Cold Steel

14

I was awakened in the morning by Bee crawling over me to get to her sketchbook. I slid deeper under the blankets as she perched on the edge of the bed and sketched. Just enough gloomy light leaked through a basement window for her to see the paper. When she had finished, she ran out to use the privy. I followed. Gray clouds promised rain.

She left me to stir the slumbering fire back into a blaze and make the morning porridge while she sat at the kitchen table, studying the sketch. In a modest tailor’s shop, two men sat cross-legged on a platform raised off the floor. Glass-paned windows spilled light over half-made garments draped across their laps. A cat sat under the platform, barely visible in the shadows. Bolts of cloth were stacked on a table next to a privacy screen. On the opposite side of the street, buildings housed a row of shops. Seen through the window directly opposite, beneath a sign that read QUEEDLE AND CLUTCH, a troll was being measured for a coat. In the distance, above snow-dusted roofs, rose two slender, square towers, each topped with what looked like a huge golden egg.

“Here we see the problem exactly as General Camjiata described it to me,” I remarked, gesticulating with the wooden spoon. “You have to recognize an actual place or piece together the meaning of disparate images to form a message. Then you have to fix a date to it. The cat in the shadows could be me. The most likely person we know who would be in a tailor’s shop is Vai. The snow suggests some time between October and April.” I allowed myself to hope that I would rescue Vai and thus end up in a tailor’s shop waiting for him.

She flipped through the pages, scrutinizing several sketches of the academy. “The general told me the same thing. He is better at interpreting my dreams than I am. The Taino behiques were going to teach me what they know about dream walking after Caonabo became cacique. But of course instead I had to leave. Ah! Look.” She displayed a drawing of the headmaster’s study, with its mirrors, bookshelves, and chalkboards. The long table was usually piled with books and scrolls, but in the sketch the tabletop was set with five place settings, as for dinner. Seen from the back, I was dressed in a fashionably cut jacket and skirt. Bee pointed to a murky reflection of me in a mirror that also showed a red wreath hanging on the back of a door. “Here is a festival wreath with the sword of Mars, today’s festival. There is a lit lamp. Five people will be invited to dinner in the headmaster’s study after dark this evening, and you’ll be there.”

“I don’t recognize the clothes I’m wearing. Still, I suppose this will act in the nature of an experiment. We’ll have time to go to the law offices first.”

Rory strolled into the room wearing nothing but a towel and a smile. “Mmmm. I like porridge! Can we have some more of that sugar on it? Someday I want to pour sugar all over an attractive body and then lick it off—”

“Rory!” cried Bee, clapping her hands over her ears.

“Blessed Tanit!” I muttered as my cheeks flamed, for my thoughts did stray to my husband. I busied myself handing over a sober waistcoat and jacket of an ambivalent but sophisticated gray. “You’re not to wear any of Vai’s other dash jackets unless you ask me first. You can wear this one and the one you ruined.”

He gave me a look as reproachful as if I had called him a dog. “I’m not carrying that cursed chest if I’m not to be allowed to wear any of the extra-fine jackets.”

“Hush, you two,” Bee said. “While we’re gone, we’ll hide our things under the floor in the carriage house.”

We tidied up, closed down the stoves, and set the pot to soak. After explaining our errand, I returned the head of the cacica to the basket so we could take her with us.

We left the house by the back gate. Mid-morning delivery carts rumbled through the residential district, but otherwise the lanes were quiet. The farther east we walked, the busier the streets got. People hurried past with their faces painted red, headed for the festival procession. Many wore ribbons of the colors of the Tarrant princely clan, while others wore red-and-gold tabards to mark their allegiance to the god. Instead of looking excited and delighted, many appeared grim and even belligerent. Strangest of all, no one in the crowd was wearing the laborer’s cap that was the mark of radical sympathies.

Caught in the middle of a clot of people, we found ourselves pushed onto Old High Street. The wide thoroughfare led toward the district called Roman Camp where lay the main temple dedicated to Mars Camulos. With a clash of cymbals and a blast of trumpets, the festival procession marched into view. The sting of fire magic tamped down like buried coals gave spice to the air.

It was traditional for the guild of blacksmiths to lead the way, marching in ranks in their leather aprons and carrying nothing in their hands except the power of a blacksmith’s magic, which contained and channeled fire and thus transformed crude metals into the god’s weapons of war. Onlookers shifted back with suspicion and fear, for a conflagration might break out at any moment. Few of the blacksmiths were old, and all were male. I studied their stern faces with new eyes. No one talked about fire magic in Europa because it was considered too dangerous and volatile. Blacksmiths guarded their people and their secrets so securely that I had never truly understood what a fire mage could be until I traveled to Expedition.

