Cold Fire

4

I found James Drake at the front door instead of the nameless young foreigner. Drake’s lips were tilted up in a funny kind of smile, giving him the look of a man who is expecting a gift or a slap. He set a gloved hand on the latch but snatched it back.

“It’s like ice!” he hissed.

My sword’s hilt waxed cold against my palm. Had the cold mages found us missing and already tracked us down? Or had they discovered Camjiata was in Adurnam and come for him?

“Stand back.” Gritting his teeth against the latch’s cold burn, Drake opened the front door.

Seen past him, a man stood on the stoop, cane in hand.

“These are the offices of Godwik and Clutch, lawyers,” said Drake, as though to a simpleton. “Callers are admitted only by appointment.”

“Isn’t it redundant to inform me that these are the offices of Godwik and Clutch, lawyers,” said the man with the cane, “when the sign out front informs me both in word and in picture of that very fact? Naturally I do have an appointment with the solicitor named Chartji. Otherwise you can be sure I would not have ventured into a neighborhood like this one for legal aid.”

Some men have the unfortunate propensity to look exceptionally well in the clothing they wear, and the effect must therefore be amplified when they dress with full attention to the most fashionable styles, the best tailors, and the most expensive fabric. In fact, he wore a greatcoat of an exceedingly fine cut, magnificently adorned by five layered shoulder capes rather than the practical one or the fashionable three. Its wool was dyed with patterned lines and sigils that reminded me of the clothing the hunters of his village wore when out in the bush. Altogether, the coat was one worn to be noticed and admired.

It was also unbuttoned, as if the ferocious cold did not bother him at all. Beneath he wore a dash jacket tailored to flatter a well-built, slender frame and falling in loose cutaway folds from hips to knees. The fabric’s violently bright red-and-gold chain pattern made me blink. How any man could wear cloth that staggeringly vivid and not look ridiculous I could not fathom. Yet there he was, him and his annoyingly handsome face. I should have known.

“My very question,” said Drake with a cutting smile. “What is a cold mage doing in this neighborhood? A mage of your ilk must despise the scalding technology of combustion. He must regard with contempt the clever contraptions and schemes made by trolls and goblins in their busy workshops. Which rise all around you, in all their industrious vigor.”

I expected sparks to fly. The two men, as they say, stared daggers.

“So polite of you to inform me of what I must despise.” The man on the stoop examined Drake as he might a man who has the bad taste to dress in provincial fashion when venturing into the city. “But unnecessary, since I’ve found I can make such judgments for myself.”

Drake’s free hand curled into a fist. A tremor kissed the air, expanding like the unseen pressure of a hand or an invisible dragon’s sigh. I tasted smoke. A ripple swirled as shimmering heat across the threshold.

“Stop that!” The cold mage raised a hand as if brushing away a fluttering moth. The pressure and heat ceased so abruptly I coughed.

He looked past Drake and saw me. Wincing back as if he’d been struck, he lost his footing and staggered down a step before catching himself. His surprise gave me hope. Maybe Four Moons House and the mansa had not yet tracked us down.

He jumped back up to the door, his gaze fixed on me the way a hammer seeks a nail.

The cold magic pulsing from him coursed down my sword’s hidden blade. If I twisted my draw just right, I could pull a blade into this world out of the spirit world where it currently resided. Not that cold steel would avail me much against Andevai Diarisso Haranwy, the very cold mage who had destroyed the famous airship. I was surprised the incognito guards Camjiata had posted on the lane had not raised the alarm, but then again, you could not identify a cold mage by looks. He might be any particularly well-dressed young man born to a family of high status and notable wealth. They could not have known he’d been born to neither but risen to both.

“You’ll have to return another time, Magister.” Drake started to close the door.

The man I was obliged to call my husband thrust out an arm and, with the tip of his cane, halted the door’s swing. He pushed inside, closed the door, and on the entry mat paused to stamp snow off his polished boots and tap the dusting of snow off his hat.

