Cold Iron (Masters & Mages)

by Miles Cameron

  ‘I’ll look after these,’ he said.

  In heartbeats, all they had of him was the sound of his feet pounding down the steps.

  Sasan laughed. ‘You trust him?’

  Aranthur shrugged. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Weren’t those crystals yours?’ the Safian asked.

  Aranthur shrugged. His life had become sufficiently event-filled as to seem unreal.

  Drako’s footsteps grew more distant.

  That same evening, Ansu arrived with as little ceremony as he had left. He arrived with two servants, both Byzas. They were palace equerries out of their usual scarlet and blue uniforms, and they carried six heavy cases up the stairs, and then, without being asked, cleaned the whole set of rooms top to bottom. The blond man left while the pale dark-haired man swept and washed, and returned with four sets of magnificent leather and velvet bed hangings and an oil painting of an Arnaut regiment of the Old Empire, all on horseback, breaking into the feared Attian Yaniceri infantry.

  Aranthur loved the painting at first sight. The servant hung it on a hook already in place. He and his partner hung the bed curtains, and then proceeded to prepare a small dinner of chicken on the hearth.

  ‘Can we keep them?’ Sasan said. ‘This is better than your magik.’

  Ansu chuckled. ‘We might perhaps engage them once a week, but this is a favour.’

  The blond man bowed. ‘It is my pleasure. The Emperor cannot have the Prince of Zhou living in …’ He looked around.

  ‘Squalor?’ Sasan asked. ‘Who are you?’ he asked Ansu.

  ‘Ansu,’ the prince answered. ‘And you?’

  ‘Sasan Dhahamet Khuy,’ the addict said. ‘Thuryx addict. Former nobleman.’

  ‘Ahh,’ Ansu said with interest. ‘Thuryx. Delightful if shared with a sexual partner.’

  Sasan threw back his head and laughed.

  The next day, Aranthur arrived at the Great Hall to find a student protest in the courtyard. He recognised Sirnan and some of the other Lions, but he pushed through without much trouble and got into Edvin’s office by a side corridor, served quaveh, and sat to practise his calligraphy.

  Edvin was late coming in and had a black eye. He cursed darkly, and drank his quaveh. After some furious copying, he looked over his empty cup at Aranthur.

  ‘Did they trouble you?’ he asked.

  Aranthur shook his head. ‘No, I went through them.’

  ‘You know what they want, don’t you? The Lions and the Reds?’

  ‘No,’ Aranthur said. ‘Or yes, but tell me anyway.’

  ‘They want the Master of Arts to resign so that she can be replaced by a male representative of one of their Houses.’ Edvin shrugged. ‘Don’t you follow politics? She has a seat on the Seventeen. She’s a non-aristocratic woman. They want her gone.’

  ‘Gods,’ Aranthur said.

  I already know more than I want to know, he thought.

  Edvin shook his head. ‘It’s the hawks, the same bastards who want war with Atti, or maybe the Iron Ring, or Masr, or maybe all three.’ He sighed. ‘Bastards like Roaris, who want everything to be run by aristos. I like her. She’s stable.’

  Aranthur had never imagined the Master of Arts was a political figure, but he realised he was, as usual, thinking like a farmer. Of course she was – she controlled the second or third most powerful institution in the largest city in the world.

  ‘She asked for a larger part of the Imperial budget to raise the number of women who are scholars,’ Edvin said. ‘How can you not know this?’

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  Then Edvin fell silent, because the woman in question appeared, seized her magikally hot quaveh, and then, a moment later, summoned Aranthur.

  ‘I know all about your crystals,’ she said. ‘And Drako says you killed again. Let me be brief – it is a good day for everyone having a crisis. I spoke to Drako at length. The crystals are under study.’ She shrugged. ‘I may not be in this office in a few days, Aranthur.’ She gave him a long look. ‘I am sorry, what I have to say is hard. If I go, I strongly recommend that you consider continuing your research on the grimoire and on the language of Safi … elsewhere. Perhaps privately. Perhaps Syr Drako will fund you.’ She looked out of her window and then back at him. ‘Do you know what I’m talking about?’

  Aranthur was busy trying to keep himself together. It was worse than a sword bout with sharps because this had a different reality. In a burst of emotion he realised how much he loved her office, her careful instruction, and even her temper.

