Cold Magic

9

Flakes of spinning snow burned my cheeks as I stumbled down the steps, remembering at last to twist Bee's bracelet onto my right wrist, as though I were daughter to her mother, embraced by her heart and her protection. I had no bracelet of my own.

At the coach, the cold mage offered me an elbow to balance on so I could mount the stairs into the interior like a respectable person, but I grabbed the handles and clambered up gracelessly without touching him. We Cats are particular, don't you know? I wanted to hiss at him, but I knew I must not. I must not dishonor the Barahal name. I must give him no further hold over me, beyond the fact that I was now the property of his house.

As Bee would say, "Don't kick unless you can really hurt them."

I sat next to the far door, facing the back. The coach shifted under his weight as he settled onto the opposite seat by the open door, facing forward. The footman closed the coach's door. I glanced out the window still open beside him, but the door to the house had been shut and the curtains were all drawn. I bent in order to see the nursery windows on the third floor, and I was sure I saw a face staring out through the misty panes. The cold mage shuttered the window with a snap. Tears stung my eyes. I blinked repeatedly to drive them away.

The coach rocked as the coachman and the footman heaved on my traveling chest and settled themselves. 1 heard the clink

of coin or other objects changing hands as the old man was given a final offering and dismissed to find his own way home through the bitter night. The coachman slapped his whip against wood and then whistled. More smoothly than I imagined possible, the coachman eased into theacarriage court and turned the bulky equipage around. Then we rolled out onto the street, wheels rumbling on stone, returning the way they had come.

He opened the window on his side. I looked onto the square. The streetlamps gleamed, fading as we passed them and flaring back into life. Snow swirled over the grass and the familiar trees of the park: the oak tree we called Broken Arm because of the time Bee fell while climbing; the five groomed cypresses all in a row, like children in uniform lined up at school; the drowsing cherry tree, dreaming of next year's fruit. The stele showed her back to me, plain stone. Maybe I would never see the votive's serious face again. I shivered.

"Such gaslight will be outlawed soon enough," he muttered, twitching a shoulder as if in discomfort as we passed yet another streetlight, which flickered. He closed the shutter, leaving us in the dark.

Or him in the dark, anyway. I could use the faint threads of magic that were stitched through the world to enhance my vision in the dark, just as I could listen for the hiss of the streetlight spurting back to life behind us.

He fingered his left cuff and drew out an object from the sharp creases, maybe a key or a scribe's knife, something formed out of one of the noble metals and small enough to fit lengthwise within the palm of his hand. He fiddled with it, then began tapping it against one thigh to one beat while he drummed lightly with his other hand on his other thigh to a different beat, three against two.

The coach rolled through unseen streets. The journey dragged

on for so long that my anger and fear began to congeal into a dreary sort of resentment. Yet run as it would, my mind could not come up with any reason why Aunt and Uncle had sold me to Four Moons House. My thoughts ticked over with the revolution of the wheels; ideas and bursts of anger and fear clattered in time to the fall of hooves on stone in counter-rhythm to the hiint patter of the cold mage's hands. What disaster had forced their hand? What contract had they sealed? What documents were in the envelope? Why had they done it, and why had they never warned me? Had the head of Bran Cof tried to warn me? Or maybe Aunt and Uncle weren't the responsible ones. Had my parents got into trouble and used me as surety to get out of it? Did this have anything to do with their deaths?

Fiery Shemesh! Had I really seen an eru?.

The personage sat there in the dark, silent but for the play of his hands, until I began to wonder if he even knew he was drumming.

A hundred cunning retorts and cutting stage lines lilted across my tongue, but I bit them down. Let him not believe me to be so cowed, or grateful, or honored that I would beg for any scrap of pity or kindness or, for that matter, some idea of what was going on and what might happen to me now.

I would not speak until spoken to.

We left the residential streets and entered a commercial district where I could hear the popping race of goblin chatter and conversations in a dozen variants of Latin. His hands stilled, and he seemed to be listening. A Greek demanded directions in his choppy diction. On the other side of the street, a man declaimed in stentorian tones, "We must stand together. We must raise our voice. We must demand a seat on the city's ruling council. Our own councillors, elected by us, not appointed by the prince." The Northgate Poet! Now, at least, T knew where we were.

