Cold Fire (The Spiritwalker Trilogy) Read online

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  Dedicated to the memory of Steve Larson, teacher, musician, theorist, lover of games, punster, oenophile, and all-around great, funny, brilliant guy.

  Gone way too soon.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to the knowledgeable people who advised me on matters both large and small:

  Fragano Ledgister (the Caribbean and theories of revolution), Gerald Rasmussen (politics), Marie Brennan (long hair), David B. Coe (tariffs and taxes), A’ndrea Messer (natural history aka science, as well as substantial assistance with the map), Jay Silverstein (empire and Mesoamerica), Alexander Rasmussen-Silverstein (there can never be enough Napoleon), Raina Storer (buttons & cookies), and Alyssa Louie (putting me in touch with the right people), like my sagacious physics advisor, Kurtis Nishimura.

  My excellent and invaluable beta readers include Alexander Rasmussen-Silverstein, Katharine Kerr, Sherwood Smith, Jay Silverstein, Darcy Kramer, N. K. Jemisin, Edana McKenzie, Victoria McManus, Rebecca Houliston, Alberto Yáñez, Mark Timmony, A’ndrea Messer, Karen Williams, and Rhiannon and David Rasmussen-Silverstein. My apologies to any I’ve inadvertently left out.

  I revised Cold Fire during the early part of 2011, a period when revolution became the headline and the hashtags I follow on Twitter began with #sidibouzid and #bouazizi and moved on from there. Many courageous people struggle for self-determination. I hope their voices can be heard.

  Author’s Note

  The Spiritwalker books take place on a different Earth, with magic. Almost all the names and words are real, not made up. Although the world may seem like an attempt to write alternate history, it isn’t true alternate history. It’s more like a fantasia of an Earth that might have been had conditions included an extended Ice Age, the intelligent descendants of troodons, nested planes of interleaved worlds, and human access to magical forces that can redirect the normal flow of entropy.

  Calendar Notes

  The “Roman” days of the week commonly used in this world are Sunday, Moonday, Marsday, Mercuriday, Jovesday, Venerday, and Saturnday. The months are close enough to our own that they don’t need translating. From the Celtic tradition, I’ve used the “cross-​quarter days” of Samhain (November 1), Imbolc (February 2), Beltain (May 1), and Lughnasad (August 2), although it’s unlikely Samhain was considered the turn of the year.

  Creole

  Part of this story takes place in the Antilles, the Caribbean, which has developed within a very different history from the one that shaped our own world. For that reason I decided to create my own creole rather than attempt (badly) to replicate any of the various historical or modern Caribbean dialects or patois.

  With the heroic assistance of Dr. Fragano Ledgister and additional advice from Katharine Kerr, I instituted specific linguistic rules common to creoles and applied them with a few nods toward the languages that would have been part of Expedition’s creole, most importantly Taino but secondarily Latin and Bambara. Obviously because I write and think in English I did also borrow heavily from elements of modern creoles as well. Insofar as the three levels of creole (as per Mervyn Alleyne’s definition of a hierolect, mesolect, and basilect in Jamaican English) used in this book sound reasonable to the reader, it is due to the generous advice I received. Any faults and flaws are my own.

  Our Caribbean, by the way, has an astonishing and marvelous literary and musical tradition so extensive there is not room here to even begin to discuss it, but I would urge you to explore it on your own.

  1

  It was a cursed long and struggling walk hauling two heavy carpetbags stuffed with books across the city of Adurnam. That it was night helped only because the darkness hid us. The bitter cold turned our hands to ice even through gloves. A dusting of new snow crunched beneath our boots. My half brother Rory ranged ahead, on the watch for militia patrols.

  The prince’s curfew had emptied the streets. In a normal year every intersection would have been lit with a fire in honor of the winter solstice. Inns and taverns would have remained open all night, awash with ale and free oatcakes. But after the riots that had wracked the city, people and businesses had locked their doors and shuttered their windows. It was so quiet I could hear my cousin Beatrice’s breathing as she trudged along beside me with a bag across her shoulders.

