The town of Nail Soup was no more than a tiny collection of ramshackle buildings, strung out along the Archangel Line that was slowly being stitched across the northern frontier. Once, it had been a hive of activity, its name was synonymous with the railhead and the hordes of workers who swarmed in to chip ice, forge steel, and lay rails. But that time was more than a year gone, and Nail Soup, as so many towns before it, was sliding into obscurity. The tent city was long gone, and most of the houses on the outskirts on the town were crumbling and falling into disrepair. Even on Main Street, only the bar and the general store were well-kept. Even the bank and the sheriff's office were looking worn and ragged around the edges.

Which, the mayor thought with a sigh, meant that witch's attack was really just adding insult to injury. He peered through his binoculars at the derelict house at the end of the street. The witch was in there, along with the sheriff and one of her deputies. She had stalked into town hours before, cast up walls of ice around the bar and demanded that all the townsfolk bow down in worship before her. When the law had arrived to take her into custody, the witch had lashed out, entombing the two agents of the law in ice and spiriting their comatose bodies into the decayed and disregarded building at the end of the street.

Which left the mayor with a quandary. Because, while he had no end of willing volunteers for a posse, he had no one who could conceivably kill or capture the witch before she killed her hostages. With a sigh, he set down his glasses, ran hand through his hair, and resisted the urge to swear aloud. He'd hired a sheriff so he wouldn't have to deal with things like this, dammit.

The sound of boots on the creaking boards of the bar's balcony interrupted the civil servant's line of thought.

“Excuse me, sir.”

The voice belonged to one of the would-be posse, a group that had been hazily designated as the town watch. She had a lever-action rifle slung over her shoulder, and the uncomfortable expression of someone about to tell something to a superior that was probably going to get them shouted at.

“This one just rode in. Er... she says she's a witch hunter, sir.”

The mayor blinked. Standing behind the watchwoman was a short young woman with copper-colored hair. Her furs were well-worn and travel-stained, and a gun belt, complete with six-shooter, was slung around her waist. As she shrugged off her cloak to extend a hand, the mayor saw she wore a second pistol under her left arm.

“Pleased to meet you, Miss...?”

“Anna. Just Anna.” The young woman gave him a curt nod. “Now, I understand you've got a witch problem.”

“Well, yes. She just sort of walked into town and started throwing magic around. We're a peaceful town, Miss Anna, so the sheriff went to put a stop to it. Next thing anybody knew, the witch had her all sealed up in ice and the deputy, too. Took 'em both into that house down yonder, and she say's she'll kill 'em if we try to go in after her. Now, she's hasn't hurt anyone yet, so I hope she's bluffing, but...”

“If she's the same one I've been tracking, she isn't,” Anna said, shaking her head. “Describe her.”

“Er... a little taller than you, I guess. Thin. She was wearing some kind of fancy blue dress with fiddly bits around the shoulders.”

Anna nodded. “Ice-blue eyes? Short, black, spiky hair?”

“That's her.”

“Then, Mr. Mayor, I'm afraid she's already killed three agents of the law back in Snowdrop. And a poor prospector's family on the road between there and here. Now, personally...” The witch hunter rested her right hand on the butt of the pistol at her waist. “I can kill her. Probably. But the best way to do that is burning down that house and everyone in it.”

“But that's our sheriff!” The mayor blinked.

“Yeah.” The witch hunter nodded. “I know. And there are a few other options. But they're all dangerous. Really dangerous. And if I'm going to choose a way that means I might die over one that means I won't, I need some extra incentive.”

“But you're a witch hunter. Isn't it your duty, to well...”

Anna held up her hands. “I'd like, Mr. Mayor, to draw your attention to the second word there. Hunter. That means I work by ambush, traps, tricking and cheating. Anyone who goes toe-to-toe with a witch tends to die, horribly, so I never do. So I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Mayor, but I'm not going to march in there and challenge her to honorable combat out of the goodness of my heart.”

“But,” the mayor said sourly, “you could be convinced to take a less destructive approach.”

Anna grinned. “That's about the shape of things.”

The mayor sighed. He really hoped this wouldn't be too expensive.

“Of course, the life of our sheriff is valuable to this town. We would be willing to pay quite well for her life.”

“How well?” Anna asked, giving him a long look.

“Fifty pounds?” The mayor hesitated. “And another twenty-five for her deputy.”

“Not enough for me to risk my neck, I'm afraid.” Anna shook her head. “Try seventy-five a head.”

“A hundred and fifty pounds?” The mayor's voice was strangled.

