Cold Steel

28

As I reached for the latch, Brennan caught my arm.

“Don’t get out. The ghana has spies in the crowd.”

He pulled down the glass in the window so I could hear. Bee’s voice carried easily, for she certainly never had any trouble making herself heard. She spoke in clear schoolroom Latin meant to be widely understood.

“Our demands for new laws will not cede to the demands of blood and birth. We dispute the arbitrary distribution of power and wealth which is claimed as the natural order. We know it is not natural. It is artificially created and sustained by ancient privileges. Why should those privileges be reserved to only a few communities? By what judgment do the patricians claim they stand above the rest? It is on our backs and our labor and our blood and our children that they rise. We need not stand bent beneath. We can stand straight and say—”

“Kiss me, sweetheart!” shouted some wag in the crowd. “That’s what we say. You’re the prettiest girl I’ve seen in an age.”

Raucous laughter followed this sally. I glanced anxiously across the crowd. Brennan pointed to two trolls stationed intimidatingly behind Bee: Chartji and Caith.

“Kiss you!” Bee exclaimed without losing a beat. “Why would I kiss you when a Roman legate begged me to become his favored one and yet I turned him down? Do you think you are as much of a man as a Roman legate?”

“More a man than any legate, as I can show you!” the fellow called to shouts of laughter.

“Thus you prove my point. If you wish me to look upon you as the amatory equal of a Roman legate, then you must surely believe that justice is no different from love. You cannot chain one community into clientage and call that justice while you let another community enrich its coffers and feed its children off the blood and toil of the first. The blood of a poor laborer flows as red as the blood of a prince. Death hunts them both equally, for a corpse knows no rank. It is only those who survive the dead man who dedicate themselves to making such distinctions. There should be one law that treats all communities in equal part, so every person has honor and dignity.”

“She’s quite remarkable,” said Brennan, keeping his face in shadow as he gazed out the window. “A natural orator. I’ve never seen a heckler get the better of her, and they do try.”

“I had no idea she would ever be giving speeches!” I stared in rapt admiration at the way she exhorted the crowd to consider how unjust laws and antiquated customs were the means by which the many were sacrificed to exalt the few. Yet it was not Bee’s bold voice I had doubted but the idea that people like us would ever get a chance to speak at all.

“We do not need nor do we desire their false generosity or their dishonest counsel! We seek only the honor and dignity that by right fall upon every person. The law must unchain all communities from clientage, from indenture, from slavery. That is what we ask you to consider.”

A rumble stirred the air. A troop of soldiers swung into view at the far end of the livestock yards. Their flowing tunics and feathered caps gave them an imposing presence.

“Consider wisely!” cried Bee with a glance at the approaching cavalry. “Your ghana wishes to enforce my silence and compel your obedience.” She jumped down from the barrel.

A voice rang out. “There’s a reward for the man who hands seditionists over to the ghana!”

Brennan rapped on the ceiling, and the carriage began rolling.

“I’m not leaving her out there in that!” I grabbed the latch.

He slammed me back against the seat. “Stop! You’ll never find her in this crowd and will only make things more difficult by going in search of her.”

I twisted, trying to get free, but he knew the same dirty fighting tricks I did. “Ow! You’re reckless to let her go into a crowd like that!”

“I am reckless with my own life, but never with the cause. Stop fighting me, and look!”

As the men began to run, dissolving into a din of fright and panic, the trolls blocked the lanes down which the soldiers rode. Their heads swayed as they scanned the formation. There was something uncanny in the way the trolls bent forward from their usual upright stance, bodies lowering. The riders slowed. I sucked in a breath, gripping the edge of the window.

A gun went off. Spears lowered and swords flashed as the soldiers rode down the unarmed trolls. If trolls could ever be said to be unarmed.

They scattered. Whistles shrilled. A cascading melody lilted like a pretty aria, yet its spill of notes made me shudder down to the bone. Some charged, while others easily overleaped the fences and bounded to circle in from the side. I had never seen anything like it. They were so quick that the frontmost simply dodged the thrust of spears. The movement and scent of the trolls panicked the horses, and the lead mounts bolted, throwing their riders or slamming into the pens on either side in an effort to get away. A sword flashed, cutting into a feathered hide.

Was that blood I smelled, hot and dark?