Had James Drake tried to join a guild of blacksmiths, only to be turned away? Or had his family refused to allow it because as nobles they thought guild work beneath him?

A man in the last rank looked at me, his brow creasing as he dropped a puzzled gaze to my cane.

Blessed Tanit! It hadn’t even occurred to me to protect the cane from the sight of blacksmiths, who could see its cold steel with their fire-limned sight. We worked our way down until we found a place where we could dodge across the street. Carts passed, decorated with festival tableaux that included actual people standing in martial poses made famous by the old tales: Caesar’s victory at Alesia over the Arverni princes; the death of an Illyrian prince who had rebelled against Rome; the surrender of General Camjiata to a mage, a prince, and a Roman legate after the Battle of Havery. Certainly the festival had taken on an overwhelmingly Roman air! The usual tableau of the Roman legions kneeling in defeat at the battle of Zama before the Dido of Qart Hadast and her general Hannibal Barca was nowhere to be seen!

A line of drummers flew a rhythm along the street. Dancers wearing ram masks and ribbon-festooned ram costumes stepped alongside. Behind drummers and dancers rode a troop of turbaned mage House soldiers. Banners of light woven out of cold magic floated above them. The streaming gold banners were meant to impress the populace, although I thought them shabby compared to what embellishments Vai could manage. The magic whispered my sword awake.

Behind the soldiers rode the Tarrant militia, and behind it marched infantry with a legion’s eagle standard held proudly at the front of their ranks. The famous Roman Invictus cavalry in their red-and-gold capes brought up the rear. Fourteen years ago the Invictus had driven General Camjiata’s stubborn Old Guard into the river at the Battle of Havery and forced the general to surrender. No wonder we had seen the Havery tableau today.

In the shadows of alleys and under thresholds, folk with sullen expressions watched the parade but did not cheer.

Bee tugged on my sleeve. “Look!”

The man riding at the head of the cavalry was a good-looking fellow with a clean-shaven face, hawk’s eyes, and gold earrings gleaming against his black skin. Bee’s rosebud lips mouthed his name. Amadou Barry. A blush rose becomingly in her cheeks, although I could not be sure whether it was pleasure or anger that animated her countenance.

His roving gaze sought trouble in the crowd. Looking our way, he saw her. He rocked back in the saddle. Recovering, he turned to demand the attention of the bluff soldier riding next to him, his brother-in-law Lord Marius.

“Pull your scarf over your head and keep out of sight,” I said, wrenching Bee around as I indicated the nearest alley with my chin. “That way. Meet me in Fox Close. Go!”

I wrapped myself in shadow and dodged into the procession. The pounding of drums and blaring of horns washed over me. The masked dancers in their ram costumes spun as if I were a wind blowing through them. The men under the masks were blind except to the drums, but the ram spirits who flowed within the masks saw me. Their eyes were mist and ice, gleaming with power. They scraped the ground in a mocking greeting, and folk clapped and whistled as if the sweep of bows were part of the dance.

Their rumbling spirit voices whispered in the air. “Cousin! What do you hunt here? Why have you come?”

They could cut my concealing threads with their sharp spirit horns, but they let me pass unmolested. I sidled up alongside the horses in time to hear Lord Marius shouting to be heard above the drums.

“You need to give her up, Amadou! It’s been over a year since you saw her. You’re seeing the ghost of what you wish you’d had, now that you’re betrothed. If you’d wanted her that much you should have offered her marriage.”

“Against my aunt’s wishes and every sensible consideration? To an impoverished Phoenician of disreputable birth? Who turned out to be an agent of General Camjiata all along? I think not!”

“Then be sensible and let it go. You just saw someone who looks like her.”

“I’m sure it was her! We know the general means to return to Europa someday. Why not now? Look! There she is! Bring her to me!”

As he pointed toward the alley, I darted to the head of Legate Amadou Barry’s fine steed. Two slices ruined the bridle. His grip on the reins went slack. I ducked under his mount’s neck to deal the same damage to Lord Marius’s tack, although the animal rolled its eyes and pranced away from my scent. I cut my way through the troop, leaving a trail of sheared girths and tack. The drumming beat a pulsing rhythm around us as the dancing line moved on down the street while the beleaguered troop bottled up the road. Soldiers had to dismount to steady their horses.

Lord Marius scanned the trail of my invisible passage through the troops and into the crowd as a man follows the swirl of leaves. With gestures I could see and commands I could not hear, he sent soldiers scrambling after me.

