Rebel Ice Read Free

torn, but may lead to where they were flung on impact."
    "How many have you claimed?" she asked as she pawed through the debris.
    "I do not count." Yes, I did, but I had no intention of telling her I had recovered and skinned 1,040 bodies of worgald.
    Some of the younger gjenvin watched us. Enafa stiffened when the wind carried their whispers and sniggers to our ears.
    Look at them.
    The soiled ones.
    Perhaps they are hungry.
    "They speak as if we were jlorra," she said, glaring at the skimmers. "They know we do not eat the dead ensleg."
    "We amuse them." Had she not reacted, I doubt if their contempt would have registered with me, so accustomed to it was I.
    "The beast driver does not like it." Enafa nodded toward the big woman approaching us.
    I shoved a twisted panel aside. "That would be useless."
    "Like this teat sucker Daneeb latched on you?" The beast driver grunted a laugh. "I thought you done with nursing the weak, Skjæera."
    Enafa's cheeks darkened. "I am not a baby! And Skjæera is a healer!"
    "She is nothing but shit, like the rest of us. You, newling, are less than shit." Galla pulled the body I had uncovered from the snow, and used her dagger to strip it of its worgald. I tried to urge Enafa past, but the beast driver glanced up at me. "She will watch." She began to work on the head.
    As Galla slid the flat blade beneath the ensleg's skin and began removing his face, Enafa made a choking sound. "What are you doing?"
    "The work, useless." She flipped her knife to clean it, hard enough to splatter both of us with blood crystals and bits of frozen flesh. "You must take it whole."
    My apprentice stumbled a few steps away, then vomited. I supported her as she heaved, until her belly calmed and she could stand alone. Rather than thank me, she clutched at my arm with fierce fingers. "Why do you not stop her? She desecrates him!"
    "Galla does our work. The windlords require the intact facial skins of ensleg dead be sent to the skim cities," I told her. "Offworlders will pay handsomely to identify their dead."
    "They sell ensleg scum to the ensleg scum," Galla corrected as she rose to turn the male over. "At least the jlorra and the rothawks dine well on what is left. Look at this poor bastard, Skjæera. He's mostly intact. You might have saved him with your witchery, were you not shit now."
    Referring to my ability to heal often amused the bitterest among the skela, who had honed mordacity to an art form. That I should end a handler of death was perhaps the ultimate irony. Over time I had grown accustomed to it.
    Galla's sneer had a far different effect on my apprentice, however. "As well you might have been grinding beneath him tonight!" she snapped.
    It was well-known that Galla had been an ahayag who repeatedly serviced every male in her iiskar. Being a harlot was accepted, if not particularly admired, but dallying with ensleg traders was not permitted. Galla had been caught with the wrong color male in her furs. Since becoming beast driver, she liked to pretend she had never been a prostitute. She made sure everyone else kept up the pretense, as well.
    I stepped in front of Enafa to take the blow meant for her, and managed to stay on my feet. I clutched my aching belly as I gasped out, "She does not think… before she speaks… Forgive her… beast driver."
    The knuckles in Galla's bloodied mitt bruised my breast as she shoved me back against a portion of the ripped hull. "Get out of my way."
    "Do not hurt her!" Enafa snatched at Galla's arm. "Let her go!"
    "Galla." Daneeb appeared out of nowhere. "Release your sister and return to your labor."
    The beast driver took her hand from me and pointed to my apprentice. "She called me a whore."
    "The child is mistaken. You were a whore." The headwoman folded her arms. "Take the body and pile it
    with the others. " Galla slung the dead ensleg over her shoulder and, after a final snarl in my direction, strode off. "Enafa, go and work with Lati." Daneeb waited until my