Billowing blankets of steam rose from the canyon below, forming thick cloudwalls that obscured the mountains on every side of the Callisto. Beneath the ship, the valley floor was invisible under its carpet of rolling fog, which occasionally reached out along thermal twisters, rising in white columns on the sulfur-tinged wind. The grumble of volcanic vents filled the air, dislodging sheets of ice which slid like glass down the cliffs, shattering.
In the rigging, crews worked day and night to keep the balloon and rope free of ice. Whenever the ship passed through a fogbank, the moisture condensed and froze almost immediately, threatening to drag the aircraft into the burning valley below.
Only Violet, Mathilde, and Gor-im could stand upright on the deck, and even they held tight to the rails or ropes to steady themselves.
“Visibility remains very poor, captain,” said Violet, grunting with exertion as she worked the wheel. “And the wind is just about impossible. We really can’t go on much further under these conditions.”
Mathilde eyed her captive guide. She couldn’t trust his advice, but she could read his body language. At the moment, he stood tall, craning his neck like an anxious lookout. For all his grit, he was unused to air travel, and pale as a sheet. She knew he would be eager to land, and even now he shaded his eyes against the white glare of the snow, practically standing on tiptoe.
“Not long now,” she said. “Keep her steady. Failing that, keep her airborne.”
“Aye aye,” Violet replied, banking the ship into a rising thermal.
From between two peaks came a flight of karziel, the wide-winged ravens of the mountains. A dozen white birds and a dozen black, weaving their way through the wind with an effortless grace that made the Callisto look like a donkey cart by comparison. As they passed by, Gor-im raised his hand in a reflexive salute. Before Mathilde could comment, the man stood straight and gestured ahead.
“There!” he cried. “Black-striped peak! That way!”
The mountain was pocked with caverns on its southern face, each one fanged with glistening icicles and dark as a forgotten scrap of midnight. But it was easy to guess where the Oracle must be. Crimson flags fifteen feet long fluttered in the wind along one outcropping, stretching like serpentine tongues into the wintry air. And there were guards waiting.
It was a difficult mooring, but not impossible. The Ovogiin were adept at the art of rock-hooking and rope; with their cooperation the Callisto was soon anchored and secure. But no crewman of the Callisto was allowed past a certain boundary, where the banner-poles were planted.
Mathilde watched the guards. Polite, yet firm. Armed, but not trigger-happy. She could work with them. Once the boarding planks were secure, she went down to the rocks and was met by a long-bearded old man with the look of one long accustomed to the mountain.
“Taskar-par, you call me,” said the man. “I take to Iron Oracle. She expect. Also ask that you release prisoners.”
“I’ll let you have them when I take my leave,” Mathilde said. “I’m sure you can understand.”
Taskar-par looked disappointed but not surprised. He led the way into the mouth of the cavern, where the darkness left Mathilde momentarily blind. Instinctively, she put her hand to the hilt of her gunsword, but the immediate tension in the guards on either side of her was enough to make her put both hands up in a gesture of surrender.
“A moment,” she said. “Just a moment.”
“Light ahead,” said Taskar-par. “Torches. Out of the wind. Come with.”
The cavern’s hall opened as they went deeper, widening into a kind of courtroom ringed with torches. The oily smoke of whale fat left streaks against the stone, but the back wall of the cave was bare ice, blue-green and ancient, a chunk of a frozen ocean older than the mountain itself. The Iron Oracle sat before it on a golden rug, her legs crossed, her eyes closed in an attitude of meditation. Before her rested a black metal sphere roughly the size of a topographical globe, and behind her, like a flagpole, rose the thick handle of a warhammer.
Once the guards were in position and Mathilde stood alone before the Oracle, silence fell. Only the quiet drip of condensation from the ceiling disturbed the quiet.
“Tell your name, please,” said the Oracle.
“Don’t you know it already?” Mathilde replied, unable to contain a smirk.
The Oracle’s eyes were instantly open, and they were dark upon Mathilde.
“Yes.”
It was hard for Mathilde to gauge the other woman physically, since she was sitting cross-legged and motionless. Judging by the size and obvious weight of her weapon, she would have to command considerable strength. Yet she was not apparently muscular. Hard to judge.
“My name is Mathilde St. Claire,” she said. “Commander of the CCS Aeronautics Corps 9th Estate. Captain of the Callisto.”
“Former commander,” the Oracle said. “Former captain. Titles suspended by government.”
“Suspended or not,” Mathilde replied, betraying no surprise, “I will be Captain of the Callisto until the day I die.”
“How much longer?” the Oracle asked, raising an eyebrow. “How much longer until that day comes?”
