Cold Fire Page 3
“I wondered where you’d got to,” I said. “Bee meant you to carry those bags.”
He blinked innocently. “Did she?” He sank down onto the bench, picked up a parsnip, sniffed at it, and with a disdainful grimace set it back down. With a sigh, he stretched the length of the bench in a boneless sprawl whose languor I admired in large part because I knew that at the slightest sign of trouble he could spring up and attack.
The heat was making me sweat, so I shrugged off my coat and draped it over Bee’s. In the backyard only the Amazon was visible, standing beside the closed gate. A clock stood atop the cupboard. Its ticking punctuated the silence as Brennan considered his work-hardened hands.
“I come from the north, as I think you recall, Catherine,” he said, “from a mining village in Celtic Brigantia. A few days’ walk from the village where I grew up, you come to the ice shelf. The ice rises from the land like a cliff. When the sun shines, you can see the ice face from miles away. It blinds because it is so sharp and bright. Professora Kuti and Maester Godwik can tell you all about the color, texture, weight, height, volume, and consistency of ice. But because I grew up so near the ice, among hunters as well as miners, I can tell you that the ice is alive. Not as you and I are alive. It’s not a creature or a person. But it lives, although I couldn’t tell you how or why.”
“A fascinating tale, but what has it to do with us?” I said. Yet I could tell by Bee’s frowning expression that he had caught her interest, although I could not be sure whether it was his story that intrigued her or his looks, his air of worldly experience, and the likelihood he had bested more than one man in more than one nasty fight.
“When I was a small boy, my grandmother told me about a girl who was one of her age-mates. In my grandmother’s youth, the ice reached all the way to Embers Ridge, where we now light the bonfire on Hallows’ Eve. One year at midsummer the girl walked out on the hunt with her older brothers. When they reached the ice, she stood all day as if dazzled. When the sun set, she woke. She told them she had seen visions—dreams—in the face of the ice. They went home to consult with the village djeli and the elders. But what happened was this: The things she saw in the face of the ice came true in the year that followed.”
Bee inhaled sharply.
Brennan’s gaze settled on her. “She married, but birthed no children. For five summers more, she walked north every solstice to the ice and walked home after and told the elders what she had seen. No one spoke a single word outside of the village of what she did. They knew better than to draw attention to a gift which is also a curse. Do you know what happened to her?”
The clock ticked ticked ticked.
“She died on Hallows’ Night,” said Bee in a voice as hard as an oracle’s.
He had the look of a man who has seen things some might call the stuff of nightmares. “The authorities at the prince of Brigantia’s court were told she had drowned. In fact she was torn to pieces on Hallows’ Night in the forecourt of the temple of the hunters Diana Sanen and her son Antlered Kontron. Her severed head was found in the village well.”
He paused. We said nothing. What was there to say?
“She had been pursued and killed by the Wild Hunt. As the Thrice-Praised poet Bran Cof sang, ‘No creature can escape the Hunt, no man outrun its teeth.’”
The clock ticked over the new hour. Its chime so startled me that I flinched.
Brennan paced to the window. The Amazon had wrestled open the heavy bar that secured the back gate. A red-haired man in an old coat slipped inside the yard from the alley behind, and the Amazon went out. As Brennan turned to address us, the red-haired man barred the gate.
“It is well known,” Brennan continued, “that before he took the name Camjiata, Captain Leonnorios Aemilius Keita married Helene Condé Vahalis. She was the daughter of a powerful mage House, although she was a cold mage of only negligible power. But it was rumored she walked the future in oracular dreams. People said the young general’s victories were achieved because he knew how to interpret her dreams to his benefit. Camjiata just implied that you, Beatrice, are one of those young women—and they are always young—who has discovered she walks the path of dreams. It seems obvious the general wants you because he thinks your dreams can give him an advantage in war. Meanwhile, obviously the mansa of Four Moons House wants you to keep you away from the general, since it was the mages and the Romans who defeated Camjiata the first time. Yet it seems to me, if you are such a woman, then mage Houses, princes, Romans, and even escaped generals are not the worst threat you face.”
