Cold Iron (Masters & Mages)

by Miles Cameron

  Aranthur shrugged. ‘The price is rising, and you told me yourself that the Disciples use the illegal trade to fund things. Like rebellions, I’m guessing.’ He looked out of the window, his mind clear of the dying assassin. ‘And maybe the thuryx trade, which in fact you’d like to investigate. See? I know when you are lying.’

  Drako laughed. He took the pipe, inhaled deeply, and shook his head.

  ‘Damme,’ he said in his best upper-class accent. ‘Well, guess away, Timos. All I have is guesses. If I could have the Duke of Volta to torture for a day, I’d get it out of him.’

  ‘Torture?’ Aranthur said.

  Drako shrugged. ‘I’m running out of rational, humane options. I don’t like what I did tonight. We try very hard not to kill Easterners … One riot there and the fucking Lion aristos will have a House mob slaughtering them. I don’t have a clue who my adversaries are, and they are already destabilising the Sultan Beik over in Atti. Around a month ago, as we started planting in the Empire, Armea fell. The last two cities on the Attian border went down. They should have held for years – huge, well-stocked fortresses. I don’t even know how they fell. Atti is next, and then us, I guess. I see all the signs that the Disciples are working on us already.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll tell you this much – the whole crystal thing makes no sense.’ He whirled the pipe through the air for emphasis. ‘No sense. Sure, the crystals would have a street value. A good one. Higher than thuryx.’ He shrugged. ‘But my double agent was a major player, and those crystals weren’t worth much more than your family’s farm. Maybe two of them.’ He shrugged. ‘All right, perhaps ten family farms. Still not enough for anyone to die for, or risk an empire or an operation. Yet not only did he die for them, but then they risked their entire covert and arcane structure to search your rooms. Inside the Academy precinct. Every artifact in the Academy was triggered; it was as if the Master meant to announce …’ Drako paused. ‘Meant to announce that he was coming for you. For us. Damn. Maybe that’s exactly what he did. I know nothing about him or how he works.’ He shook his head. ‘Hurry up and learn Safiri so I can take you east.’

  ‘I knew that’s where this was going,’ Aranthur said.

  Drako shrugged. ‘I’ll be going too. The Sultan Beik has begun what looks like the call up of his feudal levies. Our sources in the seraglio say he’s coming for us.’ He shook his head. ‘I know that makes no sense, but the word is …’ He paused. ‘Aranthur Timos, you are too easy to talk to.’

  Aranthur laughed. ‘I was learning something.’

  Drako smiled and smoked. ‘I’m tired of being silent, I suppose. Dangerous form of fatigue. I can’t share the why, right now, and I beg you not to repeat anything I tell you to anyone, including your professors or even Dahlia or, really, your mother.’

  ‘So dire. The world is at stake and only I can save it? Don’t tell my mother?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not that much of a farm boy.’

  Drako flopped back. ‘Timos, the fucking Attians are coming with sabre and drum. In my lifetime,’ he said bitterly. ‘Why? Why can’t they play these games after I’m dead? All I want is to sleep with all the beautiful women and drink all the brandy.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘This is nice stock.’

  ‘My patur’s,’ Aranthur said. ‘And Iralia?’

  Drako shook his head. ‘You don’t need to know. She does her work and you do yours. I do mine.’

  ‘She invited me to visit her.’

  ‘Go right ahead,’ Drako said. ‘Don’t discuss any of this. Here’s ten sequins. Ansu is serious about moving in with you. You know that, eh?’

  Aranthur nodded. ‘I offered.’

  Drako laughed. ‘I didn’t used to believe in the gods.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘I’ll tell you in a year, if we’re all still alive. I will come around more often,’ he said. ‘You really can’t be allowed out by yourself, and Sasan needs …’

  Aranthur raised an eyebrow. ‘You are the one who needs Sasan.’

  ‘True for you. Please be careful, and go armed.’ Drako shrugged. ‘I’d miss you if you ate a blade. I’ll be back tomorrow.’

  ‘Good.’ Aranthur rose, and instead of shaking hands, they embraced. ‘Despite everything, I like you.’

  Drako smiled his crooked smile. ‘Count no man happy until he is dead. Despite which, I have done all right by you.’ He looked out of the window. ‘Fucking Dahlia, though.’

