To the kid, June was a monster.

  She was a strange, chimeric combination of beauty and horror; a human half-swallowed by darkness. Her sparkling leotard– specially made to shine in the spotlight as she flew above stunned audiences– now seemed as if it was the only thing holding her together.

  From the waist down and from left elbow to fingertips, she still boasted the tanned skin and lean muscle that had made her a spectacle all her life. But the rest of her looked as if shadows had gathered into a solid. She was almost entirely a walking, talking, silhouette. A shadow-monster from some child’s nightmare.

  “Don’t make this hard!” She screamed after the boy. He ran on, across the pitted and uneven snow, doggedly fighting for every step. Fear was an incredible motivator.

  June sighed and glanced at the sky. The sun was setting, night coming on like a stalker, and the window of opportunity was shrinking. She flexed and relaxed one gloved still-human hand around the stock of her revolver. It would be so easy. The kid wasn't even 10 yards off. So why did she hesitate?

  With a frustrated grunt June raised the gun, earning a shriek from the child when he hazarded a glance back, and took aim at his skull. The heady rush of anticipation filled her with confidence even as her quarry gained distance. One squeeze of the trigger was all it would take, and she would be free and clear.

  June, a voice echoed from her memory. Please, end this.

  The hand on the gun suddenly wasn't so steady. It wobbled as the wind gusted, pushing the barrel off course. The same wind had knocked the kid off his feet up ahead. He scrambled to all fours in the snow, still not more than 15 yards out, and turned to look back at his attacker.

  Wide, blue eyes regarded her with terror. Even through the snow and the failing light of dusk, they looked as clear as day.

  "Fuck," June muttered to herself, correcting her aim to account for the wind. "They just had to be blue."

  Memories of another pair of blue eyes filled her vision. Of how they had begged her, in the end, to change. Blue eyes and blood in the darkness, and the flush of strength she had felt when this had all begun. A strength that had now, at last, run out.

  With a wailing sob, June dropped the gun and fell to her knees. Guilt tore through her in an agonizing wave, an endless crushing awareness of every drop of blood, every misdeed, every hurt she had inflicted. Nauseating, lethal guilt. She raised her hands in surrender at no one in particular, screaming outright.

  The boy, having gained his feet again, continued his flight over the snowfield. He would live to see night, at least.

  The patches of shadow that dappled the snow stretched longer as June screamed her guilt into the wastes. They grew and spread, becoming bigger than the angle of the sun should have allowed for. They had gathered together into something more opaque and solid. And now that black thing on the fresh-fallen snow stretched its way towards June’s feet.

  She felt almost relieved when the pain took hold. The shadow crawled from a bare foot up her leg, and the animalistic panic that would have sent her screaming in years prior did not come.

  The urge to survive had simply gone out of her; a candle snuffed in the breeze. She stared down at her leotard - she had spent so long embellishing it this year - as her legs blurred into darkness. The agony of dissolving muscle and crushed bone killed coherent thought then, and she knew only suffering.

  The pain was exquisite until the very end.

  Chapter 2

  The ringmaster fastened the final golden button on his collar, just over his throat. He could hear the motley chorus of pre-show sounds echoing from the stage, a cacophony of shouts and discordant snatches of music that were as familiar to him as his own hands. He smiled. His crew always put their full effort into every performance, of course, but this evening there was no denying the extra buzz of excitement. A peal of laughter cut through the noise, reminding him of something that needed doing. With one final adjustment to his collar to ensure it was perfect, he left the dressing room.

  The dazzling, showman’s grin he wore at every public appearance settled onto his features automatically as he picked his way through the chaotic backstage corridor, tipping his hat at anyone who acknowledged him (most were, thankfully, too busy).

  The main tent was massive, a point of pride belonging to the circus for at least two hundred years. It was set up non-traditionally, with the stage a half-moon shape on one end and the house seating in rows of risers arranged more like a theatre auditorium than anything else. Behind the stage a wide corridor ran all the way around, dotted with doors that led to various storage rooms, costume closets, dressing rooms, and a wider one that led to the animal staging area.

  Where the back corridor ended on each side of the stage, there were hallways that ran out like spokes from a wheel, leading to a cluster of smaller, satellite tents. It was towards one such tent that the Ringmaster headed, breathing deep as the scents of fried foods and butter replaced the sweat, paint, and booze perfume of the backstage corridor.

  Briefly, the sound of the waiting crowd could be heard drifting out of the main tent. Overlapping conversations as the audience waited for the show to begin. It was a sound that called to the Ringmaster like a siren-song, but he made himself ignore it. There would be plenty of time for schmoozing later.

  Now at the door of a smaller tent, two security guard brutes with faces only a mother could love nodded the Ringmaster through. One of them growled his stage-name, Zephyr, by way of greeting.

  “Gentlemen,” Zephyr responded with a bow. The guards were not people he interacted with enough to know well. He thought one of their names started with a G. Luckily, they neither knew nor cared that their boss didn’t know who they were.

  Warm, smoky air rushed out of the door as it opened. This tent was kept intentionally warm and dimly lit. He had gotten the idea from the casino in town. Keep the people comfortably confused about the time and they stay and drink and – most importantly – spend.

  The private parlor was exclusive; the kind of place you had to be on a list to get into. While the patrons that frequented it were not the sophisticated upper class you might find in cities South of the wastes, these people were just as accustomed to a higher standard. They were typically the children of generational wealth, bored by the lack of risk in their day-to-day lives.

  They likely had woken up one morning and decided to make the pilgrimage North, suiting up with an expedition and more often than not paying some sad sap to do all the actual work of frontiering. To most of them, the carnival Kaamos was just a badge of achievement. Something to brag about to their friends later. They wanted to see it, but they did not want to hobnob with the common man. They wanted, needed something better.

  The private parlor, typically referred to as just The Parlor, was born from that need. Everything inside was ornate and expensive. There were secluded tables tucked into nooks along one wall, each hung with velvet drapes for privacy. A bar served as the centerpiece of the room, though, its mahogany surface polished to a high sheen so that it reflected the massive, glittering chandelier overhead.

  Only a few people sat at the bar at this hour, their nights just getting started. They would be well drunk by the time the show started. Zephyr spotted one of his performers lounging in a cloud of smoke near the back of the room, where a scattering of sofas, plush chairs, and cafe tables comprised the rest of The Parlor’s seating. He felt a flash of irritation at the sight of his performer’s arm slung around an unconscious woman.

  Shrill laughter pulled his attention to the right, and Zephyr’s smile grew even wider. If the laugh was unmistakable, it was nothing compared to the woman it belonged to. She sat on a sofa against the far wall, where doors to private rooms alternated with cushioned smoking areas. Isa was, as ever, surrounded by a cluster of men with more blood in their loins than in their brain.

  She sat among them like an obscene idol being worshipped. Her fat, pale legs cascaded over the edge of the sofa, the skin of one nearly indistinguishable from the other. She seemed impossibly enormous; a rolled and dimpled white mound bursting in every direction. The pink bustier she wore strained at every seam against folds of thick flesh. Her arms were the width of most womens’ entire bodies.

  She looked up as Zephyr approached. That round face, grotesque and seductive all at once, turned his stomach. Her plump lips parted in a smile that set her chins wobbling.

  “Sir!” She exclaimed in that shrill, girly voice. “Did you miss us?” One of her fat fingers found the lace top of her bustier, then traced its way down to where he could only guess her nipple must be smashed there between pounds of fat and thin cloth.

  “Isa…” Zephyr filled his voice with feigned affection. “You know you torture me with these temptations.” He leaned down towards her proffered hand, kissing one plump finger. Her skin was hot, and when he pulled back he could see a flush crawling up her neck.

  Movement in his peripheral nearly made him jump. A snake’s head had appeared from Isa’s curls, sliding with hypnotic slowness over the shelf formed by her ample breasts. Zephyr watched it for a moment, marveling at the indecency of it: that long serpentine body pressing against mound after mound of sweaty flesh. It wound its way down her side and down over a mountainous thigh, coiling there like a garter.

