Free Our Lady of the Ice by Cassandra Rose Clarke Page A

his wine. In the dim light it looked like blood. “Go bother somebody else.”
    “What you got there?” She laid her fingertips on the edge of the envelope.
    Sala went still. Onstage, the girl twirled around and around, her skirt flaring out from her hips. Then that skirt was flying through the air and landing in a sparkling heap at the edge of the stage. Someone off to the side applauded.
    “Take your hands off that,” Sala said, in a cold, hard voice. Eliana jerked her hand back as a reflex.
    “Touchy,” she said, trying to make her voice light.
    Sala glared at her and sucked hard on his cigarette, the ember flaring. Then he jammed it into the half-full ashtray. Beads of sweat shone on his forehead, jeweled in the red lights.
    It was warm in here. Rich-man warm. But Eliana could tell that wasn’t why Sala was sweating. The guy had no idea what he was doing.
    “Must be important,” she said, leaning back, toying with the end of a lock of her hair. “To get you so worked up.”
    “It’s nothing.” Sala lit another cigarette. He kept glancing nervously around the dining room. Eliana wondered if he had a gun. She hoped he didn’t. Because she was about to do something very stupid.
    The music was still carrying on in the background. The girl was still dancing. It was an old song. Eliana remembered her mother listening to it, dancing around the living room alone. It was after Eliana’s father had died, around the time when her mother went to work at one of the atomic power plants. Her mother had hated that, making energy for the mainland when she couldn’t afford to return there herself.
    “I’m really not interested,” Sala said, not looking at her.
    “That’s really too bad,” Eliana told him, and then, before she had a chance to think about it, she shot her arm out and grabbed the envelope out from his hand. He resisted. Sala’s eyes widened and burned with anger.
    “What the—”
    Eliana used up all her strength to rip it away from him, and then she ran. She tore through the dining room, music pounding in her ears, hoping she hadn’t torn whatever was inside the envelope. Sala shouted something. The businessman looked up at her, bored, and then she was in the entranceway, and then she was outside, the dome lights blinding.
    “Get back here, you fucking bitch!”
    Sala. Eliana whirled around, caught sight of him in the doorway. His hands were empty. No gun.
    She shoved the envelope into her coat and ran, down the side street and out into the open bustle of the docks. Sala was still shouting behind her. People stopped, looked at her, looked at him. She ignored them. She just kept running.
    Mr. Vasquez had taught her, when he’d first made her his assistant instead of just his secretary, that she needed to learn how to run and she needed to learn how to shoot. She’d never really learned the latter. But running came easily to her, even in her pumps and stockings, and it wasn’t long before she’d made it to the supply market, a few blocks from her car.
    She collapsed onto a bench beside a fish vendor and sucked in air. White dots of light kept flashing in her vision, but the more she breathed, the more sporadic they became until they disappeared. Sala wasn’t anywhere in sight. She’d lost him.
    Eliana reached into her coat. Pulled out the envelope. She undid the fastener and slid out the contents—not enough to read, but enough to check. Looked official, whatever it was. Parchment paper, rows of smudgy boxes filled with off-center typing, like a birth certificate.
    Weird.
    She slid the document back into place. Fastened the envelope.The fish vendors were shouting at each other, swapping dirty jokes and roaring with laughter. Eliana set her purse in her lap, dropped her hand inside. She still expected Sala to appear out of the crowd, but he never did.
    And when she was sure it was safe, she walked to her car, and then she drove back to the smokestack district.

CHAPTER FIVE
    DIEGO
    Diego was