Cold Magic (Untitled Kate Elliott Series #1)

by Kate Elliott

  I sat by the hearth and brushed off my skirts, shaking off my concealment.

  “There she is,” said Roderic.

  Legate Amadou Barry walked over. “I hope your rest was a peaceful one, maestressa.”

  “What happened to that soldier?”

  “Blooded by cold steel. We had a few minor injuries, but he alas is dead. We’ll leave immediately after the camp comes down. You’ll ride at the center of the formation lest their crossbowmen decided to take a shot at you. However, it seems we’ve driven them off, for they are nowhere to be seen this morning.”

  A man had died on account of me.

  Blessed Tanit, make his passing gentle and his journey an easy one. Give peace to his family.

  The low-hanging clouds made gray of the world. Our mood as we set out had the harsh tone of untuned, jangling strings. Later, it began to rain.

  The next day in the late afternoon, without further incident, we reached Adurnam.

  28

  No one had warned Bee. A servant opened a door, and I entered the sitting room behind Amadou. At first, his body shielded me from her view. I beheld a spacious chamber lit by many lamps against the encroaching dusk. The walls were painted with chevrons and angled stripes in red, black, and yellow. An oak mantel carved with lizards capped a brick fireplace inset with a circulating stove; the fire within radiated so much heat that I began to sweat, and to think about how filthy I was. I could not catch my breath.

  On one of the Roman-style couches sat a proud-looking woman no older than Aunt Tilly, wearing embroidered damask robes whose vivid orange and green shone. Her elaborate coiffure of braids was complemented by gold earrings shaped like hoops that dangled to her shoulder. She was an elegant, graceful, beautiful woman of Afric ancestry; Amadou resembled her. The twin sisters were seated on stools on opposite sides of a table, stringing beads and coins and other small objects onto a chain. Both set down their work and glanced up with bright smiles.

  “Amadou!” they cried, and then they glimpsed Roderic, behind me, and looked away.

  As Amadou walked forward to greet his aunt, I saw Bee seated on the other couch holding a sketchbook on her lap and a pencil in her left hand. Her thunderous frown, directed at the open page, made me giggle, in some part with delight but also because after all this time I was so desperately relieved to see her alive and well. Yet what was she so angry about?

  She heard my chortle. She looked up. With a deafening shriek, she flung sketchbook and pencil halfway across the room as she leaped up. Her expression entirely transformed, she charged across the space between us and threw herself into my arms. I would have wept, but Bee’s embrace was so crushing I could barely get air into my lungs much less find breath for sobs.

  We stood this way for a while, smashed together, holding tight, my cane pressed between us. I could not think. We were reunited. That was all that mattered.

  Eventually, I opened my eyes. Over her head, I watched Roderic making his courtesies to the aunt, who clearly found him as charming as he found himself. Amadou pulled up two wooden stools with legs carved to become antelopes, and the men sat down in front of his aunt. Rory smiled at the twins as Amadou bent forward to confer with his aunt, who held his right hand between hers.

  Bee must have felt my attention shift. She released me from the vise. I took in a long gasping breath, then staggered forward, aware I had snubbed the woman who had sheltered Bee. But she was gracious, and her nieces seemed genuinely if shyly pleased to see me again, although I am sure I had not ever been kind enough to them at the academy to deserve their generous greeting.

  “You remember my half brother Roderic, Beatrice,” I said, hoping I would not have to kick her. “It’s been ever so many years since we last saw him.”

  She fixed her full-bore stare on me, drilling for secrets. Then she swept over to him.

  “How could I possibly forget dear Rory!” With a flourish, she kissed him smartly on either cheek and rather more warmly than he had clearly expected.

  He glanced at me as if for aid in dealing with a flower whose beauty might hide poisonous thorns.

  Bee stepped back from him and eyed Rory an instant more, then cast a look toward Amadou so brimming with fulmination that I would have laughed if she had not appeared ready to stick a knife in him… or to kiss him. It was difficult to tell. He pressed a palm to his forehead, realized he was doing so, and looked to his aunt with a plea.

  “Please sit,” his aunt said. “This is unexpected.”