“That’s what I’m here to ask you,” Mathilde replied. “I’ve taken prisoners. I’ve stolen military property. I’ve invaded a sovereign foreign power under strength of arms. You know my name, so you must know why. You know my titles have been suspended, so you must know the workings of my own government better than I. Tell me if my suspicions are correct.”
“Which suspicions?” the Oracle retorted. “You are a suspicious person, Captain St. Claire.”
In battle, Mathilde knew how to feint. It was easy to project the illusion of vulnerability, to fake weakness as a lure, to draw the guard of a foe and create an opportunity. True vulnerability was nearly unknown to her. It was painful to feel it in front of a stranger.
“There’s a young man travelling with me,” she said. “He calls himself Shagash, which I think is some curse in his native tongue. He comes from the Riesewald.”
“Akinlo Forest,” the Oracle corrected. “They who live there call it Akinlo.”
“We can agree that it lies to the south,” Mathilde replied, biting her tongue. “And in that country there has been a disaster. I saw the explosion from the air and filed my report. I submitted inquiries with the stewards of the region.”
“Stewards,” scoffed the Oracle. “Why do Capulans speak this way? Talk of all land as if we living here only borrow it from you. Have to give back some day. You think we talk of your country like that?”
Those words opened a window in Mathilde’s memory, and she could see the high office of her mentor, Grand Consul Henrick Aleshire. She could smell the wind through the tower window, and hear the way it rustled the maps pinned to the wall. Dozens of maps, all arrayed and labeled, annotated, divided. All the lands of the continent, and all the years left in the War. How many believed the War was already over? How ragged was the blanket of peace under which they all slept? She thought of the fireball rising from the Riesewald. Henrick’s letter to her, his private letter, when she submitted her report. The skeletons, still smoldering in the tree branches, when the Callisto landed to survey the wreckage.
She fell to one knee.
“Please,” she said. “I have to know. Was it a coincidence that my ship, of all ships, was on patrol that night? What other purpose could there have been for such an assignment? There are no rival navies in the Orphan Sea. Tell me if he thought I would… tell me what will happen if I… tell me…”
“Focus!” said the Oracle. “I warn you. Time is not a line. Time is not a river, or a flower that opens at night. By looking, you are touching. By asking, you are answering. You will leave a footprint in the snow.”
Mathilde was shocked to find tears wetting the back of her eyepatch. Her wounded tear ducts flowed freely while she mastered herself. Her good eye glistened, but did not weep.
“Did he think he could trust me to let them die?” she asked. “Is that why he sent me?”
The Oracle didn’t answer right away. She regarded Mathilde in silence for a long time, her brown eyes wide in the flickering torchlight. Could she be surprised? It was impossible for Mathilde to say.
“No way to know what is in the mind, unspoken,” said the Oracle. “No way to know the High Consul’s mind. No way to know your mind. Visions come to me. What your government calls “intelligence.” What I can tell you is simple. Your High Consul Henrick Aleshire knew what slumbered beneath the fortress of Ar’lupo. So knowing, he did not warn. What happened there, he allowed.”
Mathilde thought of the fire burning in the fireplace of the High Consul’s office. She thought of the fire burning in the trees of the Riesewald. The maps all along the walls, the names of nations as they were known and as they would come to be known under the Capulan banner.
“You will try to kill him,” said the Oracle.
“Try?” Mathilde said, her voice faltering in spite of herself.
“A double vision,” said the Oracle, opening one hand and then the other. “From here, I see you succeed. From here, I see you fail. Much snow has yet to fall between now and then. One thing is inevitable: you will try to kill him.”
There was a long silence between the women after that. Outside, the wind moaned in the mouth of the cave. Mathilde climbed to her feet and surveyed the guards watching over the exchange. Taskar-par met her eye and looked away.
“What’s your name?” Mathilde asked, addressing the Oracle.
“Don’t you know it already?” she replied.
“Yes.”
The Oracle laughed, and the sound rang like a bell in the wide cavern. In a fluid, unfolding motion, she stood up from her rug and reached back for her warhammer.
“They call me Houlun,” she said. “They call me the Iron Oracle because they think I can see the future. But remember: I knew not which question you would ask me. Only which ones you might ask.”
Eyeing the woman’s weapon suspiciously, Mathilde replied, “What did you think I was going to ask you?”
“I thought you would ask me to join your crew,” Houlun said. “So that I could help you fight the people who followed you here, and the people who waited for you here. So I could escape from the trap that was laid here for both of us.”
Outside, the moan of the wind was joined by the sounds of alarm. A clamor of alarm claxons from the Callisto. The deep note of horns from the cavern guards.
“I already knew the answer,” Mathilde said, smirking.
The Oracle shook her head and tapped the black sphere at her feet with the head of her hammer, lifting it as easily as a dumpling run through on a fork. She kept laughing.
“You surprise me, Captain St. Claire,” she said.
From outside they heard gunshots.