Cold Magic

29

In the confines of Serpens Close, we discovered a stair that led, just as the old man had said, to a path along Duvno Stream, a bricked-in sewer whose stench was leavened only by the steadily dropping night temperature. We hurried for some way along this path and left it to make our way through deserted streets to humbler districts and eventually the festive sprawl of the winter market on the shore of the Solent River. Here we bargained for winter coats, the kind worn by women who must work out of doors through the fierce winter chill, and cloaks to go over them to double as blankets. Bee traded her elegant frock for sturdier garb, and we stood in the cold street and shivered, heads bent together and my hand on the hilt of my ghost sword in case anyone accosted us.

"We need legal help," I said. "What about those trolls I met?" She looked askance at me. "You met trolls? Spoke to them?" "I liked them, Bee. So would you have. But I don't know where their offices are. We can scarcely go searching this time of night. We have to find somewhere to hide until the sun goes down on solstice eve. Tonight, tomorrow day, the next night, and the next day. That's all."

"Then what? Beat off our pursuers with your cane?" "I don't know, but our first goal is to get you free of the contract."

~X\J~L _

"What do you think happened to Roderic?" she whispered.

I wiped my eyes, unable to speak.

So at length we settled into the smoky supper room of a tavern, where we shared a bowl of millet and goat's meat stew at a corner table so out of the way that a stout oak pillar cut off our view of the door into the common room. In this forsaken corner, there was plenty of smoke but little enough heat. Out there, people were eating and drinking and conversing merrily, as folk did who weren't running for their lives. We had, of necessity, come into the somewhat more expensive supper room, but despite the late hour, it was packed with noisy folk keeping late hours. I demolished our first helping and began working through a second while Bee picked past stringy goat's meat and yellow turnip seeking what was not there.

"The old man said he was waiting for me," said Bee.

"Maybe. Or maybe he was an old lecher and thought it a likely story to draw you in for a kiss."

I had expected her to recoil at the thought of being kissed by a dying man who must have been ninety if he was a day. I had even hoped perhaps to squeeze a chuckle from her. Instead, she pinned my wrist to the table.

"No. He said I was death coming to meet him." I had forgotten how deep her gaze was. Men stuttered and collapsed at a glance from her eyes. Right now, I thought she looked as if the weight of the world's misery had fallen on her shoulders. "He said he was giving me his heart's fire to help me walk my dreams in the war to come. I'm frightened, Cat. What did he mean?"

"I don't know," I said. "Eat something."

She released my wrist and scooped up a spoonful of brown gravy. With a frown, she stared at a shred of wilted green mint floating in the liquid, then drizzled the spoon's contents back into the bowl. "I'm not hungry."

"We have to keep up our strength. If not for yourself, then think of Rory, who may have sacrificed his life for us."

She sighed and, after wiping her eyes, began to eat. "You never told me what happened to you, Cat. The tale would make the stew go down better, I'm sure."

So I told her. As the story unfolded, she ate with more gusto, and her bowed shoulders began to straighten as if my words nourished her.

"Can that be true? That the male who sired you is a creature of the spirit world?" she demanded, a little too eagerly. "Like an eru or a saber-toothed cat?"

"What else can I think?"

"It does seem likely, but awfully strange. And how would they have managed the… the deed?"

"In the usual way, I would suppose. Not that you know anything about that."

"No more than you do!" She grinned, then bit a finger, thinking. "Still, if it's true, do you think we could cross into the spirit world and hide there?"

"If I knew where to find a crossroads. If you could even cross with me."

"The magister crossed."

"He was raised among hunters. Didn't I mention that? It's a dangerous place, Bee."

She frowned. "And this world is not? Tell me, Cat, did all that coin you now possess come from him?"

"Yes."

Through narrowed eyes, she regarded me shrewdly. "Did he like you?"

"Yes, certainly he must have, because that is how young men show young women they like them. By trying to kill them."

"But you said he said afterward that he was sorry."

"He never said that!"

"Maybe not in those exact words. But he said-"

"Leave it! I do not ever again want to talk or think of Andevai Diarisso Haranwy."

"How quickly you snap, for someone who claims to be undisturbed by the flies buzzing all about her."

"Somehow, that makes me feel like a steaming pile of fresh manure out in a field."

She smirked.

"Our pardon." Two men reeled up like gasping fish. They wore the respectable clothing of apprentices and clerks, and the younger had dressed his up with a bright orange and brown dash jacket. Because of their pallor, it was easy to mark the flush of drunkenness in their cheeks. I shifted my sword to my right side so I could if necessary draw it quickly.

The younger one straightened his jacket and then addressed us. "You fine gels look like you have an empty cup, which we would gladly fill."