3
Brennan looked out the window again, watching as the red-haired man traversed the length of the yard while kicking up the snow that dusted the paving stones.
“Excuse me.” He flashed one of his spectacular smiles and went out. We heard him go up the back steps and open the back door. Gray light gleamed through the paned windows. The peculiar hut glittered as if polished gems lay hidden in its layers. A crow still perched atop the center pole. Brennan intercepted the stranger with a friendly gesture and a smile.
“At least,” said Bee in a low voice, “the awful news was delivered by the handsomest man I’ve ever met.”
“Bee!”
“How do you suppose he got the appellation Du? Brennan Touré Du. Du means ‘black-haired.’ Yet he’s enchantingly fair-haired.”
I clucked my tongue to show I was not so susceptible, even though I was. “He’s positively ancient. Over thirty, anyway. That’s even older than your handsome admirer Legate Amadou Barry. Or have you forgotten him?”
She fixed me with the smoldering gaze that caused young men to fall catastrophically in love with her, professors to quake, shopkeepers to hasten forward to serve her, and young women our age to wish they could be like her, so proud and queenly. Then she dabbed away a tear. “Please! Amadou Barry offered me an intolerable insult! As if I had asked for it!”
“You’re not to blame for the proposal Amadou Barry made to you, Bee.”
“I know.” She blushed and looked away as if ashamed. “But before that I told him things I shouldn’t have, because I thought he genuinely loved me. I thought I could trust him.”
I frowned as I leaned on the table, pinning her gaze with my own. “Bee, you were alone and frightened and scared. You did nothing wrong. And I’m sure he was very persuasive. Until that unpleasant moment when he offered to make you his mistress.”
“As if it were the best thing I could ever hope for!” She made stabbing motions with the knife. “This! For him!”
“Sadly, men are the least of our problems right now.” I grabbed Rory’s ankle. “What do you know about Hallows’ Night? Murdered victims? The face of the ice? The Wild Hunt?”
His penetrating gold gaze was as opaque as a cat’s. “I know I’m hungry.”
“Do you not know, or are you not telling?”
“Hallows’ Night? Murders? The face of the ice? I don’t know what those things are.”
Because he looked exactly like a young man, it was easy to forget what he truly was and that he didn’t belong here. “Fair enough. I believe you. What do you know about the Wild Hunt?”
“I eat flesh. The Wild Hunt drinks blood. Even my mother trembles, for when the horn sounds, she would make us all hide. But everyone knows no one can truly hide, not if yours is the scent they pursue. I never saw them in all my life, but I have heard the hunt pass by while I cowered.”
Bee weighed the knife in her left hand as she considered the parsnips. “We thought we need only escape the combined forces of the mage Houses and the local prince. Now I’m warned I was born all unknowingly with a terrible gift of dreaming that will result in my being dismembered.”
“That knife is so sharp I can taste its edge.” Rory rolled up to his feet as Bee glared at the hapless parsnips. “Upset people shouldn’t wave knives around.”
“I didn’t ask you!”
He rubbed his eyes with the back of a wrist, the gesture very like that of a b
ig cat, lazy and graceful and a trifle out of sorts. “They never do ask me, although they ought to,” he said with a contemptuous sniff. He stepped out into the passage.
“It’s just hard to imagine he really is a saber-toothed cat,” whispered Bee.
“I heard that!”
“Then don’t eavesdrop!” Bee called after him.
He padded up the main stairs toward the front entryway.
I went to the door, but the low passageway was empty, so I crossed back to the table. “That was certainly a disturbing story, but you must admit, Bee, we don’t know if it is true. Maybe Brennan was trying to frighten us into cooperating with them.”
She shook her head as she set a parsnip onto the cutting board. “Then he’d do better to ask why he and his comrades first met you while you were traveling in the company of a cold mage, when everyone knows cold mages are the enemies of Camjiata. Maybe he thinks we came here to spy on the radicals for the mage Houses.”
