Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

by Kate Elliott

  “Andevai’s bride! This I did not expect.” A djeli spoke from within the mirror.

  I had walked right into his trap. A crash sounded from upstairs.

  I bolted out the door and slammed into Bee.

  “We’ve got to run!” I steadied her before she stumbled down the steps. Rory waited on the street, looking alarmed. “The law offices have been abandoned. Someone has set a djeli to watch the premises with magic. I’m afraid it’s the mansa’s djeli, Bakary.”

  In such circumstances Bee never argued or questioned. “Where do we go?”

  “We need to find out what happened to the law offices.”

  At the corner of Enterprise Road and Fox Close, the loitering man had reappeared. He looked our way as he deliberately took off his hat and replaced it with the cap worn by the radicals. He’d seen us, so there was no harm in asking, since he already knew we were there. I strode back to the corner. He touched two fingers to his forehead in a welcoming salute.

  I smiled saucily, for I had discovered at the boardinghouse that a flirting smile was likely to get a tip, and right now we needed a tip badly. “May the day bring you peace, Maester. How is it with you and your family? Well, I hope.”

  The man measured me with a grin. “Better now you’ve come, lass!”

  “Cat, really!” muttered Bee.

  “Have you news of what happened to the law office?” I asked.

  A pair of mounted men appeared far down Enterprise Road.

  The man doffed the cap, tucking it inside his coat. His dusty blond hair hung to his shoulders. “Those with feathers must flee the nest when predators disturb the tree.”

  “Were the lawyers arrested?”

  “Birds cry a warning each to the other.”

  His cryptic utterances annoyed me. “By which I take it that the prince’s militia raided them, but they escaped. How long ago did this happen, Maester?”

  “If you want to know more, come in off the street.”

  We followed him through the public room of a coffeehouse where shabbily dressed men sipped at their brew. They watched us go into a private room furnished with a table and chairs.

  “Sit. Will you have food or drink? It’s already paid for.” The young man had the freckled face of a pale man who has spent a good deal of time in the sun, and a bone-deep weariness made his features melancholy. A woman walked in with a tray of bread and cheese and a pot of hot coffee with four cups. She set it down and went out.

  The coffee smelled delicious, and I hadn’t eaten decent cheese for months.

  “I suppose it can’t hurt,” said Bee, seating herself next to Rory.

  I plopped down next to our new companion and cut off a hunk of cheese to go with my bread. The coffee was rich and sharp.

  “To answer your question, the attack on the law offices happened right after the Solstice riots three months ago. A march was held on the first anniversary of the Northgate poet’s hunger strike. Why do you want to know, lass?”

  “Why would I tell my business to the likes of you, a man loitering on the street like any sort of scoundrel?”

  “Whsst! You’re a fiery beast, lass. It will take a strong man to harness you.”

  “It would take a strong man to not speak of harnesses!”

  Perhaps I gestured aggressively with the knife, for his laughter ceased. His mouth settled into a grin that twitched with both bravado and an emotion like anger. Men didn’t ever like to look as if women frightened them.

  “If you want information, lass, you might think a moment about whether you want to antagonize a man who’s willing to tell you things. And to feed you most generously, in a city where plenty of folk go to bed hungry and wake up hungry with no hope of even a scrap of bread.”

  I sighed gustily. “My apologies. We’re looking for the troll lawyers.”

  “Not so difficult, was that? But I’m thinking you don’t recognize me. For I surely recognize you two lasses, and the man with you, too. That’s why you’re in here and not out there.”

  He had two fingers missing on his right hand. Abruptly, I did recognize him.

  “You were the one with the coal cart, Brennan Du’s man. You challenged Lord Marius, to catch his attention so he wouldn’t find us. He had you arrested. Your name is Eurig.”

  “That is me in truth, lass.” He flashed a more flirtatious smile, perhaps thinking that a woman who remembered him so keenly had been struck by his looks and presence, when in fact I had been trained in a household of spies and messengers to have a good memory. “I remember the day as bright as yesterday even though it was over a year ago.”