I smelled the luscious aroma of coffee and heard the rumble of masculine conversation from inside a coffeehouse, where brew and the company of like-minded raconteurs could be imbibed, a place where a woman would never dare set foot. Farther away, handbells rang a rhythm and abruptly ceased. Close by, a peddler called, "What do ye lack? What do ye lack?"

Answers, I thought. Questions.

The cold mage coughed into a patterned kerchief.

I sat up straighter, waiting for the words I was sure would come.

He lowered the handkerchief and resumed his drumming.

The coach rolled along thoroughfares that stayed alive after the fall of night. Beggars clacked for alms. Bells conversed: first an opening from the sharp tenor of the bell that guarded the temple dedicated to Komo Vulcanus, answered by a scolding bass out of Ma Bellona-Valiant-at-the-Ford, and the high, excited response of the sister temple towers, Brigantia and Faro by the river.

He brought the handkerchief up to his face again, but this time to cover the reek of urine and vomit off the street. I was made of sterner stuff. A flood of noise marred our passage down a street filled with lively evening life, the scent of spilled beer and the off-key singing of drunken men.

"Away with the oppression of mages! Why should they break our gaslights just 'cause they don't like 'em?"

"Nay, it's princes and their greedy kin who trample us!"

"You take your choice: taxes or fetters!"

"Nay! Nay! Let's call, like the Northgate Poet says: freedom or letters!"

"Oi! There's one of them bloody House coaches now. As you please, boys! As you please! We're many, and they're few."

A heavy object slammed into the side of the carriage. I grabbed the seal to keep my place as a roar of voices mobbed

around us and began, with the weight of their bodies, to rock the vehicle back and forth. If my heart thundered, it was no more than what I hoped the horses would do: gallop out of there.

"Clear off! Clear off!" shouted our coachman, although how I could know it was his voice I can't say. It carried so.

Jeers and curses greeted his cry.

"See how you like the mud when you freeze yer pale white arse in it!"

I ip em over! 1 lp em over!

Maybe my teeth were chattering. "What are you going to do?" I demanded.

His hands stilled. He'd shut his eyes!

Even cats can't see through wood. Nor could I. But I saw a spray of sparks, like Han fireworks spitting gloriously in five colors. A blue sizzle landed in my glove, as if it had spun right through the carriage walls, and it burned not hot but deadly cold as it seared my skin. Men screamed, more in fear than in pain, and the mob scattered as the vehicle lurched forward, throwing me sideways so I hit my shoulder and bit down a yelp. I would not cry in front of him.

My husband said, quite clearly, in his precise, cultured voice, "A pox upon that cursed wraith!"

We rolled on. The blue sizzle popped and vanished.

"You are uninjured?" he asked stiffly. A spark pricked the darkness and expanded into a wan cold light by which he examined me with a frown.

I was shaking, and my shoulder ached, and I clung to the seat strap, wanting Bee beside me to face him down and wishing Aunt was there to smooth my hair and offer me a cup of hot chocolate, but…

But.

But.

But the truth was that I was trembling too hard to get anything out of my mouth.

I heard a chant rise in our wake like a nest of hornets maddened by smoke:

"Better to perish by the sword than by hunger!"

"Let princes and lords rot in their high castles with none to serve them!"

"Into the mire with them magisters and their foul cold magic!"

"I trust you are not too rattled," he said in a clipped voice. "Once we are out of the/city, it's unlikely we will have to endure any more such unfortunate disturbances."

I thought of a hundred terribly clever and scathing rejoinders I might make to a man who could sit there thinking of nothing but his own comfort. Instead I kept my expression as detached as that of an actress returning flowers sent her by an unsuitable beau.

"Yes," I said, managing an airy tone of unconcern. I could speak as pedantically as he did! "Some say the trolls have contaminated the restless city laborers with their peculiar ideas. I suppose that out among the bucolic fields and villages ruled by the Houses, we need fear no unpleasantness."

"Is that what you think?"

Since it was not, I said nothing; I had already said too much.

"I've never met a troll," he remarked, "nor even seen one close up." He looked thoughtful, and as his face relaxed, it was as if I glimpsed a different man. Then he realized I was staring at him, and his expression closed and the light snapped out.

