Cold Fire

6

“A good morning to you, Maestressas and Maester.” A young man with dusty blond hair and a freckled white face stood beside an empty coal cart. “Is all well with you?”

“I have no trouble, thanks to my power as a woman,” I replied in the traditional way, and received a scathing look from Bee for my pains. “And you, Maester? Is all well with your family?”

“We have peace, thanks to my mother who raised me,” he said with a grin. “Though I wonder at the bells. I hope the fire’s not around here.”

He looked down Fox Close toward Enterprise Road. With the bells tolling the alarm, the streets of Adurnam had turned, like the snowmelt-fed streams of late spring, into foaming rivers full with a raging flow of people hurrying to get somewhere else. I didn’t relish making our way halfway across Adurnam in this tumult.

“Are you from this district?” I asked.

He made a flourish with his cap. “That I am. And my ancestors before me. Eurig is my name. Brennan Du asked me to get you across the city.”

I exchanged a glance with Bee. We would have to lose him, but not too soon. A shame, for he seemed nice enough. “Our thanks. We can’t give our names. My apologies.”

“I understand. This way.”

He picked up the handles of the cart and began pushing not toward Enterprise Road but deeper into the narrow lane of Fox Close. We walked alongside as he talked. “We’ll take Ticking Lane through the Lower Warrens. They’re perfectly safe despite the name. Most of the old buildings here have been knocked down and rebuilt. And there’s gaslight everywhere in this district. We used to be nothing more than a fishing village. Now we’re quite the most modern district in Adurnam, thanks to the trolls and the radicals.”

“How did you become a radical?” Bee asked.

“As the Northgate poet says, it’s no crime to think men have natural rights that ought not to be trampled on by ancient privileges.”

“Just men? Or women, too?” asked Bee with her most dangerously pretty smile.

He blinked, taken aback by this thrust. “Nature has suited women for a different role than that given to men.”

“Like Professora Kuti?” Bee demanded.

“Cat!” Rory nudged me with a bag. “I smell a lot of horses nearby.”

Angry shouts of protest rang from Enterprise Road: “The dogs are come to bite us with their teeth of steel.” “We need step aside for no man!” “Which will it be, lads? Freedom or fetters?”

A whip cracked. A man screamed. A column of mounted soldiers swept into sight around the corner where Fox Close met Enterprise Road. About half wore tabards marked with the four moons of full, half, crescent, and new: turbaned mage House troops, leading a spare horse. The rest wore the uniforms of the Tarrant militia except for a half dozen in red-and-gold hip-length capes, the mark of Rome’s ambassadorial cavalry. Pedestrians stumbled back to the stoops and railings.

“Keep walking,” said Eurig. “Don’t look back.”

“Eurig,” I said, “did the ancient village here have a crossroads?”

“What? The Fiddler’s Stone down by Old Cross Gate? The fishermen would bring their catch up from the shore and trade it to the folk who came over from the Roman camp. That was a long time ago.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Let’s move faster. Just don’t run.”

I looked back. The soldiers pulled up in front of the law offices of Godwik and Clutch. A man wearing a Roman cape dismounted just as the door opened and Andevai appeared on the steps. The rigid set of his shoulders betrayed his annoyance, and made me think he really had come to consult with Chartji on a matter so private he hadn’t told the mansa. From the steps, as if drawn by my foolish stare, Andevai looked our way down Fox Close. I saw him see me.

Quite deliberately, he strode down the steps, mounted, and turned toward Enterprise Road.

“He’s leading them away from us!” I said.

“Just keep walking,” said Eurig.

“Cat!” Bee was breathless. “Didn’t you recognize him?”

“Andevai? Of course I recognized-”

“It was Amadou Barry, with the Roman guard.”

Eurig turned his cart into a lane lined with craftsmen’s shops. Behind one window, clockwork toy horses and dogs clattered along a display counter. Behind another, four women sat at a table, filing and polishing tiny gears.

Rory, lagging behind, ran to catch up. “They’re coming back. That Lord Marius is with them now. He must have told them to turn around.”