“That's my price, Mr. Mayor.,” Anna said with a shrug. “Take it or leave it.”

The mayor sighed. It was a shame the sheriff was so popular, really. Otherwise, he might have sssbeen able to get away with letting this crazy woman set fire to things. But there was nothing else for it.

“Deal,” he said, extending his hand.

Anna smiled, spat into her palm, and slapped it against the mayor's. As the man tried to surreptitiously wipe his hand on his trouser leg, the young witch hunter turned back to the watchwoman.

“Now,” she said with inappropriate cheerfulness, “does that creaky old house over there happen to have a cellar?”

-x-

The watchwoman led Anna in a wide circle around Nail Soup, ducking furtively behind buildings and scrambling down alleys to avoid being visible from any window of the house where the witch lurked. It took them almost an hour to make the approach, and beneath her gloves, the watchwoman's knuckles were white from clutching her gun.

“There.” The watchwoman gestured with the barrel of her rifle to a wooden hatch, half-buried in the snow. “You might get a bit dirty, but you can get inside without being seen.” She paused, scratching the back of her neck. “Are you sure you can do this?”

The witch hunter smiled at her as she drew one of her pistols.

“Worried about me dying? Or about this place actually having to pay off the bounty?”

“That's the mayor's problem.” The watchwoman shrugged. “Bounties and rewards in Nail Soup all come out of his pocket, personally.”

Anna arched an eyebrow.

“That's generous of him.”

“Fines get paid to him personally, too.”

“Ah.” Anna pulled back the gun's hammer with a click, and reached into her pocket with her left hand. When she drew it out again, she was holding a small, dark blue crystal. “Well, don't worry too much. I might not have magic but I do have a few tricks.”

“Right. Well... be careful, alright? I saw the witch when she came into town. Looked like a mean one.”

“Careful? Me?” Anna winked. “I'm the very soul of caution.”

Then she was gone, brushing away the snow and scrambling down into the basement and out of sight. The watchwoman sighed, clutched her rifle a bit tighter, a sat back on her haunches. There was nothing to do but wait.

So she waited, as silence stretched itself over the town and curled its tail around her. Her breath puffed little clouds in the cold air, which hung around her head with no wind to disperse them. The watchwoman blew them away with a sigh, and ran her hands over the wood of her rifle. Maybe she should have volunteered to go in too. Alright, so she knew precisely nothing about hunting witches, but an extra gun couldn't hurt, could it?

Her train of thought was violently derailed by the gunshots that shattered the perfect silence. The watchwoman jumped to her feet, heart hammering in her chest. Should run in and help? Or would another person in the dark confines of the house just add to confusion? There was another sharp crack, and, hard on its heels, the heavy thump of a door slamming open, and shouts rang out down Main Street. Clutching her rifle close, the watchwoman pounded through the snow to the front of the house.

Two other members of the watch were already there, crouched next to the shivering, blue-lipped form of the deputy, who had apparently collapsed the second he was off the house's porch. The front door yawned open, and the smell of powder drifted from shadowy interior. Before she could join her comrades, another figure stepped slowly from the house into the cold light of the arctic sun.

The sheriff's neat brown hair was disheveled and tinged with frost, and her gunbelt was empty. Hatless, coatless, but with her badge still firmly pinned to her chest, she took one tottering step before pitching forward and falling headlong down the pair of steps that lead down from the porch. Dropping her rifle unceremoniously into the snow, the watchwoman ran forward, and managed to catch the tall woman before she hit the ground. As she awkwardly lowered her down, she saw that her lips were as blue as the deputy's, and her skin was pale and chilled.

Quickly shrugging off her coat to wrap around the sheriff's shoulders, the watchwoman turned to her two comrades.

“You, help me get them up. You, run to the bar and tell them to put more fuel on the fire. We need to get them warmed up before--”

She was interrupted by another ear-splitting crack from the house. Louder than any of the previous gunshots, it was accompanied by great spikes of pure blue ice that burst from the windows of house's second story, shattering the glass in an instant. A moment later, and the ice grew, bursting from the wooden boards that tried vainly to contain it, sending splinters and wood dust raining down on the street below.

For a minute or more, there was silence again. Then, it was broken , not by cracking gunshots or the tingling snap of magic, but by a low, sinister, scraping sound. The sound of a body being dragged slowly across warped and decaying wood. At first, it was dim and distant, echoing from somewhere deep within the house. But second by second it grew louder, approaching the front door, and the watchwoman snatched her rifle from the snow.

