Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

by Kate Elliott

  With a smile, I mouthed, Soon but not yet.

  Then everyone else saw me, and their exclamations of delight and concern bent me like a reed under the onslaught of a winter gale. I retreated to the bed and sank down. Vai and Bee hurried in to sit on either side of me.

  “Love, how are you?”

  “I’m hungry! I could eat a whole side of beef and have room for turnips besides!”

  “We were so worried,” said Bee, wringing my hands until I grimaced and said, “Ouch!”

  Vai brushed strands of hair off my brow. “Why on earth did you go to Tanit’s sanctuary on Hallows’ Night without telling anyone? We thought you had been taken by the Wild Hunt!”

  “I don’t remember that part very well,” I said truthfully. “But I do remember that you asked me if I had anything I wanted to do. I want to build batey courts in Europa so we can have our own batey leagues and tournaments. Isn’t that a good idea? And in a few years we can go to the desert and destroy any of the ghouls that were caught on the other side of the gate. Without blood, no more will ever fall into the mortal world. If the last of them are hunted down, there is a chance the salt plague can be eradicated. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  Bee pressed the back of a hand to my forehead. “Is she still feverish?”

  “No, that’s exactly the sort of adventure I would expect her to undertake.” Vai flicked a finger along my cheek. “However, there is one thing we’ve all been waiting for you to explain, Catherine.”

  Rory had been leaning against the wall, arms crossed. He sighed as might a long-festering boil when it is at last punctured. “You may as well tell the truth, Cat. When you called the coach and four and the eru into this world to help you hunt down and kill James Drake, you had to make a bargain with them that you would allow them to live in your household for as long as they wished.” He opened his eyes wide and raised his eyebrows, head jutted forward aggressively, in warning.

  Blinking was all I could manage. “Oh.”

  Vai said, “You can imagine our surprise when we brought you home from Tanit’s temple and found the coach, the horses, a heavy bag of gold coins, and the two of them in the stable.”

  Bee leaned into my shoulder. “In the hay, indulging in a most ardent embrace. I thought it was sweet, although Andevai did not find it as amusing.”

  “Did you not, my love?” I asked.

  “We found them a room,” he said. I hadn’t known the man could blush like that!

  “Do they bide here still?”

  “They do,” said Vai, “and in truth, it is convenient to have them, for we could not otherwise afford to house a coach, much less stable four horses. I just find it a little odd.”

  They both stared at me with the expressions of people who suspect the worst but feel you are not quite yet up to being accused of perfidy.

  In the end it wasn’t just that I could wind shadows about me and sneak around where people didn’t want me to go. It was that I understood the importance of misdirection.

  “Now that we have a coach and four, you can go to Noviomagus, Bee. We can go as soon as I’m stronger. Perhaps Chartji has some business for us to take care of there as well, so we can combine work and love! I am sure there are radicals to meet with, too, for it seemed to me that the prince and mage House in Noviomagus had not the least interest in listening to the radical cause.”

  “That would be delightful,” cried Bee, blushing.

  “Yes, for the first hour, until you fall simpering into Venus’s coils and I am left to mope about Noviomagus on my own, although that kindly steward I met at Five Mirrors House might be sympathetic to my sad plight.”

  Vai frowned. “What manner of reckless mischief you can get up to on your own or together I don’t even like to think. Not that it’s any of my business, mind you, for I am sure you can do as you please,” he added as Bee opened her mouth to expostulate.

  “You ought to be cautious, though, Bee,” I added thoughtfully. “Maybe you did dream of that fabric before Vai found it, and you just didn’t realize it. I know dragon dreamers are barren when they mate with men, but Kemal isn’t a man even when he’s in man form.”

  “Cat!” Blushing, she clutched her sketchbook to her breast.

  Vai was still vexing himself over my mention of the kindly steward. “I need to negotiate with the mansa of Five Mirrors House regardless on another matter. Viridor can meet me there. He and I have begun a correspondence regarding new pedagogical methods. I’ll send a dispatch to alert them. Kofi needs to see something of Europa, and I wish to introduce him around.”