“I have an appointment with the solicitor Chartji,” he said as he set hat, cane, and gloves on a side table. “You cannot deny me entrance.”

With his lips pressed together and his dark gaze mocking, he surveyed Drake with the disdain that came so easily to him. Drake’s clothes were indeed undistinguished, although practical and sturdy, but in any other company a man with Drake’s striking eyes and attractive face might expect his looks and smile to render his clothing invisible. In this company, he just looked drab.

As the gazes of the two men met, Drake’s blue eyes seemed to blaze. My lips stung as with the bite of a kiln’s heat. My lungs felt choked by unseen smoke and ash. My skin crawled as if licked by invisible tongues of fire. I gasped, sure the air was about to burst into flame.

A chill descended as decisively as a curtain falls at the end of an act. The burning taste of fire was utterly extinguished. Ice brushed my lips like a cold kiss, but it was only sensation, not actual frozen water.

Andevai uncurled a fisted hand as if he were carefully releasing a captured bird. “You’re strong, but not nearly strong enough.” He spoke in a bitingly arrogant tone whose sheer cool vainglory would have been sufficient to bestir a herd of calmly grazing elephants into a maddened, city-flattening stampede. “It’s a bit dangerous, don’t you think? Playing with fire?”

Drake’s grin popped, but he looked furious, not amused. He took a step toward me. With narrowed eyes, Andevai placed himself between me and Drake. Then he met my wary gaze.

I had last seen him two days before. He had not changed. His hair was cut close against his black head, and his beard and mustache were trimmed very short and with absolute perfection, no doubt to encourage young women to look at him. The less said about his beautiful brown eyes, the better. Especially when I recalled the unkind and even cruel things he had said to me when we had first been thrown together, when he had dragged me against my will from the only home I had ever known.

His voice was soft now, emotion tightly controlled. “I suppose your presence here means you have managed yet another escape, Catherine.”

“I can’t tell you anything. Your allegiance lies with Four Moons House.”

He regarded me coolly enough that I felt obliged to admire his composure, considering the things he had said at our last meeting.

“Considering the things that were said at our last meeting,” he said, as if his thoughts aligned with mine, “it may surprise you to hear that my arrival here has nothing to do with you.”

“Considering the things that were said?!” I muttered, for it was hard to know what to say to a man when, the last time you saw him, you had shared a potent kiss. But I found words. “Every mage House has advocates trained in the law who can argue cases in the law courts. What use can you possibly have for Chartji’s services?”

“A question I might ask you.”

“You might, but my answer would be the same as yours.”

He flashed a smile of such astounding sweetness and humor-as if he appreciated my wit!-that it would have been easier for me if my heart had simply stopped and I had dropped dead. I had not known the man could smile like that.

His smile vanished and he said in a serious tone, “Perhaps you’d best sit down, Catherine. Are you going to faint?”

“I never faint,” I said hoarsely. “I’m just tired from all the escaping my cousin and I have had to do.”

“You never answered her question, Magister.” The spark in Drake’s tone made my neck tingle as with a warning. “Why on Earth would a magister visit the offices of an ordinary solicitor who is also a troll? Have you lost something you want back?”

It was clearly a wild guess, but Andevai swung around as fast as if he’d been ridiculed. When his gaze met Drake’s, such a flare of mutual dislike flashed between them that it felt as if all the air had been sucked from the entryway. The history of the world begins in ice, and it will end in ice. So sing the Celtic bards and Mande djeliw of the north. The Roman historians, on the other hand, claimed that fire will consume us in the end.

Ice, or fire? As the two men faced down, I had a sudden and terrible premonition I was about to find out.

A trill, like speech, slid down from the stairs to interrupt the end of the world. Chartji descended from the first floor with the odd hitching walk typical of her kind. She reached the entry and stuck out a hand in the manner of the radicals. “Magister. Here you are.”

Andevai shrugged as if letting anger roll off him. Then he turned, taking her hand in his without the least sign that he, the scion of an influential and wealthy mage House, found this style of greeting plebeian. “My thanks for remembering our earlier meeting and agreeing to my request for an appointment.”

