B stared at her for a long moment, then nodded. “I believe you.”
“Good. Because I like you, and you’ve been surprisingly useful, and I’d hate to break up our fellowship over a little misunderstanding like that.”
“But, ah, I do have another question,” B said.
“Shoot.”
“How exactly are we supposed to get off this train?” B asked.
Marla rolled her eyes.
“Seriously,” B said. “Last time I looked, there were frogs all around the foot of the stairs, like they were trying to figure out where Mutex went. If there were only a handful we could avoid them, but there are lots of them out there. And the way the poison you sweated out ate through the carpet, I don’t think the jeans and sneakers I’m wearing are going to be sufficient armor against them.”
“You two should have some faith in me,” Marla said, taking a last hunk of meat off a turkey leg. “All right. Time to show you some honest-to-gods magic, the kind of shit there’s almost never time for in the heat of battle, which is why it’s good to learn how to kick people’s teeth in without any magic at all, if you were wondering. Open up all these iceboxes.”
Rondeau wrinkled his nose, sighed, and nodded. “Give me a hand, B. Marla always makes me do the dirty work.”
“You don’t have to take any of the meat out,” Marla said. “You just have to let out the cold.”
They broke open the half-dozen iceboxes. Cold air wafted out, and the iceboxes began to hum strenuously as they struggled to refrigerate the entire car. “All right,” Marla said, “now be quiet for a while.” She closed her eyes. This was going to be tricky. She’d practiced a lot with fire, and had an affinity with it, but she’d never been as good at dealing with cold. She opened herself to the air around her, trying to make herself a vessel, and the cold flowed into her from the machines. The iceboxes hummed, then squealed, then shorted out, one after another, as Marla drew their cold into her. Her bones felt made of ice, and once she felt her core temperature lowering dangerously, she flung the coldness out of her body, away from the train, out onto the platform beyond.
The cold left her, but she kept shivering, her teeth chattering, because she hadn’t distributed the cold as efficiently as she should have, and she was now freezing from the inside. Rondeau draped his jacket around her shoulders, which was a nice gesture, but useless, since clothing was only good at trapping a person’s own body heat, and her heat was negligible. “St-st-stove,” she said, and B rushed to the gas range (how had Bethany rigged a gas range on a train?—she really had been very good) and lit up all four burners. He turned on the oven, too, and opened the door. Marla sucked in the heat, getting her body temperature up, stopping before she drew in too much and had to toss off a fireball to cool down, which would have ruined all that effort she’d put in with the cold. “Enough,” she said, blowing out a last exhalation of cold vapor. B turned off the stove. “Let’s go,” she said, and led them back to the engine car, where the doors were still open.
The platform was covered in a sheet of ice about two inches deep, and tiny golden frogs were suspended inside like bits of fruit in a gelatin mold. “Walk carefully, it’s slick,” Marla said, and they made their way across the ice, walking over the frozen frogs.
“They’re kind of pretty,” Rondeau said, looking down. “It’s a shame they’re instant hopping death.”
“Mmm,” Marla said.
“Do you think they’re dead?” B asked.
“I don’t know. I think you can freeze amphibians, and they come back to life when you thaw them. But I’m not sure. I don’t think they can get out of here, though, and if they live, they’ll starve. I don’t think there’s much in the way of flies down here.”
“Maybe Mutex will come back for them,” B said.
“Maybe,” Marla said. “If he lives through the day.” They reached the stairs, and climbed up out of the darkness.
“So what now?” Rondeau said when they reached the surface. “We go meet the next sorcerer in line for the throne?”
“Sure,” Marla said. “Unless you have a better suggestion, yeah, I think we should get in touch with the next sorcerer in line. They can’t all be collaborating with Mutex, and maybe the next one in charge will help us rally the troops. Sorcerers aren’t usually very good at working together, but if things get dire enough, it’s been known to happen.”