Cold Magic (Untitled Kate Elliott Series #1)

by Kate Elliott

  “Very pretty,” I muttered. “Too bad the even more decorative Maester Amadou is not here to admire your fetching pose. Only, you should have your right hand raised in the manner of an orator declaiming.”

  She looked at me, all honey. “It’s not locked.”

  I could smell luncheon’s distant promise. I was so hungry. But there was no one in the corridor. Either find a way, or make one.

  “It will be on your head,” I muttered.

  I adjusted my schoolbag’s strap so it wouldn’t shift. Then I bent to listen at the keyhole, hearing no sound from the chamber beyond except the ticking of the clock like the swing of fortune: triumph, disaster, triumph, disaster. I lifted a hand, she turned the handle, and we slipped inside. She closed the door and let the handle rise with a faint snick. The chamber lay eerily empty. The poet’s head looked merely like a remarkably lifelike carving. Even so, I kept thinking its eyes were about to pop open and spot us sneaking where we weren’t allowed. We slid quietly across the polished floor—many years of fencing practice had honed our ability to move smoothly—and at the far door, I again listened at the keyhole.

  At first hearing: nothing.

  I shut my eyes and listened more deeply, letting my cat’s hearing creep through the unseen room on the other side of the door to the shift of air and temperature that betrayed a larger chamber beyond, in which one male voice asked a curt question and another replied in a cramped monotone I was sure belonged to the headmaster’s dog. I could not quite hear distinct words: a map of Adurnam? The Rail Yard? Gas?

  Was everyone in the academy discussing the newly arrived airship?

  There was no point in waiting. We must be as bold as the didos of our people, the queens who had founded cities, battled the Romans to a standstill, and commanded voyages of discovery across the Atlantic Ocean and around the horn of Africa. I nudged Bee’s foot with my own. She slid the door open a crack, wedged a foot in, peered inside. Like lightning, she flashed through the gap and vanished. I slipped after her, and she shut the door behind us.

  Fiery Shemesh!

  We stood in a chilly chamber of aisles, alleys of shelves that reached floor to ceiling, all crammed with books of every height, width, and thickness, some old and others new, more books than I had seen in one place in my life: This was a storage library. The polished wood floor caught streaks of light from the courtyard windows rising to our left, but mostly the light was broken up by the high shelves. We stared straight down a central aisle lined with pillars, each of which marked a side alley of shelves running perpendicular to the shadowed edges of the room. At the other end of the space, one side of a double door had been propped open against a stack of books so new their leather bindings gleamed. The vast formal library beyond had a vaulted ceiling and ample sunlight.

  A man spoke, a brusque request for “that document you mentioned.” Although we could not see him, I heard, almost felt, his feet shifting on the floorboards. Another pair of feet clip-clapped toward the open door.

  I yanked Bee into the shadows to our right. We shivered like mice while the headmaster’s dog walked briskly down the central aisle and into the headmaster’s office. Its door closed behind him. We darted along the back aisle to the other end of the room. Creeping, we ventured up this alley, books leering at us from either side, to the door that opened into the library hall. From this angle, we could get a look only into the left-hand sweep of the huge chamber.

  Five towering windows took up most of the outer wall facing the rose court, running from cushioned window seats all the way up to the crown moldings that joined wall to high ceiling. Long, heavy curtains of a dutiful gold fabric swagged down on either side of each window, tied back by braided gold cords. I nudged Bee and pointed to the gathered drapes. She nodded.

  We crept to the left until we could see the rest of the chamber. The inner three walls were lined floor to ceiling with bookshelves. A rolling book ladder rested beside the far doors. In the half of the chamber nearest us, settees and side tables were arranged in handsome groupings flanked by braziers to allow scholars to read and converse in comfort. On the far half of the chamber, three long tables were set crosswise so as to take advantage of the full length of the natural light streaming in through the tall windows. Oil lamps rested by tables and couches to provide light in the evenings. None were lit now. Even the massive fireplace lay cold, despite the chill.

