The bad feeling I’d been nursing got worse. What if we’d been set up—sent to this deserted part of the city to be ambushed out of view?
The street twisted and straightened again, and then I crashed into Emma, who’d been walking in front of me but had come to a sudden stop.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
In lieu of an answer, she just pointed. Up ahead, at a T-shaped intersection, there was a crowd. Though it had been sticky-hot back at the carnival, many of them were bundled in coats and scarves. They were assembled around a particular building, and stood gazing up at it in dumbfounded wonder—just as we were, now. The building itself was nothing special—four stories, the top three just rows of narrow, rounded windows, like an old office building. It was, in fact, nearly identical to all the buildings around it, with one exception: it was totally encased in ice. Ice coated its windows and doors. Icicles hung like fangs from every sill and ledge. Snow spilled from its doorways, collecting in giant heaps on the sidewalk. It looked like a blizzard had struck the building—from the inside.
I peered at a snow-blasted street sign: R—KERY STRE—.
“I know this place,” said Melina. “It’s the peculiar archives, where all our official records are kept.”
“How do you know that?” said Emma.
“Miss Thrush was grooming me to be second assistant to the ombudswoman there. The examination’s very difficult. I’ve been studying for twenty-one years.”
“Is it supposed to be covered in ice like that?” asked Bronwyn.
“Not that I’m aware,” said Melina.
“It’s also where the Council of Ymbrynes convene for the annual Nitpicking of the Bylaws,” said Millard.
“The Council of Ymbrynes meets here?” said Horace. “It’s awfully humble. I expected a castle or somesuch.”
“It’s not meant to stand out,” said Melina. “You aren’t supposed to notice it at all.”
“They’re doing a poor job of keeping it hidden, then,” said Enoch.
“As I said, it’s not usually covered in ice.”
“What do you think happened here?” I asked.
“Nothing good,” said Millard. “Nothing good at all.”
There was no question we’d have to get closer and explore, but that didn’t mean we had to rush in like fools. We hung back and watched from a distance. People came and went. Someone tried the door but it was frozen shut. The crowd thinned a bit.
“Tick, tick, tick,” said Enoch. “We’re wasting time.”
We cut through what was left of the crowd and stepped onto the icy sidewalk. The building emanated cold, and we shivered and jammed our hands into our pockets against it. Bronwyn used her strength to pull open the door, and it came straight off, hinges flying—but the hallway it let onto was completely obstructed by ice. It stretched from wall to wall, floor to ceiling, and into the building in a blue and cloudy blur. The same was true of the windows: I wiped the frost from one pane and then another, and through both I could see only ice. It was as if a glacier was being born somewhere in the heart of the place, and its frozen tongues were squeezing out wherever there was an opening.
We tried every way we could think of to get inside. We rounded the building looking for a door or window that wasn’t blocked, but every potential entrance was filled with ice. We picked up stones and loose bricks and tried hacking at the ice, but it was almost super-naturally hard—even Bronwyn could dig no more than a few inches into it. Millard scanned the Tales for any mention of the building, but there was nothing, no secrets to be found.
Finally, we decided to take a calculated risk. We formed a semicircle around Emma to block her from view, and she heated her hands and placed them against the ice wall that filled the hallway. After a minute they began to sink into the ice, meltwater trickling down to puddle around our feet. But the progress was painfully slow, and after five minutes she’d only gotten up to her elbows.
“At this rate, it’ll take the rest of the week just to get down the hall,” she said, pulling her arms from the ice.
“Do you think Miss Wren could really be inside?” said Bronwyn.
“She has to be,” Emma said firmly.
“I find this contagion of optimism positively flabbergasting,” said Enoch. “If Miss Wren is in there, then she’s frozen solid.”
Emma erupted at him. “Doom and gloom! Ruin and ruination! I think you’d be happy if the world came to an end tomorrow, just so you could say I told you so!”
Enoch blinked at her, surprised, then said very calmly, “You may choose to live in a world of fantasy if you like, my dear, but I am a realist.”
“If you ever offered more than simple criticism,” Emma said, “if you ever gave a single useful suggestion during a crisis, rather than just shrugging your shoulders at the prospect of failure and death, I might be able to tolerate your unrelenting black moods! But as it stands—”
“We’ve tried everything!” Enoch interjected. “What could I possibly suggest?”