She was taller than he was, with the wide-set eyes and feathered ruff typical of trolls. When she opened her snout in imitation of a smile, her sharp teeth certainly presented a threat, but her greeting was pleasant enough and her speech so human that its precision sounded peculiar.

“Well met, Magister. I admit, I was not sure you would venture to this district, where lies so much technology to disturb you. I am pleased you did so. If you will follow me to my office, we can discuss your business.”

Drake said, “What business might that be?”

She bared teeth at Drake, bobbed her head at me, and gestured to Andevai. “We guarantee privacy for all who seek our services.” Opening the nearest door, she indicated he should precede her into the office.

He hesitated. “Will you be here afterward, Catherine?” he said in a low voice.

This was one answer I could honestly give. “Until Four Moons House gives up all attempt to claim my cousin Beatrice, I can have nothing to do with any mage House or magister.”

He stiffened. “Of course. I admire you for standing loyal to your family above all.”

He sketched an ambivalent gesture, halfway between greeting and leaving, before he crossed into the office. Chartji shut the door behind them. With my exceptionally good hearing, I heard the rustle of curtains being dragged open inside.

“How do you know this arrogant cold mage?” asked Drake.

“The tale is quite a labyrinth of intrigue,” I said, wishing he would leave me alone so I could eavesdrop.

“Phoenician spies must be quite at home with labyrinths of intrigue.” Yet he smiled to take the sting out of the words.

When in doubt, we’d been taught to distract through misdirection. “We call ourselves Kena’ani, not Phoenician. Phoenician is a Greek word, and it’s the one the Romans called us.”

He chuckled. “I’ll remember that, Maestressa. I make it a point never to trust a cold mage. I hope you don’t think it might be possible to do so.” His eyes had the strange quality of seeming vivid in the dim entryway. He watched me, waiting for an answer.

I did not want to speak, but I kept wondering if Camjiata’s armed attendants might decide to attack Andevai. “I’m very sure the cold mage doesn’t know the general is here. I don’t know what his business is, but it’s not about Camjiata.”

“Your insight interests me, Maestressa,” he said with a smile meant to flatter, and indeed I blushed, because I was not accustomed to flattery. “Nevertheless, I’ll need to go report the cold mage’s arrival.”

He went downstairs.

I sidled to the office door and leaned against it. First I tightly furled my senses, blocking out sounds, sights, and smells around me. Then I reached to the threads of magic that permeate all things, the insubstantial threads that can’t be seen or touched in any common way. My awareness crept on those threads into the office.

Andevai was talking. “…If the principle of rei vindicatio were turned on its head. What if people bound by clientage could say they want to reclaim ownership of themselves? Is it possible?”

“ Rei vindicatio means to take possession of something you already own. Such a ruling would turn on the legal status of those people bound by clientage.” Chartji spoke in her eerily perfect diction and accent. “Is clientage legally equivalent to slavery? If they do not possess their own persons in any legal way, then there is nothing to reclaim. Unless the law declares slavery to be illegal, as the law does among my people. So it is difficult for me to say if it is possible here. I will need to make a thorough examination of the law codes and the rulings of jurists. I will need to interview bards and djeliw, because they keep the oldest laws in their memories. I know of no such case being brought before the princely court in the principality of Tarrant. In Expedition, the law is handled quite differently. Just a moment…”

I was straining so hard to hear that when the door exhaled away from my face I stumbled forward into the office. The way the troll pulled back her muzzle was not unfriendly, but it was distinctly unnerving to stare down those predator’s teeth. The crest of yellow feathers raised.

“When I assure people that I offer private meetings, I must be able to fulfill that promise.”

I am sure my face turned as scarlet as if I had been painted. “My apologies.”

Andevai was seated on a settee by the desk. “You may as well let her stay, solicitor. There’s something she needs to hear.”

“I thought you said this appointment had nothing to do with me,” I retorted.