  More obscene, more tantalizing than the image of snake and skin was the erotic moan that left her lips as Zephyr reached out to stroke the snake’s angular head. He suppressed the urge to recoil and instead winked at her, earning another trill of laughter.

  “What’s all this, sister?” A new voice, huskier than Isa’s, heralded the arrival of the circus’s second fat lady. She emerged from one of the nearby doorways wearing only a skirt, looking like the mirror image of her twin sister. It was hard to imagine there was enough flesh in the world to make two of them.

  “Ah, there you are, Liv,” Zephyr cajoled, turning with a flourish towards Isa’s twin. “I was wondering.”

  Liv moved like a force of nature, her grace uninhibited by her size. The way her generous folds and bulges rippled with each step was entrancing. Sweat shone on her belly, beading on her chest and dripping down the massive globe of each breast. She was clutching an empty wineglass in one fat fist, and had her own snake draped around that same forearm.

  Her breath heaved with effort as she swung herself around to settle on the couch beside Isa. Both of them, blue eyes shining in the dim light, looked at him expectantly. Zephyr felt filthy standing there under their combined salacious stares.

  “Ladies,” he said. “I must humbly ask a favor of you.”

  Isa and Liv leaned in, indecent excitement lighting their faces. Even their snakes perked up, as if they too were listening. Zephyr’s smile became something sinister as he allowed his mask to slip just enough to get their undivided attention. When he spoke again, his voice was a quiet growl.

  “It’s going to be messy.”

  Chapter 3

  Joanna reined her horse hard, stopping them just at the front of a weather-worn building bearing a sign that might have at one point born the word INN but was now no more than a wood panel with flecks of paint clinging to it, flapping in the wind. It didn’t look very inviting.

  The snow was coming down in earnest now, lowering visibility to a dangerous degree. Jo could barely make out her companion six paces back. She looked in his direction anyways, and sighed. There was no hitching post here; they had grown more and more rare since they’d entered the wastes.

  Back at Far Point, where they were supposed to be, horses were still the main mode of transport. Out here, though, oxen and even the occasional motorized vehicle seemed to be what people relied on. Probably due to the weather. But it was just another thing about the wastes that made Jo feel uneasy.

  Nate brought his mount to a stop beside her, squinting up through the snow. He wore a thick scarf wrapped around his neck, and the hood of a fur-lined coat pulled over his brown hair. A gust of wind— mild yet, but seeming to hint at the coming wrath of the blizzard— forced his face down. Both of them squeezed their eyes closed against the bitter cold of the breeze.

  When it passed, Jo looked at her partner imploringly. “Please, Nate. Let’s just head back. We can still beat the storm if we keep at a lope.”

  Nate frowned. His face was windburned, red tinting his normally tanned cheeks. He was wearing a familiar stubborn expression that drove Jo crazy. He was a good man, but when he dug his heels in he could be absolutely maddening. Judging by the set of his mouth, this was not a fight he was going to give up.

  “Jo,” he said, matching her pleading tone. “It’s a matter of principle. Not to mention money. The sheer cost of those supplies-”

  “I know,” Jo cut him off. Too annoyed to argue, she swung her leg out of the stirrup and slid to the ground. Tumble, her baldfaced paint, whickered at her. Snow had begun to collect in his mane. Jo brushed it off, murmuring reassurances into his ear. She slipped the reins over his head and led him closer to the building. Nate sighed behind her. He knew he would hear about this later.

  “I promise I’ll find you somewhere warm. And the thickest blanket I can,” Jo told her horse. Talking to him like a person was a bad habit, according to most everyone back home, but it soothed her. Especially when she didn’t feel like talking to Nate.

  Tumble just blew air through his nose and stood there serenely while she tied him to one of the building’s deck posts. The snow wasn’t thick enough yet to entirely muffle the sound of hooves, so she heard Nate come up behind her before she saw him. He had pulled his hood down and was looking at her cautiously.

  “Are you upset?”

  Jo, sighing, turned to face him. His green eyes, so lovely and gentle in that rugged face, softened her mood as they always did. She rubbed the back of her neck with one gloved hand. It was going to be a lifetime of this man getting his way, with that look.

  “I just don’t think this is a good idea. We aren’t supposed to be out this far without a guide. And we aren’t outfitted for a storm,” she told him, trying to regain some dignity by sounding stern. He didn’t buy it, of course, and visibly relaxed.

  “The wastes aren’t as bad as the tales, Jo.” He grinned at her as he dismounted. “Plus, you’ve got me! I’ll protect you.”

  She made a face at him. The big tough gunslinger act would have been pathetic had he not been so damned earnest. He laughed, more at himself than at her face, and she couldn’t help grinning along with him.

  He made quick work of tying his horse, a huge, borrowed Shire named Sentinel, and slung his arm around her shoulders as they entered the building. Jo nervously checked her hip for her knife, then the stock of her sidearm. Nate had only his hunting rifle, slung over his back. He was confident none of this would come to a firefight, Jo thought, because of course he was.

  “Can I help you?” A woman asked them before their eyes even had a chance to adjust. She didn’t look like an innkeeper or a barmaid. She was dressed in snow gear tip to toe, with a long coat and snow goggles pulled up onto her blonde head.

  “Hello, Ma’am,” Nate said politely. “We’ve been blown off course, I’m afraid, and when we stopped a little farther down the road for directions it seems somebody may have accidentally confused our cart with their own.”

  The woman raised an eyebrow. “You were robbed?”

  Nate held up his hands and shook his head. “I’m not saying that. We don’t really know what happened. I just know that last we saw of our cart it was headed towards this town.”

  “What was in it?” She asked. She didn’t sound concerned for them at all. Jo clocked the shift in tone from polite to greedy and took an automatic step back, her hand itching for a weapon.

  “Supplies,” Nate answered truthfully. “But rather expensive amounts of supplies. And our people at Far Point are really counting on us to bring all of the supplies that they ordered. Not just some of it.” He looked at her plainly, clearly unworried. The woman peered at both of them. It seemed like an assessment.

  “Well, I can ask my boss if he’s seen it,” she said after a moment. Nate smiled at her warmly.

  “That would be excellent.”

  “Wait here,” she ordered. Jo watched her disappear into another room. Though the sign had indicated this was an inn, the interior didn’t much look it. If anything it looked like a general store near to going out of business. There were a couple tables, sure, but no counter to speak of, and the whole back of the room had shelving that was nearly empty. What few items there were for sale looked dingy and used.

  In one corner, a tiny wood stove and a hanging rack of pots and pans stood near the entry to what might have been a small kitchen. Despite the blistering cold outside, the stove had managed to heat this place to an uncomfortable temperature. Jo fought the urge to pull off her scarf to relieve the itchy prickling of sweat breaking out along her collar.

  “I promise, Jo,” Nate said quietly. He could probably read the nervousness on her face like a book. “After this we check the outfitters across the road, and if nobody there knows anything either then I promise we’ll head right back to camp.”

  Jo nodded. A surly looking man with a limp entered the room from another door, eyeing them warily. He poured something from the kettle on the stove and limped back the way he came. Two revolvers and a pickaxe hung at his belt, which he wore over bare underclothes.

  “Frontiersman, do you think?” Nate whispered. Jo only shrugged. The people out here were notoriously tough, a trait rivaled only by their reputation for eccentricities. They had seen it firsthand over the past couple days of travel.

  A sudden gust of wind rattled the windows, startling them both. Then there was an odd snapping sound and a louder smack of impact. Jo whirled towards the noise. An arrow’s shaft stuck out of Nate’s shoulder. He stared at it in confused dismay.

  Jo, reacting faster because she had been expecting something to happen, found the source of the shot crouched on the top of a small stairwell in the corner. She drew and fired off three rounds. The bowman fell forward, dead.

  “Nate let’s go!” She shouted, grabbing Nate’s elbow and running for the door. She threw it open, squinting through the onslaught of freezing wind to discover herself staring down the barrel of a gun. Another man had been waiting on the threshold. She risked a glance back and saw that two more had set themselves up on the stairs, armed with rifles instead of bows. They were surrounded.

