Our Lady of the Ice

Everything is lost.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

ELIANA

Eliana watched the footage on Luciano’s television, the sound turned down so she wouldn’t have to listen to the newsman prattling on. Images flashed by: An enormous, shattered dome, the glass blackened from the explosion. Ice that had melted and refrozen after the fire had been put out, into eerie, indefinable shapes.

And the crops.

The rows and rows of crops, now all dead and wilted. They were throwing them out into the desert to be covered over by snow and ice. That was on the television too, the ice-drones carting the crops over the barren landscape until they disappeared from the sphere of the camera’s light. A year’s supply of food, the newsman had said. Eliana had watched with her hand at her throat, hardly believing.

All those stupid advertisements the past year, with Marianella smiling into the camera as Lady Luna, Alejo Ortiz beaming at her side. They were asking for money to build domes just like this one, domes that could sustain the city without interference from the mainland.

“We kept it a secret,” Marianella explained later that afternoon.

“Why?” Eliana said, sitting on an old reproduction of a Queen A

Marianella shrugged. A food tray was balanced on her knees, and she took a bite of watery beef soup, the best they could get so late in the season. And all those crops were frozen.

“It was Alejo’s idea,” she said. “All politics are theater, when you get down to it. He wanted to have a fully functioning dome when we made our a

“You can rebuild,” Eliana said, although she had no idea if that was true. “I mean, if you already had plans for others. And the whole city knows it’s possible now. It’s not as if it broke down.”

“It was sabotaged,” Marianella said flatly. She set her tray aside, her food half-finished. The silence in the room grew thick.

“I’m sure it was Ignacio Cabrera,” Marianella said. “Who else would bomb the agricultural dome?”

Eliana’s heart twisted at the mention of Cabrera’s name, at the reminder of who Diego really was.

“Other than Sofia,” Marianella said.

Eliana looked up. Marianella stared into space. She looked pale and haggard. Not like herself at all.

Eliana stayed a few moments longer, but when it was clear that Marianella didn’t want to talk further, Eliana said her good-byes and left.

Eliana’s footsteps rattled through the corridor. The Ice Palace was confusing, all those twisting mazelike hallways, leading into rooms filled with old robotics equipment or stacks of ceramic amusement park statues. She wandered for ten minutes until she found a sunroom that looked out over the garden. Luciano was there in the room, reading one of his books.

She stopped in the doorway, surprised to see him. He glanced up at her, and the unca

“Eliana,” he said. “Did Marianella enjoy her meal?” He shut the book and set it aside.

“She ate it.”

There was a pause. Then Luciano looked at her like he had all the answers to her racing, miserable thoughts, like he knew how to make her forget about Diego and his betrayal, like he was willing to listen to her confusion about the agricultural domes and her fear about Cabrera.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

Eliana slumped up against the doorframe. She hesitated. “Everything.”

He sat very still, watching her, his head tilted to the side. “You can tell me about it if you wish.”

She knew he was programmed to do that. That’s how all the amusement park robots worked. They were programmed for certain things. Luciano had been programmed to help people.

And maybe she needed help.

“You really don’t mind?”

He shook his head. “I’m happy to help a friend.”

A friend. Maybe it wasn’t just the program.

And at any rate, she didn’t want to walk away. She didn’t want to be alone.

And so she sat down in the dusty wicker chair beside him. When he looked at her expectantly, she realized this was what she’d hoped to find with Marianella, because Marianella had been at the gala when Diego had pulled his gun and revealed who he was. But Marianella had reacted exactly as you should when confronting a monster.

And that was the problem.

“It’s about my boyfriend,” Eliana started, and she didn’t intend to say much more than that, but everything poured out anyway. He’d lied to her about the sort of work he did. He’d lied about owning a gun. His eyes had glittered with a cold and terrifying light that had seemed to reveal more about him than any moment they’d spent together ever could have.

When the words finally dried up, her eyes were wet.

Luciano sat still for a moment. She wondered, stupidly, if she had broken him. But then he put his hand on her knee.

“That must be difficult,” he said.

It was such a stupid platitude, but no one, not even Marianella, had said anything approximating it in her time here. Her boyfriend had almost killed her, almost killed her friend, and no one had remotely tried to sympathize.

“I don’t know what to do!”

“What can you do?” asked Luciano. “None of this is your fault. You can’t blame yourself for seeing good in him. That’s a quality more humans should have, the ability to see the good in others.”

“But there wasn’t any good in him.”

“Of course there was.” Luciano smiled, an easy smile that calmed her like a drug. “You were with him for over a year, yes? And he never hurt you. In fact, he tried to put you out of harm’s way as best he could, from what I can tell. It seems to me you brought the good out in him.”

Eliana sniffled. The sunroom’s windows heated up the thin dome light outside, generating a warmth that felt far more organic than anything from a radiator. She’d never considered the possibility that she might have been the reason Diego seemed like a good person. She didn’t know if it was true or not, but she did know this was the first time she had seen him with Cabrera, and the first time she’d seen that cold glitter in his eyes.

“He still lied to me,” she said.

“Everyone lies,” said Luciano.

Eliana laughed at his bluntness. “Did you say that to clients when the park was open?”

“Of course not. I was programmed to lie. That’s how I know everyone does it.” He smiled again. “I’m not lying now, however.”

This time, Eliana returned his smile. She drew her knees up to her chin and looked out into the garden. Weeds were sprouting up in the cracks between the stones in the path, everything wild and green and beautiful. She tried to imagine it as it would have looked when the park was still open, the growth neat and orderly, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t sure she wanted to.

“I’ve never been to the mainland,” she said distractedly, still looking out at the garden. “I’ve wanted to, my entire life. Ever since my parents told me stories about it.”

“It’s difficult to acquire visas, from what I understand.”

Eliana shrugged. “Not difficult, just expensive. I’ve got the money now, you know. I just have to make it to the spring. I hope the ships start ru