  ‘Is she one of us?’ Aranthur asked.

  Drako shook his head and suddenly he was sober and his eyes were hard.

  ‘Never ask,’ he said.

  Aranthur shook his head. ‘Damn it, Drako. I’ve just discovered that we use torture and you’re willing to hurt a child to get your way. I don’t know enough about our side to play it. What is our side?’ Anger coursed through him and he found his fists clenched. ‘Am I a government informer?’

  Drako smiled crookedly. ‘We’re a conspiracy to save the world. I wasn’t misleading you about that part. We are not a side. I have some pull with the Emperor and General Tribane has more. That’s all. We have friends in the Lightbringers and in the Sultan’s court, and now, in Zhou.’ He shrugged. ‘We sometimes do bad things for good ends. I hope they’re good. Don’t tell me that the Master is right all along, and that he’s the one saving the world.’

  Aranthur felt his heart beat. ‘What?’

  ‘Everyone is the hero in his own romance. Even the Master. Whoever he is.’ He shook his head. ‘I say again – watch your back for a few days. Those two outside the temple were bravos, but they meant business. Family toughs are better trained than Easterner thugs and you have a surprising list of enemies. I’ll ask Verit Roaris to try to get the Da Rosas to take the heat off you. Goodnight.’

  ‘Roaris is … one of us?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘I see you are beginning to understand the politics,’ Drako said with an uneasy smile. ‘Roaris serves his own ends. As do we all. But he’s loyal.’

  The next day dawned too early and Aranthur’s throat burned from too much smoke, but he was in his place at Rasce’s stall, wearing his best doublet because Drako, for all his ambiguity, was usually a true prophet.

  When Rasce was glossy coated and all Aranthur’s tack gleamed with new wax, he heard the inspection party coming along the stalls. He straightened up, coiled his lead rope as the rules insisted, and laid out his tack.

  The inspection party was bigger than it had been the last time. When they were looking at a stall almost fifty paces away in the huge barn, Aranthur noted that the General was with them. He spent the next block of time using his neighbour’s powdered pumice and some oil to clean – really clean – his arming sword. And then he started on his heavy sword. He was scrubbing at the blade, with its deep brown patina, when he realised that it might have an inlay – a steel inlay in a steel blade.

  He was just beginning to doubt his initial observation when Drek Ringkoat said, ‘There’s a mug I know, General.’

  Aranthur shot to his feet and stood at attention.

  Centark Equus said, ‘Trooper Aranthur Timos, Fourth Tagma, City Cavalry, Selected.’

  ‘Trooper Timos,’ General Tribane said. ‘You are hereby promoted to the rank of dekark in the City Cavalry.’

  Aranthur couldn’t help himself. He smiled.

  ‘In addition, for service given freely in a time of emergency, the Emperor has, by purple writ, declared you to be fideles.’

  The General handed him a tightly rolled scroll of heavy vellum.

  Equus nodded. ‘Dekark Timos, we would usually conduct this ceremony on the parade ground, but we have been asked to keep this … private.’

  Aranthur had an inkling why.

  ‘Stand at your ease, Dekark,’ the General said. ‘Syr Timos, will you serve on my courier staff? I believe you own two horses?’

  ‘Yes, General,’ he said.

  She met his eye and his unhidden grin with a slight smile of her own. There was no perfume in evidence.


  ‘You may keep both of them at the Emperor’s expense. I regret to say, however, that if you accept the duty, the odds you will be called up are …’ She paused. ‘Very good.’

  Aranthur had to refuse. Being called to active duty would ruin his school career; he’d never catch up with his peers …

  ‘I accept,’ he said.

  The Jhugj laughed. ‘Told ya,’ he declared. ‘Welcome aboard, boyo.’

  Ten minutes later he was moving Rasce to another part of the huge stable block, closest to the gate, farthest from the palace itself. It took six trips to relocate all of his equipment. He was issued a breastplate, neatly plum brown and requiring little more than wax to keep it clean, a pair of steel gauntlets and a helmet. The helmet was complex, with a riveted dome, and a long tail like a shrimp or lobster might have that went over his back, and a brim with a nose guard.

