by Kate Elliott
At the toll station on the north side of the ford, our House seal was all the payment we needed to pass. He did not speak one word for the rest of the day as we rolled along in a silence so tense it seemed I could taste it. Nor did he speak when, near dusk, as frost rimed the trees and the roofs of a tidy village, we rolled into the spacious court of an inn so empty of customers I realized it must serve only the Housed and their agents. He said nothing when the steward of the house came to escort me away to a finely appointed chamber on the second floor, overlooking a garden and, beyond it, the River Tarrant, whose wide loop we would cross again at dawn.
I took off gloves and overcoat and laid them over the back of a chair, against which I rested the black cane, and then washed my hands and face. Three braziers filled with red coals heated the room, and four candles encased in glass lanterns gave light. I ate alone, from a tray set on the elegant small table: The food was excellent, and there was plenty of it, more than I could eat. A washbasin, a nightdress, and an over-robe and fresh undergarments were brought by an exceedingly polite elderly woman, and my own clothing taken away to be tidied. As the door closed behind her, I heard a distinctive click. I went to the window and opened the shutters. It was a long drop to the ground, and outside the glass panes, bars blocked any attempts at a hasty exit. From somewhere below, I heard men laughing as at a shared joke. I closed the window and tried the door, but it was locked from the outside.
I was his prisoner.
I threw myself on the bed and wept.
After the worst spasms had passed and I wiped my eyes and nose with a handkerchief, I forced myself to sit at the dressing table, regarding my wan face in the flecked mirror. I had looked worse, I am sure. Once or twice. I unpinned my hair to let it fall free, and as I brushed it the required one hundred strokes, I listened to the ordinary noises coming from the ground floor, where magisters must bide if they wished to be warm. Maybe he was in the chamber below me, preparing to come up, as was his duty. And mine.
With a grimace, I padded over to the chair to get the cane. As soon as I grasped the handle, the ghost sword flowered into existence. I almost laughed. Magic hides itself! Cane by day, it became a sword by night, when danger most threatens. I paced out an exercise: draw, return, draw, guard, and then into footwork, although I was careful not to stamp too hard. At the end, panting, I spun and clipped off the wick of one of the candles. The flame snapped out as by magic. This was a blade!
The cheery flame of the other candles caught me as with hope. The braziers breathed warmth. What a pleasant, fire-ridden room! Exactly the place no cold mage would care to enter. I blew out two of the candles and carried the fourth back to the bedside table, tucked myself in, and blew out the last candle. With the sword beside me, I fell asleep.
12
Beneath the comfort of warm covers, one’s drowsy dawn thoughts wandered pleasantly. Our upcoming birthday celebration was sure to be memorable. Because the family could afford only one birthday feast, I had agreed to wait until solstice to share it with Bee. She had asked for and we had been promised an actual balloon ride. Imagine how it would feel to rise above the rough slumber of Adurnam at dawn! We might hope to see the wide marshy flats of the Sieve spreading beyond the city’s skirts, the distant rise of the Downs, and, if we were fortunate, even maybe so far as the mouth of the Rhenus River to the southwest where it spilled into the Bay of Brittany…
“Maestra?”
The truth poured over me like ice water. I sat bolt upright as a girl with tightly curled, short black hair stepped into the room with my clothing draped over an arm.
She startled back. “I’m sorry, maestra. I didn’t realize you were still abed. If I may say so, what lovely hair you have, maestra.”
Her cheerful smile coaxed an answering smile from me as I brushed black strands out of my face. “That is very kind of you,” I said as I climbed out from under the covers. “Is it so very late already? The bed is quite comfortable. It smells of herbs.”
“So it does,” she agreed cheerfully. “I myself sewed sachets and bound them with amulets to keep out bedbugs and other such irritations.”
Not all irritations, though.
My husband strode in as though it were his chamber, but pulled up short like a dog yanked back on its leash. The heat from the glowing coals in the braziers was sucked away in a sharp inhalation. He stared at me as though speech had been ripped from his throat.
