Cold Fire

by Kate Elliott

  “It is a fine chamber, is it not?” said Bee. “But I am squelching a horrible temptation to paint nasty pointy-toothed sprites flitting through the trellis. They could be skewering the butterflies with little javelins and darts.”

  “Javelins and darts? You should give them rifles!”

  “Of course! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that!”

  “Neither can I! How did you end up here? What happened to Rory?”

  “Questions I might also ask you.”

  I was so tired of questions! “You tell first!”

  “There’s the temper! Frustrated, Cat?”

  I flung myself onto the bed, which was so spacious and inviting…

  “Cat, dearest, you’re flushed.”

  “What can I do, Bee? He asked me straight out if there was anything I needed to tell him.”

  “And you kept silent, exactly as you should have done.”

  “Yes. No! Yes, I kept silence, but no I shouldn’t have. I should have told him everything.”

  “Of course you shouldn’t have!”

  “You don’t marry someone with the intent of concealing things from him! To withhold trust until there is no doubt is not trust. He trusted me, but I didn’t trust him. Don’t you agree he must hate me now?”

  “That didn’t look like hate to me. And if he really trusted you, he wouldn’t have run off like that. So if you ask my opinion—”

  “Did I ask for your opinion?”

  “Yes, you just did. Blessed Tanit, Cat! Marry him? Don’t tell me you had actual sexual congress with him!”

  “I didn’t! But I was going to!”

  “I don’t understand. The head of the poet Bran Cof said if you don’t consummate the marriage, then after a year and a day you’ll be free. That’s what you want, isn’t it? To be released from the marriage?”

  Without realizing, I had ruched up parts of the thin blanket in my fists. “Do you think I would walk free if he could not? That I’d take my pleasure, and leave him in chains?”

  “Dearest Cat, I always knew you were secretly romantical.” She smiled in a way that reminded me of Aunt Tilly at her most tender, and stroked my hair to calm me. “My story is more easily told, which, I note, is commonly true when it comes to your stories and my stories. You witnessed my compulsion to unearth those slimy grubs. I knew I was leaving you behind when I waded into the river but I simply couldn’t stop. I floundered to shore in the Temes River of all places, on the wharf in that town Londun. No sign of the grubs. I must suppose they dispersed in the water. As for me, I almost froze to death while choking on rubbish and sewage. But I talked my way into a ride—”

  “I’m sorry I missed that!” I found I could open my fists and let go.

  She smirked. “I discovered a fatherly carter on his way to Adurnam and weepingly informed him my callous lying sweetheart had abandoned me on the wharf. I went straight to the Buffalo and Lion Inn. You’ll be relieved to know I found Rory there.”

  “Thank Tanit.” My heart eased. No matter what else, we had not lost him. “And my father’s journals?”

  “Rory had everything. He’s cannier than he looks and acts, you know. Anyway, six days had passed while we were in the spirit world. Riots still wracked Adurnam. The prince and mages had discovered the general was in the city. There were also broadsheets out with a substantial reward for our capture accompanied by very unflattering sketches, I must say! And of course I couldn’t trust the headmaster. Rory kept insisting the headmaster is a dragon, but surely he’s a mage.”

  “I’m no longer ruling out any possibilities. You met the general again?”

  “Eventually, yes. He told me his wife had seen in the path of dreams that I would lead him to you. La Professora and Brennan Du had to leave Adurnam also, and they invited Rory and me to go with them to Massilia. But naturally I sailed with the general to Expedition to look for you.”

  “Where is Rory?”

  “He could not bring himself to get on the ship. He’s afraid of the ocean. I kept the journals, which are here, and sent him with Brennan.”

  I closed my eyes. Blessed Tanit! How Vai had kissed me! He couldn’t really believe I cared about Brennan Du the way I cared about him!

  “Cat, are you blushing again? I hope you’re not carrying a torch for black-haired Brennan. I suspect he carries a torch for La Professora. But she is married to another, alas.”

  “That doesn’t stop people,” I muttered, looking up at the whitewashed ceiling. How must Vai have felt, waiting for me all those months only to discover me with another man?