  “Cat, are we almost there?” she asked.

  “I’ll carry both bags,” I offered, even though the one I carried felt like a bag of bricks.

  “It’s not the weight. It’s the dark.”

  The night was hardest on her. Clouds covered the sky, and we avoided the few main thoroughfares that had gaslight and kept to side streets where it was darkest. With a curfew in force and people fearful they would run out of oil and candles, few night-watch lanterns burned on porches. Both Rory and I could see abnormally well in the dark. That was one of the reasons my family called me Cat instead of Catherine. We led the way, while Bee had the more difficult task: She had to trust us.

  Rory loped back. “Patrol coming.”

  We shrank into the shadow of an alcove. I set down my bag and slipped my ghost-sword from its loop on my outer skirt. It looked like a black cane, but at night I could twist its hilt and draw a sword. I waited, poised to strike. Rory tensed like a big cat about to spring. Bee sucked in and held a breath. Ahead, a troop of mounted men clattered toward the nearest intersection.

  Rory sniffed, then licked his lips. “I hear other people, too. I smell iron and that nasty stuff you call blackpowder.”

  In the house nearest us, a shutter shifted as someone inside peeked out. I closed my eyes, tasting the air and listening with senses far sharper than Bee’s. The wind carried the clop of hooves but also a hiss of men whispering, the click of a boot heel on stone, the lick of flame and the sting of burning.

  “Stay here,” I whispered, shoving the heavy bag into Rory’s arms. They obeyed.

  In the interstices between our world and the spirit world lie threads of magic that bind the worlds together. I drew the threads as shadow around me to conceal myself from ordinary sight. Staying close alongside the buildings, I skulked forward. In the intersection, no one moved, but I heard the jingle of harness grow louder as the soldiers approached. Movement stirred in an alley to my right. A tiny flame flared, lighting the shape of a mustachioed mouth and the gleaming barrel of a gun. After a hissed whisper, the flame was snuffed out.

  I stepped back against the wall of the building at the corner just as the first rank of turbaned mage House soldiers rode into view. Sparks flowered. At least ten sharp gunfire reports echoed down the houses. Horses snorted and shied. Two soldiers crumpled forward. One tumbled from his horse. His boot caught in the stirrup, and the panicked horse dragged him sideways. A volley of crossbow bolts loosed by the mounted soldiers clattered against the buildings on either side of the alley. A glass window shattered, and bolts thunked into wood shutters.

  “They’re bad shots!” shouted a man from the alley. “We’ve got them, lads! Fire!”

  But instead of loud reports, the only sound was a series of deadened clicks.

  The mage troop swept forward as a seam of icy white light ripped across the air as if an unseen blade cut through the night to penetrate to daylight behind. A bright, cold fire bubbled out from the rift. The light moved as if pushed, spheres like lamps probing the alley and the stone faces of the buildings to reveal thirty or more men in hiding. The hiding men desperately tried to shoot, but their shiny new rifles simply failed to fire. The presence of an extremely powerful cold mage had killed their combustion.

  With my back pressed against th
e stone, I willed myself to be nothing more than stone, nothing to see except what anyone would expect to see looking at an old, grubby, smoke-stained wall. Even so I dared not move, though I knew cold mages could not see through my concealing threads of shadow. A man dressed not in armor but in flowing robes rode forward from the back of the troop. His was an imposingly dignified figure with his graying black hair plaited into many tiny braids and his black face drawn down in an angry frown. I knew him: He was the mansa, the most powerful cold mage in Four Moons House and therefore its master.

  In that knife’s-edge moment before the men in the alley broke and ran, the mansa lifted a hand as he addressed a comment to his companion, a middle-aged blond Celt dressed in the uniform of the prince’s militia. “They are smuggling in rifles despite the ban on new technology. Just as we suspected.”