Eurig whistled shrilly. Five shops down, a burly man wearing an apron streaked with grease stepped out onto the lane. He nodded, and we hurried past him into a large room where persons bent over an alembic from whose unstoppered rim rose a misty thread. An acrid smell made my eyes water. Rory sneezed. From behind a curtain came the sound of hollow clapping.

“Up on the roof and over to the troll nest,” said the aproned man. “They’re all out at the steamworks, and I’ve got their permission. I’ll put your cart out back. Lads, get your masks on.”

“What’s that awful smell?” Bee asked.

“A scent to keep the prince’s hounds at bay, Maestressa,” he said. “You won’t be able to come back down, but they won’t be able to come in.” He dragged aside the curtain to reveal stairs.

A handbell rang three times. We climbed the stairs to the first floor in pace to the odd clapping noise. Workbenches filled the first-floor chamber, strewn with glass pipes, gleaming gears, and a discarded tartan cap. A dozen workers were grumbling as they reached under their benches for cloth masks. Scars mottled their ashen faces. The second floor was crammed with crates, and the third with neat rows of cots. A stair-step ladder led to a long, low attic with a dormer window and more cots.

I pressed a hand over my nose. My eyes were really beginning to sting.

Rory was staggering. “Poison!” he choked out.

“Move,” said Eurig. “The fumes will kill us.”

I pulled down the latch and opened the window. The winter air hit like a blast. A crow sat on the peak of the roof opposite. I was so sure it was watching me that I could not move.

Bee pushed past me and out the window. Shaking myself, I followed. We chivvied to the right around the chimneys and out of sight of the lane. Across a warren of roofs, it was possible to see the river embankments and docks crowded with vessels. A massive flock of crows wheeled in the sky.

“Look!” Bee’s fingers tightened painfully on my arm.

A fire blazed on the wide pewter expanse of the Solent River.

Greasy smoke billowed. Ripples of heat rolled upward against a dawn sky made dank and low by clouds. A hulk anchored beyond the docks was burning with fiery abandon.

“Isn’t that a prison ship, Cat? All those people chained in the holds must be trapped.”

Rory crawled into sight, wheezing. Eurig slouched after, dragging the bags.

Upriver, a sloop flying the prince of Tarrant’s ensign flowed into view. The deck was covered with uniformed men, some in clusters around the guns, others with swords, pikes, and crossbows ready to board.

Eurig shaded his eyes. “They mean to sink the hulk. Follow me.”

Bee released my hand. “They’ll let the prisoners burn? Or drown?”

He cast her a disgusted look. “Of course they will. That’s the plague ship.”

“A plague ship?” I stared at him. “What plague?”

“The salt plague.”

“The salt plague never left West Africa. It can’t cross water or survive the desert.”

He laughed in a coarse way that made me blush with shame. “Of course it can cross water. In a ship. That’s how our noble prince keeps agitators in line. There’s a cage of salters on that hulk. A political prisoner gets put in that cage, and he will get bit. The plague will infest his blood, and he will become a salter just like the others. He’ll crave salt and blood as his mind and body rot.”

Bee’s fingers closed over my forearm, grip tightening as Eurig took a step closer.

By the tension in his shoulders and the cant of his head, he meant us to feel intimidated. “My sweet lasses, there is no cure for the salt plague. And every person who is bit gets infested and becomes a salter in their turn. It would be better to be dead. So don’t wonder why we send those salters to rest at the bottom of the tide where they can’t bite us. Scarred Hades! Get down!”

A corner of Ticking Lane was visible between two chimneys. Horsemen rode past. We ducked, then crawled to where a sloped plank gave access to a higher roof. We climbed up, but once there, Rory vomited a vile spew that, horribly, had the slimy remains of feathers in it.

“Just…need…moment…rest,” he murmured, sinking to hands and knees.

“You’re turning green,” said Bee as I covered my mouth and nose with a hand. “You scout ahead. I’ll stay with Rory and the bags.”

Wincing with distaste, Eurig was eager to lead the way over the uneven rooftop with its chimney pots, then up steps to a wide ledge boasting a decorative wrought-iron bench, as if people sat up here. We looked over the rebuilt warrens. Trolls in pairs and threes, never singly, hurried through interconnected lanes and alleys, intermixed with men and women carrying goods on their heads or backs. One of the trolls cocked its feather-crested head, spotting us but moving on. Two bright-plumaged trolls leaned out an attic window several houses down, looking toward the conflagration. A woman hanging out washing had paused to stare at the disaster out on the water.