  “Put down the gun, girlie,” One of the men on the stairs ordered. The man in the doorway cocked his own six-shooter for emphasis. Seeing no way out, Jo gingerly placed her pistol on the ground and stood, arms raised. Nate’s face shone with pain but he still tried to bargain.

  “Alright, alright gentlemen. You can keep the cart, it’s alright. I didn’t realize how… How important it was to you.” He raised the arm that didn’t have an arrow sticking out of it. “Just take it easy and let us go.”

  All three men closed in, pushing them back towards the tables. The wind slammed the door shut with such force that it bounced open again, letting in a swirl of snow. One of the men behind them laughed.

  “We might take you up on that, to save the energy,” he drawled. “But your woman here is so pretty… I think we could put her to use instead.”

  Nate’s normally friendly face darkened. He turned to face the man who had spoken and, as if there wasn’t an arrow protruding from him, he lunged, kicking the rifle out of one pair of arms before the other could react. Jo saw the opening and rushed the man in the doorway. Her shoulder drove him back a few steps and before he could react she had pulled her knife and stuck it hard into his crotch. He howled in pain, but didn’t drop his gun.

  No matter. Nate got one shot off before the third man had him at gunpoint once more, and that single shot hit its target. Jo looked back as the man she had stabbed clutched his bleeding, broken, and – most importantly – gunless hand.

  Nate was now in a chokehold, with a gun aimed at his heart. Jo cried out, starting for him, but he shook his head fervently. She hesitated. Their eyes met in a wordless exchange. Then wretched, helpless understanding passed between them, and Jo bolted from the building without looking back.

  The wind was fierce now, biting into her bare skin as soon as she broke cover. She blindly fumbled at Tumble’s reins but the blowing snow made it impossible to see the knot. There was a scream from inside the building, and two more shots fired.

  “Fuck this,” Jo mumbled. She unclipped the reins from the bridle and leapt awkwardly onto her horse, who needed no spurring to sense her urgency. He wheeled around and took off at a gallop before she even had her seat. Everything was a blur of white that stung at her nose, her eyes, her skin.

  She had never seen a storm like this. The sound of it was like a freight train roaring. Once in the saddle she wrapped her hands in Tumble’s mane and held on, praying he could see better than she could. The land was all white now, and trees were few in the wastes. She could have steered, but she had no idea which direction was which in this weather. All they could do was try to put distance between themselves and that Inn.

  Eventually, Tumble slowed to a lope that could be more easily maintained over distance. Jo buried her wind-burned face into his neck and whispered encouragement and thanks. He radiated heat as horses always seemed to do, and it felt good on her frozen nose.

  All they could do was run.

  The cold put Jo in a sort of stupor after a while, and she found that she felt intensely drowsy. Curled in against Tumble’s warmth, with that ceaselessly howling wind and white in every direction, she fought sleep.

  Eventually, she became aware that Tumble had slowed to a trot, and she had nearly fallen asleep. She was slipping to the right. The horse felt his rider’s shift in weight and grunted his distress. It snapped her back awake.

  “Shit, shit!” She exclaimed through numb lips. Tumble’s white face was turned slightly to look back at her. “I’m okay, I’m awake.” He whinnied and looked ahead again.

  A memory from the beginning of their journey, when they were still riding in familiar landscape, surfaced in Jo’s exhausted brain. It was something like a hallucination, perhaps. Or maybe she had fallen asleep again.

  “I’ve seen snow before, Nate,” Jo chided, rolling her eyes. Nate laughed. He was leaning forward in his saddle, reins forgotten on his mare Cricket’s neck, showing off a bit by steering with his legs.

  “I know you have, Joanna.” He laid the sarcasm on thick.

  “Ugh,” Jo said. “If we’re going to get married you have got to stop calling me that.”

  Nate lit up like she had known he would. He straightened up. “I still get a little thrill every time you mention it. I can’t wait. How about, instead, I call you fiancee?”

  Jo wrinkled her nose. “Nah, that’s even worse.” She glanced down at the ring on her finger, feeling her own thrill despite the feigned nonchalance.

  “Ha! Alright. Fine, Jo, babe… Anyways, this isn’t like the soft mountain snow when we run the passes in winter. This is harsh, unforgiving. It’ll freeze you to death.”

  “I reckon any sort of snow will do that.”

  “Maybe so, but it happens fast in the wastes. Hypothermia can creep up on you.”

  “I think I’d notice if I was freezing to death.”

  “You’d think so, but this type of cold does it quick. And you get confused before you feel anything else. The confusion makes it harder to recognize what’s going on. Suddenly you’re dizzy, a little nauseated perhaps. Then tired. You just want to fall asleep. You’re confused as to what’s even going on, so you maybe think to take a little nap.”

  “A nap in the snow?” Jo guessed.

  “A nap you never wake up from,” he countered, serious now. “Wake up, Jo.”

  WAKE UP!

  His shout dissolved into the sound of Tumble screaming in distress. Jo felt her reaction happen at half speed. It was like trying to wade through sand to move at all. They had hit a snowbank at speed, and the horse was going down. Tucking her chin and using every bit of strength she had, Jo rolled as she hit the ground.

  Tumble couldn’t even try to break his fall. He fell hard, his head slamming against the ground with such force that Jo found herself suddenly thankful for the snow. His legs pawed at the air for balance, hooves flashing. She crouched where she landed, feeling the tug of sleep again. It would be so comfortable to just close her eyes here, and nap for a second. Just while she waited for Tumble to get up.

  She forced her eyes open, fear struggling to ooze its way along her nervous system. There was an unnerving gap between thought and action that grew wider with each second. Her heart should have been pounding, her mind sharp with adrenaline; instead it felt as if a sedative coursed through her. Each heartbeat was a slow labor.

  Even as her mind screamed with urgency, unconsciousness teased at the edges of her vision. It waited there for her, conjuring memories from childhood of stepping out of the bath and into the fluffy, warm embrace of an outstretched towel and her mother’s arms. No! This was what Nate had been talking about. She couldn’t go to sleep.

  The wind picked up even more, as if angry at having been outsmarted.

  Tumble was still scrambling to get up, but the frozen ground offered no purchase. His eyes were wide and white rimmed. He snorted in fear, rocking to the side once more to get legs under but sliding back down. Jo crawled towards him on numb limbs.

  By the time she made her way to him, painfully slowly, he had stopped trying to stand. His flanks heaved and shined with sweat. His eyes rolled. She laid one hand on his nose and he steadied a bit, looking at her through the wind-whipped mess of his forelock. How long had they ridden? She looked around and realized, with sluggish surprise, that dusk had fallen.

  Guilt gripped her. She had been so out of it that she had no idea how long they’d ridden, or how far they’d come. She must have fallen asleep at some point, she knew, because an entire chunk of time had been lost. And she hadn’t even stopped to let Tumble rest. He had run himself out of strength.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. Her eyes stung with tears, and stung again as those same tears froze on her lashes. She pulled off her glove with her teeth, gasping at the sight of the bruise-colored tips of her fingers. Frostbite. She refused to consider the implications just now.

  The frostbitten hand burned like fire as she stroked Tumble’s side. He stared at her with his wide blue eye, his trust complete even as he lay dying in the snow. “I’ll get you out of this,” she told him. He snorted at her, eyes calmer now.

  Jo unlatched his bridle and slipped the bit from his mouth. That icy cold metal couldn’t be helping things. He huffed his thanks. Thinking as quickly as her lethargy would allow, she put her glove back on and started digging in the snow with slow, clumsy motions. The hypothermia had nearly ruined her dexterity.

  The snowbank itself sheltered Tumble’s head for the most part, but she awkwardly scooped at it with numb hands to build it up in a half-circle. That alone winded her, and she had to sit in the snow to catch her breath for a few minutes before going back to her snowpile and packing it down into a wind-breaking wall. She then worked on the other side, til he was surrounded in a horse-shaped pit of packed snow.