  ‘Ma donna,’ he muttered. ‘How can I continue …?’

  She shrugged. ‘My successor will not fund any Eastern research, unless it directly supports military efforts against Atti. These idiots think that war with Atti will solve anything.’ She sighed.

  ‘But the Emperor’s manuscript … The magikal reader …’ He shook his head.

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Officially, the Emperor plays no role in the politics of the City. Unofficially, I believe you will find that you can work in the Emperor’s personal library.’ She shrugged. ‘You may find me there. I will try and get you a writ, today or tomorrow. I believe that’s all the time I have. I worry that when the Seventeen know what we are doing here, they might order your arrest.’ She rose. ‘I have to say, because I am a believer and I believe in the roles of the gods in the lives of people, that you are indirectly responsible for my fall. When you helped prevent the Duke of Volta from retaking his city, you forced him to play different cards. Now he’s using the political hawks and religious conservatives to unseat me on his way to forcing us into war with Atti. And my communications with the republican government in Volta are suddenly considered treasonous.’ Her amusement was genuine. ‘It’s never the thing you think. Money to educate women? I could bury them at the Council of Seventeen. But “Foreign Disclosure of Privileged Magik” sounds very like treason.’

  ‘Oh, by the Lady,’ Aranthur said. ‘That’s … Gods! Terrible.’

  She shrugged. ‘For what it is worth, I think he meant to bring me down all along, and that he always meant to push us to war with Atti. War with Atti! We haven’t faced the Sultan in the field in seventy years. It’s insane. Our whole trade is with Atti.’ She shrugged.

  ‘I feel I should have been following all this instead of studying Safian magik,’ Aranthur said bitterly.

  She shook her head. ‘Our only hope is to understand the East. ‘War with Atti – even Atti seems to want it. They are calling up their militia today, according to Drako. There’s a rumour at court that a whole army moved into the Black Lands north of Tanais the day before yesterday, headed here. Can you imagine?’ She held out her hand. ‘I’m sorry. We live in interesting times. If I am forced to resign today, I’ll see that you have a writ on the Imperial library delivered to your rooms. Please do not come back. Please, and I beg you, do not even allow the new incumbent to know what you were doing, or he’ll …’ She frowned. ‘At best he’ll arrest you. At worst … He’ll take you for his own projects.’

  Aranthur rose. ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘Do not be sorry for me,’ she said. ‘Be sorry for all the Easterner refugees and all the people in the East who are facing extinction. For the Dhadhi. For the Jhugi. The drakes.’ She met his eye. ‘And please stop killing people.’

  ‘I’m not offered a great deal of choice.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s not a wives’ tale. Killing interferes with your power. At one level, it clouds the mind …’

  ‘I’ve felt that!’ Aranthur said.

  ‘At another level, the one absolute requirement for non-kuria casting is empathy. Killing erodes your empathy. I know whereof I speak.’ She sat, shoulders slumped. ‘I wish I had more time. I don’t. If this all goes, please work with Syr Drako. If you have a crisis, go see the Lightbringer, Kurvenos.’

  ‘Yes, Magistera.’

  She smiled. ‘Go with the gods, Timos.’

  Aranthur went home to find Sasan sober, and reading. He had all of Aranth
ur’s school books in an untidy stack and he was working through them. Aranthur resented his treatment of the books, which had cost him time and trouble and silver to accumulate, but his irritation was buried by his delight that Sasan was clean and sober.

  They went out together, because Aranthur didn’t need to work. He took the Safian to the used clothes market on the wharves, and they prowled until they bought the man some clothes: several doublets and pairs of hose, a short cloak. It was Drako’s money, and Aranthur didn’t count the obols. Boots, a belt, a hat …

  ‘I’ll be back on thuryx before I wear all this,’ Sasan said. ‘By Rani, I want it now. Every moment.’

  Aranthur nodded. ‘Well, we should keep walking.’

  Sasan was an uneasy companion. He would stop and look at mosaics, or men repainting a building-front fresco; he would stop to urinate in an alley, something Aranthur would never do; he chatted with every Armean or Safian street seller. Now that he was dressed as a tradesman or a Student, the Armeans were surprised at his fluency, and almost distressingly respectful.

  He gave one of Drako’s silver crosses to a girl with a pox-ravaged face and shook his head.