"Was there something else you wanted to say?" he asked behind the veil of darkness.

"No."

We clattered on, swung hard around a corner, and rolled through a quiet neighborhood where I heard the splash of water

tossed onto stone, a kitchen maid emptying the wash water, perhaps. We rocked to a halt amid the balm of calm voices. His door was opened from outside and he disembarked. Shaking and aching, I emerged blinking into the pleasant courtyard of a compound lit not by gaslight but by the unmistakable hard white glow of cold fire oozing from ceramic bowls hanging from brackets set under the eaves and from pairs of elaborate stone cressets mounted on stands beside the doors and gates.

A pair of men armed with crossbows and swords shut the gates behind us. Two exceedingly well-dressed and proud-seeming personages-one male and one female-met us with cups of water, which we drank, then handed empty to waiting servants..

"We expected you before this, Magister," said the man without preamble, in the manner of an equal.

My husband looked taken aback by the baldness of this greeting. "I was delayed."

"We were told to expect the mansa's sister's son," said the woman, looking him rudely up and down, "but you do not resemble him whatsoever, so I suppose you must be that other one we've heard spoken of."

"I must be," he said icily.

I shivered, as if it had actually gotten colder, and maybe it had.

"I suppose that explains the delay," she added. "Have you ever traveled to a city before? It must seem very strange to one such as you."

"I trust the inconvenience has not disturbed the smooth running of this establishment." His always-arrogant expression shaded toward anger.

"Of course not!" she retorted with the indignation common to the proud. "We know our duty and will discharge it and maintain the highest degree of quality appropriate to Four

Moons House, as is expected of and understood by those who grew up within the family."

These deadly currents I could not navigate or even comprehend, so I was grateful when the male attendant indicated a waiting ancilla, who led us down a corridor and past a flight of stairs. I was ushered into a parlor that overlooked a garden through expensive paned windows and was shown to a well-made chair placed next to a side table polished to a fearful gleam. The woman followed, bringing warmed water in a basin and a warmed cloth so I could wash my face and hands. An open door on the far side of the room revealed a sleeping chamber beyond, fitted with a capacious bed draped with hangings.

I knew what marriage entailed, but at that moment, with the cloth squeezed so tight in my hands that drops of water stained my dress, I comprehended that, in fact, I knew nothing that mattered.

What had the Hassi Barahals owed to Four Moons House that Aunt and Uncle must pay in the coin of my flesh?

My husband had not come in after me.

Despite the cold outside, the chamber breathed warmth, but of course I saw no hearth, no fire, no coal-burning stove.

"You will want to change for supper," said the woman.

"I will?"

Her smooth countenance slipped, and she looked at me as if I had turned into a toad. Then she smiled without a sliver of sincerity and, with the same frigid courtesy, indicated the sleeping chamber. I rose, trembling, and followed her past the bed and into a closet almost the size of the bedroom I shared with Bee. There lay my trunk. An unknown hand had opened the lid to reveal the hastily packed garments within. Two dinner dresses lay draped over the back of a dressing chair.

She considered my perfectly respectable clothing as she might a serpent. "You will have to use one ol these garments. And no

time to iron out the wrinkles. Still, with such a costume, wrinkles are the least of the offense. I will send a girl to help you dress."

She left before I could punch her with the strong left hook noble young Maester Lewis of the red-gold hair had taught to Bee and me. Tears pricked and burned, so I thought of ice and did not cry. Waiting, I tugged off my boots to stand barefooted on the plank floor, expecting its cold pinch to shock away the last of the tears. But the floor oozed heat. Ah! It was glorious.

The door clicked open, and I turned with a start.

The girl had strawberry hair and blue eyes, a blandly pretty face as uninteresting as the blandly tasteful decor, and most importantly she had deft hands with buttons and laces. I tried to draw her into conversation, since she looked about my age, but she might as well have been mute. Or she might actually have been mute. Given what Bee and I heard about the cruelties and whims of the Houses, it would not have surprised me if they had cut out her tongue. I chose the celadon crepe, my best dinner gown. It was not perhaps at the height of fashion, but it had good line, as Aunt would say.

Aunt, who had handed me over without blinking.

