Rossi answered succinctly.
She nodded, and her figure disappeared behind the door.
There were no further questions, no emotional fluctuations, as though she were checking the condition of some unimportant cargo.
Perhaps that disposition was precisely why she had survived until now.
Above the iceberg, flocks of gulls changed course in alarm.
They instinctively avoided the still-expanding zone of freezing temperatures.
Rossi raised a hand and caught a falling ice crystal.
The crystal quickly melted in his palm, leaving a cool dampness.
He remembered Anok's trembling fingers as he handed over the Vivre Card.
The commission that man had paid for with all his savings and half his life had earned only a dispassionate question from his daughter.
But on these seas, being alive and knowing each other's whereabouts was already a rare kind of warmth.
The warship accelerated away from the frozen waters.
Behind them, the iceberg left by the white dragon glittered in the sunlight, like a suddenly erected gravestone commemorating this prison break that had changed so many lives.
Ahead, dark clouds roiled along the horizon, heralding a new storm.
Tani wiped down her long blade in the cabin.
The blade reflected her unruffled eyes.
The wound Akainu had inflicted still throbbed faintly, but that sense of powerlessness hurt more.
She needed to grow stronger, to find a way to freeze even magma.
This Family might be the best whetstone.
Oni poked her head out of the next room and asked timidly, "Sister, where are we going next?"
"The New World."
Tani sheathed her blade, the scrape of metal especially clear in the cramped space. "To waters crawling with monsters."
The girl shrank back, then added quietly, "I just 'heard' Mr. Rossi thinking about Fish-Men..."
"You don't need to report things like that."
Tani interrupted her. "Remember