A voice from an unseen watcher cried out: “Militia in the warrens! Bloody Romans, too. And mage House soldiers! Quick, lads, stow the rifles.”

“Get down!” snapped Eurig. “Anyone might see you.”

I stepped behind a chimney as he tugged open a trapdoor. We descended steep steps through an attic crammed with crates, baskets, and sealed ceramic jars. The floor below had no walls, only support pillars. Mirrors fragmented me into a hundred pieces: etched mirrors, hand mirrors, bronze mirrors, mercury mirrors, all hanging from the beams or propped on racks or braced on stands. Among them, displayed on a maze of shelving, lay gleaming objects of every shape and size: polished gold bracelets, bowls of metal gears, glass pipettes sealed over liquid mercury, steel blades, a flintlock rifle recently oiled. The shadow threads that bind the world seemed to have caught in the maze, tangling through my head. A discordant melody echoed faintly through the maze, the disharmony making my temples pound.

I rubbed my aching eyes. “What is this place? A thieves’ den?”

“Careful where you step! Trolls are the most amiable creatures imaginable. Unless you take or break something that belongs to them. Come on.”

We ducked under mirrors, sidestepped a column of pewter candlesticks, and traversed a labyrinth woven of wire. The path doubled back, dead-ended, and once rewound us back the way we had come. The mirrored reflections made my vision throb. I feared that if I brushed anything, the entire collection would crash down. Dizzied, I leaned on the banister as I descended.

The second floor had three doors standing open to bedchambers. We had reached the first-floor landing when a thunder of hooves rattled the entryway on the ground floor below us.

A shout: “That roof, there. Yes, this building. I saw someone up there, my lord.”

“The door is locked, my lord captain.”

“Break it down.”

“Camlodus’s Balls! It’s the militia.” Eurig turned. “Go up and hide. I’ll divert them.”

I knew better than to argue. I raced upstairs just as the front door was smashed open and soldiers exploded into the house. The maze seemed a bad bet for hiding, so I bolted into one of the second-floor bedchambers. The room looked as though a whirlwind had hit it, clothing scattered in heaps across six high square frames with mattresses, which looked like more like nests than beds. The bright patterned fabrics gave the beds a patchwork feel: here a gold-and-green floral extravagance that might have been a barrister’s robe suitable for law court, there a ruffed dash jacket sewn out of a cotton printed with orange bars, blue scallops, and elongated rose-colored spectacles winged with peacock feathers whose eyes watched me.

“Stop!” cried a martial voice.

On the landing below, Eurig replied, “Here, now, my lord captain, Your Mightiness. What gives you leave to come barging in here?”

“I might ask what gives you leave to speak so disrespectfully to a man who holds both kinship to the prince, and a sword,” said a stentorian tenor. I recognized the voice of Lord Marius, whom I had first met at a ruined fort on a hill northeast of Adurnam, not more than a week before. Then, laughter had lightened his voice. Now, he blared.

“The prince of Tarrant?” retorted Eurig. “The man whose honor drains away drop by drop each day the Northgate poet refuses to eat? Our voices will be heard.”

“In the law courts, at least. What brings you to an empty troll’s nest?”

“They’re partners in a consortium with my employer.”

“I do believe you are lying. Are you angling for a ride on the plague ship, man?”

“Do you mean the one that’s sinking right now? So will injustice founder.”

“Arrest him,” said Lord Marius. “Search the premises.”

Threads of magic are woven through every part of the world because our world and the spirit world that lies athwart our own are intertwined. As footfalls approached the door, I drew the house’s shadows around me like a cloak and hid myself. Two men walked into the chamber. One was Lord Marius, a tall, lean Celt with a thick mustache, a clean-shaven chin, and short hair stiffened into lime-whitened spikes. His gaze swept the chamber with a smile of amusement brushing his lips, as Bee’s pencil might coax into life the humor of a man who prefers to laugh. He did not see me.