  So it was that twelve days later, with a light fall of snow dusting the ground, I set off to escort my cousin to meet a dragon with whom she had the intention of becoming romantically involved.

  Bee was so charmingly nervous that she kept running back into the house for things she was sure she had forgotten. The coachman stood at the horses’ heads, chatting with Kofi. In company the eru had proven to be much more reserved than the relaxed coachman, so she waited by the door with one eye on the sky, as if making sure a blizzard was not about to drop in.

  Shivering, I climbed in to warm myself with heated bricks tucked inside my fur cloak. I had just received two letters. One was from Doctor Asante, written in the manner of a close kinswoman desirous of getting to know better a beloved child from whom she had been long separated. I had read it ten times already. The other was a letter from Kehinde via Chartji, explaining that a printer had been jailed by the prince of Colonia and asking if I might lend my skills to a mission to rescue the man before he was executed for sedition. Colonia wasn’t far from Noviomagus. I could probably manage it by myself.

  “You’re looking thoughtful, love. What are you considering doing that I don’t want to hear about until it’s over?” Vai arranged himself on the seat opposite with care, as if he believed a many days’ journey in the coach would not wrinkle his clothing simply because he did not wish it.

  I smiled, for Rory and I had, between us and the coachman and eru, covered our tracks. “I can’t help but be reminded of the evening you and I met and married all in the space of an hour. Do you know, Vai, you’re so awfully handsome I suppose I might have been able to fall in love with you that first evening when you took me away from my aunt and uncle’s house, if only you hadn’t been so awful in every other way.”

  He relaxed, stretching out his feet to tangle with mine. “My grandmother warned me it is rash and reckless for a man and woman to join their affections in marriage just for the sake of physical attraction. Marriage is meant to be arranged by the elders so no trouble comes of it. Falling in love with my good looks would have been a terrible mistake. If an understandable one.”

  “I certainly had no chance to fall in love with your humble demeanor. Since I doubt you have one.”

  He glanced at me through half-lidded eyes in the coy way he had when he had drawn out just the sort of teasing joke he loved me to make. Rory stuck his head in, gave me a kiss, embraced Vai in a brotherly farewell, and bounded away into the house far too eagerly.

  “I was surprised when Rory decided to stay behind,” I remarked.

  “You see, I did forget it!” cried Bee as she clambered in, plopped down next to me, and set a basket on my lap. “Sweet yam pastries, crescent rolls, rice and peas that Kayleigh made for Kofi, and a jar of Serena’s yam pudding. Rory has made me a bet that he will seduce her before we return.”

  “Good fortune with that,” Vai said. “Serena is not interested in dalliance.”

  “How would you know?” I demanded.

  He flashed a smile, silently laughing at me. “She’s angling for a prestigious marriage with a very promising magister from Five Mirrors House. There are two powerful candidates to be heir, and the mansa there wants to move one out of the way so there is no trouble.”

  Bee batted her eyelashes as her most dangerously honeyed smile lit her face. “If that is the case, don’t you worry about bringing such a powerful magister into F
our Moons House?”

  He looked at her blankly. “No. Why would I?”

  Kofi stuck his head in. “I shall ride up front to see the countryside. Fair wild, I call this!”

  “I want to hold on in back with the eru,” I said.

  “No!” Bee and Vai spoke at the same time, as Kofi shut the door.

  “You are so recently recovered, dearest,” said Bee. “It really is outside of enough that you are making such a long journey so soon.”

  “It was your idea!”

  “It was your idea!” retorted Bee primly. “I only agreed because it is time I got to have an adventure!”

  “Because giving radical speeches and slamming down rude hecklers as soldiers march to arrest you is not an adventure? Wrestling an overloaded rowboat for hundreds of miles down the Rhenus River with only a lazy cat for company is not an adventure? Sleeping with the most famously handsome radical in Europa—”

  “What?” said Vai. “Bee and Brennan Du… what?”