  A clerk went over his kit. ‘Says here you have a cannone,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Myr,’ he said. ‘A fusil.’

  ‘In the armoury?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Fetch it. You will receive a writ for it and you can keep it with your other gear.’ She gave him a grim smile. ‘I guess they think you will need it, young man.’

  He waited in a line at the armourer’s. There were dozens of men and women getting weapons or having swords sharpened, and since he had waited through the line, he had his own arming sword ground sharp while he waited for another clerk to fetch his cannone.

  The sharpener looked at his sword. ‘Too short for horseback. Nah, bud, I’ll do it for ye, but we don’t usually do non-military crap. Good steel. How sharp?’

  Aranthur shrugged.

  ‘Butter knife? Shaving? Butcher knife?’

  Aranthur shook his head. ‘How would you do it for you?’

  The sharpener made a face. ‘Depends,’ he said, a little annoyed as the line was building up. ‘For cavalry fighting, I’d say butter knife, because it won’t stick in the wound and it won’t get ruined by a couple of hard crosses. Razor sharp is for fools – first good blow and you have a deep nick. Butcher knife …’

  ‘I’ll have butcher knife,’ Aranthur said.

  The cutler rolled his eyes and started sharpening. A page boy brought his cannone.

  Back at his stall, Ringkoat was waiting.

  ‘You know how to shoot that thing?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, syr,’ Aranthur answered.

  The bannerman nodded. ‘Well, come and show me.’

  He led Aranthur to the far wall of the stable block, then through an iron door and along a maze of passages until they could hear both the cough of crossbows and the sharper bark of guns. They went out into the sun, and they were standing behind a long line of un-uniformed men and women with an incredible array of weapons, shooting at distant targets. They had to wait some time for a space on the line. A centark came and led them to a station, which was nothing more than a stone set in the ground with the number 339 carved in it.

  ‘Do not leave this stone,’ the man said. ‘You may fire at will, but you may not leave this stone until I tell you to. If your weapon points anywhere but down the range, I will warn you once. The second time you will be removed, and punished. If you appear to threaten anyone’s life, you will be shot. Is that clear?’

  Aranthur felt fear, but the Jhugj laughed. ‘I know the ropes, Claka. I’ll keep him out of trouble.’

  Claka shrugged and walked to the next soldier.

  Aranthur opened his case and withdrew the weapon. It was well oiled, perfectly polished, and he admired it as he drew it out.

  ‘Whoa!’ Ringkoat said. ‘Very nice. Where’d you get that?’

  Aranthur told the story while he loaded the weapon. He took his time and was careful, and when he was done, he aimed at the distant white sack of sand, and pulled the trigger.

  The lock clatched and the cannone barked instantly.

  ‘Fine,’ Ringkoat said. ‘Don’t make love to it. Load it.’ Nonetheless the dwarf leant forward. ‘That could even be my people’s work.’

  Aranthur loaded faster, faster and faster, through ten rounds. But it grew harder and harder to get the round balls into the muzzle as the powder fouling built up.

  ‘Use the hammer,’ Ringkoat said.

  So Aranthur used the hammer to drive his bullets into the barrel. By the fifteenth shot, he was having to use the little hammer quite hard, actually striking the balls rather than pushing them.

  Something inside the hammer rattled, as if something was loose. But the next time he struck a ball, on round seventeen, the whole hammer was like a baby’s rattle.

  ‘What’s that?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘It’s your pretty gun, not mine,’ the Jhugj said.

  He shook the hammer and the tiny rattle was barely audible over the constant pop and cough of the other weapons. He shrugged.

  ‘Handle doesn’t seem to be loose.’

  Aranthur’s heart was beating very fast. He took a deep breath and released it. He had to summon his will to stop himself from staring at the hammer. Instead he dropped the thing into his pack.

  ‘So – you are good enough, but you need a lot of practice. Shooting that thing from horseback … Draxos, boyo, will your horses even accept the sound?’ Ringkoat shook his head. ‘A lot of horses shy at the bark. I need you to practise. If you are close to me, I don’t want you shooting my horse.’