Bee skewered them with a glare. "Was that meant to be poetic or merely crude? You may move on."

"No reason to knife a man just for asking!" They departed, unsteadily, and made their way to a table crowded with young men who greeted them with the hoots men shower upon the unfortunate. A few blew kisses in our direction. I thought about how much we were like the table and the wall, nothing to bother looking at, nothing at all, and they turned back to their conversation and, I hoped, forgot about us.

Bee was carving lines in the smears of gravy left on the bottom of the bowl. "How could he do it? Use the vision of a woman who was walking the dreams of dragons to plot a military campaign?"

"Who? Camjiata? Do you ever see Camjiata in your dreams?"

"How would I know? I've never seen him except in caricatures. Some make him squinch-faced, hunchbacked, and spittle-ridden, while others claim him as mighty and black-haired. Rather like you, now that I think on it, so perhaps you are secretly his love child."

"I am not-" Words caught in my throat. I stuck a spoonful of stew into my mouth and chewed to make them go back down. It was no stranger a notion than the other possibilities. "Anyway, how would an imprisoned man know about you?"

"Couldn't someone who walked the dreams of dragons dream about someone who walked the dreams of dragons? If he had a wife who dreamed, she might have told him."

"If she was a diviner. But diviners are notoriously imprecise. And I'm not sure what that has to do with walking the dreams of dragons."

She looked up, resting the spoon on the bowl's rim. "You said that when a dragon turns over in its sleep, the world changes."

I shuddered. "Yes, in the spirit world. I saw it happen."

"What about in our world? You called it a tide. Wouldn't that tide run through this world, too, somehow? If things are connected, as you say."

"I just don't know, Bee."

"What do you think dragons dream of, Cat?"

"Plump deer who run exceedingly slowly."

She pulled out her sketchbook from the knit bag we had purchased to carry a change of drawers and shifts and a few other necessaries. She paged through the sheets: Some were drawn to capture historical events, like the Romans kneeling before the armies of Qart Hadast after they lost the Battle of Zama. Others were pure fancy, like the poor folk falling from balloons. But others, I now realized, represented scenes from her dreams, when it seemed she had truly dreamed things that had not yet come to pass: the ramparts of Cold Fort; the bookshelves and

dead fireplace of the library in which we had met the old man; my hand pressing down the latch of the balcony door in the academy lecture hall. A tall man standing framed by the lintel of a door; I did not know him but I was sure I had seen that face recently.

"If they know what Camjiata looks like, and I have sketched him in a recognizable place in my dreams and maybe with some means to identify the day or season, then the cold mages and the princes-who hate each other but hate Camjiata more- might have a chance to find him. Wouldn't they?"

I whistled softly. "I never thought of that."

"But why, then, could the agents of the Prince of Tarrant and the mansa of Four Moons House not have come to my parents and asked with a pretty and a please to pay for my services? Maester Amadou was certainly willing to pay for my kisses!" She flushed, glancing toward the table of clerks and apprentices who had begun singing a song likening the city council members to high-priced and coldhearted whores who lifted their skirts only for the wealthy and never for passion or justice. " 'Greetings and peace to you, Maestressa Barahal,' they might have said, 'for you have the very means by which we may capture the wicked Camjiata, the Iberian Monster whose armies wrought such devastation across the lands. And for your services we will meanwhile lavish gold upon your family so they can pay their debts and buy new curtains to replace these much-mended and very shabby old ones.'"

"They might," I agreed. "But they had evidence the Hassi Barahals were spies for Camjiata. So that answers that question. Anyhow, having met the mansa, I am certain that once he determined he wanted as well as needed you, he'd not be willing to share you."

She tucked the book into the bag. "So no matter what happens, we will still be at the mercy of people who can force us to

do their bidding just because they have powerful kinfolk, and money, and soldiers."

"In't that the truth!" cried the innkeeper as she swept in on the wings of Bee's final words. She poured mulled wine into the tin cup we were sharing. "Always it is lords and mages who grind us under their well-shod feet. Shoes that were made by the likes of us, weren't they? Yet we are tossed a pittance and told to be grateful for the work, while they parade in the avenues and rest on finest linen and crow in the city council. Who hears us?"

"Indeed!" replied Bee emphatically, with raised eyebrows. "They have curbed our'mouths with bridles and bits! Thus are we silenced."

"The very words of the Northgate Poet!" said the innkeeper. "I took you for radicals. For you clearly aren't nightwalkers. If you don't mind my saying so, you ought not be out so very late. Not with your looks, and on such a night with a picketing planned."

Bee and I glanced at each other.

"I thought it would have started already," said Bee, batting her eyes in that invitingly innocent way she had.