I grabbed for my sword, lying on the bed, but all I found in my hand was the cane.
He flinched back as from a blow and rapped his own cane on the floor. “Are you not ready?”
The serving girl goggled at him. He wore an exceptionally fine dash jacket that, fitted through the torso, fell from the hips in loose folds to his knees. This one was paneled in a gold fabric set against a green of such elegance that even I took in a startled breath, because the fabric was so impressive, not because the buttery shine of the beaded gold collar caught high up against his neck looked so very well against the rich brown of his complexion.
I drew my cane across my nightdress like a shield. “Are we in a hurry?”
He blinked. “Ah. We are. Yes. Also, there is a chance the prince’s wardens may pursue anyone they believe tied to the incident…. It may not have been so very wise for me to go to the academy to find out what properties of the airship I could best exploit, although I admit I found out exactly what I needed.”
“Wouldn’t a cold mage deflate any balloon sack just by standing alongside it?” I asked, then bit my tongue.
“That’s part of it,” he said enthusiastically, then stopped and glanced at the young woman, who quickly bowed her head. “It’s best to assume we might be followed.”
I remembered the mob, the smoke stinging in my nostrils, the beat of flames against the sky. The howls of anger. Maybe my color changed.
He nodded, as if I had spoken. “Just so. The carriage is waiting.” He went out.
The girl smiled in a sisterly way. “He’s not a kinsman of yours, is he?”
“No! Not at all. Not in a kinsman blood relation kind of way. We met for the first time two days ago.”
She did not take offense at my tone. Evidently, like Bee, she could interpret my mood and draw her own conclusions. “He has beautiful clothes, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“The Houses are rich; everyone knows that.” I had not meant the words to come out with such sarcasm.
She chuckled. “Surely we do know that, who serve them. But forgive me, maestra. He said the carriage is waiting urgent, and I’m blabbering on. What help can I offer? I’ll brush your hair, if you wish.”
I smiled. “I’d like that. Just a few strokes, for I must finish quickly.”
She was a good companion on an anxious morning, because her words flowed in a soothing spill. “My brother, he’s an apprentice at a tailoring shop in Adurnam, where you must have come from. When he visits at festival, he brings us the tailoring books and the fashion books to look over. I know what he would say about that one. If you don’t mind my saying so.”
Leaning closer, I murmured, “What would your brother say?”
“Privately, I’m sure,” she said in the voice of a person thrilled to be offered a venue for speaking her mind instead of remaining mute before arrogant cold mages. “Privately, he would say that the finest of clothes must be worn with a coolness that does not draw attention. A man who draws attention is trying too hard.”
A brutal hammering rose from downstairs, like someone pounding on a door. Startled, I jerked away from the brush.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, twisting the hair neatly up and pinning it into place. “I hope no one heard me. I meant no offense.”
“None was taken in this chamber, I am sure.” I was sorry to lose her lively presence, but I knew what I would need to get through another day. “Is it possible for you to go downstairs to the kitchens and pack a basket of bread and cheese and apples, or anything? I would be most grateful to you and
to those in the kitchens.”
She favored me with a look heavy with sudden pity. “Blessings on you.” She looked around the chamber, which in the light of day resembled nothing as much as a luxurious prison house with its barred windows and iron-bound door. “I suppose you’ll need them.”
It proved an exceedingly long, joltingly uncomfortable, and tediously silent day. After the incident with the shattered cup, I was unwilling to attempt conversation lest I inadvertently anger him, and despite that brief discussion of airships in my chamber, he now displayed no interest in me whatsoever. He even declined my offer to share with him the contents of the basket: an apple, walnuts, two loaves of fresh bread, a wedge of pungent cheese, and two halves of a chicken neatly wrapped in waxed paper. Mostly, I thought about my family. Why this had fallen on me I did not know, but I would do my duty because I loved my family and they loved me. I would do my duty to honor the memory of my father and mother.