  “It seems La Professora is quite the traditionalist in some ways despite her radical philosophies. Anyway, how would you know about…Cat! You can’t hide from me!” Bee grabbed one of my fingers and bent it back. “You said you hadn’t done it with him.”

  “Ouch! I haven’t. Although I cursed well wish I had. Ah! Let go!”

  “Tell the truth!”

  Through teeth gritted against the pain, I said, “James Drake. But I can explain.”

  She released my finger, and whistled. Wincing, I rubbed my abused hand.

  “James Drake,” she said in an altered tone that made me cringe. She stretched out with elbows planted next to my head. “Gracious Melqart! But then why were you mauling your husband? And why is a cold mage of such rare and exceptional power here in Expedition anyway, where it is against the law to be a cold mage? Most importantly, did you find your sire?”

  Like a thwarted child, I rolled over, and pounded my fists and kicked my feet, savoring the smack of my hands and legs on the mattress. I had never hated my sire as much as I hated him at that moment.

  “Cat, you’re having a temper tantrum.” Bee’s laughter so sang in my heart that I began to choke and gurgle. I stopped hitting and rolled onto my back to laugh with her.

  “Oh, Bee, how I missed you!”

  She embraced me, and we laughed until tears ran. Finally, she went to wash her face in the basin. My cane had gotten wrapped up in the blanket, so I stuck it under the mattress.

  “What happened to you, Cat?”

  I clapped a hand over my mouth and, as she stared at me with an exaggerated expression of surprise on her face, I pointed with my other hand to my mouth. Waggled the fingers covering my mouth. Bit on them, feeling a question rising. Any question. It didn’t matter, as long as it threw people off the scent. Curse him!

  “You are hungry? No, you are crazed? You’ve lost the power of speech? You have to pee? You have developed a strange but debilitating desire to inflict pain on yourself ? You are trying to tell me something with these bizarre gesticulations that you can’t put in words? Ah!”

  She dashed to a tall wardrobe. The door was carved with a gourd upended and spilling fish, the sides and top elaborated to resemble a leafy tree. She returned to me with her sketchbook and a lead pencil. The pages fell open to a sketch depicting a man and a woman forcefully intertwined in a kiss. The angle concealed most of the man’s face, but the jacket gave him away. I slammed the book shut, embarrassed by the intimacy of the pose.

  Bee sighed. “Now you see why I did not want to have had that dream. It was positively lurid. The only identifying mark is the cobo hood gas lamp above your head. It’s of a type you will find in every establishment in Expedition, so it was hard to identify the place. Try writing.”

  I grabbed the pencil out of her hand and opened the book to a blank page. At once, I began shaking, awash in sweat. I bit my lip. The pain allowed me to scrawl: I cannot speak of what happened after you left. It is worse than we feared.

  “Blessed Tanit, you’ve drawn blood,” said Bee, wiping my lower lip with her thumb. She snatched the pencil and drew in a length of chain like shackles, then handed the pencil back.

  I wrote, Yes.

  She sketched the jetty and harbor of Expedition, as seen from offshore.

  Ocean, I wrote, licking a drop of blood off my lip. Shark. Salt Island. Bitten. Healed. Drunk. Lies. Drake. Rescued. Buccaneers.
Cow Killer Beach. Jetty. Vai. Vai. Vai. You.

  She blanched and took in several deep breaths. After, she turned to me with the same look I imagined a surgeon would give a patient who has survived an amputation. “This is quickly going to become tedious.”

  I wrote, Don’t ask questions.

  “That’s an odd sort of binding,” she remarked, taking pen and sketchbook from me.

  “I do have to pee,” I said, rolling off the bed. I trotted to the wardrobe and reassured myself that my father’s journals had indeed survived our separation. “And I’m hungry.”

  With a grandiose sigh, she stowed her sketchbook back in the wardrobe and tossed clothing at me: a featherlight shift and my very own skirt, bodice, and jacket, washed and the wool ironed to a glossy sheen. Over her own shift she buttoned a skirt sewn from strips of gold, gray, and blue cloth. The bodice she wore had sleeves to the elbow and was embroidered with an entanglement of flowering vines and axes.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked. “I might murder you in your sleep to steal it.”