Still wreathed in shadow, I clambered up onto a barrel and shouted, “Have you let yourselves be beaten down by fear? Shame! Shame! Have you already forgotten the words of the Northgate poet? Was it for nothing that he starved himself on the steps of the prince’s palace to demand new laws for the common people? A rising light marks the dawn of a new world!”

A gun went off. I escaped along a side street. A clamor of rocks being thrown and glass breaking serenaded me, but the sounds faded as I fled. I was winded by the time I fetched up on Enterprise Road, panting loudly enough that passersby looked around to see who was breathing like a steam engine. I leaned in the stoop of a closed shop until I caught my breath, then made my way to Fox Close. There was something odd about the neighborhood, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

The lane was lined with modern gas lamps, although naturally they were not lit during the day despite the overcast gloom and smoky pallor. The lane lay deserted except for a man loitering at the corner with a hat pulled low over his brow. I did not see Bee and Rory.

I walked right past the law offices. When I retraced my path, no business sign met my eye, only a boarded-up house where the sign of orange letters against a feathery brown backdrop had once proclaimed GODWIK AND CLUTCH. The sign was missing; it had been taken down.

I mounted the steps. The door had been staved in with what appeared to be axe blows, then repaired with planks hammered over the rents. I jiggled the latch and found it unlocked. Cautiously I pressed it down, but remembered before I opened it that it would look awfully strange if anyone caught sight of the door opening by itself. It was quiet along the street, every window shut.

The man at the end of the lane vanished, stepping out of sight onto Enterprise Road. I opened the door and slipped inside. A muted light filtered from streaked mullioned windows above the door, illuminating the stairs that led up to the shadows of the first floor above. A tall mirror had been set on the stairs to catch any movement into or out of the house.

Trolls used mirrors in the complicated mazes they drew around their nests. I could not walk in a troll maze, nor could the Wild Hunt enter one because the confusing tangle of shards and glints woven into a troll maze cut the threads of shadow from the spirit world. I had saved Bee by sending her to troll town in Expedition, where the Wild Hunt could not reach her.

This was no part of a troll maze. This was a djeli’s mirror, like the one on the first-floor landing of our old home. In such a mirror, a djeli could see into the spirit world.

My image stared back at me, caught in all my surprise and consternation. Shadows coiled around me like living things leashed to my flesh. I resembled the spinning dancers in their wreaths of flowing ribbons. A silver cord stretched from my heart into the silent depths: the magical chain that bound me to Vai. I had never before seen it so clearly. I took a step forward and brushed fingers over the surface of the mirror where it seemed the glowing cord cut through into the other side. Where my fingers touched, they slid as into water, pulling through a viscous liquid neither cold nor hot but exactly the same temperature as my skin.

“Andevai’s bride! This I did not expect.” A djeli spoke from within the mirror.

I had walked right into his trap. A crash sounded from upstairs.

I bolted out the door and slammed into Bee.

“We’ve got to run!” I steadied her before she stumbled down the steps. Rory waited on the street, looking alarmed. “The law offices have been abandoned. Someone has set a djeli to watch the premises with magic. I’m afraid it’s the mansa’s djeli, Bakary.”

In such circumstances Bee never argued or questioned. “Where do we go?”

“We need to find out what happened to the law offices.”

At the corner of Enterprise Road and Fox Close, the loitering man had reappeared. He looked our way as he deliberately took off his hat and replaced it with the cap worn by the radicals. He’d seen us, so there was no harm in asking, since he already knew we were there. I strode back to the corner. He touched two fingers to his forehead in a welcoming salute.

I smiled saucily, for I had discovered at the boardinghouse that a flirting smile was likely to get a tip, and right now we needed a tip badly. “May the day bring you peace, Maester. How is it with you and your family? Well, I hope.”

The man measured me with a grin. “Better now you’ve come, lass!”

“Cat, really!” muttered Bee.

“Have you news of what happened to the law office?” I asked.

A pair of mounted men appeared far down Enterprise Road.

The man doffed the cap, tucking it inside his coat. His dusty blond hair hung to his shoulders. “Those with feathers must flee the nest when predators disturb the tree.”

“Were the lawyers arrested?”

“Birds cry a warning each to the other.”

His cryptic utterances annoyed me. “By which I take it that the prince’s militia raided them, but they escaped. How long ago did this happen, Maester?”

“If you want to know more, come in off the street.”

We followed him through the public room of a coffeehouse where shabbily dressed men sipped at their brew. They watched us go into a private room furnished with a table and chairs.