  Jo’s tears flowed faster now. She stood at last, trying desperately not to think of this snowy cocoon as Tumble’s tomb. He had closed his eyes, but his breathing was steady. The wind was quiet when Jo was crouched behind the shelter of the banks she had made, which gave her hope.

  Then, the hardest part of all. The wind whipped at her hair, punishing every inch of exposed skin. It was like razors. The desire for sleep was nearly overwhelming but she gathered an armful of fresh snow and dropped it onto Tumble’s legs. Her eyes closed again and again, and she continued to force them back open.

  Step by step, scoop by scoop, every grueling movement costing energy she didn’t know she had, until all that was showing beneath the white was Tumble’s head. She had punched a couple holes in the side of her makeshift shelter, but with the rate the snow was falling he would suffocate soon anyways.

  Jo wasn’t even aware that night had fallen. Everything seemed bright and white. She knelt beside her beloved horse’s head and leaned down to kiss his nose. The warm, hay-scented breath that brushed her face felt weak. But at least he was still warm.

  A nauseating wave of dizziness nearly knocked her back down when she straightened. She was sweating despite the cold. Her nose had run, her snot frozen on her burned and numb skin, and she figured she was as good as done for. She might as well just curl up next to Tumble and fall asleep. Blissfully, wonderfully asleep.

  But then he would die, too. She took one last, lingering look at his head sticking out of the snow, memorizing it, and using it to steel her will. She took a purposeful step forward. Then another.

  And collapsed.

  She made an attempt to get up, but her hands slid from under her, pushing easily through the now elbow-deep fresh coat of snow. Beneath it was a layer of frozen gravel. It looked as if it had been shoveled and then covered with a fresh layer of snow.

  Half asleep already, she vaguely wondered if it was a road.

  Chapter 4

  “But it’s a good horse!” Someone hissed. The wind, still howling, nearly swallowed the voice entirely.

  “It’s nearly dead!” A second voice responded at a half-shout.

  Something tickled at the back of Joanna’s thoughts. It seemed important, but her mind was so sluggish she couldn’t fully recall what it was. The roar of the storm and the cold paralyzing her entire body almost lulled her back to sleep.

  “He’s breathing still.” A whiney note in that first voice now. Jo’s eyes snapped open. There was a more urgent note now to the memory she could feel struggling to the surface.

  “Len I swear to the dark prince himself if you make me drag that fucking hor— Oh shit!”

  There was the sound of crunching footsteps in the snow. Jo efforted herself to gather her wits, but it was like herding cats. Everything in her brain felt slippery. She tried to push herself up, thinking that seeing past the pile of snow that had collected around her might jog her memory, but none of the muscles in her body wanted to comply. The footsteps sounded inches away from her head now and she sensed, rather than saw, the two people that crouched over her.

  “Shit, she’s still breathing, too!” That first voice again. It was bright, feminine, and musical. Jo couldn’t see from where she lay, but she could imagine the pretty face that voice belonged to. She tried to speak, but it turned to a slurred yelp as a hand suddenly gripped the roots of her hair to force her face up.

  The sky was the same black-blurred-with white mess as it had been when she’d been thrown off of Tumble. Snow still flew, almost horizontally, and that punishing wind still howled like a thing on fire. It was impossible to tell how much time had passed.

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  “Huh, you’re right.” Jo rolled her eyes to the right to see who had spoken. They were so thickly bundled in clothing that it was impossible to make anything out. Goggles hid their eyes. “Oh well.” The bundled stranger shook Jo’s head playfully, driving another helpless whimper from her numb lips.

  “Oh let her go, Nance!” The pretty voice, coming from somewhere farther off, yelled over a fresh gust of wind. Jo’s head was released back to the snow with a thump. Sounds were lost for a few moments as the storm kicked up.

  “—Down that way,” The meaner voice became audible again. There were a few confused sounds of movement, a loud thump of something hitting the snow, and then- worst of all- a pained whinny.

  “Tum-ul!” Jo grunted. Her lips barely formed the word, but she remembered at last. She knew exactly what horse these people had been referring to, and she welcomed the surge of adrenaline at the thought of Tumble being stolen.

  Her muscles seized and cramped as she found some movement again and squirmed in the snow. Her limbs were leaden, but she managed to roll over. It was a start. She strained to hear the voices as they spoke again.

  “Loop it under the strap there. Yeah, I got his legs.”

  Adrenaline surged again, flushing her skin with much-needed warmth. She got one elbow under her, then the other. Almost sitting up now, and just able to see over the snow. The effort of moving made her feel so warm that she wondered distantly if she had a fever.

  Dizziness made the world totter confusingly. She blinked away snowflakes and turned towards where the voices had been. Through the snow, what she saw was too confusing to make sense of. Two vaguely human shapes and a larger one on the ground beside them, and two stocky shapes larger than both of the humans but lower to the ground. Piles of snow muddled the scene even further.

  One of the people straightened and turned back towards where Jo sat propped unsteadily on her elbows. The other one seemed to be busy with a length of rope, then leaned away towards the two other shapes.

  Jo squinted through a break in the snow and thought they might be oxen. She was maddeningly warm now, and shakily peeled off her coat. It offered little relief. Both of the people were standing, now, and looking at her. The taller one turned away and stepped around the prone horse-shape.

  “Let’s go!” The taller person shouted. They were the mean-voice.

  “Hang on,” the prettier voice— the shorter person— called back. She picked her way across the snow, shrugging a layer of outerwear off as she approached. “Here.” She tossed it Jo’s direction. It was a bulky, rubber-lined coat, and it landed over Jo’s head like a shroud. There was a thunk of something else hitting the ground, too.

  “I don’t like killing.” She stated simply. “And put that on, even if you feel hot. You’re already stripped half naked. That’s how we usually find bodies in the snow.” A pause broken only by the hiss of snowfall. “Good luck.”

  Her footsteps squeaked in the snow as she turned, and then receded. Jo struggled with the coat draped on her head, trying to shake its bulk off with uncooperative arms. By the time she succeeded, the two strangers were gone. And so was Tumble.

  She looked around for some kind of landmark, but in every direction there was only dark and snow; a swirling sky above an endlessly monochromatic waste. There was no light, no trees, nothing to guide her back towards civilization.

  Despair bore her slowly to her feet. She didn’t feel cold anymore, but she got into the big, dry coat that the stranger had thrown at her anyways. It took three tries just to get her arms in the sleeves. Her skin still felt like it was burning, but fear of what that woman had said kept her in the coat.

  A particularly bitter gale forced her eyes closed for a few moments. When she opened them again, she was looking down at something small and silver resting in the snow. It must have been whatever else that woman had thrown. She groped at it for a minute before managing to pick it up, eventually having to squeeze it between her palms since none of her fingers wanted to work.

  It was a dull metal canteen, and it was warm. A delirious giggle bubbled out of her. She hugged the thing against her chest, ignoring the pain that the sudden heat brought into her fingers.

  Inside it turned out to be some kind of tea she didn’t recognize. It smelled a little like pine sap mixed with mint. She took cautious sips, delighting in each one as it gave precious heat back to her body. Her head began to clear a little, and she started shivering. That, she remembered from Nate’s lecture, was a good sign.

  Buoyed by the hot drink and the dry coat, she turned a slow circle again, scanning the unbroken snow for anything familiar. Except, she realized, it wasn’t entirely unbroken; the people who had taken Tumble had left an enormous trail behind them. It was fading fast as new snow piled down over it, but she reckoned it might be visible long enough to get somewhere.

  She tucked the half-full canteen into one of the coat’s pockets, pulled the collar tight around her neck, and took up the twin ruts that the thieves had left behind. It was almost like a wagon trail, except thicker and with smoother curves on the turns.

  The cold didn’t begin to seep in again until about an hour later, when the trail had gone from a distinct print to a subtle divet in the otherwise flat blanket of white. Jo had drunk the tea down to the last few sips by then. It was still warm, but just barely.