  A man stood with his back to us, bent over one of the tables as he examined papers spread before him. He was dressed in a magnificently starched, polished, and embroidered green boubou, the voluminous sleeves and folds of the robe marking the old-fashioned style. But if his muscular shoulders; vital posture; short, almost shaved, black hair; and restless hands were any indicator, he was young, not old.

  Behind us, the headmaster’s office door snicked open.

  We skated over the polished floor and slipped behind the nearest draperies just as the headmaster’s dog trotted back into the chamber. The visitor had not even turned; he was impatiently tapping a hand on the table, the driven pattern of the beat familiar to my ears, because it was one of the drum dances popular on festival days. Bee stood crushed behind me. I tweaked back an edge of the drape.

  The assistant hurried to the table, set down a long tube, and uncapped it. He unrolled a schematic busy with lines and curves, then secured the corners and the sides with iron paperweights molded in the shapes of Kemet’s gods and goddesses.

  As this precise ritual unfolded, my gaze wandered across the chamber.

  On a side table by one of the couches, Bee’s sketchbook lay beneath a slender leather-bound book set thoughtlessly atop it. I could retrieve it as long as neither of the men turned.

  Everyone says that the West African Mande lineages and European Celtic tribes were together able to establish the mage Houses, because they possess more conduits to the spirit world than any other peoples known to the natural philosophers, but that does not mean other peoples do not have a few tricks up their sleeves.

  We who call ourselves Kena’ani made our fortunes and solidified our sea-trading networks because there were a few things we did particularly well with the aid of the gods—back when our people believed in gods—and with the connivance of the natural world, which must be understood and manipulated so as to harness its power. Some say the Kena’ani are a godless, spiritless, magicless people who will sell our swords and souls for money and will trade anything, even our honor, as long as we make a profit by doing so. They can say what they want. We know how to keep our secrets. We know what information we are willing to share, what we’re willing to sell, and what we will never reveal.

  Bee and I learned that lesson young: It’s easier to get away with things you’re not supposed to be doing if no one suspects you can even attempt them. Tell no one. Not ever.

  Bee twisted her silver bracelet as she took in a deep breath to fill a false voice she could cast elsewhere as a distraction: an ancient woman’s craft she’d learned from her mother’s mother that I’d never gotten the knack of. As for me, I bent my gaze not inward and not outward but between in and out, into the space where things exist but are not noticed by those who walk past them without seeing that which is not important to them. I drew a veil out of the frail threads of magic inhabiting this space and wrapped myself in it.

  A strong word, or a knock—hard to say which—resounded at the far double doors. As both men looked that way, I stepped out from behind the drape and skimmed smoothly across the shining floor toward the table where the books rested. I did not look directly at the two men—the gaze of one person on another can be as hot as fire—but I kept track of their movements in my peripheral vision. The headmaster’s assistant hastened over to the door and opened it while the visitor bent back to his perusal of the papers spread before him on the table. My knee bumped the low side table just as the assistant muttered, “I’ll be burned,” and he turned.

  I froze, as still as the table, as silent as the couches, as unexceptio
nal as the floor he stood on and never noticed because it never need be noticed. His gaze flowed right over me without a flicker. He shrugged, closed the door, and returned to the table, again turning his back as he settled in beside the visitor.

  “I haven’t much time. I’m late already,” said the visitor in the impatient tones of a man of high status who expects deference. “You said you possess a recently published volume on the subject of aerostatics.”

  I dared not risk shifting the top book to get the one beneath. Instead, I swiped up both books and skated straight for the open library door, my back to the men, my skin tingling as with the arrows of discovery pinioning my body. But neither called out. Neither looked. Neither noticed me, someone who was no more important than the other furniture in the room.

  At the door, I slipped into the dim alleys of shelving. Bee glided in after me. We skittered to the back aisle and froze there as the headmaster’s dog walked straight down the central aisle and into the headmaster’s office. We saw his figure flash by, but he never looked down the side alleys to see our shapes huddling in the shadows. Bee touched my wrist to claim her sketchbook. I handed it to her. As for the other book, the one I’d been forced to pick up, I felt all I could do was place it on a shelf and hope the headmaster and his dog and servant would think it had been misfiled.