  “—is not an adventure? Not to mention the part where you marry a prince of the Taino, or are asked to run for a seat on the first elected council in Europa.”

  Bee sighed happily, paging through her sketchbook with the dreamy blush of an addled schoolgirl. “Yes! Who knows what will happen next?”

  The latch’s sliver eyes and wire mouth glittered as its sour little voice woke. “I won’t know. No one tells me anything.”

  In the sudden hush that throttled the ones I loved best in all the world, the coachman snapped his whip and cried, “Ha-roo! Ha-roo!” The eru leaped onto the back of the coach, and we rolled out onto the street, wheels rumbling on stone.

  Bee put her nose down by the latch, which matched her glare for glare.

  In a low voice Vai said, “I thought you were just making that up to entertain us, like you do.”

  “What do I ever make up, I should like to ask? Andevai! You do believe I punched a shark, don’t you?”

  “Yes, love, I believe you punched a shark just like I believe you drank coffee with the Master of the Wild Hunt on the streets of Havery on Hallows’ Night.”

  Bee sat up. Her eye turned on me as her expression bloomed into the full flower of indignant suspicion. “But she did punch a shark. James Drake was on the beach and saw it happen. He told the general and me all about it.”

  They looked at each other, sharing an unspoken thought, and then they looked at me.

  In the depths of the ice, wreathed in ice, sleeps the Wild Hunt, and when it wakes, all tremble in fear. In the depths of the black abyss there drifts in a watery stupor the leviathan whose lashing tail can smash ships into splinters and drive the sundered hulks under the waves. In the depths of the smoke lies coiled in slumber the Mother of All Dragons. If she stirs, waking, the world changes. So we are told.

  But none of that seemed at all frightening compared with the prospect of Bee and Andevai united in exasperation and anger, against me.

  Me!

  I thought about how many days it was going to take us to reach Noviomagus and how many hours of that time they were going to spend scolding and haranguing me as only they could.

  “Everyone knows all the good parts except me,” groused the latch. “For instance, where are we now and where are we going? Why? How did we get here?”

  There is more than one way to skin a cat. Or at least, if you’re the cat, to stay unskinned by rebuking tongues and accusing eyes for just a little longer.

  “Fortunately, it’s a very expansive story and one I can tell you if you don’t mind hearing every piece of it all. At length.”

  “Catherine, I believe you owe us some manner of explanation!”

  “Cat, what have you been hiding from us? What did you do?”

  “I don’t mind, no matter how long it takes!” said the latch, with the nearest thing to a real smile I had ever seen on its dour face. “Do you have any of that coffee stuff? That was very tasty.”

  “We can get coffee along the way like we did before. Let me see. There’s a great deal you don’t know, so it’s best if I start at the beginning.”

  First I peeked into the basket to see that there was indeed a jar of Serena’s most excellent yam pudding tucked to one side. Then I settled myself more comfortably on the seat and smiled at my beloved if fulminating cousin and my handsome if reproachful husband. Finally I winked at the latch that had just saved me.

  The latch winked shyly back, like a child caught out on its first budding infatuation.

  Never let it be said I could not talk my way out of any trouble that I could not punch.

  “The history of the world begins in ice, and it will end in ice.”

  extras

  meet the author

  April Quintanilla

  KATE ELLIOTT has been writing stories since she was nine years old, which has led her to believe either that she is a little crazy or that writing, like breathing, keeps her alive. Her previous series are the Crossroads Trilogy (starting with Spirit Gate), The Crown of Stars septology (starting with King’s Dragon), the Novels of the Jaran, and a collaboration with Melanie Rawn and Jennifer Roberson called The Golden Key. She likes to play sports more than she likes to watch them; right now, her sport of choice is outrigger canoe paddling. She has been married for a really long time. She and her spouse have three children, as well as a miniature schnauzer (aka the Schnazghul). Her spouse has a much more interesting job than she does, with the added benefit that they had to move to Hawaii for his work. Thus the outrigger canoes.