The innkeeper was a stout, healthy woman old enough to be our aunt. She smiled warmly on us in the way older women do when you remind them of their daughter. "Och, no, lass. Word just came round early today, that tomorrow morning, the Northgate Poet means to go sit on the council steps and refuse to eat until the city council agrees to seat council members elected from the populace."

"That's a radical notion," Bee said, eyes widening with real surprise.

"No different than what happened in ancient days, in old Rome, so the poet has declaimed. Them who can read, can read if on broadsheets being posted. Maybe you saw the one we nailed up by the door. In old Rome, plebeians had their own

tribunes and their voices were heard. So you can sure we in the city mean to go picket by the steps in support of the poet's hunger strike. It's just that the prince does not like crowds and is threatening to call a curfew. He'll not touch the poet, of course. But he may strike at us! So folk are building up their courage for tomorrow's picket by drinking, and drinking men are like to have wandering hands, if you take my meaning."

"That's just what happened, maestra," Bee agreed with the smiling alacrity that made people adore her. I kicked her beneath the table, to warn her that she was overdoing it, and she trod so hard on my foot the pressure brought tears to my eyes. "We sneaked out because we wanted to see the protest. But now we're frightened, and it's too late to walk home."

"Phoenician girls, aren't you?" asked the innkeeper with a sigh of resignation that made her ample bosom heave beneath the stained apron she wore over her winter jacket and skirts. A man called a name, possibly hers. She glanced toward the door that opened into the common room and flagged the man standing there, husband or brother perhaps, with a wave. "How like your sort to educate their girls in books and neglect common sense. What are your families thinking to let you go walking alone? I suppose it's just as possible you climbed out the window and never asked permission."

I choked down a mildly hysterical laugh, thinking of our flight into the garden. But then I thought of Rory and covered my eyes.

"There, there, lass," she said pettingly. "All will be well. You come back with me into the kitchens. My kitchen girls share a bed in the scullery. They'll be up all night, for I don't expect this crowd will leave until dawn, and then for the council square. You can sleep there."

"That's very kind of you." Bee reached into her sleeve for our coin. "How much for your trouble?"

The woman had a frown so deep and unexpected on an otherwise good-natured face that it was like a hard frost falling in the middle of summer. "You paid already for drink and meal. This other I do for my daughters' sake, so it would fall poorly if I took payment. I only ask you go straight home in the morning and give up this rash adventure. Bad things happen to girls out on the streets on their own. Anyway, it's no good for my reputation to have you sitting here. I've had more than one drunken man ask me about the pair of you in that leering way men have. As if I manage the sort of establishment where I offer up girls as well as ale!"

"We ask forgiveness if our presence here has caused you any sort of trouble," said Bee in her most unctuous tone. "We never thought we'd run into men who… who put their hands where they aren't wanted!" Her blushing innocence would have shamed the most persistent suitor. I rolled my eyes, but the woman melted as rivers thaw beneath a glowing spring sun.

"Best come now. The drunker men get, the less likely they are to hear you say no."

I gathered my ghost sword, and Bee took up the knit bag, and with our coats and cloaks over our arms and the eyes of half the men in the room on us, we meekly followed the woman into the back, past the ale room where a lad was pumping out ale from barrels into pitchers and setting them on a table for the servers, and on into the steaming clatter of a kitchen at full boil.

Two kitchen girls were chopping and grinding at a big wooden table, while the cook was managing the fireplace and its joints and kettles. All were too busy to do more than nod at us with the glancingly curious expressions of people who would find you a seven nights' wonder if they were not so tired. I was chastened by their industry, and they still had more than half the night ahead of them. A lad hurried in lugging a bucket of coal and set it down by the fireplace.

"Is there anything we can help with?" I asked.

"Och, no," the innkeeper said, not unkindly. "You'd just get in the way. Go on through into the scullery"

The scullery had a cheery fire blazing in the fireplace and a fair amount of heat radiating from the copper where water was heated in a huge tub. The stone sink with its big wooden bowl for washing sat unattended. Most of the sideboard was taken up by stacks of dishes, but at the far end rested six painted masks almost ready for the solstice festival. Bee went to look at them as I crossed to the curtained alcove to the right of the fireplace and peeked in to the bed behind. It looked amazingly inviting, with sheets recently laundered and ironed, an unexpected nicety.

"All ready for solstice night except for the blessings," said Bee.

I went over to examine the masks. One was a fox, and one was a cat with whiskers sticking out from the wood, and the other four were round, humanlike faces with two painted black and two painted gold and decorated with snake-trail patterns in white and red. The shapes were decently done by a craftsman, bought in the market, but the decoration showed more enthusiasm than artisan's skill.