  ‘Bone plague,’ he said.

  ‘What the Darkness is bone plague?’ Aranthur said.

  He was frustrated at the stops, at the time everything took, at his own fears that Sasan was talking so fast to conceal what he was saying, at his tension over whether they were followed. He saw two men; he couldn’t decide if he had seen them at the Academy.

  Sasan glanced at him from under his heavy black eyebrows.

  ‘You don’t know? Drako thinks you do.’

  ‘Drako is a very strange man,’ Aranthur allowed.

  ‘It’s fairly new. It only seems to affect the poor. Their bones melt. They soften, their lungs fail and they drown. Sometimes other, worse things happen. Sometimes they rot while they are still alive.’ He grunted. ‘I’ll find you a beggar who has it.’

  He began to lead the way up the ridge, towards the Pinnacle.

  ‘No need!’ Aranthur said.

  Sasan shook his head. ‘No, you need to see.’

  Aranthur dug in his heels. ‘You are going to buy thuryx. And I have seen it. I just didn’t know it had a name.’

  The two young men stared at each other.

  ‘Do you play dice?’ Aranthur asked, suddenly inspired.

  Sasan raised a black eyebrow. ‘I have been known to gamble,’ he said slowly. Then he shrugged. ‘I do mean to buy thuryx.’ He raised both eyebrows. ‘You know other addicts?’

  Aranthur thought of his uncle, and wine.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  He hadn’t thought of his uncle for a long time.

  Aranthur led the way to a tavern that had dice tables. Sasan looked around.

  ‘Light and Sun,’ he said. ‘I used to love this kind of place.’

  Aranthur took one of the tiny gold sequins and broke it into silver crosses, and then into some bronze obols, and together they approached a table.

  ‘You look like a fuckin’ Arnaut to me,’ said a big man in a greasy leather jerkin. ‘I don’t play with fuckin’ Souli. Go somewhere else.’

  Aranthur had the same feeling of shock and anger that he always had, but he shook his head and went to another table.

  ‘What’d he say?’ Sasan asked.

  ‘He doesn’t like my kind,’ Aranthur said.

  Sasan laughed. ‘Sunlight! I’m with you, and he doesn’t like your kind? Best joke ever.’

  The end table wasn’t so particular. Men were playing for low stakes; a slattern was serving weak beer and showing a shapely belly button every time she swayed.

  ‘I could bring you luck,’ she said to Sasan.

  He handed her a silver coin.

  She smiled up at him, and put the coin on the dirty felt. Dice were rolled.

  The coin vanished.

  ‘Dark Night!’ she spat.

  ‘Try again,’ Sasan said.

  ‘Use smaller coins?’ Aranthur suggested.

  ‘Are you always this cautious?’ Sasan asked.

  Aranthur thought of shooting the bandit. ‘No.’

  Sasan laughed. ‘Damn, I feel alive. Win for me, honey.’

  She put another whole silver cross down on a single number. There were six dice. The scores were many and varied and any Student knew how little the scores had to do with the mathematics of the odds.

  Aranthur put five obols on a different number. His was a multiple of six. The dice had six sides. It seemed to him that the number eighteen and the odds of rolling six dice were better than the odds charged.

  ‘Now we’re playing,’ Sasan said. In Safiri, he said ‘Let all the Gods witness!’

  The dice came up eighteen

  The silver cross vanished, but Aranthur’s five obols became thirty obols, or three crosses.

  ‘Maybe I’m bringing you luck,’ the girl said to Aranthur.

  ‘He has plenty of luck already,’ Sasan said. ‘Help me.’

  They put down bets. Other men moved back; in a matter of a few bets, the table was theirs. They played, and the girl, who was clearly very quick, began to follow Aranthur’s pattern of betting. The house’s odds were out of step with the actual odds, and Aranthur’s hurried calculations would lead to his placement. She followed him, a bet or two behind.

  In twenty bets they had made a pile of markers. They didn’t always win, and an hour later, they lost two thirds of their winnings. Sasan began to bet on his own.

  Two big men, both Easterners, came and stood watching, arms crossed.

  ‘Maybe you should not always bet on these numbers,’ the shorter man said, very politely, in Liote.

  ‘Maybe you should stay silent,’ Sasan said in fluid Armean.

