downriver

I

The spectral hands around my neck twist tight. Lightning flashes, exposing the faces of my attackers through the veil of snow that previously hid them.

I see a gentleman in a fur coat, two younger men in shabby uniforms, and a woman in a knotted headscarf, clutching one of the uniformed men and pulling him back. He doesn't want to go with her, and shifts his feet in the snow to steady himself.

Their eyes bulge at the *thing* throttling me. The gentleman palms his face and shakes his head.

"Enough of that!" he calls. "Leave her be. She's not going to–"

His jaw goes slack.

It pushes me back. Behind me is the river, but the ice is thick enough to skate on.

I try to put a foot out behind me, but my body won't respond. My head hits the ice, but the spectre still pushes on my body. My fingers won't move; I can still feel everything – the cold through my coat, the ice under my head. I can still see the snowflakes and the clouds and the air spirit over the workhouse.

I can't move.

One of the younger men, the one not being restrained by his girlfriend, runs forward and puts his hands up to the thing at my throat. But he can't get any grip on it.

Only a magician can touch a spirit.

He falls forward onto me and the ice splinters under my shoulders. My hair soaks up icy water and the cold claws at my scalp.

"Get back!" the woman cries.

"Let her go." There's panic in the gentleman's voice. "Get out of here -- damn you both!"

He came to my Mamma's party the other night and told me he could teach me magic without me being forced to go to a monastery. Come to the riverbank beneath the Sigismund Palace and we'll talk.

But it came at a price; he told me I needed to spy for him, to be his eyes and ears in the Minster. I was to tell him what the priests were doing – what they were talking about with their paymasters over the border in Krovt.

But I wouldn't. I'd rather die than do that. We're all imperial citizens; the border is a line on a map, nothing more. They're doing nothing wrong, I told him.

He shook his head and turned to leave.

And then his pet sprite leapt at me and wrung my neck.