With him walked his brother by marriage, the young Roman legate Amadou Barry, whose father was both Roman patrician and West African prince and whose mother had been born into a noble Malian lineage. His Roman ambassadorial cape and the cut of his old-fashioned uniform certainly flattered him, although he had a frown on his handsome face.

“I admire his bravado,” Lord Marius was saying. “But I’ll have to have him fined for disrespect. I can’t challenge a laborer to a duel.”

“You Celts argue too much over fine points of honor. This seems like a chase after a wild goose, as you say up here in the north.” His gaze flowed right past me as he scanned the room. “Jupiter Magnus! Have you ever seen such a mess?”

Lord Marius had a hearty laugh. “Perhaps it merely belongs to a mind whose idea of tidiness isn’t the same as ours. It’s no worse than your sister’s dressing room.”

Amadou Barry halted three steps into the room. I eased back to the bed on which lay the peacock jacket. “Sissy was ever so. I’m amazed by the resourcefulness of those two girls.”

“Everyone has underestimated them, that is sure. Not least you, Amadou. Were you just that sure she would accept the-ah-position as your mistress?”

“I am a prince and a legate. Her family is impoverished and not respectable. She can’t ever hope to receive a better offer.”

Unless it was an offer to throttle him. As if a fire had been laid in the hearth and lit, my temperature rose.

“Quite so. I’m surprised to hear a Phoenician refused a lucrative contract-” Lord Marius broke off, gaze tightening. “Did you see something?”

Calm. I had to remain calm.

“In Beatrice? Faithful Venus, Marius! Even you must see something in her. She is the most delectable-”

“If I have to hear you praise her shining eyes and cherry lips one more time, I will have one of my men shoot me to put myself out of my misery.”

“She will not sigh when I am dead,” said Amadou.

“Nor will she lie with you for gold, it seems, which is the next line in the famous poem by the Thrice-Praised poet Bran Cof.”

Amadou sighed. “I misplayed my hand. I was too accommodating.”

Lord Marius paced the chamber, passing an arm’s length from where I stood with my buttocks crushed against the high metal frame of the bed, holding my breath. “Women are hard to please. I could have sworn I saw a flicker of movement. Must have been the light.”

“How do we know the girls are anywhere near this district? Much less in this house?”

“The mansa specifically told me to follow the cold mage. We’re not to trust him. If he says to go left, then we go right.”

“Ah, so that’s why you turned this way when he wanted to ride back to Enterprise Road.”

“That’s right. Then one of my soldiers saw the cold mage see someone up on this roof, and my man thought it was a female, so here we are.” Lord Marius paced to the door and glanced into the hall. He gestured to someone before turning back. “You know, Amadou, whatever you think about your Beatrice’s raven-black ringlets and bonny curves, this business of hunting down girls makes me uneasy. It’s beneath us. Meanwhile, that commoner in the hall is right, curse him. The Northgate poet sits on the steps of my cousin’s court. Each day the poet does not eat, he heaps more shame on my clan’s honor. I fear we are not getting out of this without a bloodbath.”

“The plebes will mob and riot. It’s in their breeding. We’ve known that in Rome for centuries. The sooner the militia drives the rabble off the streets, the better for all. If more blood were spilled, there’d be less trouble.”

“Do you suppose so?” drawled a far-too-familiar voice. “I would think a timely hailstorm would drive people inside without causing undue harm.”

Andevai walked into the bedchamber. I could not call his expression a smile.

“That’s an interesting thought, Magister,” said Marius. “Can you manage such a storm?”

Andevai’s cool vanished like frost under the sun. “Of course I can!”

“I meant no offense, Magister. It would be a cursed sight better way to restore order than cutting people down. In my experience as a soldier…”

Gaze straying from Lord Marius to the bright disorder of clothing and fabric strewn across the beds, Andevai saw me.

He saw me.

Lord Marius had broken off. “Magister? What’s wrong?”

Andevai blinked. “I was…just…stunned…” His gaze flickered to the bed. “That jacket. Orange bars. Blue scallops. Peacock-winged spectacles. And a ruff?! Quite stunning. You would have to really…wear colors…and lace…to pull that off in a jacket.”

