Above them, the sky was fierce with stars – pure light smashed across its empty reaches. Lucy couldn’t stop shivering. Alkazia was a dark shape against the sky, a door into some other world. While Lucy stood there, gazing at it, the moon slid over the top of Alkazia and the whole plain shone. For one moment, Lucy was suspended, part of the sky, feeling the stars burn in her own flesh. Then Fracta tugged at her arm and they started walking.
The silence was astonishing. Lucy could hear tiny crystals grating against each other under her feet. What she felt, above all, was the unreality of fear. She might have been suspended an inch above her body, noting with curiosity how her hands were shaking, how her bones felt hollow.
Fracta signalled the entrance was on the far side. They walked around Alkazia. The entrance was a cutout square, darker even than the walls. Holding her ice-razor in front of her, Lucy walked into Alkazia. Inside, it was dead cold. Moonlight, glimmering through the door, showed Lucy she had stepped into a vast hall, its ceiling and corners lost in shadow.
Fracta tapped against Lucy’s back and pointed at one wall. Then she pointed at her chest, and the opposite wall, and scurried away. Splitting up, they edged along opposite sides of the hall. The wall showed Lucy’s reflection – her face, distorted on the uneven surface. When Lucy stepped closer, her reflection rose and blossomed, opening as she leant towards it, until she leant into her shadow. Then her reflection vanished. Where her face had been, she saw someone else’s face.
Her cry echoed in the silent hall. It was the Heir, like him in every way; only there was no life in him at all. The ice gave his skin a marble sheen. He had his hands raised, fingers splayed. For a moment Lucy was in the aeroplane again, watching him press his fingers against the window. Then the memory faded and Alkazia gathered around her again.
The Heir was in a cell cut into the wall. A layer of ice held him, its dirty translucence pitted with bubbles of air. He was frozen; she could not save him. Still, she couldn’t bear to leave him there, staring at nothing. Her ice-razor sliced easily through the wall.
He was surprisingly light. Lucy lifted him easily from his cell. His flesh was so cold it froze to her fingers. She had to blow on them to ease them free. She suddenly imagined finding Daniel like that, and felt the cold glaze her own skin. Setting the Heir down, she took another step and peered into the wall. Again, her reflection blossomed and vanished. Again, where her face had been, she saw another’s face. It wasn’t Daniel; it was the face of a Cloudian, his plump cheeks stretched with pain. Stepping forwards, she saw another Cloudian, and then another. The hall was a gallery lined with true images of suffering.
Lucy searched the length of the wall, looking into stricken faces until her nerves dulled. At the far end, she came upon an oversized staircase, with every step an ice-plank wedged into the wall. She looked up at it and dark filled her eyes. Some part of her longed suddenly to see the Kazia, face to face.
Fracta tapped on Lucy’s shoulder. ‘I have found them. The two Cloudians I have cut free, but your Earth friend is awake and I would not shock him.’
‘Daniel’s alive?’
‘You must be quick to cut him out.’ Fracta glanced up at the door. ‘Already, the moon is sinking.’
Lucy was running. Fracta had propped Wist and Jovius beneath their broken cells. Jovius lay spreadeagled, just as he had been. In the next cell, Daniel slumped against the back wall. When Lucy rapped on the ice, he didn’t even blink. Four slashes, and she pulled the ice wall out.
‘Daniel!’ She reached into the cell and wrapped her hand around his wrist. His skin was so cold it felt like laminex. ‘Come on, quick!’
‘I’m so tired.’ Daniel’s voice sounded like a slow-motion recording.
‘Cold’s all through him,’ said Fracta, behind Lucy. ‘You’ll have to drag him out. I’ll get the others.’
‘The Heir, too,’ remembered Lucy. ‘Near the door.’ She was straining to lift Daniel. His arms and legs flopped. ‘Come on,’ she pleaded.
Daniel kept staring at some point a hand’s breadth in front of his face. When his left foot caught on the side of his cell he tumbled forwards. Lucy’s knees gave way under his weight. He crashed down on her; he hadn’t even put out his hands to break his fall. Rolling him off her and grabbing him under the arms, she started lugging him backwards across the hall. She was sweating and her lungs hurt. Halfway, she had to stop and catch her breath. Her gasps tore at the silence.
‘Get up, Daniel. Please get up.’ She glanced back at the door.
‘I’ll take his shoulders.’ Fracta appeared beside Lucy. ‘You get his feet.’ With a quick sideways heave, Fracta pulled Daniel across her hunched back. Lucy grabbed his ankles. Together, they half-walked, half-staggered across the hall, bumping Daniel between them.
When they stepped outside Alkazia, Lucy thought she heard the stars ringing out one high note, like a bell. Her skin tingled with painless pins and needles. They set Daniel on the cloud plain by the cave where Fracta had stacked the Heir, Wist and Jovius, one on top of the other.
‘Three hours to sunrise,’ said Fracta. ‘Keep out of my way while I remake this cave.’
Lucy crouched next to Daniel and wrapped her coat around him. Shivers ran the whole length of his body. He held his crooked hands in front of him and started whimpering as the blood burnt a path back through his fingers. The sound he made tugged at Lucy’s throat.
‘Can’t we stop it hurting?’ she cried.
Fracta was working frantically. She had pushed the cave walls out. Now she was slashing chunks of cloud out of the plain, piling them together to plug the gaps. She barely glanced up.
‘You should be glad he’s suffering,’ she said. ‘Means he’ll recover. Worry about them, if you feel like worrying.’ She flicked her head in the direction of Wist, Jovius and the Heir. Wist was still pointing, blindly, at the sky.