mists. Murmurs moved through the crowd as others heard or saw it. Silence's eyes narrowed, and his hand fell to his hip, where his gun should have been. Glimpses of something large moved through the mist, seen and gone in a moment. It moved ponderously, crunching loudly through the snow, and then suddenly raised a shaggy head and roared defiantly. The harsh sound echoed eerily on the quiet, and then the mists came down again, and the creature was lost to sight. The courtiers huddled together for comfort but kept moving. The Empress was waiting.
Silence's hands itched for a weapon, but gun and sword were both denied him. No subject, no matter how trusted or exalted, was allowed to bear weapons before his Empress, without a special dispensation. Which meant everyone around Silence was unarmed, too. Easy pickings if the creature decided it was hungry. The Empress would have to be crazy to risk endangering the Families with a real threat, but no one would have bet against it. Silence scowled, his hands curling into fists. A dim shape roared again, but the sound was farther off. It was moving away. The crowd breathed a general sigh of relief, and the pace picked up again. There was always the chance the shape was just another hologram, but no one was willing to bet on that, either. Silence decided he was going to stick really close to the Investigator. Even unarmed, Frost was death on two legs, and he'd back her against anything Lionstone might have imported. Not that he'd ever tell Frost that. She was bigheaded enough as it was.
More shapes loomed up out of the mists ahead. At first Silence thought they were security guards waiting to escort the courtiers to the Iron Throne, but as he drew closer he could see they were just snowmen. A line of human shapes, made from packed snow, with cheerful scarves around their necks, coals for eyes, and a smile drawn on. They might have been charming if they hadn't all been depicted dying in different, innovative ways. One had been impaled on a lance. Another held its severed head in its hands. Beside it, a third form had been dismembered, its snow limbs lying scattered around its body. Silence started to walk past them, then hesitated as he realized Frost had stopped. The Investigator stood scowling at the snowmen, one hand patting her hip where her sword should have been. Stelmach stood shivering beside her, not particularly interested in the snowmen, but unwilling to move on without the protection of the only more or less friendly faces he knew. Silence moved in beside Frost.
'What is it, Investigator? Problem?'
'I don't know, Captain. Maybe. There's something about these snowmen. Something… disturbing. Who makes a snowman with limbs?'
She stepped up to the decapitated snowman and took the snow head out of its cupped hands. It was a large round ball of snow, with a wide smile cut beneath the blind coal eyes. Frost grunted at the unexpected weight of the head and balanced it in the crook of her arm while she scraped away at the surface of the snow with her other hand. The eyes and smile disappeared. Silence knew what she was going to find before he saw it. The surface snow disappeared to reveal the nose and staring eyes of a real face. Frost carefully swept away more snow to uncover the human features beneath. Silence didn't recognize the face. He moved forward and thrust his hand deep into the snow body. His fingertips thudded against something hard and unyielding that definitely wasn't packed snow. He pulled his hand out quickly, and rubbed it clean against his hip.
'There's a real body in there,' he said quietly.
'Can't say I'm surprised, Captain.' Frost threw the head aside. 'Shall I check the other snowmen?'
'No need. They're all dead men. Lionstone's way of telling us what's coming. I wonder who they were.'
Frost shrugged. 'People who upset the Empress. Never any shortage of them. Let's go.'
'What's the hurry?' snapped Stelmach. 'Make the most of what little time we've got left.'
'Don't give up hope,' said Silence. 'Frost and I have been here before, and we survived. Maybe we'll get lucky this time as well.'
'No one's that lucky,' said Stelmach.
'Don't worry,' said Frost. 'We'll put in a good word for you.'
'Oh, great,' said Stelmach. 'That's all I need.'