A shriek tore the air. The clamor of men was drowned under a cacophony of whistles so loud I clapped my hands over my ears. A troll ducked under the belly of a horse and slashed upward. As the horse screamed, its guts spilled.

Brennan shut the window as the carriage lurched around a corner. “That’s torn it!”

“I can’t leave Bee out in that—!”

“Trust that I know what I’m doing. We have a meeting place already planned.”

Knuckles white, I held my cane, wanting to batter him over the head with it, but instead I took in one slow breath after another, trying to calm myself.

He shook his head. “It’s a good thing Bee warned me that you leap before you look or you’d have gotten out there and caused ten kinds of trouble. For one thing, what if the ghana’s spies recognized you as the magister’s wife living on the hospitality of White Bow House? What kind of questions do you think they would start asking? You can’t just jump. You have to consider the consequences of each action.”

“I thought the more you skate onto thin ice, the better you like it. That’s what Kehinde says.”

A flash of real irritation tightened his lips and eyes. The force of his anger silenced me. I had no idea what Brennan Touré Du thought of me, and I feared he wasn’t thinking very highly of me at all.

We trundled along as an appalling noise chased us with the pitch of an ugly fight. The carriage jolted to a halt. The door opened, and Bee flung herself into my arms. My eyes grew damp, but after a struggling pause she sat back with one arm gripping my waist and the other holding my hand. The carriage dipped as several people swung up onto the foot-rail in the back.

“I couldn’t see anything, but I heard the screams,” she said to Brennan.

“Does that happen every time you speak?” I demanded, still trembling.

“The ghana’s troops should know better than to draw blood,” said Brennan. “It’s why we like to have a crowd of trolls at our gatherings. They’re curious about the way the rats behave, and by being there they are the best protection radicals can have.”

“Bloody Melqart!” I whispered. “It disemboweled a horse!”

I pressed a hand to my mouth, then lowered it. While the thought shocked me, my body did not respond with revulsion. Instead I thought of how much moist, raw flesh was thereby exposed.

Bee crushed me against her. “Oh, Cat, I’m so sorry you saw such an awful sight. I didn’t know we would be separated for so long. It’s been almost a year since you and I were in Adurnam! I became so afraid I had lost you. Let’s never be parted again.” To my surprise, she burst into tears.

I fussed over her. Despite my tears and the fading chaos of the battle, I was swept with an intoxicating happiness. I had rescued Vai and now I was reunited with Bee and Rory. For this hour, at least, I could luxuriate in knowing I had reclaimed the ones I loved.

“As long as you’re safe that’s all that matters. Have you been well, Bee? Have you had quite a bit of trouble?”

“Yes. It’s not the first time a public meeting has been attacked in that aggressive way. I can’t get used to it.”

“You’re not meant to get used to it! What happened after you and Rory left me in the spirit world?”

She wiped her eyes with the back of a hand. “Rory and I swam ashore in the city of Camlun at the festival of Beltane. We traveled to Havery, where we were courteously received at the law offices. We’ve been with the radicals ever since. It’s been more dangerous than I imagined. Professora Nayo Kuti was arrested in Lutetia for the crime of spreading sedition!”

“What happened?” I demanded.

“We believe the mage House in Lutetia pushed the Parisi prince to take the step,” said Brennan with a crooked smile meant to remind me of why he had to be careful with mages. “However, her husband is a man of considerable status in Massilia. Through his efforts she was released and sent back to Massilia.”

“Professora Nayo Kuti is married?” I said. “I thought Kehinde was an independent woman.”

Bee’s gloved hand slipped from mine and she leaned over to rest a hand on Brennan’s knee in a gesture so intimate and familiar that I looked sharply away lest I blurt out an inappropriate question that would embarrass us all. My thoughts whirled dizzily.

“I am sorry regardless to hear she was arrested,” I lumbered on, “but I am glad to hear she was released in a timely manner to a safe place. I hope she is still writing.”

“She is still writing and her pamphlets travel across Europa.” Brennan nodded at Bee.

She withdrew her hand and tucked it into the bend of my elbow. “I pray your escape was not too much of an ordeal, dearest. Is Andevai unharmed? I hope we will have time to prepare him before he sees Rory wearing his ruined dash jacket.”