  “We were never able to thank you for the sacrifice you made for us. What happened after you were arrested?”

  He glanced at his mutilated hand. “A lot of folk were arrested after the prince got news that General Camjiata had walked into Adurnam and then escaped over the sea. Black-haired Brennan and the professora barely escaped.”

  “I was with them!” said Rory. “That was fun!”

  He rounded on Rory. “Fun! One hundred men were executed for treason!”

  “I didn’t see that,” said Rory indignantly. “We were already gone. I would never call executions and arrests fun! I meant that the skulking and running were fun, and Brennan Du taught me how to properly drink whiskey. Did you think I meant I am the kind of person who laughs when people suffer?”

  He looked suddenly about twice his normal size, with his chest puffed up and his lips curled back. His braid, like a whip, seemed ready to snap.

  Eurig scooted his chair back so fast that it squeaked against the floorboards.

  Rory leaned forward. “A person can enjoy fun and be serious at the same time.”

  “Gracious Melqart, Rory! You’re sounding more and more like Cat every day!” Bee pushed him back into his chair and turned her most coaxing smile on Eurig. “What happened to the Northgate poet?”

  Eurig’s anger broke free. “Why, the Northgate poet died, lass. And our hopes with him. The prince let the poet starve himself to death on the steps of the palace.”

  I was too shocked to speak, for when we had fallen into the well, the Northgate poet had still been alive.

  “Died!” Bee set down her mug. “What of the shame that stained the prince’s honor?”

  “Tyrants have no honor and therefore no shame. The prince will make merry at his daughter’s wedding feast. He serves flesh to a princely Roman legate in exchange for the Invictus Legion to guard his restless lands. Roman boots will walk the roads the empire built in the days of our ancestors, back when we were free men. Every day we wake to see our master the prince of Tarrant walk arm in arm like a brother with the cursed magister who is the mansa of Four Moons House, although they were bitter rivals all the long days before. We live under the law of the sword. They crush us under their boot-heels like the vermin they name us, and so death makes cowards of us all. The prince ordered that every troll must leave the city, and no person raised a voice in protest.”

  “Every troll?” demanded Bee.

  “That’s what was strange,” I murmured. “There are no feathered people anywhere.”

  “Every one. And every man in a radical’s cap was arrested and his family threatened. Hundreds have been transported to the north. There they must labor with their sweat and their blood in the mines of the Barrens. The salt they haul up in buckets flavors the prince’s food while his subjects go hungry. The iron they dig out of the rock forges the swords that kill us.”

  His poem of grievances so stunned me that I could not help but think of the promises General Camjiata had made. The music of revolution had a more urgent melody when heard in a city where so many voices had been so recently silenced. I wanted to give him hope. “I heard a rumor that the general is returning to Europa. He’ll proclaim a legal code that abolishes the ancient privileges of princes and mage Houses.”

  “Rumor is like a woman’s promise that she’ll kiss you. Have you a kiss for me, lass?”

  “I
don’t kiss just any man I see! Only the ones I want to kiss! Did I give you reason to think otherwise?”

  “A brave man must have taken on the taming of you!” he said with a laugh that made me want to skewer him.

  “Our thanks to you for helping us,” Bee said as she slipped the cheese knife out of my hand. As if I could not control my temper!

  He smiled as easily at her as he had at me a moment before. “My trials were made easier by my knowing such a beautiful young woman was spared thereby.” He glanced up as the door opened and the woman appeared.

  He rose. “Time for you to move on. I saw with my own eyes when the mansa of Four Moons House came to Fox Close with his djeli to set the mirror in place. An impressive man, the mansa. Rioters had set a barricade in the road and set it afire. He put out the bonfire with a blast of hail and cold wind that shattered windows and made every hearth fire go out. His men will come to see who opened the door. I don’t reckon you want to be here when they get here.”