  The trail had taken her to a place where the land suddenly dropped out into a deep ravine. There was light, now, coming from below. Jo squinted through the slurry of wind-borne snow and could just barely make out a neat row of lamp posts at the bottom of the valley. The yellow-orange lamps topping each one were barely above the snow.

  From that high point the trail made a sharp left and followed a steep ledge downwards. Jo, afraid of heights at the best of times, pressed her back into the cliffside the whole way down. The wind stilled to a softer drone once the top of the ravine was above her, and the air no longer seemed to bite at her exposed skin.

  By the time she made it to the bottom she felt the first stirrings of real hope at survival. The high cliffs offered protection from not only the wind but the worst of the snow as well. It was wetter and slushier down here, and the trail wasn’t fading as fast. It continued down the belly of the valley, and she continued to follow it.

  Chapter 5

  Jo had no idea what to make of it. It loomed out of the snow like some eerie monolith, starkly black against the blizzard. It was the biggest building she had ever seen in her life, and by far the most strangely shaped. It seemed to be round, but the wall curved so gradually from where she stood that, were it not for the domed roof, she wouldn’t have been sure.

  She had seen domes like that before, in some of the bigger cities’ more elaborate architectural endeavors. But even those tended to be small domes used mostly to ornament an otherwise-normal roof. This one was just a giant dome where a roof should be, set on top of the wall like some kind of lid.

  Her trek down into the valley following the trail of the two who’d taken Tumble felt endless, and now that she’d made it to the end the chill had crept back into her bones. She was too dazed to make any sense of the building she’d been led to.

  The whole thing was made of some black glassy material, though it must have been stronger than glass to be able to remain so perfectly unblemished in this climate.

  And it was unblemished, the sides so reflective that it mirrored its surroundings to dazzling effect. Big lights were spaced evenly around the circumference of it, set ten meters or so from the base and angled so that they didn’t reflect too harshly. The result was that the whole surrounding area glowed like some strange aura.

  From the side she stood on Jo could only see one way in: A huge double door that stood out because it was a flat, metallic gray instead of shiny black. And it was exactly where the horse-thieves' trail ended.

  Despite the lighter winds down here on the valley floor, Jo was wobbling with exhaustion by the time she finally reached the door. She could see herself, eyes wide and face haggard, reflected like a shadow in the dark glass. Fear ran through her more sharply now, and she briefly wondered if she wasn’t committing the exact same type of foolhardy mistake that Nate had before, when they were attacked.

  She told herself no, this was different, this was a living creature she was trying to rescue and not a bunch of expensive gear. And not just any living creature, but Tumble, who had been a steadfast companion for most of her life. The memory of him laying motionless in the snow was all the motivation she needed. With a grunt, she grabbed one of the door’s handles and pulled it open.

  Darkness was all she saw at first; partly due to the change from the bright lights outside and partly because it was dark inside. What light did come in through the door illuminated a huge room, its ceiling extending all the way to the top of the building’s dome.

  The dirt-and-straw floor and the smell of livestock identified it as some sort of stable, but in all her years of horsemanship she had never known a barn this large. She looked left and right, spotting a more traditionally sized door to the right. There was no sign of anyone and it was perfectly quiet other than the occasional sounds of an animal sighing in its sleep.

  Cautiously, slowly, she let the door close behind her. A final gust of cold air rushed in around her ankles, eddying snow along with it, then the room was plunged into total darkness. The warmth was such a relief that Jo stood where she was for a long moment, letting the heat calm her aching, shivering muscles.

  When she finally stepped forward, there was a series of clicks as a row of automatic lights flickered to life overhead. They were dim and yellowy, but enough to see by. Jo moved left to the normal-sized door there, but it was locked. This close, though, she could see that part of the wall was on a track. A sliding door, like at any barn, but again much larger.

  Jo traced it along to where it latched and undid that, sliding it open as quietly as she could. The scent that rolled out, rich with hay and the earthy, sweet perfume of horseflesh, made her suddenly homesick. She pushed the feeling back.

  A new series of lights— this time brighter— popped to life ahead of her, revealing two long rows of stalls. A black nose appeared from one as a more curious occupant came forward to see what was going on.

  “Shh, shh…” Jo whispered. “Sorry to disturb you.”

  She passed all manner of horse as she walked down the row, all immaculately kept and beautiful. Somehow she wouldn’t have expected horse thieves to take such good care of their charges. None were familiar, though, and she had almost given up hope when she noticed a larger stall at the very end of the row.

  Approaching at a tiptoe, Jo peered over the gate in that stall to find Tumble, still unconscious, laying in a bed of fresh hay. He had been given a blanket, too, and a heater set into the wall was blasting out a steady stream of warm air. Two boots that looked as if they’d been hastily removed were laying to the side of his haunches. His belly moved steadily up and down with each breath.

  Relief, warmer than even the heat pouring into the stall, flooded Jo. Tears sprang to her eyes. She staggered forward to throw her arms around Tumble’s limp neck, but froze halfway when a sudden voice rang out behind her.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  Jo whirled. She was looking at a short woman with a plain but pretty face, with tilted eyes and jet black hair tied up in a bun. She was holding a bucket in one hand, and in the other a halter. Her voice was lovely, and familiar.

  “It was you,” Jo gasped. “You took my horse!”

  The woman’s face contorted in anger, then confusion and realization rapidly diffused it. “Oh…Oh, shit.” She looked over her shoulder and then back at Jo. “You’re the girl. You— How?”

  Angrier by the second, Jo gestured at the coat she was wearing. “You gave me a coat!”

  “Shit,” was all the woman said. She set down the bucket and rubbed her temples with the newly freed hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Just give me my horse,” Jo demanded. The woman looked truly sorry. Which is why Jo didn’t see the knife coming.

  Faster than her still-sluggish mind could register, Jo found herself being held around the throat by the short woman, a knife pressed against her throat. She was surprisingly strong. “You have to come with me,” the woman hissed in her ear. Jo nodded, hardly in a position to argue.

  She noticed the woman glance at the stall where Tumble was, with something like sadness in her eyes. There seemed to be a hesitation, then she said, so quietly that Jo could have imagined it: “Just say you’re here for the show.”

  Then they were moving, Jo half-dragged along with her chin up as high as it would go to avoid the blade of the knife digging in. All she knew of their passage was the domed ceiling; looking anywhere but up would have compromised her throat.

  The smell of the stables faded, as did the darkness, but Jo didn’t dare ask where they were going. Her heart was pounding so hard that it had set her still-numb hands and feet to tingling painfully. She guessed it was better than them being frozen, though.

  “Bex,” the woman called out once they’d finally stopped. “An intruder.” She punctuated the word by releasing Jo with a shove.

  She nearly stumbled on her tingling feet. The room they were in was a garish green and tiny, occupied by a strange man sitting at a paper-littered desk. The man had no hair and a strange tattoo running temple to temple across his brow.

  “Oh, no,” he said flatly. “He’s not going to be happy about this.”

  Jo glared. “I’m not an intruder,” she spat, pointing at the woman who had dragged her here. “She is a horse-thief!”

  The man called Bex smiled placidly, his eyes eerily expressionless. “Indeed?” He mused. The lack of emotion in his voice made Jo swallow nervously.

  “Yes,” she began. “I saw th… Her, and someone else steal him. I followed them here.”

  He smiled coolly at her. “I see.” Then, to the woman who had brought her to him: “Leave her, I’ll sort it out. Timing couldn’t be worse, I’m afraid. The master is in a mood…”

  Jo turned back to the horse-thief woman, who met her eyes for a split second -you’re here to see the show, they seemed to remind her- and then left with a nod.

  Bex acted as if she weren’t there, picking up a pen to scribble something down for a few moments. Jo just stood there, watching him cautiously, wondering what was happening. He frowned at her after his writing was done, then plucked an old-fashioned phone from somewhere beneath his desk. His steely eyes stayed on Jo as he spoke into the phone.

  “Zephyr, we have a situation requiring your presence.”