Brennan chuckled.

I sighed. “He is much the same as ever, as you will see. Bee, where is your sketchbook?”

She had it with her, for her sketchbook was like my cane: We never went anywhere without them. I paged through to the sketch of the tailor’s shop.

“When Maester Godwik recognized the eggs atop the towers as the architecture of Sala’s palace, I knew I had to come to Sala,” she said. “I hoped you would remember. And you did!”

I flipped to the sketch of the false dream.

“Cat!” she whispered, with a glance toward Brennan, who had closed his eyes in a kindly attempt to give us a little privacy. “Why do I need to look at this? I try to forget I ever drew it.”

For the longest time I examined the fabric of the dash jacket worn by a man seen only from the back. Shading and hatching became petaled flowers, while dots and lines evoked the spray of fireworks exploding joyfully out of the flowers’ blooming splendor.

I said in a low voice, “Quite by chance and not by my doing, he is getting a dash jacket made in this fabric. Can you bring about the future by drawing it?”

She snatched the sketchbook out of my hands and snapped it shut as if to close off the drift of my thoughts. Brennan opened his eyes, looking startled.

“I have no power to bring about the future. I only have the curse of sometimes glimpsing the future in visions that usually make no sense.”

She looked at Brennan in a way that made me realize she and he had discussed the subject at length. I caught my breath, waiting for some confession, but she only turned back to me with hands pressed together, palm to palm, as she spoke.

“I have done a lot of thinking about what you and I have seen, and what Queen Anacaona told me. The women who walk the dreams of dragons walk unscathed through the Great Smoke, which we might also call the ocean of dreams. People have long gone to augurs and priestesses to have their dreams interpreted, because they believe dreams are windows into the gods’ intentions. Yet surely most dreams are merely a jumble of thoughts and images and fears and hopes. Or nothing more than indigestion.”

“Or brought on by too much whiskey,” murmured Brennan with a smile that brought a rose’s bloom to Bee’s cheeks.

She went on as if he had not spoken. “I think the Great Smoke is very like the ocean. It has shallows, and depths, and a shoreline. I believe it also has currents just as mariners tell us our own oceans do. I now believe all strands of past, present, and future commingle in the Great Smoke. Dragon dreamers walk the currents of the future, even if we do not know what we are seeing.” She paused to brush her cheeks. “Why are you staring, Cat? Is there something on my face?”

“No.” I struggled for a jest but could not find one. She looked so grave and scholarly, quite unlike my bombastic and passionate Bee but exactly like a woman I could love and admire just as much. “Was the leviathan that conveyed us across the Great Smoke truly a dragon?”

“Dragon is a word we use to describe something we don’t understand. But to truly answer your question, we must speak to the headmaster. To speak to the headmaster, we must travel to Treverni Noviomagus.”

“Are you sure that’s where he is?”

Brennan nodded. “We have learned through our network of intelligencers that a man answering to the description of the headmaster and bearing the name Napata is headmaster of the New Academy in Noviomagus. The New Academy was founded two years ago.”

“Which would be the right time if he left Adurnam after we fell into the well,” added Bee. “Furthermore, Cat, I think we will find him in Noviomagus on the Feast of Mars. In nine days. That’s what I dreamed. Remember?”

I clasped her hands excitedly. “The secrets of the Great Smoke aren’t the only thing he can tell us. He saved his assistant from the Wild Hunt. We need to find out how he did it. He might be my only chance to save myself from my sire.”

Bee squeezed my hands in reply, for I could tell by her expression that she had not told Brennan any of my secrets.

Brennan was tapping his thigh rather as Vai did when he was wound up, counting a drum rhythm as if it helped him focus. “We will have to leave Sala tonight regardless, before the ghana can close the roads.” He opened the window.

Dusk bled darkness over a street of tightly packed row houses. The carriage slowed, and Brennan cracked open the door. As we passed the awning of a hat shop, he jumped out and caught Bee as she sprang after him; I leaped likewise, and dashed through the open door. The elderly shop attendant nodded as I followed Brennan and Bee through the front room and out the back into an alley.

Several streets over, we entered a humble, whitewashed inn whose front room was swept clean of customers. A young woman wearing a head wrap, wool gown, and calf-length leather vest was bent over the stove, lighting a fire. She carried a baby in a sling against her back.

