Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

by Kate Elliott

  I opened my mouth to make a joke, but no sound came out. My chest felt hollow, for she had sacrificed her grand marriage for me. I could not throw that in her face as a jest.

  She kept combing, grip tight. “His relatives wanted him to denounce me in front of the entire Taino court, but he refused to do it. He merely let people assume I was returning with the general to Europa because I was Europan and obligated to serve my people. ”

  I said nothing, waiting for her to go on.

  “He was so angry. Not like Papa gets angry, shouting and stomping, but distant and formal.”

  Her fiercely vulnerable expression tore my heart in two. “I’m so sorry it ended badly.”

  “Ouch! Bee! You’re pulling my hair.” Rory stiffened, teeth gritted.

  She released the death grip she had on Rory’s locks and began combing with such fixed concentration I knew I was about to hear truth. “I felt so humiliated. Caonabo cutting me off like that when I thought we got on so well, and I know he thought we got on well, too. But he took it so badly. I know it was a lie to draw that sketch. But surely he had to understand I could not just stand by and see you threatened with death! It’s as if he holds his honor higher than my love for you or any loyalty to our marriage. Yet why would he not? He’s a prince in a powerful nation, and now its ruler. If I did not walk the dreams of dragons he would never have acknowledged I existed. I married him for the security and the position and the wealth, not in a mercenary way, mind you—”

  I laughed, and she made to throw the comb at me.

  “You know what I mean! I didn’t marry him to make use of his rank and riches for my own personal gain, but so you and I would have a rock to stand on in a stormy sea. We have nothing.”

  “I know,” I murmured as I trailed my hand through the silks, damasks, and cottons, and the practical wool challis of my riding jacket. “Nothing but your jewelry, and some expensive clothes with pearl buttons. I suppose we will have to sell them, starting with the buttons.”

  At the bottom lay winter coats, boots, Vai’s carpentry tools, and tiny carved wooden boxes, containers for ornaments and toiletries, including the sheaths made of lamb’s intestines Vai had obtained before the night of the areito. I smiled dreamily. He had been so sure I would say yes.

  Rory nudged Bee with his shoulder, and she resumed combing.

  At the bottom of the chest I found two packets of fine white cotton cloth I had never before seen, wrapped around three heavy bundles, each about the size of my forearm, that had the solidity of metal. I sighed. “I’m glad you escaped with one chest, at least. I suppose the other chests are on the ship with the general, if Drake hasn’t burned them. What’s wrapped in the cotton?”

  “Caonabo asked me to give some items to Haübey, in secret. I hid them with your things so no one would suspect I had them.”

  “Caonabo divorced you because he was offended that you lied about the sketch. And then asked you to carry out an errand for him?”

  “He trusted me to do it.”

  “I am indignant on your behalf. Of course he trusted you! You’re a trustworthy person! Yet he threw you off for what he took as a personal slight. Young men see everything reflected in their own honor.”

  She chuckled. “Now you’re talking about Andevai.”

  I smiled. “That’s better. I like to hear you laugh.”

  Rory relaxed as Bee’s hand lost its death grip on the comb and her strokes grew lighter. “Caonabo intends to change some of the old laws, like the strict one on quarantine. The worst of the old epidemics burned themselves out several generations ago. The behiques can treat illness more effectively now. But people naturally fear bad things will happen if they don’t do everything exactly as they always used to do it. Change frightens people.”

  “Or threatens them,” I said. “That’s why the mage Houses don’t like technology. It threatens their power. That’s why they defeated and imprisoned General Camjiata, because his legal code threatens their power, too…”

  We took possession of Cook’s bedchamber next to the kitchen. Bee and I shared the bed while Rory slept on the floor beside it, resting on the pallet our man-of-all-work Pompey had used in the kitchen at night. “I never sleep alone,” he said, “it makes me nervous.”

  “Hush,” said Bee, pinching out the lamp.

  In the darkness the memory of Cook’s scent settled over me: She had always smelled of flour and onions, but in a comforting way, not an unpleasant one. Home rose around us, although it was dark and abandoned. We could stay the night but never truly return.

  Yet the house embraced us. With Bee slumbering beside me in the old familiar way and Rory snoring softly on the floor, I slept soundly.

  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 wea
r 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.