They moved on, trudging doggedly through the deep snow to catch up with the rest of the courtiers. Some of them must have seen what was inside the snowmen, but they were all doing their best to pretend they hadn't. Success at Court often depended on being very selective as to what you saw. The snow fell and the mists thickened and still the arctic scene stretched out before them. Silence frowned. The courtroom couldn't be that large. Perhaps they were being subtly influenced to walk in circles. He looked up sharply as an agitated murmur began again among the courtiers. The crowd lurched to a halt, those on the edges looking quickly about them. Nothing moved in the mists. Silence looked at Frost, who was listening carefully. She gestured for him to lean close so that she could murmur in his ear.
'There's something moving under the snow, Captain. It's large and alive. I can feel the vibrations, and I can hear the sounds it makes as it moves.'
'A snow snake, perhaps,' said Silence. 'They have those on Loki. Some of the big ones run to twenty feet long.'
'Oh, no,' said Stelmach. 'Not snakes. I really don't like snakes.'
'Don't worry,' said Silence soothingly. 'If it annoys the Investigator, she'll tie it in a square knot and throw it away. Right, Frost?'
'Damn right,' said Frost.
And that was when a set of jaws ten feet wide opened up beneath a courtier's feet, gulped him down, and disappeared back into the concealing snow. His friends and Family shouted in alarm and fell to their knees to dig at the snow with their bare hands, but there was no trace left of whatever had taken him. They looked at each other helplessly, and far away in the snow and mists came the light tinkling of laughter. The Empress was amused. Some of the courtiers began talking calmingly to those still on their knees. There was nothing to be done. Man proposes and the Empress disposes, and that was just the way it was in the Empire these days. Silence said nothing, but his face was set and grim.
The snow surged up suddenly at the crowd's edge as the snow creature's blunt head broke the surface. People scattered with shouts and shrieks. The great mouth opened and spat out the courtier it had taken. The head dropped back into the snow and disappeared. The courtier sailed through the air and hit the packed snow hard, but his plaintive groan showed that at least he was still alive. His friends clustered around him, checked that he was basically undamaged, and got him on his feet again. Lionstone laughed again, and everyone who liked their head where it was laughed along with her. Even the courtier who'd briefly seen the inside of something much larger than he was managed a shaky laugh. Though he was probably just glad to be alive. Frost looked at Silence.
'Big snake.'
Stelmach nodded rapidly, his eyes very large.
The courtiers trudged on again, driving their legs through the deep snow. It actually seemed to be getting colder, if that was possible. Hoarfrost was forming on hair and beards, and melting snow soaked into light clothing. Everyone was shivering, and some were shaking violently. Silence could feel the cold gnawing at his bones despite running the heating elements in his uniform on full. His nose and ears ached, and he could feel crystals of ice forming at the corners of his eyes. Stelmach was shaking as though he had a small juddering engine inside him. Frost, of course, didn't deign to shiver. The courtiers had packed close together for support and shared body warmth, but they still kept clear of Silence, Frost, and Stelmach. They knew pariahs when they saw them. They'd all stopped talking and settled for concentrating on surviving Lionstone's latest practical joke. Everyone agreed it had been a dark day for the Empire in general and the Court in particular when the Empress decided she had a sense of humor.
Strange shapes loomed up out of the mists ahead, huge shards of solid ice thrusting up out of the snow like the only part of the iceberg you ever see. The falling snow swirled around them, as though attracted to the glistening planes of ice. There were statues scattered among the huge shards, curved into sharp-edged, disturbing shapes. Silence looked from the statues to the shards and wondered if they'd been carved and shaped, too, into ancient enigmatic shapes that only mankind's distant ancestors might have recognized and responded to. The ice structures formed a rough semicircle, inviting the courtiers in, and there at the far end stood the Iron Throne, set up high on a great block of ice. And on that ancient chair of black iron studded with jade sat the Empress Lionstone XIV, calmly watching their stumbling approach.
She was wrapped in layers of thick furs, like some ancient tribal leader, her pale face as cold and clear as the legendary Ice Queen, who stole men's souls by sliding shards of ice into their eyes and hearts. She had a long, sharp-planed face, with a wide slash of a mouth and brilliant blue eyes, colder than any ice could ever be. She was
