Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

by Kate Elliott

  The mansa called together the village councils and asked them to invoke rei vindicatio: A community belongs to itself. The ancient contracts were dissolved. Much of the farm and pastureland reverted to the villages, but enough remained for a home farm overseen by House stewards. Here those who wished to work the land would farm, with the surplus marked for the support of the new House.

  To uproot and move seventy-one people from their accustomed life is no small undertaking. Remarkably, the September weather held fair for the two weeks’ journey to the city of Havery. Everyone went a little hungry, and everyone except for the littlest, the eldest, and the infirm had to walk most of the way, but not one person died. There was only one serious fight, between two young men over a village girl from Trecon who had sneaked along with the kitchen staff to escape an unwanted marriage at home.

  “Should we send her back?” Vai asked me that night.

  We were camped next to a mage hostel along the turnpike that ran from Audui to Havery. Naturally the indoor places were given to the elders and the children, but Vai did demand the privilege of a private shelter. It was astonishing how a gal might come to appreciate a crude tent rigged of canvas in which she and her loved one could sleep alone every night on a mat on the hard ground with but a single blanket to cover them.

  “The elders are split on the question and have asked if I or my wife wish to make our opinion known. We ought to respect the arrangements made by our elders. That is the way least disruptive to the harmonious peace of the community.”

  “Yes, because forcing a young woman into a marriage she does not wish for seems harmonious to me!”

  “I can’t suppose other women could possibly hope for the good fortune you had.”

  I pinched him in a sensitive spot, although that only made him laugh. “Thus you make my argument for me. It’s one thing for the elders to interview compatible young people and see that they are introduced to each other in the hope that an interest will kindle between them. I understand they wish for family alliances that will benefit the community. But the young people must consent as well, otherwise it is just another form of clientage. Anyway, Vai, you are the last person who ought to argue against disrupting the harmonious peace of the old ways. I say let her stay with us. She can work off a fair price for her transport and food, and after that remain with the House or find her way into a situation she finds more pleasing.” I rolled on top of him. “As I am about to do.”

  The elderly prince of Havery was a forward-thinking man who welcomed new technology, new faces, and new trade opportunities with the Amerikes, and who had introduced new laws by which an elected council shared the reins of ruling. As surprised as the man was when the young mansa, his elders’ council, his lawyers, and his household presented themselves to request the prince’s permission to establish a mage House in his city, he was astonished when Vai informed him that the House no longer held villages in clientage and would be setting up a carpentry yard to support itself.

  “This is a radical step,” the prince remarked as he bowed over Beatrice’s hand, for it was evident they were already acquainted. “It appears the Honeyed Voice has sweetened yet another ear.”

  “In fact,” said Vai, “it is her cousin, my wife, who coaxed me into bed with the radicals. Her, and my good friends from Expedition.”

  “You are welcome here,” said the prince, to all of us. “My clan has long suffered, caught between the Parisi prince and the Veneti dukes with their Armorican overlord. That is why I have sought allies elsewhere.” He nodded at Chartji and Godwik. They were not the only feathered people present at his court. “The presence of a mansa and his House will certainly give my rivals pause, especially now that the Iberian Monster’s campaign has shaken up the entire continent.”

  “What news of the Iberian Monster?” I asked.

  The old man indicated a stack of dispatches on a desk. “An interesting turn of events. He has rallied four Roman legions to his cause and declared his intention to depose the emperor and raise himself to that exalted place, after which he will reform the laws and some such palaver. Last we heard, he won a resounding victory near Nikaia. For the time being, that leaves us here in the Gallic Territories at a temporary peace. We shall see how long it lasts.”

  At the law offices of Godwik and Clutch, Chartji took us to a storage room. Here, by diverse means, had washed up most of the belongings we had lost hold of over the last months: Vai’s carpentry tools and the other traveling gear he and I had abandoned when we had leaped into the Rhenus River; the chests left behind at Two Gourds House with all of Vai’s dash jackets and the clothes he had had made for me; even, astoundingly, the chests Bee had been forced to leave with Camjiata, from which Drake had stolen some of Vai’s clothing.

  To my amazement, one of the chests contained all of my father’s journals. The general had kindly sent these items on with a note that read:

  It is never too late to change your mind.

  Best of all, Bee unearthed the gold and fine linen Caonabo had asked her to deliver to Juba. The cloth shed a smoky flavor, dragon-like, from being packed in with tobacco leaves. “Haübey was meant to wear this finery on his return to Sharagua, but I have decided we need the money more than he does now he has been called back from exile. We can get an excellent price for the tobacco as well. It is no easy task to shelter, feed, and clothe almost one hundred people from nothing!”