We rolled at twilight out of the Great North Wood and past willow hurdles fencing off gardens and then alongside clusters of round cottages grouped in compounds and beyond them substantial rectangular houses set back individually from the road. We had arrived in Southbridge, that part of the old Roman town of Londun south of the ancient bridge.
The carriage slowed as we turned onto the high road. The road widened to form a square around an old Roman temple. The high road plunged north toward the bridge, unseen in the gloom except for the distant glitter of watch-lights, while we took the rightward passage. We passed an inn whose gateway was lit by twin lanterns, a row of shops closed and shuttered, and a wide, paved court that sheltered a smithy still glowing within, gates flung open to let heat roil out. A burly man covered in a smith’s apron strolled into view and lounged at the gate, thick arms crossed as he stared at our carriage. From within the smithy, the syncopated beat of a hammer rang, crossed and elaborated with the lighter rhythms of other pounding: the chatter of a higher-pitched hammer, the sassy countervoice of women pounding grain in a neighboring courtyard. The blacksmith simply watched, turning with our passage as if the force of his gaze were driving us out beyond the fiery furnace that was his purview.
Beyond the smithy, the road forked again, a dirt lane ribboning off into fields while the paved turnpike shot east toward Cantiacorum and eventually to Havery, some days’ travel away. We passed more whitewashed houses and then a fenced-in area that in summer was certainly a grand garden. Beyond wall and garden lay a burned and blackened ruin, a once-noble structure with a courtyard and more buildings in back, all scorched, roofs fallen in, black soot everywhere. We pulled up in front of the smashed gate.
The eru opened the carriage door and pulled down the step, and my husband climbed out. I hurried after him as he strode past the gateway into the courtyard and halted at the ruined threshold of the main building. He pulled a spark of light out of the air and let it swell into a ball; this he sent spinning over the ruins, like a dog let run on a long leash. By the look of scorched and broken furniture tumbled in heaps or smashed under fallen beams, the place had gone down fast, and recently. In places, the floor had collapsed to reveal the shattered remains of a network of ceramic pipes by which the Houses warmed their domiciles. It was an adaptation of the Roman hypocaust, providing a constant flow of heated air beneath the floorboards. Andevai scraped at the char with the tip of his cane, pulling an object closer. He crouched to fish it off the ground and, rising, dangled a cord from one finger, strung with the fragments of cowrie shells and the crumbling spars of burned vegetal matter.
“Arson,” he said.
He crushed the remains of the amulet in his hand, then shook its dust to the ground with murmured words I did not recognize. He carried a small silver snuffbox in his sleeve, but it contained salt, not snuff, and he pinched a few crystals between thumb and middle finger and scattered this over the threshold.
A cold wind rose out of the north. A light rain, spiced with fingers of stinging sleet, misted down out of the sky.
“Follow us after you have scouted the perimeter,” he said to the coachman.
I walked beside him back into town. Every house that we passed had shutters closed against the lowering night. The hilt of the ghost sword came alive in my hand, but apparently he still could not see it.
We reached the edge of the square and walked to the other inn. The smith waited in his doorway, arms still crossed, speaking no word of welcome. My husband did not acknowledge him, nor did he stray too close to the smithy, a place of power opposed to his own cold magic, even if no person who stirred the embers of fire magic could raise an equivalent level of power without being physically consumed by an uncontrollable blast of elemental fire.
No footman or liveried servant waited at the inn’s entrance to greet distinguished customers. As we approached the open gates, the lanterns sputtered and went out. I could barely distinguish the griffin talisman painted on the inn’s sign. We walked into a courtyard surrounded by the inn buildings and their double tier of balconies. At the door to the common house, he was stymied because no servant waited to open the heavy door, but I was not too proud to fix a hand around the door handle and drag it open.
“Catherine!” He made a gesture of protest.