"We can paint in the charms," she went on. "It would be a small gesture of thanks, for the offer of a bed on this cold night."

"Would that be right? Usually people go to a temple scribe to have it done."

"Why would it not be right? Usually they go because they cannot write. Maester Lewis once told me that anyone who knows the proper act can make the offering."

She fished out a little pot of ink and the quill pen we had purchased earlier with a blank journal book and other necessities. She bad a neat hand, and 1 watched in fascination as she tucked the blessing symbols in among the cat's whiskers and almond

eyes, and the fox's big triangular ears and whitened muzzle, and flowed the charms like ribbons through the more crudely painted patterns on the faces.

''There," she said. "Now I feel I have not taken without leaving something in return. It binds you, you know, to take without giving."

"Unless they plan to turn us in to the constabulary for a handsome reward."

"Have you heard any criers on the street announcing our escape? Now that I see these crowds, I wonder if they can even risk it. The crowds are; already agitated at the prospect of the Northgate Poet going on a hunger strike, so how do you think the mob will react to news that the militia and cold mages have allied to hunt down two young women? If I were the prince, I would send out spies and seekers to hunt very quietly."

"You would hire Barahals, you mean."

She grimaced as she cleaned the tip of the quill pen. "Yes, exactly. Barahals to hunt Barahals. Then they would close in and take us without anyone being the wiser that we were being hunted."

"Maybe. But I admit, I'm very tired. I'm willing to take the chance to rest tonight. We'll take turns on watch."

But after we took off our boots and crawled into the alcove bed and decided on a turn of watch each, the clangor and bustle from the kitchen lulled us. Or maybe it was the sound of ink drying. We must both have fallen hard asleep, for I woke to silence and no idea how much time had passed. I heard not even the pop and rustle of fire. With the curtain drawn, we lay in darkness except for a line of light where the curtain's edge did not quite meet the wall. Day had therefore come, but the inn, it seemed, now slept.

No. Someone waited in the scullery, a presence notable for its measured but not precisely calm breathing. A chair scraped

softly as it was moved. Bee lay between me and the wall; I hooked a finger at the curtain's corner and twitched it back just enough to see out.

Andevai Diarisso Haranwy sat in a chair with his back straight, his feet flat on the slate floor, and his hands in loose fists on each thigh. He looked like the kind of academy student who pays close attention in class not necessarily because he is actually interested but because he is determined to do well. There was no fire; I heard no sounds of life, nothing. Just him, sitting there with his greatcoat slung over the chair's back, and Bee's steady breathing behind me, and a cat's questing meow from out of doors.

"I was raised in a hunter's village," he remarked to the dust motes swirling in the frigid air, "and furthermore, having followed you through the spirit world, I am more visibly chained to you, magically speaking, of course, than might otherwise be the case." He touched a gold locket hanging at his throat, which he had not been wearing the last time I had seen him. "Also, I have a strand of your hair. In case you are wondering how I tracked you down."

He paused.

Naturally I made no reply. Honestly, I could not understand why he would suppose I would be stupid enough to say anything. Also, he wore a jacket in the oranges and browns favored by working men, only his was so particularly tailored to his build that few working men could ever have afforded such style, and the fabric was such finely woven damask that it shimmered in a way to make a person wish to trace its shape on his body. His boots, if somewhat smudged by the dirt of back streets, had the gloss of finest leather, in fact, they were utterly gorgeous with a creamy black finish. In other circumstances, I would have been struck dumb in admiration.

This was not one of those times. I was merely speechless with anger at my own self for being careless enough to get caught.

"As it happens," he went on, "you are being hunted through the city by the allied forces of the mansa of Four Moons House and by the militia and constabulary of the Prince of Tarrant. That they have not yet found you is only because an unlawful assembly has gathered at the council hall square this morning. Naturally the prince has had to mobilize his militia there to protect the city from disruption. Even so, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that you will be apprehended if I do not assist you."

Bee popped up over my back. "Do people really talk like that?" she demanded as she swept the curtain out of my hand and opened it wide.

Seeing Andevai, she said, in an altered tone, "Oh."

"So at this point," he concluded, without appearing to have heard her, for although his gaze briefly took her in, he fixed on me, "I feel obliged because of past missteps to render aid."

His complete lack of surprise in seeing Bee gave me the sudden uncomfortable idea that he had already been over here to part the curtains and see us sleeping. I did not like to know he had watched me while I was not only unaware of his presence but also unable to even think of defending myself. I grabbed my sword-it was again a cane-and sprang up from the warmth of the bed into the chill of a chamber inhabited by a cold mage.