  The temperature dropped so precipitously that my eyes stung and my ears popped as the pressure changed. With a whispering groan, metal strained. Men screamed as the iron stocks of their rifles twisted and, with a sound more terrifying than that of any musket or rifle shot, shattered as easily as if they were glass. Many writhed on the ground, torn and bloodied by the shrapnel. A few staggered away down the alley, trying to escape.

  “Capture them all!” shouted the militia captain in a braying tenor.

  “I want any who survive,” said the mansa, studying the scene with a brow smoothed by his easy victory.

  “You mean to execute them?”

  “No. I mean to bind these rebellious plebeians into clientage. They, and their kinfolk, and their descendants will all be bound to serve Four Moons House. To execute them will merely inflame their kinfolk to further rebellion. But if these discontented men drag their households into servitude with them, that will breed resentment among their own kin for their folly in fighting against the natural order and losing what freedom they have. With your permission, of course. They’re your subjects.”

  “A wise course of action. That will make the radical agitators think twice.”

  Blessed Tanit! His companion was the prince of Tarrant himself, the very man who ruled the principality centered around the city of Adurnam, on the Solent River, in northwestern Europa.

  Really, I could think of no man I wanted to meet less than these two. As the soldiers mopped up the scene and the mansa and the prince sat in perfect amity at the center of the intersection, chatting about some man’s thwarted marriage prospects, I edged backward until I felt it safe to remove myself from the wall and hurry back to the alcove where Bee and Rory waited. I shoved in between them, trembling.

  “What happened?” Bee whispered. “I heard shots. And then screams.”

  “We have to backtrack. The mansa and the prince are with those soldiers.”

  “Are they hunting for us? Does the mansa know we escaped?”

  “I don’t think so. He said nothing of it. I still think his people won’t discover we’re gone until morning. Give me a moment.” I shut my eyes, the better to envision the map of Adurnam I carried in my head, with its winding streets, secluded alleys, and dangerous warrens.

  “You’re shaking,” said Bee, putting an arm around me.

  “Men just died. And it was a shock to see the mansa again. By law Four Moons House owns me. He has a legal right to recapture me. And if he catches us, he will find a way to own you, too.”

  “I think we should go now while they’re busy eating the wounded and dying,” said Rory.

  Bee stiffened. “You imbecile, we don’t eat people—”

  “Hush. Rory’s right.” I stroked his arm, because he liked that, and he gave a rumbling sigh. “We need to go while they’re busy mopping up. I’ve got a better route. We’ll creep back to Old Temple and go along the river. We’ll be hard to follow if we cut through the goblin market.”

  I slipped my cane back into its loop and picked up the bag. We crept back down the street as quickly as we could, but no scouts rode our way. If anyone inside the shuttered houses noted our passing, they called no alarm. Eventually we relaxed a little.

  “Do you think these lawyers and radicals will really take us in?” Bee asked.

  “We have to hope they will, Bee. I don’t know where else we can go otherwise.”

  “I’m very cold, Cat,” said Rory. “I just want a warm fire and a nap.”

  “Are there fires that aren’t warm?” muttered Bee as she strode along. Clearly, fear and anxiety had wound her tight. Even with our greater height and longer strides, Rory and I had trouble keeping up. “Winters that aren’t cold?”

  “Men who don’t fall in love with your magnificent beauty at first sight?” I added, knowing she could not resist the bait.

  I felt her grin by the way she struck a counterblow. “Why, dearest, I don’t think I’m the one who got fallen in love with at first sight.”

  “I don’t need reminding about that!”

  “What? Didn’t you like him a little in the end? Aesthetically, he is very handsome, despite the impressively arrogant personality. And you are the one who kissed him, after all.”

  Fortunately, the night covered my blush. “I really don’t know what to think about him, Bee. And furthermore, I am not interested in having this conversation right now or possibly ever.”

  “Hush! You two are so loud.”

