Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost
Asriel waits. He is unaccustomed to waiting, even thinks himself above it, still, he waits. He is blazing, ready to set light at any moment if his plan does not start in motion, still, he waits.
His prison is more comfortable than most, even equipped with a laboratory, books, other materials to help him plan. He cannot start his plan, making it a prison still. He's trapped in here and he hasn't been limited for years, since he was a child, really.
Still, he waits.
It's been days, weeks, months.
Still, he waits.
He is going over papers, adding another note here and there, restless. He is not a true scholar (even as a child his tutors could not get him to remain with a book for more than a few moments) and he knows these notes will be no use, only a way of filling his mind and pretending to work. If he does not do something, truly do something, he thinks he will go mad.
Stelmaria growls.
There is a sound outside and Thorold rises, going to the door. It's probably some messenger with food or another useless book that won't help at all and Asriel ignores it at first. He hears Thorold speaking and though he cannot distinguish words, Thorold sounds surprised, even wondering.
When he looks up, there is a child. He is alight in a second, standing, Stelmaria roused and growling. He cannot see much of the child, not the age or the sex, even, except that the daemon is shifting from moth to cat to ermine, so it must be right! He has it, at last, he can work now, he'll be in the New World within hours, it must be---
Stelmaria gives him a slight, worried nudge that he does not comprehend. He ignores her at first but she nudges him once more, almost afraid. He looks closer at the child.
There is something familiar in that face, though it is tired, strained and more grown up than the last time he saw it. He pushes the thought from his mind. He must be mistaken! Why would she be here?
She steps forward and the light falls on her face. It is unmistakable.
"No! No!"
It can't be! How could it? Impossible! He can't do it, he won't do it! Of all the disgusting, immoral, impossible things, of all the people to come here! He wants to be sick. He hasn't reacted this way to anything in years. He thought himself capable of anything but the idea of tying her to a machine, of severing her daemon, killing her! His Lyra, like a broken doll, face down in the snow, while he moves ahead to the other world, his thoughts only on the Republic.
No.
"Get out," he roars, "Turn round, get out, go! I did not send for you!"
She is frozen, oblivious, terrified. She opens her mouth to speak but closes it again. He cannot look at her without the image of her floating back into his mind. In his schemes, his plans, the child never had a face. It will never be Lyra.
She steps forward, concern on her features and (he is shocked by his luck) a boy is with her, his daemon also shifting, formless, an unknown boy, a boy that does not matter.
He begins to breathe again, placing a hand on Stelmaria's head for reassurance.
"Lyra," he rasps, "That is Lyra?"
"Yes, Uncle Asriel," she replies, sounding exactly, blessedly the same as she ever did, "I came to bring you the alethiometer from the Master of Jordan."
"Yes, of course you did," Asriel dismisses, barely hearing her words, "Who is this?"
His attention is fixed on the boy now, back to the plan. It is much easier this way, when he does not have to care, when everything is ambition and struggle and work, clear, hard lines and marked-out plans. The moment of vulnerability is over.
He'll try to forget it.
"It's Roger Parslow," she explains, "He's the kitchen boy from Jordan College. But---"
"How did you get here?" he demands. She should be in Jordan! He has tried so hard to keep her away from this, to keep her safe! She should be where she was, playing on a rooftop and disobeying, thoughtless and ignorant and safe.
Lyra babbles all sorts of fast, excited nonsense he can barely make out. Stelmaria tries to reach for the child's daemon but Asriel grasps at her fur, restraining her.
He asks Lyra a question or two, getting vague answers. She is such a child, assuming he will know everything she does, hear what she has heard, have seen what she has, seeing the world in terms of herself.
"Thorold," he orders, "run a hot bath for these children and prepare them some food. Then they will need to sleep. Their clothes are filthy; find them something to wear. Do it now, while I talk to this bear."
Lyra seems to falter, exhausted, but Asriel is past being concerned for her. He is clear, focused, himself once more. Yes, it is much easier this way.
He goes to speak with the bear and does not give his daughter another thought.
Later, Asriel sends for her in the library. She seems out of place among his books and papers, tugging at her curls while her daemon flickers between forms. He motions for her to sit.
"Your friend Iorek Byrnison is resting outside," he informs her, "He prefers the cold."
"Did he tell you about his fight with Iofur Raknison?" Lyra leans forward, her face alight, full of a childish excitement, story spilling out of her.
"Not in detail. But I understand he is now the king of Svalbard. Is that true?"
"Of course it's true," she affirms, seeming a little offended, "Iorek never lies."
"He seems to have appointed himself your guardian."
"At least someone has," Stelmaria comments, soft enough so the girl will not hear.
"No. John Faa told him to look after me and he's doing it because of that. He's following John Faa's orders."
"How does John Faa come into this?" he inquires, wondering just where she has been and what she has done now when he and Jordan were not there to shield her.
"I'll tell you if you tell me something," Lyra says, overtaken by an anxious curiosity, "You're my father, en't you?"
How does she know? Has the Coulter woman told her some biased, twisted version of the story? What does she think of him now? Who has she told? What will he say to her now?
The reason he always gave for lying was that she was a thoughtless, lying child. She would spread the story round Oxford, exaggerating it until Marisa had been imprisoned in a glass tower and he burst through, sword in hand, to rescue her.
But there is another reason, a reason he doesn't share. How could he tell her? How could he talk to her about it? How could he explain that whole adult affair, filled with his foolish, youthful mistakes? The confession would make him weak and he couldn't abide that. He was never vulnerable.
