Read Wintermoon Ice (2010) for Free Online

with belongings. He seemed curiously resigned. "You wanted to see me?"
    "Yes." Suvi looked at him in surprise. "You, but not your possessions. Why didn't you leave them in your box?"
    "I... I thought I would be leaving. Snakes don't belong..."
    "Didn't you hear what I said at breakfast? Everyone is welcome here." She smiled at Calaan and waited until he raised his eyes to meet hers. After a moment, he smiled in return, but couldn't quite hide his baffled expression. "That is better. Now, can you read? Or write? I need to know which detail to put you in."
    He nodded proudly. "My parents sent me to Jaarvikan School . I learned to fifth year, but then I had to work in the salt mines."
    Suvi's ears pricked up. "Then I have just the job for you, Calaan. I want you to lead a detail of men there, and figure how we can get the trucks running again. Salt is scarce right now, and if we can get some more we might be able to sell the excess and make some money."
    His bafflement grew and grew. "You want
me
to lead them? A Snake?"
    Her voice was firm. "Yes. You." Suvi consulted the list posted on the wall and then the clock next to it. "I place you in charge of Detail Twenty. They will be assembling in the front hall in approximately thirty minutes. Goodman Dietr will provide transport. Get a pantechnicon and enough fuel to get you there and back. Billu, in the workshop, will have the tools you need. Don't let him give you any grief. All right?"
    Suvi had been busy with other papers on her desk as she spoke, but she looked up when Calaan gave a small, choked sigh. She was very surprised to see he had tears in his eyes. "Why are you doing this? There is no call for one of the Bright to be kind to a Snake."
    She dragged a chair over to her desk and patted it. He sat on the very edge, as though worried he might somehow sully it. Suvi frowned. "Let me tell you why, Calaan. I was a foundling child, adopted at a very young age by a prosperous family. Many people told me how luck had smiled on me, to be adopted by Harps. And it is true, as a Harp, I grew up wanting for nothing. I had a Cloud governess, who taught me languages and arithmetic. My friends were clean and clever, just as I was, and one handsome lad had already agreed to marry me when the time came. But, even though I had many beautiful clothes, and a fine ten-roomed dollhouse to play with, I was not happy. My family owned the largest estate on Lake Copaheg and some days I stood on the top floor balcony and watched the merchant ships come and go. More than anything I wanted to travel on one of those ships, but of course I could not, because people of the Bright realm never did anything so low."
    "You were a Harp, but you wanted to be a Ship?" Calaan guffawed, thinking this very funny.
    "Yes, truly I did. One day, having finished my lessons, I stood alone in the tower, and watched as my parents took a stroll along the shoreline. My mother looked very beautiful in her white lawn dress and lace parasol. There was a child playing in the water, a Rat, I think she was. The wake from a passing Steamer swamped her, and she disappeared. Her mother screamed for help. I saw her beg my father to go to the child's aid, but he only stepped around her and kept walking. The woman went into the water herself, and drowned, as did her daughter."
    Suvi closed her eyes, remembering the pitiful, sodden figures that the police dragged from the lake the next day. Her hands clenched and she realized she had crumpled a list of figures into a ball. Self-consciously, she smoothed it out.
    "Well, who would help a Rat?" Calaan asked, with patient rationality. "They are almost as low as Snakes."
    Her amber eyes flashed. "I would have! And so I made up my mind that day that I belonged to no Soli. When he found he could not change my mind, my father threw my humble beginning back in my face, saying I must have come from the Rats I had wanted him to save. He sent me away to live with an Aunt and Uncle, Harps of course,