  The old Hassi Barahal compound where Aunt Tilly had been born had been boarded up in the wake of Camjiata’s defeat sixteen years ago, when the household had dispersed either to Adurnam or to Gadir. With the proceeds from the sale of the gold, Four Moons House obtained the lease for this edifice, which backed up against a gentle tributary stream of the mighty Sicauna River in the northern quarter of town. In the next property over along the bank stood a run-down old villa with a hypocaust system in need of extensive repairs, owned by a Kena’ani shipping clan eager to make an ally of the mansa and his Kena’ani wife and her cousin by offering him use of the building as long as he made the necessary repairs and renovations at his own expense. With the weather rapidly growing colder, the able-bodied set to work to repair enough of the hypocaust system to shelter the cold mages through the coming winter, while the Barahal compound’s buildings were cleaned for the rest of the household.

  Five days after we arrived, with the heaviest of the cleaning behind us, Bee and I walked down to the harbor district to the law offices of Godwik and Clutch. I liked what I had seen of Havery, for the little port city had a free and easy flavor that reminded me of Expedition. A lively troll town expanded in the west, near a burgeoning factory district. Besides the usual port-city mix of people of every lineage, clan, ethnicity, guild, and profession, there were enclaves of merchants and artisans and sailors from Expedition, the Taino kingdom, and other Amerikan peoples as well.

  “The prince has asked me if I will consider standing for the council when he calls for elections next year,” Bee was saying, “and naturally I will, since many women may feel reluctant to put themselves forward. Someone must set a good example. But we must have a way to make a living as well. That’s why the plan Andevai and I have concocted makes perfect sense. In a way, the mage House and the Godwik and Clutch consortium have become partners through your relationship with both of them. The best part is that you and I will finally get to do the work we were trained for.”

  I loved to watch her shine. She was a little like the puppy. She had gotten her teeth into an enterprise that matched her wit and her ambition.

  “Trolls are excellent lawyers because they can pick through the fine points of the law. And they are clever scientists because the world fascinates them, and they’re not really scared of anything except dragons. Also, they share everything within the clutch. The food on my plate is the food on your plate. That’s why they have become such keen printers, spreading knowledge like seeds. But one thing troll printers and lawyers can’t do is go places where they would be conspicuous for being
trolls. Therefore, you and I—and Rory if he wants to—will act as their human agents. We will investigate things for them that they otherwise would have trouble knowing.”

  “We’ll be spies,” I said delightedly.

  “If you must use that word, then I am content with it. Andevai says this is exactly the sort of scheme that will please you, Cat. Obviously it pleases me. I can scarcely wait to begin sneaking about and poking my nose into other people’s business, just as we used to in the old days! I mean, when I am not making speeches in the Assembly. But he has been worried about you. He has stewards to take care of the day-to-day running of such a large household, for it is truly an unwieldy task best left to people trained from an early age to manage its complexities. He knows you don’t belong in the mage House, nor does he expect you to serve it. He says you told him once that you wouldn’t have minded being a warden in Expedition, and I can see how that would suit you. This is something like that, don’t you think? You like our plan, don’t you?”

  I took her hand in mine. “Of course I do. It’s a marvelous scheme. It’s all splendid, what Andevai is doing, this new endeavor, everything!”

  She pulled me to a stop under the feathery brown sign with orange letters that marked the door of the law offices of Godwik and Clutch. “Are you well, dearest?”

  I clasped her hands tightly. “I’m at peace, Bee, except for one thing. You know I told you how I met your parents when I was with Camjiata.”

  The storm clouds could not have moved in more swiftly, from clear sky to threatening rain. Her voice trembled. “I should have been there with you, Cat! You should not have to face all these terrible things alone!”

  I had to look away from her then. My worn but thoroughly polished boots made a good alternative to her probing gaze. Vai did not like the way I polished my boots, so he had taken to doing it for me. “I just think that after all it would have been better if I had found it in my heart to forgive them. I felt so betrayed only because I loved them so much.”

  “They shouldn’t have done it!”

  “I know, but… it must have hurt them, too.”

  She heaved a dramatic sigh and was about to scold me when the door opened and Chartji poked her muzzle out. Her crest was flared in an odd pattern, some feathers flattened and some upright. She whistled a curt greeting, a bit off-key.

  “Bee, a letter arrived for you this morning. Of course I did not open it, but it stinks of dragon and I would be grateful if you would remove it from the premises as quickly as possible.”

  With a shriek Bee released my hands and dashed inside.

  Chartji bared her teeth at me. “Cousin, there is something about you that puzzles me. You rats are funny creatures, hard to understand, but I sense a shadow beneath your smile.”

  As the great general Hannibal Barca had famously said just before he and his queen, the Dido of Qart Hadast, defeated the Romans at Zama, Either find a way, or make one.

  “I have a few questions about contracts I would like to ask you, Chartji. Is now a good time?”

  On our walk home Bee could not contain herself. With the letter clutched in her hand, she stumbled frequently on the cobblestones as she read bits aloud to me. “ ‘In the lore of my people, it is told that the women who walk the dreams of dragons may find among dragon-kind one mate to match them.’ Isn’t that romantical, Cat? He goes on. ‘The obligations placed on me by my position as headmaster…’ That’s why he cannot leave yet. The hatchlings are still too young. They look like youths in size but they need constant care before they are ready to be left on their own. I wonder how many hatchlings the headmaster raised among people at the academy all those years without anyone being the wiser! Kemal begs me to never reveal their secret. He says that the lore of the dragons speaks of dark cruel times when the dragon-born were hunted and killed!”

