Soul of Ice

Chapter One

The air in Venierre was sticky and warm. So different from the hot, dry climate of the deserts she'd traveled through just days ago. Astra wiped the back of her hand across her hairline. The transferred sweat on her hand glistened in the afternoon sun. In front of her, the large woman carrying two covered baskets inched forward. Astra followed, keeping close to prevent anyone from getting any ideas and cutting her in line.

The docks were a mess; that had been the first thing she'd noticed when she'd arrived. Dilapidated, but still homey, cobblestone buildings were placed at seemingly random intervals. While some were squished so closely together they looked like a single building, others were spaced with docks and markets or outdoor cafes between them.

The kingdom's insignia, a three pointed star, could be seen everywhere she looked. Flags were raised on rooftops and on ships, banners had been pinned onto walls. Even the woman in front of her in line, who was now walking forward to the ticket booth clerk, had a handkerchief with the star on it crushed between her basket handle and her hand. Astra dimly remembered from the dregs of her memory from years past that the anniversary for Auxerre's Liberation Day was coming up in another few weeks. Not that she cared—she wasn't Auxerran, and she wouldn't even be in the country by nightfall.

Just past the line of ticket booths was a huge ship resting in the harbor next to smaller fishing boats and pleasure crafts, its masts reaching toward the sky. And beyond that... the Beaukarou Basin.

"Next!"

Astra strode forward quickly to the ticket booth. The clerk squinted at her and adjusted the askew blue cap on his head.

"I need a one way ticket to the Beaukarou Basin," Astra said as she pushed forward a small stack of silver—the payback she'd gotten from the pawn store with the bracelets she'd lifted off a noblewoman on her way through the city.

"You aren't from around here," he noted critically, ignoring her request. His eyes roved over her features, no doubt seeing the black hair and blue eyes, at odds with the brown haired, brown eyed people around her. "I'll need to check over your documents."

"Are you qualified to do that?" she asked skeptically, her anxiety spiking by the request. The clerk's hands moved to somewhere under the table, where she couldn't see, and came back up with two badges, a clip hanging off of each. One badge was fashioned in the form of a circle with three points coming out, another reference to the country's insignia, proclaiming him as part of the Auxerre Border Patrol. The other was a small rectangle with his name—Theon Mullins.

"Ma'am, I am a qualified border patrol agent. And I need to take a look at your documents."

Astra grimaced, but reached into her drawstring bag to pull out the documents of a girl with similar features to hers who'd been turned away from the immigration checkpoints into Auxerre due to some sort of contractible illness.

"Are border patrol agents the same as ticketing agents here?" she asked as politely as she could, careful not to let impatience seep into her voice, and slid the series of documents toward the border patrol agent. She couldn't help herself though, when her eyes were drawn once more to the huge ship in the harbor. Engraved on the side of the dark metal were the white words SAS Correrá.

"There has been a population shortage of able-bodied adults," Agent Mullins explained curtly as he scanned through her documents. "Calayne Niemi. Twenty-one years of age. Born Pelosian, parents hail from Solasia. I'm not sure how you got through immigration. There's a nationwide ban on any and all Pelosians, instated since the war." Astra reached for the papers between them to flip to the fourth page.

"I have refugee status," she explained, jabbing her finger at the seal-marked page that was supposed to grant whoever had the papers protection. "I'm Solasian, as well. And there is no travel ban on Solasia." Right? was what she wanted to tack on to the end of that sentence, but she refrained. She'd been so careful. She'd checked over her papers meticulously, checking and then rechecking her documents and information, matching all the requirements to the brochures she'd nabbed at the immigration checkpoint. And she'd only confirmed after her fifth read through that her illness was the only reason for her being turned away.