  Water was brought, then coffee and candied ginger, boska, and cherries. Amadou described, succinctly, our meeting at Cold Fort. He was clearly concerned that Lord Marius had not yet rejoined us, and his aunt took the opportunity to suggest she and he go to the factotum’s office and see about sending a messenger to the prince’s court in Adurnam. The twins likewise were dragged along on this expedition. It was done so smoothly that I had scarcely realized she had deliberately engineered matters to leave us alone, when Bee stung.

  “Who are you, really?” She rose with fists on hips, arms akimbo, to glare at Roderic. “Come along to charm my innocent cousin into calling you her brother.”

  He blithely transferred himself to the nearest couch, stretched out his long legs, and leaned back with arms crossed. “I do not need to defend what is true.”

  The battle of wills commenced as they stared each other down. Obviously, neither was going to blink first.

  “He really is my brother,” I said, running a hand up and down the smooth length of the cane that had been given to me by an eru who had called me “cousin.” “Or at least he could be. If we share a sire.”

  “The hair is like,” she admitted grudgingly. “You’ve some resemblance about the face. Perhaps. Why do you have a cane, Cat?”

  “To protect myself at night. You won’t believe what has happened to me.”

  “I might,” she said ominously, like a storm about to break. She flung herself down beside Rory, ignoring him in exactly the way she ignored her little sisters when she wasn’t interested in what they were doing. Her gaze followed me as I crossed the room to collect her sketchbook and pencil and returned them to her. I sat on the other side of her on the couch, running my fingers over the embroidered silk. I was sure I had never touched cloth as expensive as this in all my days. The simple layout of the house gave the appearance of modesty, rather like Amadou Barry, but one could see in the quality of its appointments that the family did not maintain a more opulent house only because they chose not to.

  “I might believe anything now,” she went on darkly, pressing the sketchbook to her chest. “I might believe my own father and mother handed my dear cousin over to wicked magisters under false pretenses, knowing they had bound themselves years ago to a contract that actually called for me to be handed over to the mage House.”

  “Did you know?” I whispered, fingering a perfect rose made of tiny red stitches.

  “Can you possibly imagine I would have stood by meekly and let them sacrifice you in my place had I known?”

  Tears burned. “No,” I choked out. “I never did believe it, not for all this time.”

  She grasped my hand. I twisted the bracelet she had given me off my wrist and placed it back onto hers, the mark of our compact. Thus we made our peace.

  “We were both duped,” she raged, turning the bracelet around and around her wrist. “Lied to. Used. I am so angry I could—” Her expressive face sheared through so many emotions so quickly that it was dizzying.

  Rory leaned forward. “You could what? I am all ears.”

  “It was a figure of speech, you wretched idiot,” she said with the same dismissive scorn she heaped on her sisters when they annoyed her. “There’s nothing I can do but sit here and be grateful for these very fine and high-placed and fabulously wealthy people who have been so generously willing to offer a sad, impoverished lowly Barahal shelter, food, and a bed.”

  She turned quite, quite pink, as with shame.

  “Bee!�
� I said.

  She jumped to her feet and strode to the window, her back to me. “I know nothing of what you have suffered, and yet here I am speaking only of my own mild difficulties. I’m terribly selfish.”

  Astonishingly, she burst into tears. Real, raw tears.

  I ran to her and hugged her, and she pushed me away and cursed so frightfully that I laughed. She wiped her eyes and threw one killing look toward Rory, who had closed his eyes and was pretending to not be there.

  “Bee! What happened?” I demanded.

  “No, you tell me first,” she cried. “Tell me what they did to you!”

  “I’ll tell you everything, but I want to hear your story first so I can start making a plan.”

  She set a palm on the perfectly polished glass of one of the windowpanes. The garden, in winter, wore its green yew hedges as its brightest tone; leafless fruit trees lined a path toward several round graneries partially obscured by willow hurdles set around them like a stockade. Beyond lay stables and laundry. The high stone boundary walls were obscured by trimmed evergreen yew trees, guardian against magic. For a house in Adurnam, they had a lot of land.

  I waited, and she began.

  “You can imagine what happened after the magister hauled you away that night. Mother and Father did not sleep. A few chests were packed with clothes, necessaries, and Father’s private correspondence.”