“Sit. Will you have food or drink? It’s already paid for.” The young man had the freckled face of a pale man who has spent a good deal of time in the sun, and a bone-deep weariness made his features melancholy. A woman walked in with a tray of bread and cheese and a pot of hot coffee with four cups. She set it down and went out.

The coffee smelled delicious, and I hadn’t eaten decent cheese for months.

“I suppose it can’t hurt,” said Bee, seating herself next to Rory.

I plopped down next to our new companion and cut off a hunk of cheese to go with my bread. The coffee was rich and sharp.

“To answer your question, the attack on the law offices happened right after the Solstice riots three months ago. A march was held on the first anniversary of the Northgate poet’s hunger strike. Why do you want to know, lass?”

“Why would I tell my business to the likes of you, a man loitering on the street like any sort of scoundrel?”

“Whsst! You’re a fiery beast, lass. It will take a strong man to harness you.”

“It would take a strong man to not speak of harnesses!”

Perhaps I gestured aggressively with the knife, for his laughter ceased. His mouth settled into a grin that twitched with both bravado and an emotion like anger. Men didn’t ever like to look as if women frightened them.

“If you want information, lass, you might think a moment about whether you want to antagonize a man who’s willing to tell you things. And to feed you most generously, in a city where plenty of folk go to bed hungry and wake up hungry with no hope of even a scrap of bread.”

I sighed gustily. “My apologies. We’re looking for the troll lawyers.”

“Not so difficult, was that? But I’m thinking you don’t recognize me. For I surely recognize you two lasses, and the man with you, too. That’s why you’re in here and not out there.”

He had two fingers missing on his right hand. Abruptly, I did recognize him.

“You were the one with the coal cart, Brennan Du’s man. You challenged Lord Marius, to catch his attention so he wouldn’t find us. He had you arrested. Your name is Eurig.”

“That is me in truth, lass.” He flashed a more flirtatious smile, perhaps thinking that a woman who remembered him so keenly had been struck by his looks and presence, when in fact I had been trained in a household of spies and messengers to have a good memory. “I remember the day as bright as yesterday even though it was over a year ago.”

“We were never able to thank you for the sacrifice you made for us. What happened after you were arrested?”

He glanced at his mutilated hand. “A lot of folk were arrested after the prince got news that General Camjiata had walked into Adurnam and then escaped over the sea. Black-haired Brennan and the professora barely escaped.”

“I was with them!” said Rory. “That was fun!”

He rounded on Rory. “Fun! One hundred men were executed for treason!”

“I didn’t see that,” said Rory indignantly. “We were already gone. I would never call executions and arrests fun! I meant that the skulking and running were fun, and Brennan Du taught me how to properly drink whiskey. Did you think I meant I am the kind of person who laughs when people suffer?”

He looked suddenly about twice his normal size, with his chest puffed up and his lips curled back. His braid, like a whip, seemed ready to snap.

Eurig scooted his chair back so fast that it squeaked against the floorboards.

Rory leaned forward. “A person can enjoy fun and be serious at the same time.”

“Gracious Melqart, Rory! You’re sounding more and more like Cat every day!” Bee pushed him back into his chair and turned her most coaxing smile on Eurig. “What happened to the Northgate poet?”

Eurig’s anger broke free. “Why, the Northgate poet died, lass. And our hopes with him. The prince let the poet starve himself to death on the steps of the palace.”

I was too shocked to speak, for when we had fallen into the well, the Northgate poet had still been alive.

“Died!” Bee set down her mug. “What of the shame that stained the prince’s honor?”

“Tyrants have no honor and therefore no shame. The prince will make merry at his daughter’s wedding feast. He serves flesh to a princely Roman legate in exchange for the Invictus Legion to guard his restless lands. Roman boots will walk the roads the empire built in the days of our ancestors, back when we were free men. Every day we wake to see our master the prince of Tarrant walk arm in arm like a brother with the cursed magister who is the mansa of Four Moons House, although they were bitter rivals all the long days before. We live under the law of the sword. They crush us under their boot-heels like the vermin they name us, and so death makes cowards of us all. The prince ordered that every troll must leave the city, and no person raised a voice in protest.”

“Every troll?” demanded Bee.

“That’s what was strange,” I murmured. “There are no feathered people anywhere.”

“Every one. And every man in a radical’s cap was arrested and his family threatened. Hundreds have been transported to the north. There they must labor with their sweat and their blood in the mines of the Barrens. The salt they haul up in buckets flavors the prince’s food while his subjects go hungry. The iron they dig out of the rock forges the swords that kill us.”