"Misstep? Is that what you call attempted murder? Or perhaps you meant a misstep because you did not succeed?"

He rose, making no effort to draw his sword. "I cannot expect you to forgive me, Catherine. That is not why I am here-"

"It seems obvious even to me, with my sleep-befuddled brain, that you are here as part of the hunt. You cannot expect us to surrender without a fight."

"I don't expect you to surrender. Were you even listening? I've come to try to put things right-"

I laughed scornfully. "Ha! It's far too late for that! It was too late the day you forced the Barahals to hand me over."

"I did not force the Barahals to hand you over. I was sent to marry the eldest Barahal daughter, with no further instructions and, I might add, no knowledge of why or how the original contract had been made. I did what I was told."

"Tried to kill me!"

"Cat," said Bee in her reasonable tone. "Oughtn't we to hear him out?" She rose, straightening and smoothing her rumpled gown. "You said yourself he expressed regret for the action. Also, it is obvious he could have killed you while we were sleeping. But he did not."

"My thanks." He studied Bee. "This is the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter, isn't it?"

Even in disarray, curls half smashed on the side she'd been lying on and utterly tangled everywhere, modest gown somewhat askew and a pinch of sleep blearing her fine eyes, Bee was entirely and astonishingly adorable. Everyone always said so.

He shrugged dismissively and shifted to glare at me. "Did it ever occur to you, Catherine, that I might begin to wonder why the mansa sent me to destroy the airship?"

"The airship!" squeaked Bee.

"Why would the mansa send me to marry the Barahal daughter, when so much is at stake? If she is so valuable, why not marry her to one of the magisters born into the house, not some village boy they all look down on? Why would the mansa tell me so little before he sent me out? Why would he not even tell me the single most important thing, that the diviners believed she would walk the path of dragons? The mansa never spoke one word of that to me. That I know anything about the dreams of dragons is because I had begun my training as a hunter, and the first

thing a hunter learns about the bush is that when dragons shift in their sleep, a tide washes the spirit world and obliterates everything in its path that is not warded. Given the risk involved, why would they only give me my orders and send me off? Is it because they knew I would be unquestioningly obedient as I have always had to be as I struggled so hard to meet their expectations and fulfill my promise and protect my village?"

"When you put it like that," said Bee, "it is puzzling."

"Must you agree with him?" I cried, for I am sure I would never have switched sides on her with such alacrity.

"Cat, I do not like Mm any more than you do, for he did try to kill you, and that I can scarcely be expected to forgive. But when you consider the situation rationally, it is puzzling."

"Thank you," he said, looking very irritated and very handsome.

No, of course he did not look handsome. I was merely exhausted from the exigencies of the last few days and made vulnerable to trivial considerations because I was worrying about Rory. One sees strange things in such a state of mind. One might think anything.

"I have been forced to come to the conclusion," he continued, "that the mansa considers me expendable. In rather the same way, I suppose, that the Hassi Barahal house considered you expendable, Catherine."

"Is this an effort to make me feel sympathy for your situation by comparing our plights?"

"Yes." Then he looked startled, as if that was not the word he had meant to say. "I meant, no, not at all."

I had not realized Bee had so many smirks in her. She looked at me in the most annoying way possible, blinking thrice as though to send me a message, which I ignored with a frown I hoped would blister that knowing smile right off her lovely lace.

"Go on, Magister," she said in a tone that invited confidence. "I, at least, am listening."

He had a way, I had come to recognize, of drawing himself up with shoulders braced and chin lifted that made him look exceedingly arrogant, but however vain and arrogant he actually was, there was more to that look than met the eye. "You have no need and certainly no desire to feel sympathy for me, Catherine."

"That's right, I don't," I agreed with a cruel smile. "By any chance is your shoulder paining you?"

"It has healed," he said curtly. "Catherine, I am just trying to explain why you should consider trusting me."

"What has become of the innkeepers and their staff?"

"I found the inn locked up and deserted. Leaving you entirely unprotected, I might add, and quite asleep. I expect they went to the council square to swell the ranks of agitators."

"If the inn was locked up," said Bee, "how did you get in here?"

"I expect he shattered the lock," I said before he could answer.

"Can he truly do that?" Bee asked. "I mean, that's what people say cold mages can do, that you can measure their strength by their ability to shatter iron and extinguish fires, but-"

"Yes, he can really do that."

Her eyes widened as she examined Andevai with an expression that could have been awe, anxiety, or admiration. "Oh."

"Are you done speaking for me?" he asked with a sarcasm I'm sure I'd not earned.

From the other room, a clock ticked over.

As if the clicking of its mechanism were a signal, a hazy thud sounded somewhere outside. Andevai tipped his head back to listen. Bee looked a question at me. A series of rumbling reports rolled like distant thunder.