As the door creaked open she said words in the local dialect that I understood as “We’re closed.” When she glanced up she switched to the bastard Latin common among laborers who had to speak to people from different regions of Europa. “In the back upstairs. Ye was never telling us ye mean to be bringing a cold mage who would be killing all the fires in the house, did ye?”

“My apologies, Maestra.” Brennan gestured for us to go ahead. “We intended no inconvenience. I must warn you, there’s been fighting at the livestock market.”

“Angry Carnonos!” She stood with a gasp of outrage. “My brother is gone there! If the ghana’s men come searching, ye cannot be staying…!”

Bee drew me down a passage and past a kitchen where a woman was cursing most alarmingly about plague-ridden cold mages, and thence into a back wing of the building.

In a chilly passageway she took my face in her hands, forehead wrinkling as she peered at me in the dim light. “Is all well? You escaped the spirit world unscathed and unbound?”

“Not unbound, but unscathed except for the ruin of one of his favorite dash jackets.”

With a hiccupping laugh she crushed me against her in an affectionate embrace. “Oh, Cat! I’ve had all sorts of adventures but I felt so lonely without you.”

I pulled her hands down and squeezed them. “Not as lonely as all that, it seems. Answer me truly! Is there something between you and Brennan?”

Her hesitation told me everything I needed to know.

“Blessed Tanit! Are you sleeping with him?”

Her fingers tightened on my hand. “We have been traveling together for months. I must say there are benefits to being a young woman who knows she is barren, when it comes to activities of the amatory sort. But I’m not in love with him, not in that way. We’re more like attentive companions.”

“Attentive companions! Are you telling me you’re engaged in a companionably attentive affair with one of the most notorious and dashing radicals in Europa?”

“Shh! Lower your voice. This isn’t the place to have this conversation!”

“Does he want to marry you?”

“Strangely, Cat, not every man wishes to marry me, starting with your husband and ending with Brennan Du. I find it’s a relief to negotiate a relationship that is based on respect and friendship rather than all this overheated romance.” Her voice dropped so low I had to lean my head against hers to hear. “The truth is, he’s been in love with the professora for years, but she is married. I heard Brennan and Kehinde arguing once. She admitted that she dislikes her husband. It was a marriage arranged for her at a tender age. You would think an intellectual of such radical sensibilities would take it upon herself to shed such imprisoning traditional customs, but she refuses to do anything that would bring dishonor upon her family.”

“There’s a great deal I do not understand about this situation!”

Brennan’s laugh floated from the kitchen, where he was evidently soothing the cook.

“I do not want to be discovered gossiping with you!” Bee finished, dragging me on.

Upstairs, at the very back, we entered a modestly furnished dining chamber lit by cold magic and cooling rapidly. Rory lounged under a blanket on a threadbare couch situated beside the brick chimney and its dead fire.

Vai rose from a chair. “Catherine! You look… confounded. Was there trouble? Beatrice! Is all well with you? Have you peace and good health?”

Bee kissed him on either cheek in the effusive Kena’ani manner. “Andevai! Here you are! What a startling color that dash jacket is! Please allow me to tell you how very glad I am that you are back with us.”

“My thanks, Beatrice,” he said stiffly, taken aback by her enthusiastic welcome and perhaps wondering if she disliked his new garment. The distinctively rich orange-red damask did look well on him. Because the sleeve length was just right, I wondered if the tailor had shortened the sleeves on the green jacket on purpose so he wouldn’t wear it. “Catherine has been worrying about you.”

“Of course she has! I’m sorry to say we had trouble today. A violent altercation broke out between the ghana’s troops and some loitering trolls.”

Rory whistled under his breath. “Glad I missed that.”

“I am sadly sure the town is in for a very bad night. Can you and Cat be ready to depart within the hour, Andevai?”

He took my hand and looked me up and down to make sure I was all right before releasing me. Footsteps in the hall brought me around with my sword half drawn.

Brennan entered the room. “Magister, next time we’ll bring you in through the stables so you don’t put out all the fires. Can you be ready to leave within the hour?”

“No. Nor do I see the need to do so.”

I cringed at Vai’s brusque tone. Rory smirked, as if he found the situation amusing. Brennan sighed wearily, and Bee opened her mouth to make a scalding retort.