  He winced, then set the phone gingerly back down. “Don’t even think about it,” he said without looking up. Had he seen her eyes flick to the door as she considered her chances of successful escape? It seemed impossible. But even so, she felt an uneasy sense of being watched no matter where those icy eyes were pointing.

  Jo tried to canvas the room while keeping her gaze trained on the floor in front of her. She noticed no windows, but other than the bizarre shade of green there was nothing else remarkable. It looked like a small office, amply lit and furnished only with a desk and a pair of cabinets. Papers were stacked everywhere.

  “This had better be good,” a voice boomed from directly behind Jo, making her jump. She hadn’t even heard anyone come in. Bex, a strange smile on his face now, just bowed his head and gestured at Jo, who spun around to face the newcomer.

  A litany of argument died on her lips. She gaped up at the man, caught by the hawk-yellow eyes that seemed near glowing in the dim (dim? Had he turned off the lights?) light. He was dressed in the finest clothes Jo had ever seen, all black velvet and silk brocade, gold embroidery accenting every perfectly-tailored line.

  His face was just as fine, though the sophistication of it somewhat sabotaged by a large devlish grin and eyes that at the moment were wide enough to show whites all around. The long hair framing his face was bright silver, though he didn’t seem near old enough to have more than a stray strand or two of gray. If she had to hazard a guess she wouldn’t have said anything above 36.

  He towered over Jo, who was fairly tall herself, but the force of his presence alone was more than enough to cow her. He stepped forward and she nearly fell backwards, staggered by the weight of his gaze and by the rage that radiated off him in waves. That grin was a thing of madness, she knew. There was no mirth in it.

  “And just who might you be,” He asked in a dissonantly soft, cultured voice. “To have interrupted our most important rehearsal of the year?”

  Jo opened and closed her mouth repeatedly, stammering. She sensed a threat beneath the surface of that purring voice with something visceral; an instinct tied to the sound of rattlesnakes in underbrush and the double-glow of a mountain cat’s eyes in the dark. Alarm bells wailed in her head, urging her to run.

  But she was sick of running. And furious at the breadth of what she’d been subjected to these past weeks at the behest of men. She thought of Nate’s warm eyes, of Tumble’s happy snorts when she greeted him in the morning, and of every god-forsaken frozen step in the wastes they had been forced to take. In those memories she found a rage of her own, and stood as tall as she could.

  “I am the victim of whoever that was that stole my horse!” She seethed at him. “I would never have intruded” -voice dripping with sarcasm on the word- “in this creepy god-forsaken place if I hadn’t been led to it by the thieves who took my property and left me there to die!”

  His face was unreadable, untouched by her anger even as her voice grew to a shout. The only change was a slight narrowing of those yellow eyes, turning them even more hawklike as he looked her up and down.

  “Give me my fucking horse back and I will gladly quit this locale forever.”

  “Seems to me, they saved your horse,” he said when she was done. Voice still low and controlled. It dripped sugar and venom in equal parts; poisoned honey for her ears. “But I do see your point about the inconvenience…”

  Wariness, rather than hope, bubbled in her chest. She took another step back without realizing it.

  “Because they saved you, as well, by mistake.” His smile stretched wider, gleeful now, and his entire demeanor shifted to something dramatic and inviting. It reminded Jo faintly of one of the actors she’d met during the autumn festival back home. “A shame to go through all the trouble of nearly dying, for nothing.” A glint in those mad eyes. “I do hate to waste time.”

  Something clamped around both of her arms like iron. She yelped. Bex had grabbed her from behind, and somehow his face was crisscrossed with strange markings now, as if his tattoo had somehow spread. He grinned a mouthful of inhumanly sharp teeth at her and forced her around to face his desk again.

  No amount of struggling seemed to have any effect on the man’s grip. Jo screamed and thrashed. Movement by the desk caught her eye and she saw an animal she’d never seen before skulking towards her; it was huge and catlike, but three times as big as the biggest mountain-cat she’d ever seen. And instead of brown-gray fur this monster was the deep orange of a monarch butterfly, crossed all over with black and white.

  It wasn’t a lion (she’d seen plenty of those in pictures), but it could have been related to one. Its head was the size of Jo’s entire torso, and its lolling, open mouth revealed fangs long enough to punch clean through a human skull ear-to-ear.

  A different kind of fear, the ancient desperate fear of prey, turned her knees watery. The cruelty of either of these men might be unspeakable, but she could quantify and fight against it. She knew of men. She didn’t know of this monster of tooth and claw, and death seemed to yawn over her as those drooling teeth drew closer.

  “Kill her,” that elegant voice ordered.

  Memories seemed to rapid-fire cycle in her panicked brain, and in desperation she latched onto what the horse-thief had told her. It seemed like nonsense. But, with nothing to lose, Jo shouted: “I’m here to see the show!”

  And everything seemed to freeze.

  Chapter 6

  The horrible anticipation of feeling the beast’s teeth had set every nerve on edge, so even when it didn’t come Jo opened her eyes expecting the worst. But there was no more roaring maw of fangs, nor the creature that they belonged to.

  Instead she found herself staring at a very petulant-looking Bex, his arms crossed and those odd stripes on his face gone so completely that she might have imagined them. He was frowning at Jo as if she’d ruined a rather fun game.

  Both confused and hugely relieved that the cat-beast had vanished, Jo cautioned a look behind her. She was hoping that the man with the yellow eyes had also disappeared, but none such luck. He was standing just where he had been, and still wearing that inviting grin, but now something like real glee shone through.

  He caught Jo eyeing him and chuckled, a sound that was just as dark and venomous as his voice. His next words were barely above a whisper.

  “Oh I doubt you’ll be able to stomach it, girl.”

  Jo turned away again, not wanting him to read her fear. The relief at not having been killed by some monstrous cat in this office had been swiftly replaced by a single worried thought: What if that death by mauling had been the better option? No, she refused to board that train of thought. She clenched both hands into fists and squared up to the yellow-eyed man, instead.

  “I can stomach more than you might think,” she spat at him. “And what about my horse?”

  He blinked, smile fading slightly. Jo thought she saw a flash of surprise there, but it could have been irritation. His voice revealed nothing as he leaned forward until their noses were mere inches apart. “Finders, keepers.”

  It was outrageous, childish even, and Jo would have told him as much had he not suddenly shoved past her to whisper something into Bex’s ear. Bex nodded, and the yellow-eyed man left the room without another word.

  “The Ringmaster says I’m to give you a ticket,” Bex told her after a moment’s pause. “Follow me.”

  Jo had a million questions, but Bex didn’t exactly seem like the type to entertain any of them. She tried to focus purely on the fact that she was alive. Alive might be the bare minimum, but it meant she had a chance at getting out of this. She would wait and watch and try to work out a way to get her and Tumble out of this strange place.

  Since she wasn’t being pulled along by the throat this time, she tried to memorize as much as she could about the path Bex led her down. From the office they had turned left, back the way she’d come, but then they went through a door on the right that opened into a high-ceilinged corridor with all sorts of strange mechanical things along one side of it.

  One looked like a pulley system, and another a giant crank, but the rest might as well have been from another planet for all the sense they made. From there a set of double doors brought them to a violently yellow room with a mirrored wall and a large hanging hoop. Beyond that, a smaller hall lined with red doors. Then a blue room with a few racks of brightly-colored clothes and a table full of objects that would have all been at home in a child’s playroom.

  Jo lost track after that, as their route might as well have been a maze. They passed endless brightly colored rooms and doors and halls of all shapes and sizes. Exhaustion had set in and her chills had returned by the time they finally stopped for Bex to knock at yet another door. She heard movement from the other side of it, but nobody answered. Bex knocked again, harder this time.

  “What!” Someone shouted through the door.

  “Bex here, got something important for you to take care of!”

  The door was yanked open and a man with curly graying hair glared out at them. His cheeks were flushed and his voice sullen. “What is it?”