  “I like the axes in particular,” she said with a smile that could have killed a man at twenty paces. “They remind me of the head of the poet Bran Cof. I had it done here, at a very nice shop on Avenue Kolonkan. That’s where all the best clothes and finery may be purchased.”

  “It’s very pretty.” But I was swamped by a swell of nostalgic regret for humble Tailors’ Row.

  “You’re not usually this slow to get ready. There will be food.”

  Our chamber was one of four on the second story of a town house whose clean tile floors slipped blessedly cool beneath my bare feet. Bee handed me the sandals Vai had given me, now cleaned and oiled. After I slipped my cane through its loop, we hurried down a stairway at the back of the house to the ground floor. She showed me into a tiny room with a water closet and then into a washroom where one had only to turn a spigot to allow water to flow into a basin while one washed one’s hands.

  “How many times do you have to turn that on and off ?” she demanded, clamping her fingers over the faucet to turn it emphatically off.

  “How does it do that?” I bent over, trying to look up into the pipe.

  “Gravity. The water tank is on the roof. We can go look at it later. Come on.”

  She led me back up to the first floor and into a chamber that ran the length of the back of the house. Glass doors opened onto a narrow balcony overlooking a garden so green one could almost breathe the color. Guards paced beneath the walls, swimming in and out of view beneath flowering trees and vines.

  The general sat at a table. He set down the broadsheet he was reading, rose with a grave smile, and took my hand between his as he examined me with deep-set, almost black eyes whose gaze penetrated astonishingly. “You are better. Please, join me. I expect you are hungry.”

  He nodded toward a sideboard laden with covered dishes, a basket of bread, a platter of fruit, a bottle of liquor, and a white ceramic teapot flanked by six white cups on white saucers.

  He released my hand and, to my shock, gave Bee a kiss on each cheek in quite an intimate manner. She did not even have the grace to blush. Indeed, she seemed to expect this familiarity.

  “I’ll pour,” she said, going over to the sideboard. “Sit down, Cat.”

  Steps sounded in the hall. A woman swept into the chamber. She wore a fabulous deep orange boubou of starched, waxed cloth, although instead of a head wrap she wore her black hair uncovered the better to display tiny braids woven with beads and medallions. I gaped at her.

  “Darling,” she said, kissing Camjiata on the lips.

  “Jasmeen!” Never let it be said I could not tally up the numbers. “You’re the one who betrayed the radical leadership! Called in the wardens! Why?”

  She was not easily discomposed. “The fire bane was sent here to assassinate Leon. Obviously I don’ intend to let that happen. Also, as yee own self must admit, he is an unusually powerful fire bane. Such a dangerous sort of man cannot be allowed to run around like a wild stallion with no bridle.”

  I fixed a glare on Bee, who had paused in the act of pouring tea. “Bee? What do you know about this?”

  The general steered me toward one of the chairs. “Sit down, Cat.”

  I wrenched myself away. “I don’t want to sit! I want to know what happened!”

  An aroma of wood ash tickled my nose. I sneezed. James Drake walked into the chamber, looking crisp and attractive in a white jacket and gold trousers, his red-gold air agleam in the morning sun. After all, I sat, for my legs had just gone boneless.

  “Cat!” Drake strode over and pressed his lips to mine. I jerked away, ramming up against the back of the chair. He smiled. “No need to be so formal with me, darling. Why did you take so long to come to the Speckled Iguana? And then run away?”

  I glared. “Can it be possible you think you have a grievance?”

  Drake chuckled. “Must I tender my heartfelt apologies? Were you so hurt by my leaving you on the jetty? Weren’t you worried I would be arrested?”

  “What makes you think I thought of you at all?”

  “No,” he said thoughtfully, with a conspiratorial glance shared with Jasmeen, “I suppose there were other men to embrace.”

  I leaped up and punched him, my fist slamming solidly into his jaw. He reeled back, caught himself. A hot spicy scent sparked in the air as his eyes lit and his mouth thinned.

  The general said, “James, calm down. You clearly did not tell me everything. I strongly suspect your conduct in this matter deserves rebuke.”