  Aranthur nodded. ‘I’m —’

  ‘Busy? No, you ain’t. This is fucking serious – all that mumbo jumbo at your Academy is not going to get you killed. Figure you have two weeks before you get called up.’ Ringkoat shrugged. ‘I shouldn’t ha’ said as much, I suppose.’

  Aranthur had the increasingly common sinking feeling that his life was spiralling out of control – that he couldn’t do everything: Safiri, leather-work, practical philosophy, the militia …

  Dahlia. Who was gone – whose new coldness was more oppressive than the threat of death.

  I am a fool, he thought.

  Ringkoat broke into his thoughts. ‘Hang your fusil in the stall with your charger.’

  ‘Why?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘Start getting the horses used to the gonne.’ The Jhugj laughed. ‘We will have some fine times together. You have two weeks. Get ready.’

  Aranthur walked home with his arming sword on his hip and the longer, heavier blade on his shoulder, through crowds of people in House colours. There was shouting in the distance: pulses of shouting like the cries he’d heard in the hippodrome at sporting events. Just outside the precinct there was a poster, hand-lettered in paint, demanding the resignation of the Master of Arts. Aranthur couldn’t make sense of what it said. It was as if the poster had been painted by someone who didn’t speak Liote.

  He arrived home that evening to find Drako feeding chicken soup to Sasan. Aranthur loved the smell but didn’t have any. Instead he went down all the flights of stairs to get spicy fish stew with squid’s ink, because the stupid poster had distracted him from getting food, and then he climbed back to eat it.

  ‘No wonder your legs are so strong,’ Drako said, after he’d washed the bowls down in the courtyard. ‘Are you still friends with Kallinikos?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  Drako looked out of the window. ‘Any stock?’

  Sasan laughed. ‘And you think I’m an addict.’ He was sober and he’d taken food. He was flipping the pages of Aranthur’s Consolations.

  ‘Can you read it?’ Aranthur asked.

  The addict shrugged. ‘Yes,’ he said bitterly. ‘My father said that if I didn’t learn to read Liote I’d waste my life.’

  Aranthur nodded, surrendering. The Safian did not want conversation. He prepared a pipe for Drako and sat opposite him on a stool.

  ‘I think I have something to show you,’ he said.

  Drako nodded, uninterested.

  Aranthur fetched the hammer out of his shoulder bag and handed it over.

  ‘This something you use fo
r leather-work?’ Drako wasn’t immediately interested.

  And then he was. All at once, like a shade being opened to bright sunlight.

  ‘Damme, Timos. This is the hammer from your cannone.’ He smiled wolfishly. And shook it. ‘Damme. Damn my eyes.’

  ‘I was using it today and …’

  The spy was already manipulating the hammer, trying various parts.

  ‘… and something gave, and it started to rattle. But you said that cannone was not the property of your agent.’

  Drako paused. ‘No, I said I didn’t think it was his.’

  ‘I can’t feel any power inside this.’

  Drako shrugged, defeated.

  Aranthur looked at it, not as a soldier or a Student, but as a craftsman. After a long minute, he picked it up, turned it over, grabbed the handle, and with a huge effort, unscrewed it from the bronze head.

  ‘It had to be made that way,’ he said. ‘No other way to put the head on.’

  Drako wasn’t listening. He was tapping the head on the cutting board, the big board on which Aranthur and his room-mates cut bread and vegetables. He played with his dagger and then with his eating pick. Suddenly, a spill of rainbow light poured out amid the breadcrumbs, and a single, glaring jewel.

  ‘Sun. Light.’ Drako shook his head. ‘No fucking wonder they killed for it. It’s huge.’

  Aranthur had never seen a kuria crystal so big. Now he could feel the power emanating from all of them.

  Something was wrong.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ Aranthur said.

  His tone stopped Drako.

  Sasan was looking at Aranthur, and at the breadboard.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ he asked.

  Drako whistled. ‘It is a fortune in kuria.’

  Aranthur was using his talent. He reached out and tasted his own kuria crystal and then …

  ‘Ouch,’ he said aloud, because the pain was almost physical. ‘The big one is charged – it is carrying a heavy working. And the little ones …’

  Drako nodded. ‘I feel it too.’

  Sasan whistled. ‘That’s a lot of rock.’

  Drako swept all the crystals into a leather pouch with his gloved hand.