  Bex stepped aside with a flourish, indicating Jo. “We have a guest staying with us til Kaamos. Ringmaster’s orders. I was told to bring her to you, so that you might find some use for her in the meantime.” He had fallen back into his bored, impassive tone. “This is Merrick,” he said to Jo. “I don’t recommend straying from his sight.”

  She shivered harder than ever but said nothing. Bex nodded as if everyone was in agreement and disappeared down the hall. Jo was starting to feel a little surreal again, as if her being handed off from person to person in this labyrinthine building was just part of a fever-dream.

  Merrick frowned after Bex’s back, looking seriously put-upon. He looked at her, sighed, and stepped back to open the door wider. When Jo made no move to enter he beckoned her in. She reluctantly obeyed.

  “You’re either very lucky, or very unlucky,” Merrick mused. “People kill for entry to Kaamos. I shudder to think what they’d do for a look behind the curtain before showtime.”

  Jo was only half-listening, distracted by the state of the room. It was small and sparsely furnished, but every inch in disarray. Against the far wall, heaps of clothes and empty bottles nearly covered a bed that would have looked perfectly at home in a hospital room, and close to the door a starkly contrasted set of ritzy lounge seats and matching table were piled high with dirty dishes.

  Stains and cigarette burns covered every visible piece of fabric, and cigarette butts were everywhere- on dishes, in bottles, in between the cushions of the seats; they were stuffed into any place big enough to fit them. Bottles and broken glass covered so much of the floor that walking there barefoot would have been nearly impossible.

  “Sit,” Merrick instructed, unceremoniously sweeping the mess on one of the chairs onto the floor. Something shattered. He picked up a bottle from the table, peered inside it, and tossed it aside. Jo sat, trying to keep the disgust off her face.

  He moved a stack of dirty, cigarette-ash-covered plates and sat on the table. “So what brought you to Kaamos?”

  “I… I don’t,” Jo’s teeth clattered shut through another set of wracking chills. “Know what that… is.”

  Merrick raised his eyebrows, then seemed to notice the state of her. “Hells, you’re freezing. You look like death.”

  A strangled laugh was all Jo managed through the shivers. She was thankful this guy seemed at least somewhat sane, the state of his room notwithstanding. Her mind was spinning in sleepy confusing loops.

  “Get by the stove,” he demanded, pointing to indicate the squat, ashy wood stove in the corner. Jo didn’t need to be told twice. She picked her way through the mess as carefully as she could and then kneeled on the hearth —this, at least, had been swept clean— and shrugged the borrowed coat off to let the heat hit her back.

  It almost hurt to feel direct heat on all those frozen muscles. Everything tingled as blood flow returned, but even the ensuing cramps were better than the aching cold of the past few days. She realized after a while that she’d been crouched there with her eyes closed.

  Merrick was still sitting on his table, apparently unbothered by her intrusion and subsequent silence. His dark eyes were gentle, at odds with the grizzled stubble and tired face. Jo found herself groggily thinking that in his youth he had probably been handsome, or if not quite handsome than charming at the very least.

  “Sorry,” she said into the silence. “I… I’ve been outside awhile. Pretty cold.” Understatement of the century, Jo thought, and Merrick’s raised eyebrow suggested that he silently agreed.

  “What brings you to Kaamos?” He asked.

  “I’ll be honest, I’ve no idea what that is. Everyone keeps saying it so I guess it’s important but – forgive me, I’m not from anywhere near the wastes— I was just following my stupid boy… Fiance… on some stupid attempt to-”

  Merrick had shook his head and raised his hands to interject. Not aggressively, but firmly enough to draw her up short. “Word of advice, fortuije, try not to give away too much of your life story to people around here.”

  Jo would have asked what he had called her, had circumstances been different, but something in his tone assured her it wasn’t an insult, so she nodded instead and started again:

  “I got lost. What the hell is Kaamos?”

  Merrick smiled uncertainty, as if waiting for the punchline of a joke. When Jo didn’t laugh or go on, his smile turned to a look of shock and… Something else. Fear? Pity? It was hard to say.

  “Not so lucky, then.” He sighed in real distress, running a hand down his face to rest on his chin. “Kid… Kaamos is the biggest show of the year for us. Have… Have you heard of Umbra? The… The shadow-show? Cirque North?”

  A long-buried memory floated to the surface and Jo narrowed her eyes. “The… Wait. My friend’s father used to tell us as kids about his frontiersman days… A circus in the polar circle… Except, he said it was a myth. That only fools went searching for it and half as many as left ever returned. Said… said it was supposed to be run by fiends and ghosts. That it… Ate souls.”

  Child-fear flared up in her then, despite her disbelief in all of that. There was something about ghost stories you heard as a kid that always got your hackles up even as an adult. Thankfully, Merrick threw back his head at this and laughed. It transformed him, turning his tired face into a mask of joy. It was a deep, contagious belly-laugh that had Jo grinning in spite of herself.

  “Eats souls? Damn, our reputation is worse than even Zephyr believes!” He snorted and laughed again. “Yes, I suppose you technically have heard of us, in that case, though I feel responsible to warn you it’s nothing so exciting as a ghost show! My, that would be something…” He trailed off, staring at the ceiling.

  “I thought it was a wives’ tale told around frontier fires,” Jo admitted sheepishly.

  “It certainly is, in your case,” Merrick said. “We pride ourselves on being the biggest, baddest spectacle known to man. We amaze and delight, we terrify and entrance… But we don’t eat souls, I’m afraid.”

  “But you are a circus?”

  “Oh yes. And not one I’d suggest anyone try to bring children or the faint-at-heart to. In fact, I don’t believe you should even be here. Forgive me saying so but most of our guests do tend to be men, and the women who do want to see us badly enough to make it here are, er, not the kind you’d want to meet.”

  “I thought circuses were for kids, and families?”

  Merrick’s expression turned stony. “Not this one.” He turned around and dug through the mess on the table till he found a bottle with a thumb’s width of amber liquid in the bottom. Draining that in one go, he took a deep breath and looked at Jo once more. “Our type of entertainment is geared mostly towards the hardiest, toughest frontiersmen. You must understand and remember that.”

  “I was at the edge of the wastes with a frontiering group myself,” Jo said. Merrick shook his head again.

  “Stop with the stories. Please. I don’t want to know. Keep that stuff close.” His eyes were urgent.

  “Sorry. I’m just here to get my horse. I’ll be glad to l-” A cramp seized her right shoulder then, doubling her over.

  “Are you okay?” Merrick was beside her in an instant, hands hovering uncertainly around. “What happened?”

  “Just a cramp,” Jo squeaked out. She grabbed her shoulder to show where.

  “Ah… You were likely hypothermic. Those cramps are good. You’re thawing out.”

  She knew this already, but nodded. Tears of pain stung her eyes and she bit her cheek to keep from crying out. Then, as fast as it had come, the cramp subsided. Merrick had taken a seat on his disgusting bed a couple paces away and regarded her with concern.

  “Better now,” she assured him. She felt shaky and tired but, seeing nowhere pleasant to sleep in this room, decided it best to keep that to herself. “I just want my horse. And then, I want to leave.”

  Merrick looked like he was miles away, eyes distant and face puzzled. “Kaamos,” he began, as if answering a question she hadn’t asked. “Is our biggest show of the year. It runs from the last sunset of midwinter to the first sunrise. Polar night. You know of it?”

  “I know of Polar night, yes.”

  “The show doesn’t stop. People travel for months just to queue in hopes that they might get a ticket. Many will be turned away. We make most of our money, and re-establish our fame during Kaamos.”

  “I think I get it. You’re a big, famous, raunchy carnival out here in the wastes. You don’t need an unassuming girl like me ruining the mood. Neither do I. I just want my horse.”

  “The thing is,” Merrick continued. “Once the doors close for Kaamos, they don’t open again until sunrise.”

  “As in… No late arrivals? No re-entries?”

  A manic spark in his eyes now. That flush had returned to his cheeks. He picked another mostly-empty bottle up from a pile on the bed and gulped that down before speaking.

  “As in nobody leaves.”