Vai sailed right over her. “However the ghana reacts to this disturbance, I will have no trouble leaving Sala. I see no need to go sneaking off and freezing and besides that leaving disgruntled innkeepers at every stop because I kill their fires. Nor will I agree to camping out in the woods in this damp and cold. Not when I can have every expectation of peace traveling as a magister in a coach generously provided by White Bow House. No prince or ghana or lord—or radical—will prevent me from making sure my wife travels in comfort to Noviomagus.”

“Goodness, Cat!” said Bee. “He still talks in exactly that same pompous way.”

His gaze flicked to her. “If you are trying to irritate me, it won’t work.”

“How could it, when you are already so very irritating?” she muttered.

“Because as I was just about to say and now will say, there is no reason the three of you cannot travel with us. We told our hosts we were separated from our servants, so you will pose as our retinue. All of us can leave Sala in a way uncomplicated by searches, seizures, and concerns about where we will sleep every night.”

“Pleasant to have all such mundane details settled,” said Brennan with a wry grin.

“How do I get to serve?” Rory fluttered his eyelashes in a way that made Brennan chuckle as at an old joke that hasn’t lost its charm. “By the way, Cat, you were so very wrong when you told me that first day in Lemanis that I can’t wear women’s clothing. I have made several friends in the last months who enjoy it when I dress in women’s drawers and other garments.”

“Rory!” Bee cried in a long-suffering tone redolent of many shared experiences I would likely never know anything about. “You need not say just whatever comes into your mind, as I have had reason to tell you before.”

“I just wanted Cat to know! I don’t mind being scolded for something I did wrong, but I don’t think it fair to be scolded when I did nothing wrong!” Oblivious to the stupidity of poking an already annoyed wasp, he addressed Vai. “Do you wear women’s drawers?”

I braced myself. Bee pressed fingers to her forehead, wincing. Brennan rocked forward on his toes, clearly expecting the same outcome I was.

Vai smiled indulgently at Rory, as if they were the best of joking friends. “No, I do not. But I can’t see why you shouldn’t wear them if you wish to. It’s just that they’re cut for a different shape.”

I exchanged startled glances with Bee at this unexpected display of relaxed camaraderie, for if there was one word I would not have used to describe Vai, it was relaxed. Footsteps scraped down the hall. Rory stood, the blanket sliding off to reveal him wearing the green floral dash jacket. Blessed Tanit! Had I gotten hit on the head and was I now dreaming that Vai had given one of his precious jackets to someone else?

“Chartji and Caith cannot believably pose as your servants, Magister,” Brennan went on as the door opened to admit the lawyer Chartji and her clutch-nephew, the young troll Caith.

I took a step back, a shade too abruptly, because Caith’s head slewed around like that of a predator spotting the furtive skittering of its hapless prey. A vivid memory of the troll ripping out the belly of the horse, guts spilling, steam rising from the hot innards, blinded me for a blink of an eye.

A blink was all it took for them to take the leap and make the kill.

“The feathered people need not pose as my servants,” said Vai, startling me back to myself. He crossed to shake Chartji’s hand. “Chartji is my solicitor, after all. A pleasant coincidence that we stumbled across each other here in Sala. We have a great deal to discuss.”

“I have not neglected your case, Magister. However, my case file is in Havery.”

“All the more reason I would be pleased to offer you and Caith conveyance in a comfortably sprung carriage and lodging in respectable inns for as long as you choose to accompany me.”

Chartji bared her teeth to mimic a human smile as she approached me to shake hands. “Catherine Bell Barahal. I am pleased to flock with you again. Our clutch-cousin, Keer, has written of your doings in Expedition.”

I hesitated, bruised by the memory of the dead horse. “Truly, I am glad to be reunited with you all. I was just so… stunned by the fight at the livestock market.”

“It is not to be wondered at,” agreed Chartji. “Trolls from the north country in Amerike have little understanding of human behavior and custom. They are brutish and abrupt. They don’t properly know how to behave around you rats. Why, they don’t even take rats as clutch-cousins or allow them to buy stakes in their consortiums, as we Expeditioners do.”

As I grasped her hand I was overtaken by a distinctive scent of summer sun, hot stone, and dry grass touched by the gentle spray of falling water. Keer had felt the same to me. I liked it. The other trolls hadn’t smelled this way.