"Are those muskets?" whispered Bee.

A thunk struck at the front of the inn, causing both Bee and I to skip backward. We heard hacking blows, a man's curse, and the clatter of metal chains spilling to the ground. A door groaned. Feet tapped on slate, and voices spbke from the common room.

"Whsst! Have all the fires gone out? Didn't you bank them properly, lad?"

"I did, maestra!" was spoken indignantly.

"Hush!"

Several people were sniffling or weeping, their gasps flavored with fear.

"Get up, then, to the roof. Keep an eye out. Girl, stop your crying. It does no good." Footsteps split off to pound upstairs.

"That lock was shattered," the man's voice spiked, "but then the door sealed with no lock, like it was frozen shut."

"Not so loud. You two, get the door shut and barred. Julius, you come with me. We left those two girls sleeping in the back. Hurry!"

The innkeeper and her man burst into the scullery, she holding a rolling pin and he an ax.

Andevai turned to face them, but he did not draw his sword.

The innkeeper's eyes widened as she took in first the fireplace's cold ashes, all heat sucked from them, and then Andevai. No one could mistake him for anything but the scion of a wealthy house, yet her tone was more blunt than respectful. "We want no trouble out of cold mages, Magister. It's the prince's corrupt council we're protesting."

From the common room came the squeak of tables being shoved, and thumps as they were turned on their side.

"You shall get no trouble from me," said Andevai. Yet he did not budge, as if, I suppose, he thought he was protecting us from them in a manly and courageous fashion.

Booms shuddered the air, and we all flinched as a shattering fusillade of pops resounded from nearby. A shrill echo of screams and shouts followed.

The innkeeper lowered her rolling pin. "This is no refuge for a high and mighty personage of your sort, Magister."

Two young men appeared, panting and sweaty, gripping iron pokers from the fire. "The militia has gone to war against us!"

The woman nodded grimly "All we can do is lock our doors and tuck our heads under." Another set of reports made a staccato rhythm, interspersed with cries and more screams. "If there's blood on the streets, then there is worse to come."

"Bloody princes!" cursed the man.

"The beast has been roused," cried one of the young men defiantly. "So cries the poet!" The poker in his hand shook as he trembled, watching Andevai as if he expected him to lash out to punish him for such radical words.

Andevai said nothing, nor did he move.

"What beast?" Bee asked. "What do you mean?"

"Many are angry," said the innkeeper, "but now we have found our voice."

As if to emphasize the truth of her statement, muskets fired yet again, closer now, thunder echoing in a closed tin. In their wake swelled a rising tide of voices whose pure intensity reminded me of the hum and ring of the dragon's turning in the spirit world.

Bee stepped out from behind Andevai. "Maestra," she said politely, not begging, "that's a fearsome noise outside. Might we shelter in the inn until the tide has passed?"

The woman sighed as she looked at Bee. Everyone always did.

"He cannot," she said, as if she thought we had invited him in or that we were his companions. "Even if I wished to, which I am sure I do not, I dare not offer shelter to a cold mage. Were he to be found here, they'd burn down my inn."

"Not with me in it, they can't," said Andevai in a tone that made me either want to kick him or to laugh. Because it was true.

"Can you defend yourself against knives and shovels and axes and scythes and whatever other instruments* they will bring to pull down these good timbers and you to lie crushed beneath them?" she asked, not belligerently but not meekly, either. She passed the rolling pin into her other hand and signaled to the two young men to go around us and out the door that led into the side yard. "How many can you fend off before they overwhelm you? Are you willing, Magister, to let strangers die-me and my people-by forcing them to shelter you, who have entered this house without invitation or permission? Whatever you are, I am sure I wish no harm to you in particular as long as you leave alone me and mine. But I will not risk my people and my livelihood for you. No offense meant."

Remarkably, he endured this speech without the least sign of emotion, no cracked glass, no shattered cups; perhaps he was accustomed to the right of older women to scold him.

"I will depart, maestra, if you will be so kind as to tell me how to get out of here without running straight into the mob."

"Out the back and through the yard, there's a gate into the alley."

The rising tide had indeed grown to the roar of a once-slumbering beast now roused. I felt their outrage through the soles of my feet.

Andevai pulled on his greatcoat and walked to the door. With a hand on the latch, he turned to address Bee. "This I meant to tell you before we were interrupted, Maestressa Bara-hal. Five days ago, your father returned to the Hassi Barahal house. The mansa's agents had already secured the house in expectation of capturing you or Catherine if you returned there. They look your father into custody instead. I thought it right to

warn you that his presence in Adurnam may be used to draw you in. By no means should you go home to try to free him before the solstice, because the mansa himself has come to Adurnam to track you down."