Chartji shut the door. Because I was not about to join Andevai on the settee, I remained standing. Chartji waited beside me. Fox Close lay quiet but for the noise of a coal man shoveling coke into the coal chute and the rumble of a wheelbarrow being pushed along the lane.

“Your chin is bruised,” Andevai said, touching his own chin.

I clasped my hands behind my back. “It was slammed into the floor when you fought that cold magic duel in the factory.” I did not add: against your own master, the mansa, to stop him from killing me.

“Ah.” He seemed stymied and uncomfortable. “My apologies.”

“Since you saved my life, I’m sure you need not apologize.”

With a wince as at a sour taste, he firmly said nothing and looked at me as if daring me to talk. Silence swelled like a bubble expanding to fill the chamber. I looked around. One wall was lined with bookshelves stuffed full of leather-bound volumes shelved in a hodgepodge, some upright and some lying flat. An elaborate map of the world, printed on fabric and tacked up askew, covered part of another wall. The troll’s desk looked like a bird’s nest in the way books, papers, nibs, and a number of odd-looking notched sticks were woven together into a mess that made my hands itch to tidy up. Most strangely, the fire was still burning.

Andevai rose. “Obviously you are wondering why I am here, Catherine. The main reason is business of my own, as I said, none of your concern.”

“ Rei vindicatio is none of my concern? When you arrived at my aunt and uncle’s house two months ago, you invoked rei vindicatio to reclaim ownership of the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter. Four Moons House had forced the Barahals to sign a contract giving that daughter to the mages, but she had been allowed to remain in the possession of her family all the while she was growing up because the mages were worried that the presence in the mage House of a girl who walked the dreams of dragons might be dangerous. Isn’t that correct?”

“Why ask me the question when you already know the answer?”

“Just to hear you say it.” I was shocked at how snide my tone was, but I could not control the surging tide of my emotions: He had thought he had to kill me, yet he had saved my life; I had escaped him and then kissed him. I could not make sense of him.

His lips thinned. I knew some cutting retort was coming. He had a habit of trying to cover his emotions with expressions of scorn. “Yes, I invoked rei vindicatio. But I married the wrong woman, didn’t I? Instead of marrying your cousin, I married you.”

His gaze was too sharp. I decided I would rather look at the ceiling, which was painted blue and flecked with curiously vibrant representations of clouds.

He went on, his voice clipped. “So I have asked Solicitor Chartji if she knows of any legal way to undo the chain of binding which was sealed on our marriage.”

His comment shocked me back to earth. “There is no way to undo a magical chain. No way, short of death.” The word stung like a mouthful of salt.

“So we are told. But that does not mean it has never been undone before. Or cannot be undone by other means.”

“Such a matter lies a very long way out of my field of expertise,” said Chartji. “However, it would be interesting to look into as a legal technicality. I can promise nothing. Nor can I figure in what manner of legal court you could adjudicate such a case. However, I can investigate and report back on what I find, if that is what you want.”

“Do you want to be released from our marriage, Catherine?” His stare challenged me.

“May I speak bluntly?” I asked.

“When did you ever not?”

“You’d be surprised how many times I bit my tongue!”

“If you’d done so, I would think I would have seen more blood.”

“One drop was enough,” I said.

With an intake of breath, he stiffened, looking like a man who has no idea how he came to be standing in a place so far beneath his consequence. “There is no answer to that.”

How was it he kept putting me on the defensive? “You misunderstand me. All I meant was, are you willing to hear what I have to say in front of another person?”

Chartji’s crest rose slightly.

“I do not fear her censure, if that is what you think. Anything said here won’t be repeated.”

“I was trying to be thoughtful,” I said. “I meant only to spare your feelings.”

“Please do not begin concerning yourself about my feelings now.”

“Was there a time before this I would have had some reason to be concerned for your feelings? Perhaps after I was forced to marry you and you treated me with cruelty instead of kindness? Or perhaps when I was running for my life after you were commanded to kill me?”

