Free A Cavern of Black Ice by J. V. Jones Page B

closed her eyes as he passed.
    Only he didn't pass. Not completely. He
walked to a point and then stopped. All was silent. Realizing she had
been discovered, Ash opened her eyes. The sleepwalking excuse was a
dead dog now.
    Ash blinked. Fully expecting her foster
father's pale green gaze to be upon her, she was surprised to see
that he wasn't even looking her way. His back was toward her, and he
was standing in front of the iron door. Ash saw the tendons in his
wrist rise and fall, and then a muffled
clunk
sounded as
lock and key turned.
    In all her years of living within Mask
Fortress, Ash had never once seen the iron door opened. It led
through to the unused east gallery and then to the Splinter beyond.
No one ever visited the Splinter. It was forbidden by rule of law.
Workmen had died there, people said, plunging to their deaths through
gaps in rotten timbers, crushed by falling masonry, and impaled upon
the banister of spikes that wove around the main stairway like a
handrail to hell.
    Ash inched forward, resting her hand on
Torny Fyfe's smoothly chiseled rear.
    The door swung back as Penthero Iss
pushed against the metal plating. Stale air breathed into the
corridor like fine mist. Ash smelled the dry, itchy odor of old stone
and withered things. It was the same smell—part of it—that
clung to Iss sometimes when he visited her chambers in the middle of
the night. Ash trembled, not sure if she was excited or afraid. The
lock had turned with barely a sound! The door hinges glided as
smoothly as a pat of butter running down a roast. Everything had been
oiled. Recently. There was no rust, no rot.
    Iss slid into the darkness on the far
side of the door. All previous vows about returning to her room
forgotten, Ash
willed
her foster father not to lock the door
behind him. He was in a hurry, she knew that. Would he pause to lock
the door?
    The iron door closed as easily as
something a quarter of its size. Switching air caused one of the iron
plates to jiggle in its frame. Ash listened for the sound of Iss
inserting his key. She heard something, a click or tap, and then
everything was quiet.
    Ash waited. Her heart was pumping fast
and hard, and she was ready to run for the door. She forced herself
to count seconds. Her foster father had gone to the Splinter. The
Splinter
.
    Minutes passed. Beneath Ash's hand,
Torny Fyfe's backside warmed to a toasty glow. Ash patted the marble.
She was growing rather fond of the old Quarterlord.
    This time she slipped smoothly from the
recess, tucking her hair beneath her nightdress and lifting her
ankles high to avoid sharp edges. Working the stiffness from her legs
and back, she crossed to the door. Seen up close, the metal plates
were scored and then case hardened to form a rigid skin of steel. The
mark of the Killhound standing high atop the Iron Spire was stamped
upon each one.
    Unsettled, Ash pushed against the door.
The cool metal gave, sweeping back beneath her palm. Shadows and old
air stole across Ash's fingers and up along her arm. Iss had not
locked the door. It seemed mad, impossible. Doubt spiked in her
stomach like a violent cramp. Still she kept pushing, forcing the
door back into the corridor beyond. Secrets lay ahead, she was sure
of it. And she had to know if those secrets involved her.
    Stepping into the shadows, she let the
door fall shut behind her. A different kind of coldness from that
present in the rotunda gripped at her chest: dry, bitter, and
weighted, as if the air were thick with particles of freezing dust.
Ash stilled herself for a moment, giving her eyes time to adjust to
the darkness.
    The east gallery was a long arcade of
limestone arches roofed with slate—she knew that because the
structure formed the massive east wall of the quadrangle—yet
the shadows surrounding her gave little of that away. Dark gashes of
open space, pale glimmering edges, and hoods of matted stone were all
she could see. Soft warbling sounds came from somewhere high