Freezing salt spray whipped across the narrow deck of the black-hulled skiff as it cut through the dark swells of the Frozen Sea.
Sagiri stood at the bow, his heavy wool cloak pulled tight against the bitter sub-zero gale blowing off the northern ice sheets. Ahead of them, the open sea was black and treacherous, choked with jagged ice floes that drifted south like floating tombstones.
Crouched near the low gunwale were Grand Marshal Senraki and Lady Kiana, their bodies wrapped in gray thermal-masking mantles.
Senraki held a thin sounding line in his gloved fingers, occasionally dropping a lead sinker into the black water to gauge the depth. Beside him, Kiana knelt with her eyes half-closed. Three silver void needles hovered between her palms, emitting a subtle spatial distortion that bent the freezing sea mist around the skiff, masking the heat of their bodies and the sound of the wooden hull parting the waves.