  The two bouncers, for so they obviously were, looked at each other.

  Aranthur had just won. He’d put down three bets and collected on one at odds of seven to one. The girl had also won. She was positively glowing. Sasan was the calmest that Aranthur had ever seen him – his face still, his hands unshaking.

  ‘Perhaps you should stop playing at this table,’ said the tall bouncer.

  Aranthur nodded. ‘I’ll cash out. Let’s have dinner.’

  Sasan nodded. ‘Never count your winnings at the table.’

  Aranthur made his way to the change table. He was cautious, but no one accosted him. The bored man at the table changed his pile of wooden beads into bronze and silver, and then into gold – sixteen sequins. And Sasan had more – at least another dozen gold sequins.

  ‘We won too much,’ Sasan said at his elbow. ‘You know how to fight, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Aranthur said.

  ‘Good, because I’m weak and those two are coming after us. I promise.’ The addict sighed. ‘Sunlight, once I could have dropped them both. No muscle left.’

  ‘You look good to me, sweet,’ the girl said. ‘Do I get a tip?’

  Sasan handed her five gold sequins.

  Aranthur wondered if the young woman was going to faint.

  ‘Oh, Dierdre!’ she said, invoking the Iron Ring’s goddess of carnality.

  ‘Better come with us,’ Sasan said. ‘They’ll roll you for it, or worse.’

  Outside it was dark. Aranthur put his half-cloak on.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Sasan asked.

  ‘Maddie,’ she said. ‘I’m from Paona. You know it?’

  Sasan smiled his small smile. ‘No, honey, I’m an Easterner.’

  She laughed. ‘Oh, well. Suddenly everyone’s an Easterner, right?’ She looked back. ‘There’s only two of them. We could take ’em.’

  Aranthur took a breath. ‘Canal,’ he said.

  He looked around – for foot traffic, for a City Militia post, for anything.

  Instead, he saw narrow streets in Upper Town, and a beggar. There was a scuffle in the darkness behind them. A shout, and the ring of blades.

  ‘What the seven frozen hells?’ Sasan asked.

  Aranthur grabbed
both of them and pulled them into a stumbling run for the Coryn Steps, the long staircase that wound down the side of the old temple, from the dens of vice down to the respectable canalside neighbourhoods.

  He led them into the square in front of the magnificent old temple that rose like a man-made mountain. Below twinkled the lights of the hippodrome, and beyond that the coloured crystal of the spire of the palace. Right before them, beside the temple’s massive curtain wall, ran a long flight of steps towards the more prosperous parts of the city.

  ‘Shit,’ Sasan said. ‘Now there are four of them. What the fuck?’

  There were shapes on the stairs, in the dark.

  Aranthur took out his knife – a Arnaut knife, longer than a man’s hand from wrist to fingertips.

  ‘Know how to use this?’ he asked Sasan.

  ‘Like an old friend,’ the Safian said, taking it.

  Aranthur drew his sword.

  Immediately the shapes on the lower steps paused.

  The steps were perhaps as wide as four men abreast, and there were sixty or seventy stone steps, with niches meant to house bronze statues – most of them long since stolen – and beautiful cherry trees, almost invisible in the dark. There was a little light: the light of both moons, and the distant twinkle of the lights from the old temple that towered above, and the lights in the hippodrome below, and the starlight that was as bright as late spring could make it.

  ‘Fuck,’ Sasan muttered. ‘مادر قهبه.’

  Aranthur glanced back. There were three men up above, crossing the Temple Square with purpose.

  ‘Can we talk about this?’ Aranthur shouted.

  No one slowed down, above or below.

  Maddie, the Northern woman, was made of stern stuff.

  ‘I can handle myself,’ she said. ‘Let’s get ’em!’

  ‘Don’t get gutted for a few coins,’ Aranthur said.

  But these were no common footpads, and the men below them closed first.

  Aranthur took a breath to steady himself, and moved. He wanted to talk, but they were coming; the range closed, and …

  He cut. His cut was deliberately deceptive, from behind his back. He was calm enough. He’d now done this half a dozen times and he didn’t pause to think. He flowed along, and then he turned because he’d heard something, and thrust deep into a man’s gut. It was the bloody-faced man, from the duel by the canal, which made no sense. He folded over Aranthur’s sword and then slid off it.