The woman entered and shooed the girl away. She eyed me critically. "I suppose that is the best you have. I can see why the mansa did not wish to saddle his nephew with you."

Better not to reply. I stared at her, hoping she thought I was stupid.

"We will take supper now," she added.

I kept silent as I walked behind her through the sleeping chamber and the parlor, into the hall, and across it to a finely appointed room whose windows looked out onto the lit courtyard. She sent me in ahead of her, alone.

A table set for four with china, silver, and glass graced the center of the room. Two bowls hanging from brass tripods

poured cold light on the scene, and two pairs of candlesticks bled threads of cold light from their placement on each sideboard. A small side table placed beside the window held a platter on which rested an unusual, large-veined stone and a glazed earthen vessel scored with a geometric pattern in whose belly rested a spray of white flowers.

I turned as my husband walked in. He now wore a long dinner coat tailored from stunningly expensive "king's cloth," the color so rich a gold that the eye melted in ecstasy just to look upon it. According to my father's journals, a mystic symbology was woven into the very pattern of the cloth, but because the Houses guarded their secrets with firmly closed mouths, no outsider knew what these signified. He sported also a knotted kerchief at his neck in the style known as "the diaspora," so complicated in its magnificent folds and falls that I blinked in admiration.

His dark eyes narrowed. "I thought you brought appropriate clothing."

"I did!"

"Why are you wearing this, then? To appear so, when they already think me-"

He broke off before I could further lose my resolve not to speak, for the two proud attendants-I knew no one's name here except my own-entered the supper room, looking, like him, as pleased as if they had been asked to drink salt water. He walked to the sideboard, where we all washed our hands in a bronze basin. He poured from an open bottle into five cups, then took the offering cup to the window, poured a few drops onto the stone, and set the cup on the table beside the vessel. Returning to the sideboard, he handed out the other cups, first to me and then to the others.

We drank. The mead was honeyed and rich, burning down my throat to my empty belly.

"Not promising. I expected better." He set down his cup and, before I realized what he meant to do, plucked the cup out of my hand. "You won't want that, Catherine."

My mouth opened, and then I remembered Aunt's words and closed it. Our companions pointedly said nothing, but neither did they drink more.

A young male servant pulled out the chairs. We sat. The first course was carried in by four silent servers: a clear-broth fish soup, several lamb and chicken dishes swimming in bright sauces, platters of gingered beans, gingered rabbit liver, roasted sweet potato, and a pair of savory vegetable stews fortified with millet. How I wanted to display my offended dignity by spurning the food, but I was so very, very hungry, and it smelled so very, very good.

They set down the plates, and the woman spooned lamb in red sauce onto his plate for his approval. He tasted it and winced.

"Absolutely not."

The chicken with an orange sauce.

"I can't be expected to eat this."

"I would be willing to try it," I said in a low voice, but although the woman glanced at me, my husband ignored my words.

The lamb in gravy, the gingered rabbit liver, the beans, and the vegetable stews met with the same scorn.

"Is this all your kitchen can manage? It is not what we are accustomed to at the estate, but perhaps you've been so long away tending house here in the city that you've forgotten."

I winced, trying to imagine what Aunt would say if she ever heard me speak so ungraciously. The servers carried away the offending dishes. I wanted to weep. I would have scraped the smears of sauce off his plate, just to get some flavor on my parched tongue. He considered the clear soup and the bland orange potatoes with disdain.

"These are so simple they can, one hopes, offend no discriminating appetite. Very well. Can I hope there might be a suitable wine, a vintage better than that sour mead? A cheese, perhaps, and sliced fruit?"

The woman's expression was as emotionlessly correct as his was disdainful. "I will ask personally in the kitchens, Magister."

She deserted the chamber.

"I have certain things I need," said my husband.

"All that was requested is ready," said the man in a tight voice. -?

"Is it?" my husband replied in a tone thoroughly insinuated with doubt. "I'm relieved to hear it, after this supper."

The room lapsed into an awful silence. For the longest time he merely sat, looking out the frost-crackled windows into a dark courtyard. The heat rising from the floor warmed my feet and legs, but my shoulders were cold as I stared at the bright slices of potato and the cooling soup with its pure broth and moist, white fragments offish floating among scraps of delicate cilantro. I thought I might really and truly start crying when my stomach rumbled.