  “Cat, let’s go now.” Rory’s gaze flickered toward the man, and then toward the woman, and then back to us.

  “Of course,” I agreed, smiling at the woman, who stared dourly back at me. “Have you any word of where these particular birds might have flown?”

  “To another nest east of here by name of Havery.”

  “My thanks to you for the information, and the food and drink.”

  “May Bright Venus bring fertility to you and your brave man,” he replied. He laughed as I blushed.

  We took our leave and stumped along Enterprise Road in a plaguing rain.

  “ ‘Bright Venus’! I thought it very rude to wish a person of Kena’ani heritage luck in breeding under the auspices of a Roman goddess. Didn’t you, Bee?”

  She was chewing over more urgent problems. “The mansa knows you’re here, so he’ll secure the house.”

  “We have to get the chest!”

  “Ba’al forbid that you lose Andevai’s fashionable dash jackets! Some other man might be seen wearing them!”

  “If never so well,” I muttered mulishly. I missed Vai. How sweet those weeks seemed now, when I had seen him every day.

  “Are you saying I don’t look well in this fine dash jacket?” Rory straightened his shoulders as a group of two men and two women passed who were laughing in the way of folk out about the business of pleasure. His smile made the women loose their holds on the arms of their beaux as they gave him a closer look over. When the men objected, Rory smiled more deeply, with a hint of dusky corners in his gaze, and one man took a startled step back while the other bit his lip.

  Bee’s scorching glare drove them off. “Rory! We are skulking and running! We are not lighting a bonfire and ringing bells so people will notice and remember us.”

  “Cat said I didn’t look well in my jacket.”

  I rapped him on the arm. “It’s not your jacket.”

  “Have we survived the mansa’s wrath, the prince’s fury, the general’s devious plotting, and the Wild Hunt only to have you two squabble over clothes? You look perfectly handsome, Rory, and I am sure many a female would love to pet you, and by that look you just got a few males as well, but none of them will get a chance if I murder you first. Are we done?”

  “Yes, Bee, my apologies,” he said so contritely I was astonished.

  “Cat?” she demanded. “Does Rory look well in that fine dash jacket?”

  With a look like that, directed at me, I knew how to answer. “He looks very fine.”

  “You’re only saying it because she told you to,” said Rory.

  Bee’s hand tightened on his arm. “Rory, dearest, did you know that in anatomy class at the academy we learned how the ancient Turanians used to castrate young men so they could no longer engage in petting? I paid careful attention to that part of class but unfortunately there was never a practicum in which we were given an opportunity to see if we could manage the operation ourselves. But I haven’t given up hope.”

  If he could have put his ears down, he would have. Then he laughed, and I did, too.

  Yet I could not help but notice how women and men mostly moved in separate groups. Here women never walked anywhere alone, even though in Expedition women had felt free to come and go as they wished. Nor did people laugh and talk with the same friendly clamor with which folk had in Expedition. Voices stayed hushed and dampened. Maybe that was the prince’s newly harsh reign, but perhaps it had always been this way and we had just never noticed.

  It was strange to think we were only passing through the city where we had grown up, on our way to somewhere else.

  “Amadou Barry saw you on the street, and the djeli saw me at the law offices,” I said. “Nothing to be done about that now. Since the academy is on the way home, we may as well go there first and hope we find the headmaster before anyone comes looking for us.”

  15

  After a long walk we made our way up Academy Hill past the temple dedicated to the Blessed Tanit. Her gates always stood open. Bee and Rory ducked into the temple to stay out of sight while I wrapped the shadows around me and crept into the academy compound past the servant standing at the gate.

  The entry hall lay empty, not a single pupil scurrying late to class under the frieze with its princely white yam, winter wheat, towering maize, and other carvings of plants. Another arch led me into the glass-roofed central courtyard. No one was about. Rain pattered an erratic drumbeat on the glass roof. Although it was early spring, a scent like summer kissed my lips, the smell of the spirit world sensed through the water in the ancient sacrificial well at the center of a paved labyrinth. The blood of sacrifices offered generations ago stung at my nostrils. A year and almost three months ago, Bee and I had fallen through the well into the spirit world. I paused now in the quiet courtyard, looking toward the well, which was covered by an iron grate. My blood would open a path from here into the spirit world, but how would I find Vai in all that vast and changing landscape?