“Yes, you would have to,” said Lord Marius with a laugh, glancing toward me-at the jacket-and back at Andevai. The look he gave the man I had to call my husband was so frankly appreciative that I blushed. “You’re quite the decorative specimen yourself.”

“My thanks,” said Andevai in the most absentminded manner imaginable. I blinked so hard I thought he must surely hear me warn him with my eyes to stop staring at me.

Amadou Barry sighed in the manner of a man wanting to change the subject. “Speaking of shooting oneself. Do we search the roof??”

“What say you, Magister?” Marius’s amused and avid gaze remained fixed on Andevai.

“I say nothing,” said Andevai, glaring right at me in the most shockingly idiotic way.

“We were told you could lead us to the girl you wed.”

Andevai looked sharply away and appeared to be searching walls and ceiling for any remnant of good taste. “Is that what you were told? I wonder if this is meant to be a tailor’s shop, or if they only raided one and got all the pieces mixed up.”

Amadou Barry whistled. “You didn’t come to this district to get information on where she fled?”

“I was on my own business.”

“You’re not going to give her up, are you, wherever she’s gone?” said Marius. “Good for you. I liked her. That girl has spine and courage.”

“We should check the roof,” said Amadou.

Andevai’s gaze skipped back to me.

I widened my eyes and mouthed, broadly, “ Yes. Say yes. ”

“Ye-es,” he said slowly, brow crinkling with a question.

“Yes?” said Lord Marius with a surprised glance at Amadou.

I lifted my chin and mouthed, “ Say yes. Say go up on the roof. ”

“Yes,” said Andevai more decisively. “By all means, go up on the roof.” Then, with what was even for him an excess of haughty pride, he turned his glare onto a startled Lord Marius. “Are we going up? The soldiers told me they found a troll’s maze. Whatever that is. I’d like to see.”

The captain raised a hand as if catching a tossed ball. “A troll’s maze! We’re leaving.”

Amadou glanced at Andevai. “They could have come over the roof.”

“There’s a goblin workshop locked up for the day on one side. On the other, they’re poisoning themselves with arsenic or some such. I don’t see how the girls could have gotten in here before us. And I’m not risking a troll’s maze. One foot wrong and the whole thing will crash down. Then we’ll be years haggling in court for damages. Trolls love haggling in court. Amadou, I suspect you’re right: This detour is a chase after a wild goose. Let’s go. They’re out there somewhere. I promised the mansa I would recover them and return them to him.”

Lord Marius went out. Amadou Barry followed.

Andevai crossed to the bed and picked up the jacket, holding it high so it swept along my left side. “Now I understand how you were able to get out of Four Moons House without being seen,” he whispered. “What magic conceals you? None I’ve ever heard of.”

“Listen! The mansa told them not to trust you. If you say left, then they’ll go right.”

Anger flashed in the flare of his eyes. “Is that so?”

“They were following you, to try to find us.”

“Were they, now?” His gaze narrowed as he contemplated an object, personage, or situation that annoyed him very much.

“Magister?” Amadou Barry stepped halfway back into the room. “Is something amiss?”

“I just can’t keep my eyes off it,” said Andevai, gaze skating above the collar of the jacket as his eyes met mine. “There’s so much about its tailoring I don’t comprehend. But it doesn’t truly belong to me, so I fear I must leave it behind. Although you never know. I haven’t given up on gaining something so very close to my heart.”

My cheeks were so on fire that I was amazed the legate could not see me.

Amadou Barry appeared startled by Andevai’s passionate words. “It’s a bit…over-complicated for my taste. We’re leaving now, Magister.”

“My thanks for the warning,” Andevai said, his gaze on me.

He tossed the jacket over the other clothes and turned away. At the door, he paused with a hand on the frame. I tensed, waiting for him to glance over his shoulder one last time.

A deep heavy boom shuddered the house.

“By Teutates!” cried one of the men, “they’re firing cannon on the river!”

Without looking back, Andevai walked out.

“Bring the prisoner,” said Lord Marius from the passage.

I heard Andevai. “By the way, Legate, how did you come to seek me out at the law offices?”

They clattered out, taking Amadou’s answer with them, and leaving me with a cold wind rising up through the shattered door and the jangling tinkling off-key chime from the chamber upstairs.