  As I raised it, I read its boldly stamped title: Lies the Romans Told.

  Was there truly a book written on the venerable theme of lying Romans? Here, all along, I had just thought it a figure of speech, as one might say hot-tempered Celts, sharp Fula bankers, war-loving Iberians, fashionably rude Parisi, or noble Kushites. Obviously only a person of Kena’ani ancestry would even have bothered to write an essay on lying Romans, because out of all their ancient enemies, the Romans had hated and maligned us the most. The memory of Rome’s empire was revered in histories today, even among the descendants of the many Celtic peoples and nations that had battled the imperial legions so fiercely centuries ago. After all, what would Europa be without Roman roads, the public sewers, and extensive aqueducts? Here in Adurnam, as most everywhere in Europa, we spoke a mixed language whose roots were Old Latin. Driven by curiosity—what else could you expect from a cat?—I flipped open the cover to the title page, bold black print on white paper repeating the title and recording the author’s name.

  Daniel Hassi Barahal.

  My father’s name.

  Bee pinched me back to earth.

  The headmaster’s assistant clip-clapped briskly back along the central aisle without seeing us and out into the formal library. He shut the door into the library hall behind him.

  I knew I ought to leave the book, but I could not bear to. I dropped it into my schoolbag and grabbed Bee’s sketchbook to thrust in beside it. We hurried down the back aisle and crept into the headmaster’s office. The clock ticked faithfully on. At the door leading into the corridor, I bent to listen at the keyhole.

  No one moved in the corridor beyond.

  A hoarse voice behind us whispered, “Rei vindicatio.”

  We bolted out of the office, shutting the door behind us, and stood panting and trembling in the empty corridor.

  “That couldn’t have been the poet’s head!” Bee touched the door, as if to make sure it separated us from whatever had spoken inside.

  A rush like streaming water poured through my body, the sensation of dizziness and drowning so strong I could not speak. Bee’s face was shining from exertion and triumph and nerves, and suddenly I knew I was about to start laughing hysterically. I ran to the marble stairs, Bee right behind me. We had to clutch the wooden railing as we descended at a stately pace simply to stop ourselves from keeling over with the weight of the guffaws we must hold inside. I could not look at her. Meeting her eye would be fatal. From the stairs, we dashed across the glass-roofed inner court and tumbled into the high, haughty vault of the entrance hall with its carved plants.

  “There you are! Late for luncheon. Running about unattended! What has the headmaster had to say to you?”

  Maestra Madrahat uncoiled herself from the proctor’s bench placed to survey the entrance hall; one teacher or attendant was always stationed on the bench when college was in session to watch for pupils sneaking about where they weren’t allowed.

  I leaped into the breach, not needing to feign the breathless fervor of a chastened penitent who has barely escaped the lash, because my heart was pounding so hard I could scarcely suck in enough air to talk, and my pulse was rushing in my ears like a whispering voice: Had the head of Bran Cof spoken? Did my father write that book?

  I could babble with the best of them. “He spoke to us, maestra. See poor Beatrice’s tears! He said to accompany him down to luncheon. But a ribbon on my slipper broke, and I had to pause to see if I might fix it. So he came ahead and we stayed behind. Now we are here.”

  This stream of words made her frown, but my statement was so unexceptional she could not protest. I stared at the stolid turnip adorning the wall relief, avoiding Bee’s face altogether lest I entirely lose my composure and burst into uncontrollable snorts of laughter fueled by excitement, relief, and the frightening memory of that disturbing whisper.

  A huge crash, plates dropping and smashing on the floor, splintered the air, followed by shrieks of surprise and shouts of startled laughter from the dining hall. Even the maestra flinched at the tremendous sound. Bee hid her face in her hands, shoulders quivering. Hot tears started out of my eyes as I bit my lower lip. Hard.