  “It seems to me, Bee, that you could go to Noviomagus for a month’s visit. Then you might discover whether he is the, ah, mate to match you, which I rather doubt since you seem to still have feelings for Caonabo.”

  She sniffed imperiously. “According to tradition, Kena’ani women can take two husbands if it serves the clan: one husband from within the clan and one trade husband, an outsider, to seal an alliance.”

  “I can’t figure which one you would call the trade husband and which one within the clan.”

  She ignored this perfectly legitimate question with an airy wave of her hand. “Anyway, when will I ever see Caonabo again? How can I ever afford even to go to Noviomagus? We can barely afford to feed everyone. The only reason we have managed all the renovation and repairs is that the household is doing all the work.”

  I swung her hand in mine. “That’s true. But after Hallows’ Night you must promise me you’ll find a way to go. Just to see what happens. Do you promise me, Bee? Do you?”

  “Gracious Melqart, Cat! If I protest that I do not want to, you’ll know I am lying. And if I say yes, love will carry me across the distance like wings, I’ll appear as giddy in love as you! Maybe after things are more sorted out here and the household is better established and everyone has a decent cot to sleep on… Prim Astarte! What I wouldn’t give for decent plumbing!”

  We discussed such mundane matters all the way home, and I cherished every word of it.

  So it was that at midday on the last day of October, I finished darning a worn elbow on the last of Vai’s dash jackets that needed repair, the much-abused but lovingly tended gold-and-red chained pattern he had worn the night of the areito and Hallows’ Night and thus into the spirit world. As a fine elegant dash jacket suitable for court, it was utterly ruined, but I could read the course of our love across its mended injuries and still-shining threads and know it for the glorious garment it was.

  He had selected the sturdiest of his jackets to labor in, and they did get worn. I had worked hard to get all the mending done to my liking, sitting at an old secondhand table at the window in the corner room Vai had picked out for the mansa’s study. At this table in the evenings, while I sewed and Bee drew or practiced declaiming and while visitors came and went, he wrote letters, planned lessons, practiced illusions, and had me read out loud to us from a recently published monograph by Professora Alhamrai regarding accounts of how shrinkage in the ice sheets correlated with the creep of hardy trees into the Barrens.

  Besides the table and chairs, necessary for when the mansa wished to meet people, the spacious chamber was furnished with his clothes chests, the chest with my father’s journals in it, a copper basin and pitcher on a stand, and the rolled-up mat on which he and I slept. Because Vai wasn’t there, I heated the air with a little brazier. The hypocaust beneath the planks was blocked by old rubble and not yet cleared out because the dormitories had to be readied for winter first. Fortunately it had been an unusually mild autumn, with not a single snowfall.

  “Cat!” Bee hurried in without knocking, as she always did when she knew Vai was elsewhere. “I just heard Andevai tell Serena that she must sell all his dash jackets. He wants them out of the house today, so he may begin the new year knowing he has sacrificed like everyone else.”

  “Gracious Melqart! I knew we had run low on funds for the kitchen, but I didn’t know things had gotten this desperate!” I leaped up and, with Bee’s help, hid my six favorite of his jackets in another chest, under the fur pelt blanket, together with the beautiful dressing robes.

  Bee frowned and grabbed out of my hands the dash jacket sewn from the fabric of flowers bursting into fireworks. “I swear an oath to you, Cat, I just made up the pattern, I didn’t dream it!”

  I snatched the jacket out of her hands and folded it in paper just as the red coals in the brazier dulled to ash.

  Magister Serena sailed into the room beside Vai’s more clipped, impatient stride. Sadly they looked very handsome together, but I liked her enough that if someday such a suitable match were to be made because I was no longer there, I could bear the thought of it.

  Vai smiled so sweetly at me that my
heart melted all over again. “It will take another month to get a substantial carpentry shop up and running,” he was saying to one of the stewards, “and meanwhile we’ve had all these expenses to make the House livable. Take both chests. Sell everything. We must all begin the new year with an understanding of our changed circumstances. Don’t argue with me, Catherine!”

  “I said nothing! But besides the clothing you must have to wear every day, Andevai, I insist you set aside two elegant dash jackets for when you go to court or are invited to some lordly mansion for dinner. You cannot attend such functions wearing the clothes you work in. It would not reflect well on the House, would it?”

  “Indeed it would not,” said Serena in the manner of a woman who has lived all her life with the highest expectations of her rank and station. “The mansa of Four Moons House cannot appear looking as if he works as a common laborer.”

  Bee coughed. “Even if he does.”

  “In another year or two, everything will be different,” I said placatingly. I had cleverly placed the two dash jackets I knew he would choose at the top of the chest: the fireworks and a damask whose orange and brown evoked colors popular among radical laborers. His decision to sell his beloved clothes had so agitated him that I was able to set those two and yet two more aside before the steward took away the chest.