“It would be just as easy to say that Camjiata and the Hassi Barahal house set me to spy on the mages.”
“I wish that’s what Papa and Mama had meant to do with you. Sent you to spy on Four Moons House, I mean. I could forgive them for that.” She pulled a hand over her thick black curls and pulled them back as if to tie them in a tail, a gesture I knew meant she was troubled and nervous. “What I find so puzzling is why the general would walk into the city of Adurnam. He knows the ruling prince here is his sworn enemy. Doesn’t he fear he’ll be recaptured? How does he hope to get out of here without being caught?”
“All I know is the last place we want to be is in the same house as the most wanted man in Europa. Could you put that thing down before you stab me with it?”
She skewered me with a gaze that would have felled stout oxen, had they been unfortunate enough to cross her path. “I am a Hassi Barahal. I never put down the knife!”
I began to smile, but something in the tense way she began slicing the parsnip into even roundels killed my words.
She finally looked up with a crookedly trembling smile. “I don’t want to die like that.”
“Oh, Bee.” I hugged her despite the knife.
In the silence, a lamp hanging from a hook on the wall by the door hissed patiently as it consumed oil. The back door opened. I released her and grabbed my cane. She raised the knife. The red-haired man appeared in the kitchen door, cheeks ruddy from the cold. Seen close, he was younger and better-looking than I had thought, especially when he grinned to greet us.
“Salvete,” he said as he edged around the chamber, sticking close to the wide cupboard with pots, pans, and unchipped crockery set in neat display on its open shelves. One might almost think him leery of coming too close, although I could not fathom what might disturb him about two perfectly well-mannered young women, even if one was grasping a large kitchen knife and the other what must appear to be a polished black cane, the kind of ridiculous accessory carried by young men of wealth who were more concerned with fashion than utility.
“Peace to you,” said Bee. “Are you with the general?”
He reached the stove and held his gloved hands over it with a grateful sigh. “Whew! I just can’t get used to this cursed cold.”
“You’re not from the north?” Bee asked.
He looked pointedly at her knife. She set to work on another parsnip.
“I was born northwest of here, in fact. But I’ve been living as a maku in the city of Expedition for the last ten years. I’m Drake, by the way. James Drake.”
“I am Beatrice Hassi Barahal,” Bee said with her best queenly grandeur, “and this is my best beloved cousin”—she hesitated—“Catherine Bell Barahal.”
He offered a formal bowing courtesy, gaze shifting from her to me and back again. His eyes were so blue they were like a sizzle of bright hot light. “I must always be at the service of such remarkably pretty young women.”
Self-consciously, I smoothed my hands over the waist of my rumpled jacket and my well-worn and somewhat grimy riding skirt. I wasn’t used to such brazen compliments.
Bee’s stony demeanor cracked, and she responded with a smile that made his eyes widen. “But you must tell us more,” she said. “Expedition is in the Amerikes. How exotic!”
“Between North and South Amerike in the Sea of Antilles, to be exact, where the Taino and their fire mages rule. The winters aren’t cold there. Not like here, where cold mages rule beside princes and every soul lives under the shadow of the ice.” His fine blue gaze skimmed the length of my cane. “I can’t figure how a girl like you would be carrying cold steel. You’re not a cold mage.”
“Are you one?” I demanded.
He chuckled. “I don’t bite, so no need to guard against me.” His words were accented with the musicality of a western Celtic dialect overlaid with flat vowels that hinted at foreign lands.
Despite his pleasing grin, I burned with an acrid, suspicious question. “How do you know this is cold steel?”
“Maybe someone told me.” His chuckle suggested he would say nothing more.
“You didn’t answer my question,” said Bee. “Are you with the general?”
Drake glanced out the window. “Ask him yourself, for here he comes.”
Camjiata and Kehinde crossed the yard to the back door. I did not see Godwik or Brennan. Upstairs a door closed, and footsteps paced the length of the house. I heard the professora speaking to the general as they came down the passage.
“—But the airship was destroyed. It is certain a cold mage devised the sabotage.”
