But this was what she did. Food. She needed food.

No. First a place to hide. From the trembling sounds. Hide away, find a crack. She continued building a body that would let her walk. Flee.

So cold. She didn’t understand coldness. It wasn’t a thing that should be. And she couldn’t taste dirt, just stone. Stone everywhere.

Frozen stone.

She felt like screaming. Something was missing. Not food. Not a place to hide, but… something. Something was horribly, horribly, horribly wrong.

An object dropped on her. It was cold, but not stone. This wasn’t food. She enfolded it and intended to spit it away, but then something happened.

Something wonderful. She gobbled up the second one as it was dropped, and began to undulate, frantic. It came back. Memory. Knowledge. Rationality.

Self.

She exulted in it, ignoring the little holes that were now poked in her memory. She remembered most of the trip here, but something had happened in the room with the Bands… No, the Bands hadn’t been there, and…

She formed eyes first, and she knew what she would see when she opened them. She’d already tasted him on the air, and knew his flavor.

“Welcome back,” Wayne said, grinning. “I think we won.”

30

Marasi accepted the canteen from Allik. It steamed from the top although it was only lukewarm to the touch. She sat on the steps up to the temple, swathed in about forty blankets. She’d surrendered her medallion to one of the Malwish people until more could be secured from the airship.

And its recovery was an interesting sight to say the least. Waxillium stood on the rocky section before the plateau, heaving with two hands and Pulling on nothing visible. Up ahead, the rogue airship slowly sank through the snow-filled sky, drawn toward Waxillium on an invisible tether.

“Will it break apart?” Allik asked.

She looked at him with surprise, then down at his language medallion.

“Warm choc and a blanket will do me for a minute,” he said, settling down and pulling his blanket around him. “Others are in greater need, yah? The ship. Will it break?”

Marasi looked up toward it. She could imagine Suit’s people aboard, trying desperately to make the engines work harder, the fans blow more powerfully. It sank anyway. Waxillium Ladrian—bearing the Bands of Mourning and supremely annoyed—was like a force of nature.

She smiled and sipped her drink.

“Rusts!” she said, looking at it. “What is this?” It was sweet, thick, warm, chocolaty, and wonderful.

“Choc,” he said. “Sometimes it is a man’s only succor in this frozen, lonely world, yah?”

“You drink chocolate?”

“Sure. Don’t you?”

She never had. Plus, this was far sweeter than the chocolate she was used to. Not bitter at all. She took a long, soothing draught. “Allik, this is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever experienced. And I just held the powers of creation themselves.”

He smiled.