"But after all," said the man abruptly, as if his chain had finally snapped, "I'll just go to the workshop and make sure." He rose and left.

Without looking away from the window, my husband hooked the bell and rang it.

The young man who had maneuvered the chairs entered the chamber, quite flushed, and touched the fingers of his right hand to his heart. "Magister?"

His voice softened slightly. "Serve the soup and potatoes to the maestra, if you please."

"Yes, Magister." The attendant looked relieved.

So I supped on potatoes and on soup, which even lukewarm

was spectacular, subtle and smooth and perfectly seasoned, although my husband did not deign to touch it. Afterward, the woman returned wearing a mulish expression and carrying a tray with six bottles, eight varieties of cheese, and fruit. He sampled the wines-pouring a few drops into the offering cup before each tasting-and the cheeses and rejected them all, while finally accepting a single apple, sliced at the table and shared between us, and one precious hothouse mango, prepared likewise.

Yet when he rose, thereby announcing that our supper was complete, I was still famished.

"If you'll show me to the workshop," he said to the woman.

"Of course, Magister."

They left the dining chamber as if they had forgotten I existed. I sat there too tired to rage, and just as I had begun to contemplate actually stealing the bits of food placed as an offering on the platter next to the stone, the girl appeared to save me from an act so disrespectful I was ashamed even to have thought of it. She escorted me through my parlor and into the sleeping chamber, where she helped me out of my celadon supper dress and into my nightdress.

"Maestra," she said at last, an utterance that offered neither question nor answer except to remind me bitterly that I was now a married woman, with all that implied.

She left me sitting on the edge of the bed with a bowl of light to keep me company. Heat drifted up from the floorboards. My toes were warm, and my heart was cold. In all the years I remembered well, I had never gone to sleep without Bee beside me to whisper to before slumber overtook us. Now I was alone.

The light dwindled, and when its glowing dome dulled and collapsed into a wisp, I tucked myself under the bedding.

I lay there in dread for hours, hearing the rumble of carriages gradually fade as the city fell into its late sleep, hearing the occasional cry of the night guard on his rounds: "All quiet! All quiet!" I recognized the droll bass of Esus-at-the-Crossing and Sweet Sissy's laughing alto as they sang the changeover, the death of the old day and the birth of the new. The beat of festival drums rolled faintly and was quickly stifled, or perhaps that was when I fell asleep and dreamed of happier times, dancing koukou.

I woke from an uneasy doze with my forehead wet with sweat. Somehow, the chamber had grown horribly warm. I got out from under the heavy covers, swung my feet to the floorboards, and padded over to the shutters. I found the clasp, turned it, and pulled the shutter aside, then unclasped the expensive paned window and opened it to take in a lungful of blessedly cold air. Then I coughed, having sucked in a huge breath of wood smoke, coal dust, and sewage stink. My eyes stung as I caught a whiff of ammonia.

The door behind me opened.

I gasped, turning, my hand still grasping the window's handle. A figure moved into the chamber; light formed into a luminous globe beyond his left hand. After a moment of complete incomprehension, I realized I was staring at my husband.

My husband! Come at last and very late to the marriage bed. Possibly drunk. Probably appalled at the necessity of consorting with an unwanted and unfashionable wife. I wanted to throw myself out the window, only I remembered Aunt's parting words: Go with your husband.

My duty was clear.

Strangely, he was fully dressed in practical traveling clothes (hat were dirty and torn. A moist substance streaked his cheek. He looked as if he'd been in a fight.

"Catherine, close that window," he said in an angry voice, as if by opening the shutter I had done something to personally offend him. Me! Torn from my home, hauled through the city, and then starved and left to cower like a beaten dog in a trap!

There came on the wind a sound, or maybe just a tremor in the air, a bitter kiss on my lips. My Cat's instincts flared. I turned to the window, wondering if I really was going to have to throw myself out and run through the garden to get away from his cold fury, now sparking.

"Down!" he shouted.

A huge explosion flashed mere blocks away, and the entire inn shuddered as the boom hit. Glass cracked; panes shattered. I was flung backward and lay stunned on the floor as I watched through the window, now above me, sheets of flame rise into the night sky above a bedlam of screaming men and barking dogs.