“So I was informed yesterday when I entered the city,” the general replied. “A shame. It would have made for a spectacular departure from Adurnam.”
“To think of destroying such a remarkable and beautiful object, both in design and concept! A new means of crossing the ocean between Europa and the Amerikes! Such antipathy toward invention and technology lies beyond my understanding. Such people ought not to hold power over the lives of others. But without the airship, how will you cross the ocean?”
They came into the kitchen, Kehinde blowing on bare hands to warm them.
“I’ve already set a new plan in motion,” Camjiata said as he walked to the table. He picked up Bee’s sketchbook before she or I realized he meant to so brazenly invade her private things.
“Unexpected,” he said as he flipped through the pages, many of which bore sketches of good-looking young men. “Yet as a way to record hopes and dreams, it’s quite as useful as words.”
Bee looked first as if all blood had drained from her face. Then she flushed in an exceedingly dangerous way that only ever presaged her rare but explosive blasts of volcanic temper. Just before she blew, Rory glided back into the room exactly as if he’d felt a warning rumble. He slipped up next to her and draped an arm over her shoulders in a way that made it look as though he were both soothing her and stopping her from stabbing the general.
Without looking up, Camjiata spoke in a coolly amused voice that made me think he knew exactly the effect his intrusion into her sketchbook was having on her. “Patience, and I’ll explain. The women who walk the dreams of dragons walk the path of dreams each in a unique way. Helene heard words of tangled poetry. I learned to unravel her words to reveal meetings and crossing points yet to come. For you see, she who can read the book of the future can wield her knowledge of the future as a kind of sword, one with an edge sharper even than cold steel.”
“Such a gift is a curse,” I said hoarsely.
He studied the page that contained the sketch of him standing in the entryway. Bee had drawn it days, or weeks, or months ago. “Maybe it is. But the women who walk the path of dreams have no choice about what they are. Do you know how my beloved wife died?” He turned another page. His brows furrowed as he considered lines that seemed to depict nothing more than a bench set against a wall under a flowering vine.
“On Hallows’ Night dismembered?” Bee choked out.
Rory tightened his arm around her.
The general glanced at her, and then at me, and last at James Drake, who had gone back to warming his hands over the stove. He lifted his chin. “Go on, James.”
Drake’s lips curled down. For an instant I thought he was going to refuse a direct order, but instead he left the kitchen and went upstairs.
Camjiata smiled at a charming sketch of fanciful clock-faced owl. He closed the book and straightened, his gaze like a spear piercing Bee. “Helene had gone to visit her family. She was a cold mage out of Crescent House, far in the north. I did not go with her. I had administrative duties that needed my attention, a legal code to shepherd into the world. We were both taken by surprise, I suppose, or perhaps we had begun to think we could not be taken by surprise because she walked the path of dreams. On that Hallows’ Night, a storm demolished Crescent House’s entire estate. All that was left in the morning were splinters, shattered stones, and faceless corpses. The main hall lay untouched but sheathed as in a glove of unmelting ice. As for Helene, her body was left on the steps of the main hall. Her limbs had been torn off. And she was decapitated. Her head was found at the bottom of a well that went dry that very night.”
I shuddered. Outside, blown bits of icy snow pattered against the thick glass in a rising wind.
“What do you want?” whispered Bee.
“What matters,” said Camjiata, “is what you want, Beatrice.”
It wasn’t just fear that was making me feel cold. It was actually getting colder. The cozy glamour of the fire wavered. The red glow began to shrink, and pieces of coal to settle. The fire flickered and all at once gave a weary gasp of defeat. Ash puffed and sank.
Rory sniffed. “That’s magic,” he said.
“Oh, no,” whispered Bee.
Only the presence of a powerful cold mage could suck the life out of a fire from a distance. As on an inhaled breath, the house tensed to silence, as if waiting. The ghostly hilt of my sword stung like nettles against my skin as cold magic whispered down its hidden blade. A preemptory knock rapped so loudly on the front door that the walls vibrated.