As she held it trained with with trembling hands on that yawning black doorway, the sound grew, louder, nearer, and her eyes strained to catch the first shadow that dared to step into the light. Cold sweat beaded on her brow, her fingers twitched in her gloves, and behind her, she heard someone mutter a prayer.

But then, as quickly as it had begun, the dreadful scraping stopped, and a voice rang out in the stillness.

"Excuse me,” Anna said, “but could somebody give me a hand? She's heavier than she looks.”

-x-

Later, after the sheriff and her deputy were both safely warming by the bar's roaring fire, and Anna had graciously accepted one hundred and fifty pounds in the form of a jangling bag of silver, she walked out to the hitching post where her reindeer was waiting for her. The witch's unconscious body was slung behind the saddle, black hair drooping, eyes closed. Anna gave her a quick once over, and checked the knots that bound her hands. Then she stowed the mayor's jingling purse in her saddlebags, and raised one foot into the stirrups.

"Leaving so soon?"

The witch hunter tumbled backwards with a yelp, sprawling in the snow.

"Oh, god! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."

Anna blinked up into the apologetic face of the watchwoman who had lead her to the witch's hiding

place.

"Don't worry about it." She rose and dusted herself off with as much dignity as she could muster. "What were you saying?"

"Well..." The watchwoman sighed. "You've done us a good turn. Doesn't seem right to send you on your way without so much as a drink.”

Anna smiled.

"I appreciate the thought." She reached out to tap the crystal that hung around the witch's neck. "But this bauble I got around her will only hold her for so long. And I really need to get her back to Snowdrop before it wears off."

The watchwoman gulped, eyeing the tear-drop shape. It was a deep blue, shot through with pale and glittering speckles.

"Is that...?"

"Yep. Starry ice. Chipped it out of a glacier myself, barely fifty miles south of the pole."

"Wow." The watchwoman breathed out. "I didn't know you could get that close."

Anna grimaced.

"Well, I wouldn't recommend it. But you do what you have to, in my line of work. It'll keep her dead to the world for a day or two. Long enough to get to Snowdrop, anyway."

"So they can fit her for a noose?"

Anna's expression was unreadable.

"Something like that."

"Right. Well," the watchwoman sighed, "if that's important, I don't want to keep you. Just... take care of

yourself out there, alright?"

"I always do." Anna swung herself into the saddle. "You'll do the same, I hope."

With that, she dug in her heels and galloped out of Nail Soup.

She rode fast for the first mile or so. There was no sound but the jingle of the harness and the crunch of hooves in the snow until they had circled the southern spar of a glacier and the town had disappeared behind the mountain of ice.

“Alright,” Anna said, turning in the saddle to tap the witch on the shoulder. “It's safe.”

“Oh, thank God.”

Elsa's hands moved quickly, slipping free of the trick knots and reaching for her hair. It was only after the jet-black wig was removed, and her platinum blonde tresses were allowed to spill free, that she bothered to pull herself into a sitting position behind her sister.

“You have no idea how much that thing itches.”

“I really don't.” Anna grinned, before adding “You big baby.”

Elsa huffed, breath cold on the back of her neck.

“Fine, then. How about in the next town, you be the menace to society?”

“Hmm... okay!” Anna chirped. “I mean, I've gotten really good at the whole 'cold bastard bounty hunter' thing, it shouldn't be too hard to turn her into an outlaw too.” She snapped her fingers. “I've got it!”

Turning, she snatched the wig from her sister's hands and tugged it inexpertly onto her own head. Then, with strands of her own auburn locks jutting from beneath the spikes of black, she glared at Elsa.

“Name's Black Annie,” she said, in a low, menacing drawl. “I've killed fourteen men for money, and six for pleasure.” She paused, turned, and spat into the snow before finishing “and one for snoring loud.”

She grinned and plucked the wig from her head, bowing from the waist while Elsa shook her head.

“You know, Anna, sometimes I think you get a little too into this.”

“Ah, what's the harm?” Anna shrugged. “I mean, it's a bit dishonest, but nobody ends up jailed, hurt, or dead, which is a lot more than you can say about regular bounty hunting.”

Elsa sighed. “I suppose.”

“Oh, cheer up. We've got a few days before we hit Carabas, and if they pay as well as the last place did, we'll be set for a long while. We might even be able to settle down. You know, if we can find somewhere up here worth living.”

Elsa raised a hand to scratch idly at her scalp as the reindeer trotted on, the cold beauty of the wild north wrapped itself around them.

“Yes,” she said with a small smile. “Somewhere.”