“Where, Sinclair? Where would we go?” She grabbed his hands and stared into his bloodshot, half-mad eyes. “These people can help us,” she said, imploringly. “They have helped me already, and they can help you, too.”
“Helped you? How?”
“They have a medicine,” she said, “a medicine that can help us… change.”
His breath was short and ragged. She knew he was in the grip of the terrible thirst. She cast her eyes wildly around the room, and then settled on the fridge, where she had found the bag of blood. Surely that would be where the other bag, the bag with the medicine in it, was stored.
“Wait,” she said, moving to the refrigerator and flinging it open. A bag identical to the one that Charlotte had used to fill the syringe- perhaps the very same one-sat on a wire shelf; a label on it read AFGP-5. She prayed it was the right one.
“Come on,” Sinclair urged. “Whatever this is, we haven't time for it.”
But Eleanor ignored him. If she could save him, she would, and she had seen the procedure with the needle done enough times that she was confident she could do it herself.
“Take off your coat-quickly!”
“What are you saying? Have you lost your mind?”
“Just do as I say. I'm not moving an inch until you do.”
He yanked the coat off in exasperation.
She took out the bag and found a fresh needle in the cabinet.
“Roll up your sleeve!” she said, filling the syringe.
“Eleanor, please, there is no hope, or help, for us. We are what we are.”
“Be quiet,” Eleanor whispered. “The doctor might hear you.”
She swabbed his skin with the alcohol, patted his arm to bring up a vein, then pressed the syringe, as she had seen Charlotte do, to remove any air. “Stay very still,” she said, inserting the needle and slowly depressing the plunger. She could guess what he must be feeling-the blossoming chill in his bloodstream, the slight disorien-tation. When she removed the needle, he seemed at first to be unaffected, and she was seized with fear. Had she used the wrong medicine, or administered it incorrectly?
“I don't know what witchcraft you think you've just performed, but can we go now?” he said, rolling down his sleeve again, and pulling on the coat over his uniform jacket. Loose strings of gold braid dangled like tassels. “Where's your coat?”
He barged into the next room and found her coat and gloves there, then came back and began to bundle her into them.
“I have a plan,” he said, “to launch a boat, from the whaling station. We'll be picked up at sea…”
Then he shivered, from the top of his head to the soles of the boots-different boots, she noted-on his feet. And stumbled backwards onto the edge of the bed.
It was the right medicine. Eleanor breathed a sigh of relief. Now he would be incapacitated-at least long enough for her to explain everything to him. She knelt by the side of the bed, the tails of her long coat hanging down to the floor, holding his cold hands in hers. “Sinclair, you have to listen to me. You have to understand.”
He looked at her with rolling eyes.
“The medicine will take time for its full effect to be felt. But once it has, you will no longer feel the need you feel now.” Even at their worst, sleeping in cellars or spurring their horses through mountain passes in the driving rain, they had always referred to their affliction in only the most oblique terms. “But the doctor tells me-”
He harrumphed at that. “The doctor…” But then he could not go on.
“The doctor, and the others too, tell me we must not touch ice. Do you understand that? We must not touch ice! If we do, we will die.”
He stared down at her as if she were the one who had truly lost her wits. He chuckled, bitterly. “A fairy tale and you believe it.”
“Oh, Sinclair, I do. I do believe it.”
“And this in a land of nothing but ice. Is there any better way to make you their willing prisoner?”
Eleanor bowed her head in despair. “We are not their prisoners. They are not our captors. This is not the war.”
But when she looked up, she saw that for Sinclair, it was, and would always be, the war. Even if the physical need were relieved, the affliction had struck its roots so deep into his soul that there would be no extracting them, ever. Even then, with sweat beading his brow and his skin clammy to the touch, he staggered up, as obediently as if a bugle had sounded, and pulled on his coat and gloves. She waited, praying for the medicine to further sap his strength, but he seemed to be using all of his willpower to fight its effects.
“Sinclair! Have you heard a word I've been saying? We can't go out there unprotected.”
“Then in God's name, button up!” he said, grabbing her by the sleeve of her own coat. She just had time to snatch the brooch from the bedside table before he dragged her from the sick bay. “It's a lovely day outside.”
He lumbered down the hall and threw open the door to the outside ramp. Sunlight glinted off the snow and ice, and Eleanor instinctively pulled the goggles from her coat pocket and put them on.
“The dogs are already in harness,” he said, with satisfaction. “I made sure of that first.”
He had? How long had he been haunting the camp?
He was clambering down the ramp with Eleanor in tow, when he suddenly stopped short and said, “Of all the damn bloody nuisances…”
Eleanor had pulled the hood of her coat tightly over her face, but when she peeked out from under it she saw Michael-slack-jawed-standing a few yards away a black metal contraption with three legs tucked under one arm. He seemed to be trying to make some sense of what he was seeing.
“If I were you,” Sinclair said, “I'd turn tail now and run.”
Michael's eyes went straight to Eleanor's, searching for some answer.
Sinclair pushed the flap of his overcoat away, revealing the saber that hung at his side, but when he tried to move off, Michael hastily blocked their path.
“Good God, I'm in a hurry!” Sinclair exploded, as if he were scolding a slow-witted stableboy Letting go of Eleanor's arm, he pulled the sword from its scabbard. “Now get out of the way,” he said, brandishing the sword in the gleam of the polar sun, “or I'll drop you where you stand.”
“Michael,” Eleanor interceded, “do as he says!”
“Eleanor, you can't be out here! You have to get back inside!”
Sinclair's eyes flashed at the exchange, and moved from one of them to the other. But when they returned to Michael, they burned with a cold fury.
“Perhaps I've been blind,” he said, advancing on Michael with the tip of the sword extended.
To Eleanor's horror, Michael did not retreat, but raised the metal contraption-it had three legs, like an artist's easel-and held it out like a weapon.
This was madness, she thought, utter madness.
“You can go,” Michael said, standing his ground. “I won't try to stop you. But Eleanor stays.”
“So that is what this is about.” Sinclair sneered. “You're a bigger fool than I thought.”
“Maybe you're right,” Michael said, taking a step closer, “but that's the deal.”
Sinclair paused, as if mulling it over, then suddenly lunged at Michael, the sword whistling through the air. The blade struck the legs of the tripod, and blue sparks flew into the air. Michael fell back, struggling to hold on to it.
Sinclair advanced, baiting Michael with the end of the sword, twirling it in small circles. Eleanor saw now that the back of her lieutenant's head had a gash in it, and the blond hair had been cut short, as if someone had tended to the wound.
Michael feinted with the tripod, pushing it back at Sinclair, but Sinclair knocked it to one side and continued to advance on him.
“I'm pressed for time,” Sinclair said, “so this will have to be quick.”
He slashed once, twice, and on the third blow the tripod was wrenched from Michael's hands and clattered to the hard ground. Michael scrambled after it-he had no other weapon-and as Sinclair swung the gleaming saber back over his left shoulder, ready to deliver the fatal blow, there was a bloodcurdling scream and Charlotte-in a green silk bathrobe, with her braids flying about her head-hurtled down the ramp and shoved Sinclair off-balance. He stumbled forward, barely hanging on to the sword, before whirling around and swinging at his new assailant. The blade