  In the dining hall, everyone began talking at once.

  I had not taken three breaths before two figures appeared at the dining hall entrance.

  The maestra muttered, “Clumsy cow! How long have I been telling them they must hire a better class of servants rather than these used-up, unsightly widows of crippled soldiers!”

  Bee sucked in her breath as hard as if she’d just been knifed under the ribs. I thought she meant to ruin everything by spitting in the maestra’s bitter face, but instead she looked toward the arched entrance. Her expression altered, brightened; indeed, she positively glowed like the spring sun rising.

  Maester Amadou emerged from the dining hall at a slow walk, supporting an elderly serving woman. The old dame was clearly rattled and unsteady on her feet; one of her hands was streaked with blood from where she had taken a gash.

  He guided her across the room toward us. Bee became practically refulgent. No trading vessel’s captain could have appeared as ecstatically delirious at seeing land in the wake of a mastripping storm.

  But he was not looking at Bee.

  “You are just the one to know what to do, Maestra Madrahat,” he said in a mild accent tuned with a musical soporiferousness. “The ancilla needs medical attention. She has cut her hand on the crockery.”

  The old woman turned a glazed look up to his face. I wasn’t sure if she was infatuated or in shock from blood loss. Yet, after all, she looked old and weary and pale, and if Bee had known what I had just been thinking, she would have kicked me and I would have deserved the kicking.

  “If she had not clumsily dropped the tray, she would not have cut herself,” said the maestra ungraciously.

  Maester Amadou smiled the comment into oblivion. “While it was indeed she who dropped the tray, it was not the ancilla’s fault, maestra. I had a leg stretched out in an inconsiderate fashion. The ancilla stumbled over my rude foot.”

  The old woman gave him a startled look, which only I noticed because both Bee and the maestra could not take their eyes off his smile. He was not a particularly tall young man—he was barely taller than I was, although it was true I was tall for a woman—and he looked extremely well in his fashionable clothes, a tailored dash jacket of indigo cloth and a patterned kerchief tied at his neck in the informal style known as “the Buccaneer.”

  “If a physician could be called, maestra? Perhaps someone to sit with the ancilla until the physician arrives so she does not faint? I would do it, but I think it is not allowed for men to enter
the kitchen, is it not?”

  “It is not, indeed!” said the maestra. “To mingle so freely! Well, I will just take her back there and let one of the cooks sit with her until a physician can be brought from the women’s hospital.”

  “In recompense for my inconsiderateness,” he added, “my family will reimburse any fees required by the physician as well as the cost of replacing the broken dishes. I am sure the ancilla will be back at work as soon as she is able and that her position will be held open for her given that the fault was all mine.”

  Bee sighed audibly.

  The serving woman flushed to the roots of her silver hair.

  Even I was mildly impressed by this daunting performance, beneath which Maestra Madrahat was entirely drowned. She retreated as if on an inexorable outgoing tide, bearing the injured ancilla with her.

  Maester Amadou politely addressed his comments to both of us.

  “Are you coming in?” he asked without a trace of self-consciousness in the face of Bee’s smile, which would have rendered unconscious any other young man. “There is room at the table with my sisters, if you would have in your heart the willingness to share our benches with us.”

  I saw by Bee’s blush that we would accept and we would be pleased and we would eat our luncheon sitting at the table of Maester Amadou and that afterward, for the next week at least, I would hear his praises sung and spoken all day and whispered of into the late hours of the night in our shared bed until clawing off my ears would seem a less agonizing fate.

  However, as I was the eldest Maestressa Hassi Barahal, even if by a mere two months, it was my place to accept or reject the invitation on behalf of myself and my dearest cousin.

  “How kind, but”—Bee’s dainty foot pressed down on my left slipper and began to really squish my little toe—“ah! Of course we would be delighted to join you.” She eased off. I forced a smile as my toe throbbed. “Is there still yam pudding? It’s my favorite.”