Coldmarch. Daniel Cohen A.

at the adventure in it all. I should have been dead a dozen times over – we all should have – but my father would have been proud to watch me attempt this Coldmarch. There was no time for me to grieve, so I knew the second best thing was to do his memory proud. Abb had had a great sense of humour, but an even greater sense of story.

      ‘Better keep those hands to yourself, Tavor,’ I whispered with a smirk, hovering over the open pit listening to the sounds of muffled conversation.

      Cam’s face fell. ‘I wasn’t going to touch anything.’

      ‘I was joking,’ I said as quickly as I could.

      ‘Oh.’ Cam gave me a sullen look. ‘You seemed serious.’

      ‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ I said. ‘I was just kidding.’

      Cam waved it away. ‘No, I know that. It was funny.’

      I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re family. I don’t lump you with the rest of— I just—’

      Cam’s smile grew wider, but I could see his true expression behind his eyes, as if I’d punched him in the gut, or taken a taskmaster’s whip and added to the scars on his back.

      ‘It’s okay,’ Cam said.

      ‘No, we—’ I tried, my stomach sinking. ‘You’re not—’

      ‘It’s okay, Mic— Spout,’ Cam said with a nod, finding his eyes on the hole instead of my face. ‘Let’s go see what this crazy Pedlar is hiding.’

      I pressed my teeth together, promising myself I’d make it up to Cam later. Before going into the chamber I slung the Coldmaker bag over my shoulder, wincing as a metal edge of the machine caught my injured wrist.

      ‘You can leave it up here,’ Cam said in a gentle manner. ‘I don’t think anyone is going to take it.’

      ‘I know,’ I said, but couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the machine behind. ‘But just in case.’

      Then I proceeded down the stairs, holding the bag close and trying not to slip. Since I only had one good grabbing hand to begin with, I had to keep most of my body pressed sideways for balance, the lips of the stairs scraping into my ribs, worsened by the weight of the machine.

      But once I settled at the bottom, I was unable to withhold my own gasp.

      The place was a museum.

      Or a tomb.

      Or a vision.

      Or the finest shop, selling equal parts treasure and equal parts dust.

      I couldn’t tell.

      ‘What is this place?’ I asked, clutching my machine close.

      This was completely unlike the other secret chamber we’d discovered since starting the March. Even though we’d found spaces with little shrines and gifts from past flocks, mostly those rooms had consisted of crude drawings on clay walls.

      This third chamber made the first seem practically empty.

      Split’s chamber was the size of a small Cry Temple, the ceiling high enough that even Slab Hagan – the tallest Jadan from my barracks – wouldn’t have been able to touch the top without a stool. Two dark corridors snaked away near the back of the room, dimly lit by a fresh candle flickering on a centre table. Overstocked shelves rose up from every available part of the stone floor, bursting at the seams with artefacts and maps and tapestries and treasures that screamed at us from every corner of the room, dizzying in their array and sense of age. Statues. Beaded clothing. Pottery. Jewellery. Scrolls. Everything down here had a tinge of neglect, but even under the shawls of dust, the items glowed with personality and life.