She bared her teeth again, sharing a smile as if she could smell my settling nerves and wanted me to feel reassured. “Regardless, Cat, you have certain rights and privileges now, for you have given up your weaknesses to the clutch and not been consumed.”

“Does that mean you and I are clutch-cousins also, Chartji? And me and Caith, too?”

“Ooo!” said Caith, who had been circling in with his bright gaze on my cold steel. “If we are clutch-cousins, then can I hold that shiny blade?”

Chartji whistled, and Caith bobbed apologetically and retreated to the table, where he tapped his talons so fretfully on the wood that he cut shallow gouges.

“That might just work,” said Brennan to Vai with a nod of appreciation that melted Vai’s frosty manner a trifle. “How are you going to explain how you suddenly picked up your three servants after being here two weeks with none?”

“What makes you think I have to explain anything to anyone?” Vai tugged on his sleeves.

Rory tugged on his with exactly the same movement. “The sleeves were too short,” he said, “but the clever tailor put lace on to lengthen them. Don’t they look nice?”

Vai gave me a stern look to remind me not to criticize.

I said, quite truthfully, “The color looks well on you, Rory. The fit is good, too, although you might need to have it let out a little at the shoulders. I’m delighted”—if astounded!—“that Vai has seen fit to make sure you are properly clothed.”

“By the way, Magister,” said Chartji, “several letters came to you from Expedition.”

“Have they?” Vai grinned with such unfeigned delight that Bee looked as startled as if he had turned into a different man. “Kofi said he would write! I don’t suppose there is any chance you have the letters with you?”

“No—” Chartji broke off as I raised a hand for silence.

Footfalls sounded from the passage. The woman with the baby entered, carrying a tray.

“Cook will be having the soup hot soon now, Maester,” she said to Brennan, “meaning no disrespect to the magister.” She glanced at Vai and then took a second look up and down in an admiring way before she began unloading the dishes.

Bee cast me a look, rolling her eyes. Fortunately Vai was speaking to Chartji in a low voice about sending letters back to Expedition, and did not notice. Youths brought the food, a hearty fare of mutton stew and cabbage mashed up with turnips, and we sat. I half expected Bee to be casting sly glances and arch looks at the man she had confessed was her lover, but she treated him no differently from the rest of us.

“We radicals are not working for General Camjiata,” Brennan explained to Vai. “We are working with him to achieve those goals we share in common. He will soon march his army north over the Pyrene Mountains into the Gallic Territories. We need to discover the plans of the Alliance of princes and mages, where and when and with what numbers they mean to fight him, because they will fight him. The general simply cannot have raised as large an army as his enemies will. He will need our help to defeat them.”

“Have the radicals no spies?” I asked.

“We have successfully insinuated a few spies into the princely courts. What we lack is any knowledge of the plans of the mage Houses, for they are closed to us.”

Vai considered his bowl of stew, then met Brennan’s gaze. “I can move easily into any mage House in Europa. But I do not stand so high in mage ranks that I would ever be admitted to councils of war.” He glanced sidelong at me in a way meant to make me smile, and it did. “However, once I introduce my wife into those halls, she can eavesdrop.”

“Are you truly willing to do this for the radicals, Magister?” Brennan asked.

“I don’t do this for you. I do this for my friends in Expedition, and for my village.”

“If the mage Houses discover you are acting as our agent, they will kill you.”

He shrugged. “If I am willing to risk nothing for freedom, then I am not a man.”

“Spoken like a radical, Magister.” Brennan set down his cup. “We had best get out of Sala sooner rather than later. I won’t travel with you all the way to Noviomagus. I need to deliver news of the general’s victory to printers and allies in Koumbi. We’ll meet in Havery after we have both completed our other business.”

“Caith and I are not going to Noviomagus,” added Chartji. “Not if one of our older brethren is nesting there.”

“Keer also used the phrase older brethren,” I said. “By which I collect you mean the creatures we call dragons. Why can you not go to Noviomagus if the headmaster is one of them?”

She showed her teeth again, all white and sharp, and chuffed in a way meant to show amusement or, perhaps, a shiver of what a human would have called nervous laughter.

“Because he would eat us.”