  Because Rory was right, we kept walking and stopped talking, but the exchange had restored Bee’s usual bloody-minded cheerfulness. She even dawdled in the long promenade of the goblin market, examining the stalls of knives. By the time the cocks crowed, we had staggered onto Enterprise Road, where all kinds of foreigners, radicals, technologists, and solicitors lived. Unlike in the other districts of Adurnam, every street and even the humblest lanes in this neighborhood were lit by gas lamps. Their glow illuminated the predawn traffic of men and trolls coming out of and going into coffeehouses and unlocking offices. A few cowled goblins hurried away to burrow into their daylight dens. A woman opening up a shop paused to watch Rory saunter past, for he had the kind of self-satisfied grace that attracted the eye, and he knew it and liked it.

  “Stop smiling at people! You’ll draw attention to us!” I muttered.

  “I see men looking at Bee, and even at you,” he retorted. “Why shouldn’t I get looks, too?”

  Fortunately I spotted Fox Close, a lane tucked away between a tavern and a coffeehouse. By the time we turned down the lane and reached the law offices, dawn had come and the gaslights were being shuttered for the day. We halted on the stoop to look up at a newly painted sign. Pin-perfect orange letters shone against a feathery brown backdrop: GODWIK AND CLUTCH.

  Who would ever have thought that two dutiful daughters raised in a quiet Kena’ani merchant household would throw themselves on the mercy of trolls and radicals?

  “I hope this works,” Bee muttered as we dropped the bags on the steps.

  I plied the knocker. As we waited, I untangled my cane where it had gotten caught in a fold in my skirts.

  The door opened. A troll stared at us. It was hard to know whether trolls looked more like birds or lizards. They stood tall and lanky on hind legs in a way that made me think of human-sized upright lizards, yet what looked like scales was a covering of tiny feathers. The way this one cocked his head first to one side and then to the other to get a good look at us with each eye also reminded me of a bird. He wore a jacket in the human style, and its drab brown cloth set off a truly spectacular scarlet-blue-and-black crest of feathers that ran from his upper spine to the crown of his head.

  “May the day find you at peace,” I said hastily. “My name is Catherine Hassi Barahal. This is my cousin Beatrice. And my brother Roderic. We’re here to see Chartji. The solicitor.”

  “You’re that one. Chartji warned me: ‘Let her in quickly shall she come standing at the door.’” He hopped back, startling Rory and Bee. Seeing the two bags and their brass clasps, he bent forward to look more closely first at the clasps and then at my cane as if he could see the sword hidden beneath the magic that
concealed it in daylight. “Oo! Things! Shiny things!”

  A male voice came from inside.

  “Who’s at the door, Caith?” A strikingly attractive man stepped into view, wiping his hands on a grimy cloth. Seeing us, he grinned most enchantingly, as if his day had just become utterly delightful. “Catherine! And your charming cousin Beatrice. And another companion, I see.”

  “My brother, Roderic.”

  “Well met, indeed! Did you tell them to come in, Caith? Please, step inside at once and close the door.” He nodded at Rory as we hustled in. “I’m Brennan.”

  As we walked down the main passage, he explained the young troll Caith’s complicated kinship relationship to the solicitor Chartji. He showed us into what had once been the sitting room. There we found Maester Godwik seated at a desk with pen in hand.

  The old troll looked up at once, his vivid black-and-green crest raising and spreading as he saw me. “The Hassi Barahal in her mantle! What an exceptionally pleasant surprise. Let me crow on the rocks at sunrise! And this…the cousin, I presume. And…” He studied Rory, who looked like an ordinary young man with golden, innocent eyes and thick black hair twisted into a single long braid. “Interesting. I’ve not seen one like you before. Well met. Please enter our nest.”

  There was one other person in the room, a bespectacled woman sorting among the pieces of a shattered printing press. She looked up, so surprised at Godwik’s words that it was obvious she hadn’t noticed us come in. Yet her smile seemed genuine. “Catherine!”

  Brennan set our bags down in the room as the solicitor Chartji walked in behind him. Because Chartji was female, her scale-like feathers were as drab as Caith’s jacket, and the feathers of her crest were only one color, a bright yellow. She was carrying a bowl of water cupped in one ink-stained three-fingered hand. “I thought you might come! Drink first. That’s the proper way. Then we’ll talk.”