And somewhere, he wanted to protect her from it, too.
"Yes. So what?"
The girl is frustrated, enraged. Her daemon transforms into a polecat, snarling.
"So you should have told before, that's what," she spits, "You shouldn't hide things like that from people, because they feel stupid when they find out, and that's cruel. What difference would it make if I knew I was your daughter? You should have said it years ago. You could've told me and asked me to keep it secret, and I would, no matter how young I was, I'd have done that if you asked me. I'd have been so proud nothing would've torn it out of me, if you asked me to keep it secret. But you never. You let other people know, but never told me."
He waits as she finishes her tirade, unaffected. It's a child's tantrum, a child's petulant anger at being kept ignorant, much the same as it likely was when she was left out of some silly game with the servant's children and the Gyptians.
"Who did tell you?"
"John Faa." She sinks back into the chair, her arms crossed.
"Did he tell you about your mother?" If she does not know, what will she do if he tells her? Scold him? Bring some childish Church-learned morality to the situation?
"Yes."
"Then there's not much left for me to tell. I don't think I want to be interrogated and condemned by an insolent child. I want to hear what you've seen and done on the way here."
"I brought you the bloody alethiometer, didn't I? I looked after it all the way from Jordan, I hid it and I treasured it, all through what's happened to us, and I learned about using it, and I carried it all this bloody way when I could've just given up and been safe, and you en't even said thank you, nor showed any sign that you're glad to see me. I don't know why I ever done it. But I did, and I kept on going, even in Iofur Raknison stinking palace with all them bears around me I kept on going, all on me own, and I tricked him into fighting with Iorek so's I could come on here for your sake... And when you did see me, you like to fainted, as if I was some horrible thing you never wanted to see again. You en't human, Lord Asriel. You en't my father. My father wouldn't treat me like that. Fathers are supposed to love their daughters, en't they? You don't love me, and I don't love you, and that's a fact. I love Farder Coram, and I love Iorek Byrnison, I love an armored bear more'n I love my father. And I bet Iorek Byrnison loves me more'n you do."
Lyra rises while she gives this speech, her eyes blazing and her daemon snarling and hissing. When she finishes, she sits down, petulant and triumphant, a few tears staining her face.
Asriel doesn't care, or at least, he stops himself from caring. Lyra can thrash and cry and scream all she wishes but she is safe and he will use the boy tomorrow and go into the new world. He will do his work and she will be returned to Jordan where she belongs. This whole ghastly affair that never should have happened will be forgotten.
But she wouldn't understand that. She is only a child.
"You told me yourself he's only following John Faa's orders. If you're going to be sentimental, I shan't waste time talking to you."
"Take your bloody alethiometer, then, and I'm going back with Iorek."
"Where?"
"Back to the palace. He can fight with Mrs. Coulter and the Oblation Board, when they turn up. If he loses, then I'll die too, I don't care. If he wins, we'll send for Lee Scoresby and I'll sail away in his balloon and---"
"Who's Lee Scoresby?" Asriel doesn't understands half what Lyra says most of the time, all this rapid chatter about people he doesn't know or care about. It's just as well. He doesn't understand her mindless, infantile chatter and she wouldn't understand his thoughts either if he told them.
Rusakov, put to death for knowing more than what was holy, what was safe and comforting and false. The Church, suppressing and controlling. Standing in court, as some God-fearing vulture of a magistrate stripped all he owned from him. Sin, an imaginary name for human nature. That's what frightened the Church, after all. Human nature. A hole blown into the sky, with another world inside, waiting for him. Freedom, a Republic of Heaven without books of laws, without fear, order or control.
Her mother, making empty promises, trying to make him into another one of her doting fools and crying when he refused to be one. She'd said she loved him, fuming at him in another, long-forgotten tirade, so similar to the one Lyra had just given him, all about how different he could have been from the other men, the other lovers.
Love. It didn't matter whether it existed or not. It wasn't something to celebrate or mourn, or even waste a moment's thought on.
And Lyra wouldn't understand why a secure, wealthy, titled man would risk everything for a woman he couldn't have. She wouldn't understand Edward Coulter's face, red, humiliated and furious, lunging forward until he was silenced in a second, his expression frozen, daemon fading. She wouldn't understand her mother's dutiful fear of heresy, of sin, her ruthless search for Dust.
Dust. It all comes back to Dust, doesn't it?
"An aeronaut. He brought us here and then we crashed. Here you are, here's the alethiometer. It's all in good order."
Asriel doesn't touch it. It's useless to him, in any case. He tried to use it, long ago, spending hours willing the thing to move its hands for him, tell him what he needed to know. He never could and it hardly matters now. He doesn't need it. He's shaped his plan without help.
He needs nobody.
"And I suppose," she goes on, worked into a fever, "I ought to tell you that Mrs. Coulter's on her way to Svalbard, and as soon as she hears what's happened to Iofur Raknison, she'll be on her way here. In a zeppelin, with a whole lot of soldiers, and they're going to kill us all, by order of the Magesterium."
He's almost amused by her tendency for the dramatic.
"They'll never reach us."
"You don't know," she falters.
"Yes, I do," he scoffs. Stelmaria has barely moved from his feet for the whole exchange, even as Pantalaimon shifts and snarls. She is alert but unmoving, ignoring him.
"Have you got another alethiometer, then?"
It's so characteristic of a child, assuming, unable to understand anyone knowing more than they do.
"I don't need an alethiometer for that. Now I want to hear about your journey here, Lyra. Start from the beginning. Tell me everything."
And she does.