He clicked down the latch.

"I regret whatever trouble I have caused you," he said to the innkeeper, and with this he opened the door and vanished into the yard behind the inn.

Bee moaned, sagging against me. "Papa came back to find me! And he's now in their clutches! What will we do?"

"If Rory were here, we might manage a rescue between the three of us." But to speak his name forced me to contemplate that he might have been killed. A brother found, and then so swiftly lost. How careless of me! I sucked in a harsh breath, grabbing Bee's hand as I searched for words, although I did not know how to comfort either of us.

The sound of breaking glass sprayed like shards over us, followed by a smashing crash as an impact hit the front door hard enough to make the entire inn tremble.

A howl rose like wolves scenting blood. "Death to mages!"

"Burn them who suck the life from our children!"

Bee yanked her hand out of mine and bolted, pushing past the innkeeper and her husband.

"Bee!" I shouted after her.

"I won't allow kindness to be repaid with destruction!" she cried, and ran into the kitchen, out of my sight.

Ba'al protect us! I ran after her. The innkeepers followed at my heels through the kitchen and the ale room and the empty supper room into the black-beamed common room. Bee stood behind a table, facing the front of the inn. One of the doors was cleaved in two, planks snapped and gaping, and a long casement window lay half in pieces on the floor and half in jagged patterns still affixed within what remained of the frame. Outside,

a surly crowd of men crowded forward to surge in, but it seemed Bee's presence, staring them down, had arrested the forefront in the act of clambering across the damaged sill.

"By what right," she cried, "do you invade this peaceful house?"

"A boy says he saw a cold mage come in here."

"There is no cold mage in this building!"

The power of Bee's voice caused them to look over their shoulders and address remarks to the men pressing behind them. This shoving, restless crowd was inflamed by drink as much as by anger. I stfcpped up beside Bee, wishing my cane were a sword and not, in daylight, just a cane.

A man with a ripped coat and blood on his face called, "Aulus also says he saw the cursed cold mage shatter the lock and go in! And then when he ran after to check, the door had been frozen shut!"

"We mean to go in ourselves and see, maestressa," said a burly man wearing a blacksmith's apron. "Just step aside, and no harm done to your pretty face."

I grabbed Bee's wrist before she could run forward and do something rash like slug a blacksmith. Glancing around, I did not see the innkeepers, but I heard footsteps ascending the stairs. Bee and I were alone against the mob.

"I will not allow you-" began Bee.

The boom of repeated musket fire cracked over her words, and we both ducked. Down rolled the thunder of hooves, screams and shouts and voices aflame with panic and rage. The crowd before us dissolved like salt stirred in water as two ranks of mounted militia wearing the green Tarrant jackets galloped up the street with swords flashing and muskets smoking. We watched helplessly through the fractured casement as men went down beneath the bright blades. The blacksmith hit the mul-lions and collapsed across the sill. A lad, blood bubbling up

through his hair, staggered, screaming, toward the window and fell before he reached the safety of indoors. The crowd scattered; the soldiers rode on, leaving the reek of fear and destruction behind them.

Then Andevai was in the room, striding past me to the window. He grabbed the body and heaved it out. He grabbed up big shards of glass from the floor and held them up to jagged edges. The temperature in the room dropped so precipitously that my eyes stung and my mouth went dry, teeth chattering. He knit the glass together, bent to pick up larger pieces, spinning out an icy frame in which to hold it.

I dashed forward to grab up shards and hand them to him, to make the work go more quickly. On the street beyond lay the two bodies before the window, and three more within view, two sprawled lifeless while a third, a man wearing a cap trimmed with a red ribbon, dragged himself along the cobblestones like a rat with broken hindquarters. Two women ran out from a building and hauled the red-capped man inside their door, him whimpering in a way to set me so on edge that I had to gulp down a sob.

"Why are you doing this?" I said, finding a measure of calm in our pointless and rather idiotic task.

"Broken things must be fixed," he said. "Also, if the front is closed up, looters and thieves are less likely to come inside."

"I mean, why follow us back here?"

"Because you didn't come after me when I left," he said. "And I heard the shouting and the crash."

"You could have walked into a killing mob."

"Yes."

It was so cold standing next to him that I might as well have been immersed in a snow bank, but I kept bending and handing, bending and handing, and the effort kept a core of warmth in my body. He remained intent on the glass, spreading in its

patchwork frame back across the gap more quickly than I would have believed possible. I could not discern what he was doing without a mirror to watch him in, but somehow he was able to knit the glass together by tracing the breaks with a hand.

"Why?" I asked.