  “What happened to the package Andevai—the magister—gave to Uncle?”

  “They burned it first thing, all of it. They threw that book you found on the fire, too.”

  “Lies the Romans Told?”

  “Yes. But when they weren’t looking, I pulled it out and hid it behind Uncle Daniel’s journals. Which they left behind.”

  “They left behind the journals? How could they?”

  She shrugged. “We left the house before dawn and went straight to the harbor. A Kena’ani captain was obliged to offer us passage when Father invoked the old custom of motherhouse. While we waited in a cabin on the ship, Mama and Papa told me the truth. Thirteen years ago, a contract was forced onto the Hassi Barahal clan by Four Moons House. The magisters held evidence that the Barahals had spied for Camjiata during his campaigns while at the same time selling information to the princes and mage Houses allied against Camjiata. In exchange for keeping the evidence of this double-dealing a secret, the magisters had the right to take possession of the eldest Barahal daughter at any time before she reached her majority. Me, Cat. It was me they wanted, not you.”

  “I know.”

  “How could Mama and Papa think I would ever forgive them, once I found out?”

  “Bee…”

  “Let me finish. The tide turned and the ship sailed. I sweet-talked the harbor pilot into smuggling me on board the pilot’s skiff when he returned to harbor. The ship could not turn against the tide, so they went on to Gadir without me. I hope they think I cast myself overboard and drowned!”

  “Bee!”

  “I don’t mean it! Not for the girls’ sake. I left a note. I didn’t want Hanan and Astraea worrying. They were so scared, for I had to drag them from their beds and make them dress in the dark in the terrible cold. Shiffa and Evved and Cook went, too, but I knew Pompey and Callie remained behind. I walked home. But you know, Cat, there was almost no food left in the root cellar, and coal enough for only a week, and no money at all. I can’t imagine how we were meant to survive the winter had we not been forced to flee!”

  “But—”

  “Pompey went back to his family in the country. I gave him some things he could sell, for I thought it only fair he should have a severance wage. Callie has nowhere to go, you know. She’s got no kin. I couldn’t turn her out on the street, so we sold off a few things Mama and Papa had left behind. Once I was certain we had sufficient coal to heat the kitchen and grain to keep two of us for some months—for Callie knows exactly where to find the cheapest victuals at the tradesmen’s market—then I went to the academy and asked to speak to the headmaster. I asked him to contact Four Moons House for me so I could exchange myself for you.”

  “Bee!”

  “But first he made me describe the ceremony to him, the one we witnessed, when the jelly was brought in.”

  “It’s djeli,” I said. Then: “But you were sent upstairs. You didn’t witness it.”

  “I peeked! After I described it, he told me that the law allows the head of the house to dispose of any minor under his rule at his pleasure, which means Uncle had a perfect right to marry you off against your will while you were still underage. Worse, a marriage chained by magic cannot be severed under any circumstances except by the death of one of the people involved.” She caught my wrist in a bruising grasp. “They tried to kill you, didn’t they, Cat? Didn’t they?”

  My voice was a hoarse whisper. “Yes.”

  “But you escaped those hateful mages! You escaped, Cat, and you came back. I knew it was what you would do.”

  She was flushed and magnificent, refulgent with indignation and pride. As if the sorcery of beauty had called, the door opened and Amadou Barry, Roman legate, stepped into the chamber. Seeing her, he halted as if he had slammed into stone. The chamber could have erupted into a blazing storm of fiery flying pigs, and he would have had eyes for only Beatrice.

  “You are not wanted,” she said imperiously, with a flick of her hand.

  He opened his mouth, closed it, and went out. The door closed with a snap behind him.

  “Well, there’s a change of heart,” I said, reflecting that Andevai would have argued instead of retreating. “Once, you did little else but moon over his handsome eyes and pleasing manners.”

  “I do not see him. I do not recognize him.”

  “You’re so flushed I think I am going to have to fan myself. What happened?”

  “She loves him, she loves him,” said Rory in exactly the tone thirteen-year-old Hanan would use to tease her older sister.