  Find out more about the author at www.kateelliott.com. You can also find extras there, including short fiction set in the Spiritwalker universe.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  COLD STEEL,

  look out for

  THE IRON WYRM AFFAIR

  A Bannon and Clare Novel

  by Lilith Saintcrow

  Emma Bannon, forensic sorceress in the service of the Empire, has a mission: to protect Archibald Clare, a failed, unregistered mentath. His skills of deduction are legendary, and her own sorcery is not inconsiderable. It doesn’t help much that they barely tolerate each other, or that Bannon’s Shield, Mikal, might just be a traitor himself. Or that the conspiracy killing registered mentaths and sorcerers alike will just as likely kill them as seduce them into treachery toward their Queen.

  In an alternate London where illogical magic has turned the industrial revolution on its head, Bannon and Clare now face hostility, treason, cannon fire, black sorcery, and the problem of reliably finding hansom cabs.

  The game is afoot.

  Emma Bannon, Sorceress Prime and servant to Britannia’s current incarnation, mentally ran through every foul word that would never cross the lips of a lady. She timed them to the clockhorse’s steady jogtrot, and her awareness dilated. The simmering cauldron of the streets was just as it always was; there was no breath of ill intent.

  Of course, there had not been earlier, either, when she had been a quarter-hour too late to save the other unregistered mentath. It was only one of the many things about this situation seemingly designed to try her often considerable patience.

  Mikal would be taking the rooftop road, running while she sat at ease in a hired carriage. It was the knowledge that while he did so he could forget some things that eased her conscience, though not completely.

  Still, he was a Shield. He would not consent to share a carriage with her unless he was certain of her safety. And there was not room enough to manoeuvre in a two-person conveyance, should he require it.

  She was heartily sick of hired carts. Her own carriages were far more comfortable, but this matter required discretion. Having it shouted to the heavens that she was alert to the pattern under these occurrences might not precisely frighten her opponents, but it would become more difficult to attack them from an unexpected quarter. Which was, she had to admit, her preferred method.

  Even a Prime can benefit from guile, Llew had often remarked. And of course, she would thin
k of him. She seemed constitutionally incapable of leaving well enough alone, and that irritated her as well.

  Beside her, Clare dozed. He was a very thin man, with a long, mournful face; his gloves were darned but his waistcoat was of fine cloth, though it had seen better days. His eyes were blue, and they glittered feverishly under half-closed lids. An unregistered mentath would find it difficult to secure proper employment, and by the looks of his quarters, Clare had been suffering from boredom for several weeks, desperately seeking a series of experiments to exercise his active brain.

  Mentath was like sorcerous talent. If not trained, and used, it turned on its bearer.

  At least he had found time to shave, and he had brought two bags. One, no doubt, held linens. God alone knew what was in the second. Perhaps she should apply deduction to the problem, as if she did not have several others crowding her attention at the moment.

  Chief among said problems were the murderers, who had so far eluded her efforts. Queen Victrix was young, and just recently freed from the confines of her domineering mother’s sway. Her new Consort, Alberich, was a moderating influence—but he did not have enough power at Court just yet to be an effective shield for Britannia’s incarnation.

  The ruling spirit was old, and wise, but Her vessels… well, they were not indestructible.

  And that, Emma told herself sternly, is as far as we shall go with such a train of thought. She found herself rubbing the sardonyx on her left middle finger, polishing it with her opposite thumb. Even through her thin gloves, the stone prickled hotly. Her posture did not change, but her awareness contracted. She felt for the source of the disturbance, flashing through and discarding a number of fine invisible threads.

  Blast and bother. Other words, less polite, rose as well. Her pulse and respiration did not change, but she tasted a faint tang of adrenaline before sorcerous training clamped tight on such functions to free her from some of flesh’s more… distracting… reactions.