  Chapter 7

  Joanna awoke to the sound of shattering glass. She was on her feet in an instant, heart pounding and head spinning bad enough to nearly make her fall right back over. It took her a few panicked, shallow breaths to remember where she was.

  The stove still radiated heat, but the wood had burned down to a bed of embers. Their warm orange-red glow provided the only light. Jo looked around at the messy room and sighed.

  Merrick had kindly cleared off enough of the floor for her to sleep near the hearth, and had even offered her a shirt and blanket to sleep in. They’d both been filthy, so she’d politely refused and slept curled in the giant coat the horse thief had thrown at her.

  It spoke to the level of her exhaustion that she was able to sleep at all, surrounded as she was by trash, dirty dishes, and cigarette butts. She wondered if there were roaches in the arctic regions. The thought was enough to get her off the floor in a rush, and she shuddered at the imagined sensation of tiny insects. The coat was mostly dry, but she hung it carefully over a pile of junk near the woodstove in hopes the last of the dampness would be cooked out.

  Merrick, she saw, had fallen asleep at the table. His hand was out in front of him as if he’d fallen asleep holding something. Which, judging from the spill across the table and the broken bottle by his feet (that explained the shattering noise), he had. She turned slowly around where she stood, trying to locate anything like a washbasin.

  There was a door she hadn’t noticed before, but she didn’t want to check it without permission so she instead hissed at Merrick. “Hey! Psst!”

  His eyes rolled open, glazed and unfocused, and rested on her. “Never funny, always joking,” he mumbled darkly.

  “Merrick!” She tried again. He startled, eyes clearing, then spotted her and straightened up.

  “Sorry, I must have dozed off. What time is it?”

  Jo shrugged pointedly. “I haven’t a clue. Why aren’t there any windows in here?”

  Merrick ignored this and pulled out a pocket watch. “Oh good. I can have breakfast before my call-time.” He frowned at her. “What do I do with you?”

  “Can I please just go get my horse? I’ll get out of your hair, I promise.” Jo tried. It was worth a shot.

  “I’m sorry,” Merrick said. He sounded like he meant it, too. “You’ll die out there anyway, but especially with the crowd that’s due to show up later. And,” he nodded to himself. “I don’t do death.”

  Anxious all over again, Jo followed him out of the room and down another series of confusing hallways. “That does give me an idea, though,” he whispered to her over a shoulder. “After breakfast. I think I know where you can be useful.”

  The smell of baking bread put every other thought out of Jo’s head. How long had it been since she’d eaten? No wonder she’d woken up so dizzy. Merrick smiled at the look on her face, but it was a guarded smile. “I’m sure you’re starved. But be careful here. Careful what you say, careful what questions you answer.”

  Jo mumbled agreement but her focus was still on the smells. Her nose tipped up to follow it like a hunting dog on a trail. And by the time Merrick led them at last into a brightly-lit canteen, she was nearly drooling.

  The hum of conversation stopped in a wave as they walked in. Jo tried to hide behind Merrick as best she could, but every single pair of eyes honed in on her immediately. She had never felt so exposed in her life.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” someone drawled as they passed. Jo kept her eyes trained on a far wall, not wanting to be seen ducking her head but also desperate to not accidentally stare at anyone. The people seated around the tables eating were some of the strangest she’d ever seen.

  Merrick passed by the tables and took a tray from a pile, indicating that Jo should do the same. She did, with shaking hands, and was quietly thankful when Merrick loaded up her tray for her so she didn’t need to interact with anyone. It was mostly simple fare, but the bread alone looked worth its weight in gold to her.

  They sat together at a table close to the wall, where a big, hunch-backed man sat alone over a bowl of something. He ignored them.

  Jo looked down at the piece of bread on her tray, steam curling off of it, and found herself close to tears. She forced her body to slow down, picking it up carefully and eating at a pace that wouldn’t upset her too-empty stomach.

  There was a bowl of oat porridge, a piece of some kind of fish, and an egg beside the bread. She noticed Merrick had only taken the bread and a cup of something dark and steaming.

  “Merrick!” Someone shouted over at them. Merrick’s shoulders tensed but he leaned back as if without a care in the world. An olive-skinned man with black hair and no shirt sat down across from them. His face was all showy confidence. “Who’s the victim?”

  Merrick chuckled. “Ringmaster’s orders, I’m afraid.” He looked at Jo. “This is Sevien.”

  “A pleasure,” Sevien said warmly, offering her his hand. She took it reluctantly. “I hope you find the show to your liking,” he said, squeezing her fingers slightly harder than necessary before letting go. “I must get to rehearsal but, I expect I’ll get a chance to get to…” His eyes traveled down her face appraisingly. “know you better soon.”

  “Cocky but harmless,” Merrick muttered between sips of his drink once Sevien had left. Jo filed that note away and continued to eat. Every time she looked up, she found everyone in the room staring at her, so she kept her eyes on the food and tried not to move too much.

  She had nearly finished, and Merrick was on his third cup of whatever he was drinking, when the doors to the room banged open and a woman covered from the chin down in tattoos rushed in. She looked furious.

  “Second act you’re up early!” She shouted. A number of people jumped to their feet in response and hurried out the door. Merrick made no move to get up, even when she glared at him. “Merrick!”

  He looked up. “I’ll be there, Alice.”

  She stormed over to him, blue eyes wide with rage, and swiped the cup off the table to shatter on the floor. Merrick just sighed. “You better be,” she hissed. Then, spotting Jo for the first time, she made a face of disgust. “What the hell is this?”

  Merrick kicked the back of Jo’s ankle under the table, stopping her protest before it left her mouth. “Ringmaster’s business,” he told her calmly. “I’m taking her to the pen, and then I will be on my cue, at my call time. And not a moment sooner.”

  She narrowed her eyes to slits. “Ten minutes.” Her elaborate heels crunched on pieces of the smashed mug as she stomped off, slamming the doors so hard that the lights flickered out for a moment.

  Merrick took Jo by the arm and pulled her out of the canteen without bothering to pick up. Jo was only too glad to leave the place. She found that she was trembling and hated herself for it.

  “Weird place,” she said as they walked down another series of halls. Her attempt at lightening the mood was not wasted on Merrick, who cast a glance back at her and barked a laugh.

  “You’ve no idea,” he said grimly.

  They walked on, Jo’s mind whirling with new information and panic in equal measure. She recognized where they were headed before they got there, and felt a glimmer of hope. It was where she’d first come in. Where Tumble was! Maybe she could escape after all.

  “Listen,” Merrick pulled her around to face him. “You’re going to be with Lorraine. I trust her. Nobody here is perfect but few are actually safe. She is. Listen to her, do as she says, keep your head down. I’ll come get you after rehearsal and we’ll find you somewhere more pleasant to bunk for the night.”

  “Okay,” Jo stammered, panic rising in her throat at the thought of being left alone again. Merrick had been the only normal person she’d met since she and Nate had set out for supplies, and she found herself terrified to be in this place without him.

  He pushed the door open and guided her in. “Rainy!” He called out. The woman who stepped out was, thankfully, familiar. It was the horse-thief whose advice had spared Jo from that cat-monster.

  “What?” She asked, eyeing Jo as if she’d never seen her before.

  “This girl is here for Kaamos, Zeph’s orders. She needs something to do to keep her out of the way while we rehearse. She knows animals.”

  “Always chores in here,” Lorraine said. Something seemed to pass silently between Merrick and her, then he left and Jo was alone again with the thief. She gulped.

  “You can help clean. I’ll show you the stalls I’m doing today and you can watch and learn.”

  Jo was led into the big area where she’d first come into the building, but instead of turning towards the stables she was brought in the other direction, where an odd cluster of giant stalls led off in three directions. The closest one was where they went.

  Lorraine slid a bolt out and pushed the door and Jo gasped out loud at the animal inside.

  “Is that an elephant?” She asked in awe. It was the biggest creature she’d ever seen. And its eyes, long-lashed and glassy, seemed preternaturally gentle.

  “It is,” Lorraine replied. “They make quite a mess.”