He spoke without looking at me. "I made a promise to myself that if I was not going to kill you, then no one would."

"Very noble I am sure." Musket fire popped in another street, startling me so badly I dropped a thick pane of glass, which broke in half at my feet. The street before us lay empty under a gray sky. "Then why delay by fixing this window? If folk see you here, or recognize your work for cold magic, the innkeeper and her people will suffer."

"Catherine, the militia just rode past. We can't go out quite yet. Anyway, people blame cold mages for everything. Cold magic is so commonly used to improve life that folk take it for granted."

"Itw?"

He rushed on without having heard me. "How few understand that cold magic saved most of them from a life of constant petty war and raiding. That it is the mage Houses that have secured them from the tyranny of princes."

"Only to substitute their own tyranny. You're the son of slaves, Andevai! Bound for generation after generation to serve a mage House. Whether bound by princes or mages, what difference does it make to those who want freedom?"

"What is freedom?" he asked bitterly, "and who is truly free? We are all bound by what we are, and where we come from."

"Maybe," I said slowly as I considered the turn my life had taken, the lies I had been told, "because we do not look farther than where we have been told to look. Perhaps it would all appear very different if we weren't afraid of what we are. Or what we might become."

He had cut his hand, blood smeared across one palm as he stared at me. He looked as if I had just struck him. I was rather struck myself. The words had come out, although I'd had no idea they were waiting on my tongue.

What was I most afraid of? Beyond the prospect of being hunted down and killed.

I was most afraid of being alone and unwanted.

"Cat, come look at this."

I turned. While Andevai and I had been working at the window, Bee had evidently run back to the scullery to fetch our things. She stood bent over a table piled with our coats. Her sketchbook lay open as she drew with quick, measured strokes on the page. "I didn't have time when we woke to think about what I'd dreamt last night, but now it's flooding back. Under the gaunt ribs of a whale… no… sheets of fabric and twisted metal… scorched wood… They're looking for something, digging in the wreckage____________________

" The words emerged in ragged bursts,

as if she were running and thus out of breath. "A man, tall, wheat-haired. With a mustache? I have never met him, but he knows you, Cat. He's standing with a troll… laughing____________________

"

"Brennan?" I said.

Abruptly, Bee's hand stilled. Her eyes rolled up, and a shudder ran straight down through her body. She spoke in a deep, masculine voice, raspy with age. "The airship."

I had heard that voice before, from a dying man. I stared at her, my skin prickling as with ice, and yet it was a pressure of warm air that pushed in through the remaining gaps in the casement, bringing with it the reports of musket fire and the churning roar of the riot gathering force in distant streets.

Andevai's hand touched mine. The warm moisture of his blood trickled onto my skin. "Is there something wrong with her? That's not her voice."

For a moment, the touch of his hand and the comfort of his

presence seduced me into tightening my fingers over his as I looked at him. "I think she's talking about the Rail Yard."

He stood very close, his expression not arrogant at all but focused, disciplined, and direct as he stared at me. Only at me. "What do you want me to do, Catherine?"

Kiss me.

I yanked my hand out of his and strode across the chamber. I grabbed Bee just as she shuddered and shook herself, tongue flickering out of her mouth in a way that was not quite human.

"Cat, the airship," she said hoarsely in her own voice. The cold had cracked her lip's, and she licked away a spot of blood. "Look. The snow. A thread of smoke, there. A festival wreath. It might be today. Look how short the shadows are. They'll be there when the sun's at its highest. We've got to go."

"Of course." I shut my eyes and envisioned a map of the city. We stood in the district called Cernwood Fields, and if we made our way through the Bitters and across Dog Isle past Eastfair Market…

"I know how to get there," said Andevai.

"You don't even live here," I objected, opening my eyes. "You're from the country."

"I studied maps. Your face is bleeding, Catherine."

Bee shoved my coat into my arms. "You can argue later."

I laughed. I am sure I sounded on the edge of lunacy, soon to be howling at the moon, as I tugged on coat and gloves. We pushed through the wreckage of tables and the splintered door. As we paused on the street, deserted but for the four sprawled and bloodstained corpses, Andevai absentmindedly licked the wound on his thumb. I gingerly brushed my gloved fingers over the cut on my chin, which I had thought healed over. A drop of blood beaded on the leather from the reopened cut, and all hough I had not meant to, I raised my hand and touched my blood to my lips. The blood he had drawn.

"Are you sure," Bee said, "that we can trust him, Cat?"

I looked at Andevai. He looked at me, not with arrogance or

pride but with an expression whose intensity I dared not fathom.

He lifted a hand, to indicate that I must cast the lots to judge

his fortune.

I said, "I suppose we're about to find out."