“Three days if the weather holds. A storm could delay us by a day or more.”
Noreen glanced back in time to see Gunnar’s eyes assess the cool blonde who nodded sharply. Yeah, he could see Fiona had the local look and the questions were beginning to rise in his mind.
“I’ll try to check in along the way.” Noreen turned to her secretary, eager to dispatch her before he started asking those questions. “Leave word at the palace in care of Princess Coreen’s name when you get settled, just to make sure there hasn’t been a change since we made the reservations.”
“Yes, of course. Travel safe.”
Noreen felt an extra squeeze as Fiona embraced her. Fi knew how hard this visit would be. “Look after the other two,” Noreen added with a whisper.
Fiona kissed her cheek then stepped back. “I’ll see to everything. You just enjoy the trip. As much as possible, anyway,” she added in an undertone.
For the first time in more than ten years, Noreen was heading off without at least one of her staff of three in attendance. Stepping, unchaperoned, into a small transport, with a man who looked like he wanted to spend the trip in bed with her. Why had she agreed to leave Hans in Ryadstholm? After quelling the sudden knot of nervousness in her stomach, it also occurred to her it was her first visit home since her sixteenth birthday. The very day she’d grabbed Fiona and left the planet in an attempt to avoid her fate. Fate, it seemed, had more ways than one to skin the proverbial cat. She tried to ignore the little voice that said one more life had just slipped away.
* * * *
Four hours later, Noreen caught herself shifting in her seat with impatience as the snow crawler lived up to its name. Reasonably insulated from the harsh elements, she huddled in the soft luxury of her parka and stared out of the large cab windows. The grinding pace of the tracks was perfectly designed to travel across the many layers of white crystals covering Nordia’s frozen tundra. She struggled to ignore the muffled, but steady clanking of the transport, which grated further on her already irritated nerves. Her mind was occupied trying to figure out whether Cory’s frantic plea for her to return home really meant Fader was deathly ill. Knowing Cory, it could have just been one last desperate ruse to get her home at last.
Shivering, Noreen glanced at the blue glow of the clock on the control panel, which emitted beeps and small flashes from various lights finally agree to come home. Was Fader sick or not? Was it a trumped-up cold or was it serious? Cory’s silence on the matter was enough to make her want to scream.
“Where are we stopping tonight?” Noreen scanned the map in her head. One thousand very long kilometers, over frozen ground, at this tedious speed seemed endless. Just six days ago she’d been dancing in the sun, many light years away from this frozen Hell. And now...now…she was slowly crawling the last thousand klicks.
“We aren’t stopping tonight. We’re joining a convoy in a few hours. Once that happens we’ll connect to the vehicle in front and then it’s easy for the next two days.”
And nights. The unspoken words shimmered almost visibly in the frigid air between them.
“What do you mean?” An odd chill settled in deeper than anything this cold place and this disturbing man had already done to her. She pulled the hood of her parka up around her ears and wrapped the coat tighter about her body.
“I won’t have to steer.” He shot her another smile that said he thought she was cute in her ignorance. “Then we can talk, or find other ways to amuse ourselves.”
Ignorant. Yes, she was ignorant of peasant ways. When she’d left this place ten years earlier she’d done it in style in a galaxy cruising-rocket. Only peasants traveled by these slow transports, and in convoys, taking days to reach their destinations.
By normal transport, in three days, she could be several star systems away. On a world without one spot of snow. A world where white was from time to time. Nearly noon, the sun was just barely peeking above the horizon to the south, far behind them. The elongated rays sent even longer-looking shadows out in front of them, like misshapen fingers pointing north, pushing them further into the dark chill. Another day or two, and the sun wouldn’t rise at all for six weeks, only providing a glowing red spot on the southern horizon for a few minutes each day.
Folding her arms as best she could, Noreen rubbed her cheek against the hood pushed back from her face but still warming her head. The heater of the transport worked only well enough to keep the front and side windows clear of frost. A glance at the digital readouts for the interior and exterior temperatures showed her it was seven degrees Celsius inside, with a midday high of minus fifty outside. Gunnar didn’t seem bothered by it. He wore his parka unzipped and had tossed his heavy outer mitts aside in favor of thin, woolen, knit gloves.
With a heavy sigh, she once again cursed the communication last week. Damn Coreen for dragging her back to the one planet she never wanted to see again! Not even in pictures. A place she hated so much, anything white was banished from her sight, lest it remind her of where she’d been born. Leave it to her sister to be the one to drag her back. Only by hinting at Fader’s failing health did Coreen get Noreen to banned. Not even the sea foam dared appear white. Beaches were gold, sea foam was aquamarine, and every cabana boy was tanned a deep, golden brown.
“What I don’t understand,” she spoke slowly, so he wouldn’t miss a single word, “is why we have to travel this way at all. Why can’t we fly in? Why couldn’t the inter-galaxy land closer to Stravicsholm?” At the very least she should have been able to catch an intercontinental express rocket, which should have been able to land within a half-day’s ride of the main capital, not three.
“Weather. This point in the season, it isn’t safe to blast in and out so far north. It’s barely safe enough to land near Ryadstholm. Besides, the reindeer and musk oxen herds don’t like the racket so we’ve returned to the old ways. Slower, but life is so much better. Relax, princess, and enjoy the ride.”
Noreen merely glared at the implied insult of the princess remark. She also wasn’t sure she liked the grin on Gunnar’s face. Handsome enough that he knew it all too well, his smile bordered on lecherous in her mind, his tone too smooth. Blond hair, nearly as white as the snow outside, brushed his shoulders, and he had the traditional blue eyes of the Nordian people. Traditional in that they were blue. Not so traditional in that they were a deep blue, sparkling with tiny flecks of what looked like silver. Fey eyes. The eyes of a spirit man. The rest of him was remarkable as well. Square chin, square jaw, providing an aristocratic frame for smooth skin the color of bleached maple, a very light golden brown. Warm vanilla. From what she could tell, under his outer clothing he seemed to have a body to match. Not that it mattered. She wasn’t going to be checking out his body close up.
“Wait. We’re not stopping?” She frowned. “Where will we sleep?”
When Gunnar shot another tolerant smile at her, she had the urge to slap it off his face. The man’s arrogance apparently knew no bounds. He reached over his shoulder and pushed a button. A thin panel slid open to reveal a cabin behind them. She turned to get a better look. Behind Gunnar’s seat was a plastic, half-height, open-topped cabinet with a showerhead over it. Inside, sat a self contained toilet. One step away, behind her seat, was a small fridge under a single radiant burner next to an equally small counter, barely big enough to assemble a sandwich on. Along the back wall was another low cabinet, presumably holding other necessities. Where were the beds? Was there enough room for stacked bunks?
“See the panel on the back wall?”
“Yes.” It looked like a painting. White landscape with the night sky striped by the polar lights. How typically Nordian.
“It swings down to make a platform bed.”
“A bed,” she repeated, not wanting to comprehend. It would come down to rest on the half-height cabinets