I ignored him and crossed the threshold into a large, warm, and smoky room fitted with long tables and benches. It was at this hour empty except for the tempting smell of chicken broth and baking squash. Through a second door, which was propped open by a brick, I could see into an adjoining supper room where people were dining and chattering. With a frown, Andevai entered. The blazing fire in the hearth sank like a shy child hiding his face from strangers.
A man carrying a tray piled with dishes emerged from the supper room and stopped stock-still to stare at us, like an actor pretending shock in a Roman comedy. He cleared his throat uneasily. “How can I help you, maester? Maestra?”
“What happened to the House inn?” Andevai demanded. “When I last passed through here ten days ago, I stayed there.”
“It burned, maester.”
“I can see that it burned. It was destroyed by arson.”
“I wouldn’t know about that, maester.”
“I don’t suppose you would. No one ever does. When did it happen?”
“Nine days ago, maester. A rare conflagration.”
The fire flickered, struggling to stay alive. “So it seems. It is now too late for us to travel farther upon the turnpike and seek the next House accommodation.”
The innkeeper’s gaze flashed to the fire, and his breathing quickened. “I ask pardon for not recognizing you, Magister. We never see magisters such as yourself in my inn, begging your pardon. Indeed, Griffin Inn is no place you’ll be accustomed to, Magister. We’ve no specially heated rooms for cold mages like yourself, like the House inns are fitted with.” The man gestured with the tray toward the fire. “We heat with hearths and braziers. Anyway, we’ve only one room remaining for tonight, an attic room with several cots. Not even a proper bed.”
“You can clear a chamber for our use.”
The man took in an angry breath. “That I can’t, Magister. I can’t turn out those guests who’ve already made their arrangements and paid in advance. I’m not able to collect tithes from my neighbors as the House inn did, with the threat of House retribution backing up their demands should any not pay the tax. Anyway, Magister, even besides the attic room, we’ve only four sleeping rooms, none of them to your liking, I am sure.”
“You are deliberately insulting me.”
“I am telling you the cold truth, Magister. Maybe you choose to take it as an insult, if you’re not accustomed to hearing the truth spoken to you.” The man’s knuckles were clenched to a pallor around the tray. It took a courageous man to speak so frankly to a cold mage.
The fire sighed to embers. The hilt of the ghost sword grew cold against my palm.
“We’ll take the attic room,” I said, too loudly, because I did not intend to see the innkeeper’s pewter cups sh
attered in a fit of rage. “We’ll need extra blankets, as many as you have, if you don’t mind, maester. But the principles of convection suggest that hot air rises, so up in the attic we should be warm enough even with no brazier to heat the room.”
The man had expressive eyebrows; one quirked now, cocking up as he examined me. He looked again at Andevai to identify what possible relation we might have, and nodded. “Supper is served in the supper room, maestra. Or must I also address you as Magister?”
“No. Thank you.”
His eyebrows lifted again before he recovered his composure. “I’ll send my niece to show you up when we’re done serving supper, but you’ll have to have your own people carry up your cases or what have you, as we’re shorthanded tonight what with the wedding of my wife’s cousin’s nephew in Londun. I would have shut up the inn and gone over the river myself for the wedding feast if not for—”
A trill of laughter—humanlike but not human—lilted out of the supper room.
The man nodded at me, pointedly not looking at Andevai. “Business is business, maestra. We serve any who pay with hard currency and comport themselves like decent folk. If you’re wanting a wash, there’s a trough out by the stable where you can fill a pitcher. There’ll be a basin up in the room to pour in and wash out of.”
“We will receive a tray of food in our private chamber,” said Andevai abruptly.
The man’s lips thinned. “As I said, Magister, tonight we haven’t the means for private service no matter what I might wish one way or another, for besides the lad out in the stables, it’s just me and my brother’s daughter. She’s tending the kitchen, and I’m running food into the supper room, and soon enough I’ll have customers here in the common room as well to pull drinks for, the usual locals with their music and talk.”