  She crossed her arms and glowered at him. “Who do you think would win, dear cousin, if it came down to battle between you and me?”

  He laughed without stirring in the least, entirely unaffected by a stare that would have obliterated any other man. “You’re delectable when you’re angry. I could just eat you up.”

  “You could just try,” she retorted. “You remind me of that little beast Astraea, unrepentantly spoiled.”

  “And you remind me of my younger sister—not Cat, but the other one—the one who is tiresome and self-absorbed and who never shuts up, yowling day and night for attention.”

  I broke in before the duel got ugly. “Bee, he’s not joking. He could eat you up. Now tell me what else the headmaster said.”

  “He told me that by no means should I return home. That Four Moons House would likely come after me. He sent his dog—”

  “His dog?” asked Rory, licking his lips.

  “His assistant, the albino from the east,” she said impatiently. “Anyway, the dog went scouting and came back to report that soldiers wearing the livery of Four Moons House had stationed themselves outside our house. So the headmaster offered to protect me. You can imagine my surprise when he summoned Amadou Barry. Who is no student. He’s an agent working for Rome.”

  “He’s a legate.”

  “Yes, that’s how the headmaster addressed him.” Her lips quirked up in an ironic, even sarcastic, smile. “And because I am very clever, I discovered that Legate Amadou Barry is the one who brought that book to the academy.”

  “Lies the Romans Told? Why would a Roman legate possess that book?” But I recalled Shiffa’s words. “Unless it was a codebook. Written by a Barahal. You don’t think—?”

  “That he came to the academy to ingratiate himself with Barahal girls? Whose parents might know something of it?” She fluttered her lashes, all honey, and then smiled a cruel smile. “I told them Papa burned it.”

  “How did you come here?”

  “I had little choice. The headmaster kindly informed me that not even a mage H
ouse will invade the residence of a family connected to the nobility of Rome. Yet you may suppose that however safe I am here, however well I have been treated, I am but a pretty bird in a pretty cage. I endured it because I knew I had to stay out of the hands of the mage House until you returned.”

  I looked at her narrowly. “That can’t be the only reason.”

  She flushed. “Yes, I got to see Amadou every day, and speak with him familiarly, every day. So I bided here quite peacefully and even eagerly as the weeks passed, knowing there was a separate watch posted by the headmaster’s loyal dog on our house to make sure Callie was not disturbed. To keep an eye for your return. And then”—she trembled—“and then he kissed me.”

  Rory grinned. “The man stinks of love for you, darling.”

  “Don’t be crude, Rory,” I snapped.

  “Nothing can go on here without his aunt—he calls her ‘Mother’—hearing of it,” she murmured. “She spoke privately to me. It was the kindness that was the worst of it. I was a very fine young woman, she said, but it was certainly impossible that a young man who was on his mother’s side the grandson of a prince and on his father’s side a grandson out of the Valerii—”

  “The patrician Valerii?” I cried.

  “Not only that, the Valerii Messalans.”

  “By the way you are steaming from your ears, I believe this term means something to you that it cannot mean to me,” remarked Roderic languidly.

  “Descendants of the Roman consul and commander who obtained the only significant victory Rome ever claimed over Qart Hadast,” I said, pressing my hands to my breast. “They are the worst enemies of the Kena’ani. Also, they never marry outside their patrician clans.”

  “It seems they do. Amadou’s mother was born into a princely Fula lineage. His father’s father was also of noble Fula birth. They are bankers, too, hugely wealthy. He is the one who married a Roman woman of the Valerii gens. But I don’t really care about that, Cat. The war with the Romans happened so long ago. His aunt made it very clear, in so very kindly a manner, that we Barahals were beneath them. Any alliance between us could not be contemplated. And then he… he… Later he found me, and he spoke such ardent words to me that I became quite dizzy. He offered me a flower marriage, as if I would entertain for a single moment the idea of sleeping in his bed for one year only afterward to be cast off like a common prostitute, for you know that is what people think of us Phoenician women. I told him just what he could do with his insulting offer. Then he apologized most profusely and spoke most bitterly of how unforgivable his own behavior had been and how he had never meant to offer me an insult but was only overcome by his feelings for me.”