City of Ice by Laurence Yep Read Free Book Online

only a guttersnipe and her parents wouldn’t have me, so I joined the prince to make my fortune.”
    Scirye got Randian to teach her the words for different things on the ship. And after listening carefully to Prince Tarkhun, she pretended that she was commanding the wind sled herself.
    Eventually the horizon became more irregular. The farther they went, Scirye could see what looked like gray and white lumps, which quickly became a low ridge of mountains with snow that clung to the peaks and shoulders but not to the steep sides. Prince Tarkhun seemed to be aiming for a steep gash in the side of the mountains that Scirye figured must be a pass.
    Hills, white and humped and glistening with snow and ice, sat at the feet of the mountains. Prince Tarkhun roared out a command and signal flags ran up a line and another order sent the crew up the rigging to begin furling the sails and the wind sled started to slow down until it was barely moving ahead.
    Finally, they saw the masts of the rest of the caravan. When the sails were furled, the masts stood up like a grove stripped of leaves.
    The wind sleds had been drawn up into a defensive circle just outside a log fort where the Canadian flag proudly snapped on a flagpole.
    Cheers greeted them from the caravan, and in a proud display of wind-sled handling, the prince’s barge stopped about twenty feet away. People high-stepped through the snow toward them and the rope ladder had no sooner been dropped over the side than a small fur-clad figure clambered up it and onto the deck.
    â€œFather, you’re safe,” a girl cried in Common Sogdian. And she flung herself into the prince’s arms.

8
Scirye
    With a laugh, the prince lifted the visitor from the deck and swung her around in a circle.
    Scirye felt a small twinge at that. She was wondering what her own father was doing at this moment. He must have taken an airplane from Bactra, the Kushan capital, to San Francisco to tend her mother. She’d been injured during the same robbery that had killed Scirye’s sister, Nishke.
    Even now, Scirye felt a stab of pain when she thought of Nishke—Nishke so brave yet so kind. Because their mother was often so busy with her consular duties, Nishke had been a second mother to Scirye, playing with her, reading to her, and putting her to bed.
    Not only had Scirye missed her sister’s funeral, but she hadn’t been there to nurse her mother either. Scirye fought back the wave of guilt. She’d made her choice and would have to live with it.
    As soon as the prince had set the girl back on her booted feet, his grin changed to a frown. “What are you doing here, Roxanna?” he asked in Common.
    â€œI knew I’d be safe as long as I didn’t travel farther than the pass,” the girl explained. She looked to be twelve, the same age as Scirye.
    Roxanna’s face was round, with the same sharp nose and lively, intelligent eyes as Prince Tarkhun.
    He reached under her cap and pinched her ear so he could tug it playfully. “Humph, you went no farther because the Mounties wouldn’t let you?”
    Roxanna drew her eyebrows together in a stormy expression. “They weren’t reasonable at all.”
    â€œBecause they have more common sense than you.” Prince Tarkhun let go with a chuckle.
    Roxanna folded her arms in a huff. “I was worried when the caravan told me they’d left you behind.”
    â€œIt was my order,” Prince Tarkhun said.
    â€œWell, you should have taken me along. You needed every gun you could get, and I can shoot as well as my brothers.” She paused for breath and then spoke rapidly, driven by the injustice of it all. “And I beat them in dogsled races and navigation. Yet you take them.”
    â€œBecause they don’t give me half the arguments you do.” Prince Tarkhun laughed and, wrapping his arm around her shoulder, turned her to face the companions. “And anyway. Who needs