  “I want that cursed cold mage,” said Drake, his pale skin gone a blotchy red as he pressed fingers along his jaw. “You told me that if I fetched her and dumped her on the jetty, we would flush him out of hiding and catch him. Instead he escaped.”

  I made a sound, like choking on the suppurating taste of my own naïveté. Bee dropped the teapot, which shattered on the tile floor, fragments skittering everywhere on a sheen of fragrant liquid. She looked as if someone had stabbed her.

  The elegant woman spoke in a plangent tone, as if sorry to be witnessing such unpleasantness. “I shall let yee sort this out, Leon. Send for me.”

  “Of course, Jasmeen.” He took her hand, pressed lips to her knuckles, and released her.

  She swept out, gracious enough to close the door behind her to spare the rest of the household my histrionics.

  “How could you? ” I shrieked.

  Bee burst into wrenching sobs. “You didn’t tell me this was all part of a plot to trap him!”

  “Sit down,” said the general with no change of expression or tone.

  I saw as down a narrowing tunnel a brick wall rushing to meet me. “You used me to get to him! ”

  Drake studied me. With a twisted frown that was almost more of a grimace, he looked at the broadsheet. “For information leading to the capture of the rogue fire bane, a significant reward. That’s all very well, but how are we meant to arrest him now he knows we know of him? He had to have been living somewhere, and yet no one turned him in. I find it difficult to believe a cold mage of so much power could have hidden his craft. The wardens followed those weather disturbances two nights ago, but they lost his trail, and now…nothing. No word. No whisper. No ice. No one will talk. We’ve lost him.” The corner of the broadsheet began to singe and crumple to ash.

  “James!” said the general sharply.

  Drake exhaled. Shaking flakes of gray from his hand, he stepped away from the table.

  Cheeks wet with tears, Bee got down on hands and knees to sweep up the fractured pot with her hands. My flaring exploding rage collapsed as into a dagger of anger, honed and glittering.

  “You,” I said to the general. “What did you do?”

  The door opened and three women came in. Two cleaned up the shattered pot and spilled tea, while the third brought a fresh pot and poured four cups for the table. The general thanked them politely. They left without remarking on Bee, now slumped on the floor in the sp
read of her skirt, like a crushed flower.

  The general went to the sideboard and uncovered a rasher of bacon and a plate of poached eggs surrounded by fried potatoes. He began to load up a plate as he talked.

  “Beatrice assured me you were eager to be rid of the marriage. Now it seems you aren’t.”

  He looked at me as with a question. I stared sullenly back, lips pinched shut.

  “Jasmeen says he’s quite handsome and clearly madly in love with you. Youth, looks, and admiration are an intoxicating combination that is difficult to resist.” He returned to the table and set down a heavily-laden plate between a knife and a spoon. Then he steered me to the chair in front of the plate. “Sit.”

  I did not sit. “I’ll never let you kill him.”

  The general sat opposite me, touched the rim of a teacup to his mouth, then lowered it. “Ah! Still too hot.”

  Drake put a hand on the back of my chair, as if to pull it out for me. I grabbed a knife. He retreated.

  “Where you are under a misapprehension, Cat,” the general went on, “is in your belief that I want to kill the cold mage. What is his name again?” he asked Drake.

  “Fucking arrogant bastard is his name. Was there another name that mattered?”

  I waved the knife. “What has he ever done to you?”

  The general spoke in the voice of command. “Cat, sit.”

  I sat.

  “James, you especially must learn to control that Celtic temper.”

  Drake pulled a hand back over his hair, mussing it, then paced the length of the chamber.

  “Cat, hear me out. First, I escape the prison where the mage Houses have held me for almost fourteen years. Quite without legal precedent, I note. I sail to Expedition because my army in exile has taken residence here, out of the reach of my enemies. The Council receives me with great interest, for they recognize that aiding me will open up trade in Europa. Then a man tries to shoot me. Suddenly the Council votes against my request for support, undermined from within. I hear rumor of another plot to assassinate me, one that may involve a cold mage who wields cold steel. Surely you understand I would be unnatural if I did not defend myself.”