The troll’s faint whistle shivered the air. I fisted my hands, waiting for Andevai to cut me down to size.

He shut his eyes, then opened them to look right at me, his voice tight and his tone rigidly formal. “I regret the high-handed way I behaved toward you on that journey almost as much as I regret not immediately rejecting the mansa’s command to kill you. But my regrets do not change the past. So say what you must, Catherine. I am not afraid to hear it.”

My heart was hammering so hard I was dizzy. I brushed the back of a hand across my forehead and took a breath to steady myself. “You belong to Four Moons House. Legally, you belong to them. You had to marry me because you were ordered to do it. Once I was forced to marry you, I belonged to them, too, through the djeli’s binding that contracted me to you. You knew that’s what would happen. So in a way I think it was an attempt at kindness for you to think that you and I-that you thought I was-” Heat seared my cheeks. I could not go on.

“Acquit me of kindness, Catherine. I meant what I said.”

I certainly could not forget what he had said: “ When I saw you coming down the stairs that evening, it was as if I were seeing the other half of my soul descending to greet me. ”

I gulped in air and got words past an obstruction. “Even if you believe that now, to Four Moons House I will never be anything except the mistake you made that lost them the person they wanted. The burden of protecting me from their indifference and spite will eventually wear away whatever affection you may currently believe you hold for me.”

“I wish you would speak for yourself, Catherine, and stop telling me what I do and do not believe and how I will and will not act.”

“Then I’ll speak for myself.” Because my hands were shaking, I clasped them together again. “I can’t live in Four Moons House as an unwanted creature whom everyone will scorn. And I know you said I could live in your family’s village, but I wouldn’t know how to live there. I’d be so out of place. Above all else, I know better than to chance what may happen tomorrow on a transitory passion felt today.”

I had to stop.

He said nothing. Yes, he was physically handsome, and attractive in some other intangible way. After those first disastrous days, he had made an effort to help me. His kiss had certainly pleased me in a most startling manner. But I did not love him. How could I? I didn’t even know him. And whatever he might think, he did not truly know me. He only believed he did.

“I am sure it is to your credit that you tried to soften the blow,” I went on.

“ Soften the blow??” His eyes flared.

Had I been wiser, I would have stopped, because the fire in the hearth flickered.

No one had ever accused me of being wise.

“You were commanded to marry a woman against both your own will and hers. So you concocted a honeyed fable in your heart to make an unpleasant duty palatable. Just as you weave illusions out of light, you wove an illusion about us. One soul cleaved into two halves and then like destiny reunited-”

The fire whuffed out with a puff of ash. A glimmer of ice crackled across the heavy iron circulating stove.

“Are you quite through insulting me?” he demanded.

Chartji’s crest was fully raised. I felt she was making ready to act precipitously in case someone lost his temper and brought down the house.

“It’s not meant as an insult!”

“Implying I don’t know my own mind is not an insult?” His jaw was clenched, his eyes had narrowed, and I heard a whispery groan of iron under strain. Yes. He was very angry.

“That’s not how I meant it. You didn’t kill me when you had the chance. You aided me when you could. You defied the mansa by telling him you would stop anyone who tried to kill me. So I thank you for that. But Bee and I have our own problems. A husband is one complication too many.” My hands were squeezed so tightly my shoulders ached. I untangled my fingers and separated my hands. “I’ll make no objection if a way can be found to dissolve the marriage. Let you go your way, and me mine. It’s for the best.”

“So be it.” His gaze flashed up, and if there was a murderous piercing spear in those fine brown eyes I am sure he did not mean it literally. Perhaps he was finally reconsidering the wisdom of believing he had fallen in love at first sight. People could convince themselves of anything.

“Will that be all, then?” Chartji said to me.

“Yes.” I was barely able to croak out the word. Over here, it seemed terribly hot, although the rest of the chamber shivered with cold.

“If you will.” She indicated the door. “The magister and I aren’t finished.”

I let her usher me out, and as I turned back to see if Andevai had watched me go, she closed the door in my face.