His poem of grievances so stunned me that I could not help but think of the promises General Camjiata had made. The music of revolution had a more urgent melody when heard in a city where so many voices had been so recently silenced. I wanted to give him hope. “I heard a rumor that the general is returning to Europa. He’ll proclaim a legal code that abolishes the ancient privileges of princes and mage Houses.”

“Rumor is like a woman’s promise that she’ll kiss you. Have you a kiss for me, lass?”

“I don’t kiss just any man I see! Only the ones I want to kiss! Did I give you reason to think otherwise?”

“A brave man must have taken on the taming of you!” he said with a laugh that made me want to skewer him.

“Our thanks to you for helping us,” Bee said as she slipped the cheese knife out of my hand. As if I could not control my temper!

He smiled as easily at her as he had at me a moment before. “My trials were made easier by my knowing such a beautiful young woman was spared thereby.” He glanced up as the door opened and the woman appeared.

He rose. “Time for you to move on. I saw with my own eyes when the mansa of Four Moons House came to Fox Close with his djeli to set the mirror in place. An impressive man, the mansa. Rioters had set a barricade in the road and set it afire. He put out the bonfire with a blast of hail and cold wind that shattered windows and made every hearth fire go out. His men will come to see who opened the door. I don’t reckon you want to be here when they get here.”

“Cat, let’s go now.” Rory’s gaze flickered toward the man, and then toward the woman, and then back to us.

“Of course,” I agreed, smiling at the woman, who stared dourly back at me. “Have you any word of where these particular birds might have flown?”

“To another nest east of here by name of Havery.”

“My thanks to you for the information, and the food and drink.”

“May Bright Venus bring fertility to you and your brave man,” he replied. He laughed as I blushed.

We took our leave and stumped along Enterprise Road in a plaguing rain.

“ ‘Bright Venus’! I thought it very rude to wish a person of Kena’ani heritage luck in breeding under the auspices of a Roman goddess. Didn’t you, Bee?”

She was chewing over more urgent problems. “The mansa knows you’re here, so he’ll secure the house.”

“We have to get the chest!”

“Ba’al forbid that you lose Andevai’s fashionable dash jackets! Some other man might be seen wearing them!”

“If never so well,” I muttered mulishly. I missed Vai. How sweet those weeks seemed now, when I had seen him every day.

“Are you saying I don’t look well in this fine dash jacket?” Rory straightened his shoulders as a group of two men and two women passed who were laughing in the way of folk out about the business of pleasure. His smile made the women loose their holds on the arms of their beaux as they gave him a closer look over. When the men objected, Rory smiled more deeply, with a hint of dusky corners in his gaze, and one man took a startled step back while the other bit his lip.

Bee’s scorching glare drove them off. “Rory! We are skulking and running! We are not lighting a bonfire and ringing bells so people will notice and remember us.”

“Cat said I didn’t look well in my jacket.”

I rapped him on the arm. “It’s not your jacket.”

“Have we survived the mansa’s wrath, the prince’s fury, the general’s devious plotting, and the Wild Hunt only to have you two squabble over clothes? You look perfectly handsome, Rory, and I am sure many a female would love to pet you, and by that look you just got a few males as well, but none of them will get a chance if I murder you first. Are we done?”

“Yes, Bee, my apologies,” he said so contritely I was astonished.

“Cat?” she demanded. “Does Rory look well in that fine dash jacket?”

With a look like that, directed at me, I knew how to answer. “He looks very fine.”

“You’re only saying it because she told you to,” said Rory.

Bee’s hand tightened on his arm. “Rory, dearest, did you know that in anatomy class at the academy we learned how the ancient Turanians used to castrate young men so they could no longer engage in petting? I paid careful attention to that part of class but unfortunately there was never a practicum in which we were given an opportunity to see if we could manage the operation ourselves. But I haven’t given up hope.”

If he could have put his ears down, he would have. Then he laughed, and I did, too.

Yet I could not help but notice how women and men mostly moved in separate groups. Here women never walked anywhere alone, even though in Expedition women had felt free to come and go as they wished. Nor did people laugh and talk with the same friendly clamor with which folk had in Expedition. Voices stayed hushed and dampened. Maybe that was the prince’s newly harsh reign, but perhaps it had always been this way and we had just never noticed.

It was strange to think we were only passing through the city where we had grown up, on our way to somewhere else.

“Amadou Barry saw you on the street, and the djeli saw me at the law offices,” I said. “Nothing to be done about that now. Since the academy is on the way home, we may as well go there first and hope we find the headmaster before anyone comes looking for us.”