CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Under the Ice

The Gunner hit the narrow channel of water between the ice and the riverbank like a depth charge.

He’d seen Edie go under, and that neither he nor George would get there in time to save her. So he made the only choice that remained, which was to go under the ice.

Tons of bronze don’t swim too well, so he hit the bed of the Thames and did the best he could to plow through the blackness toward the spot where he estimated the hole in the ice was. The human part of him went through the searing drowning pain of oxygen starvation, but he was so driven that he didn’t bother trying to hold his breath—he just sucked in water and got on with it.

He couldn’t see a thing, and surged forward by instinct alone. The snow-covered ice made a perfect roof over the river, blocking out all light. And as he moved ahead, he realized he wasn’t going to be able to see Edie’s ice hole either, since looking straight up was only going to bring a dark view of the night sky, which would be indistinguishable from the impenetrable murk surrounding him.

He flailed around with his arms as he went, hoping that if he couldn’t see Edie’s body, he might at least touch it by chance. But as he stared blindly, he realized it was a forlorn hope.

The girl was gone.

Then an orange light dropped out of the ice roof overhead, and he looked up and caught a brief glimpse of the world above, with George staring sightlessly downward, his face momentarily lit up by the falling heart stone before he jerked away from the hole.

The Gunner reached out his hand and caught the stone on its chain and held it high, like a lantern in a storm. The orange light shone so brightly that the turbid river water became somehow less opaque—and that’s when the Gunner saw the body, its foot caught in a broken cart wheel half buried in the ooze, its hair lifelessly going with the flow, pointing toward the sea.

He freed Edie’s foot and grabbed her, surging toward the riverbank. As he powered forward, he looked down at her pale dead face and looped the heart stone around her neck so he could get a better grip. He hugged her tightly to his body, as if he could force some of his life into her.

And of course you can’t cry under water, so the stinging in his eyes must just have been the Thames resisting his attempt to run through it.

He scrambled up the slope toward the torch-lit strip of light, and pulled himself out of the water. He felt Edie’s body flop against him as he coughed his way to his feet. He was about to start pumping water out of her, when he heard the ice scrabble and the angry snorting that heralded the approaching bull. He scooped her up and ran.

Out of the corner of his eye, George saw the Gunner emerge from the ice. The Icarus flew George away from the Walker, who was lying on his back and tugging at his clothes, trying urgently to get something out of his sweatshirt.

The Icarus screamed at George, and he looked into the blind curve of the creature’s breastplate. Somewhere inside the intricate structure, a mouth was shrieking angrily at him.

The Icarus was a worse flier than Spout. George was only about twenty feet off the ice, but he was heading away from the Gunner and what he had pulled from the water. He was unable to see what the Walker was doing. The only good thing was that he saw something pop into existence and gallop across the ice, heading for the Gunner, the whirling blades on its chariot wheels twisting ice devils out of the snow as it thundered beneath him.

George still had the hammer in his hand.

“One chance,” he said to whatever was behind the jutting hull masking the face in front of him. “Put me down.”

The Icarus howled and shook him angrily. When George looked down, he realized that the thing was gripping him with its human feet, which crushed him with toes like sinewy talons.

“Fine,” he said.

He smashed the hammer into the hull. He hit it again and again, and as he did so, the Icarus shrieked and lurched in the sky. There was a crack, and the breastwork gave way, and George was staring into the mad eyes of the Icarus.

The Icarus was a man cramped and jammed into the narrow confining space of a basketwork hull. His arms and hands were folded in on themselves, and his mouth and lower face were bound with some kind of webbing— but not so obscured that George couldn’t see the hostile insanity snarling out of the face.

“Last chance. Put me down,” said George.

The feet tore at him angrily and the eyes burned brighter. The head shook violently back and forth in an unmistakable “No.”

“Then I’m sorry,” he said, and whacked the hammer dead center on the straining forehead. The mad eyes rolled back, and the Icarus plummeted, unconscious and, for the first time, silent.

George had time to see that they were going to land in open water, just beyond the point where the ice began. He booted himself free of the Icarus’s limp feet in the instant before they hit the water.

The Icarus hit the river and kept going down. George kicked for the surface and gasped for air, then turned in time to see the edge of the ice approaching as the river pulled him toward it. The edge was a confusion of trapped driftwood and branches, and he had a horror-struck premonition that he was about to be sucked beneath the ice. He grabbed at the edge as he reached it, but the ice bobbled away beneath his fingers, and he was pulled under.

On the surface of the ice, the Gunner had seen the Bull just in time. He grabbed Edie’s body and leaped clear as the sharp horns thundered in. The Bull tried to hook him, but its momentum made it overshoot, and it crashed into the snow piled on the riverbank.

The Gunner heard his name being called, and whirled to see the Queen approaching across the flat ice field, her horses straining against their harness, their feet kicking up great divots of impacted snow as they raced to the rescue. There was another figure on the chariot, and because the man was hatless, it took the Gunner an instant to realize it was the Officer.

He sped toward the incoming chariot, cradling the dead body as he ran. He heard a snort and the drumming of hooves behind him and knew that the Bull had turned and was now running after him.

As the chariot approached without slowing, the gap behind him closed almost as fast.

He saw the Officer point urgently straight down and shout something.

“Mind the wheels!”

The Officer snapped his arm out, leaning so wide over the spinning blades that the Queen had to lean far in the opposite side to stop the chariot from tipping. Then time went very quickly as they closed in on the Gunner at breathtaking speed. He felt the Bull’s breath on his back and a light tug as it tried to hook him again, but he had no time to think about how close the creature must be, because he had to concentrate on the spinning blades whirling in toward his knees. He stuck his arm out as if he were signaling a turn and hurdled the blades as they swept in under him. This open hand slapped onto the Officer’s reaching forearm and gripped it at the same time the Officer grabbed his arm.

The momentum swung him up and around as the Officer anchored himself on the chariot rail, and the Gunner was on board.

The Bull had no time to slow his headlong pursuit, and the spinning blades opened him up like a giant can opener, splashing twisting curls of bright bronze in its wake. The Bull pitched forward, its horns digging into the ice and throwing it into a slamming somersault, where it lay still, upended and wreathed in its bronze entrails.

The Queen looked back. “He won’t be killing any more women.”

The Gunner dropped Edie to the bucking floor of the chariot and started to pump water out of her. It was like trying to work on the pitching deck of a ship.

“Help me,” he said.

The Officer grabbed him and held him steady.

The Queen was turning the chariot. “Hold on,” she shouted.

The Officer looked up and saw she was racing toward her two daughters, who were holding the mirrors up.

“George,” shouted the Gunner as he futilely pumped water from the dead girl.

“You hold on,” shouted the Officer. As the Queen hit the mirrors the first time with the tip of her spear, the Officer let go of the Gunner and leaped off the back of the chariot. There was a pop, and the chariot disappeared. The Officer scrambled to his feet.

“Stay there,” he said to the girls, and ran away from the lights of the Frost Fair, toward the dark end of the ice.