  Bee was right: The headmaster knew more than he had ever let on. We had to talk to him.

  In a rush of clattering footsteps, a crowd of boys and young men swept into the courtyard, all chattering excitedly. They were dressed in old-fashioned robes cut in the fashion of boubous, a plain drapery of muted colors designed not to excite the eye. I caught snippets of words, and it seemed they had been out to watch the festival procession. Although they had not witnessed the disturbance I had caused, rumor of its occurrence had spread. When an older man with blond hair and the ruddy features of a heavy drinker entered the courtyard at the tail end of the procession, they all hushed so quickly that the voice of the one poor boy who hadn’t noticed rang out.

  “—They heard a voice say, ‘A rising light marks the dawn of a new world.’ ”

  As proctors carrying willow wands converged on the hapless speaker to whip his hands, I looked in vain for a line of girls. I was the only woman in the glass courtyard; no female proctors or servants flocked at the edge of the shuffling horde of youths. The overly talkative boy was biting his lip so as not to cry out under the humiliating punishment as everyone stared.

  I could not bear to watch, and anyway, I needed to find the headmaster. A staircase led up to the long corridor and the closed door of his study. The well-oiled latch eased down with a soft click. I slipped inside.

  For an instant I thought I had accidentally walked through the wrong door into the wrong room, because nothing in the spacious chamber looked as I remembered it. The chalkboards and desk had vanished, replaced by gilt-embroidered chairs that looked as uncomfortable as they were showy. The bookshelves had been cleared of all their books and scrolls, and they now displayed gold cups, gold bowls, and brass or silver wine flagons. One bookcase held nothing but a grisly collection of skulls, arranged from the largest at the top left to the smallest at the lower right, which horribly seemed to be a baby’s actual skull. On the long table lay not a dinner service for five but so many empty wine bottles and empty glasses I did not bother to count the
m. Only the circulating stove set into the fireplace and the pedestal holding the head of the poet Bran Cof remained from the last time I had entered this room. It surely did not look like the study of a scholar with the many diverse interests and formidable intellect of the headmaster. It took no great acumen to suspect that he had been replaced as master of the academy.

  The skulls stared hollow-eyed at me in stubborn silence. The head of the poet Bran Cof sat atop the pedestal in a stony slumber, his brow furrowed with deep thoughts and his lips pinched closed over all the poems and legal knowledge he had hoarded throughout his famous life. With his hair sticking up in stiff spikes and his bushy eyebrows a little raised, he looked noble and magnificent and just a trifle startled, but I knew he was a filthy-minded and staggeringly unpleasant old man who tried to bully young women into kissing him. His body was imprisoned by my sire, who could not only command the poet but also see through his eyes and speak through his mouth. If I woke the head, would my sire reach through him and trap me with the chain of his voice, as he had before?

  I had to risk it.

  And I knew just the way to wake him up.

  Emphatically not with a kiss. I shattered one of the wineglasses on the table and pricked my arm enough to draw blood. This bead I smeared on the head’s lips and eyes. The cold grain of his face smeared and smoothed into warm flesh. His eyelids fluttered, then popped open with a look compounded as much of fear as of anger.

  “You fool! What do you mean by waking me with blood?”

  “I need to ask you some questions.” I took a step back, for the transition from stone to flesh disturbed me.

  His gaze sharpened to a leer as he recognized me. “The girl whose eyes are amber. Woken with kisses, I see. You have the look of a woman about you now, shaped by a man’s caresses. Did you escape the marriage, or embrace its carnal pleasures?” His tone had a greasy unctuousness that made me want to wash myself, but fortunately a new thought struck him before he started quoting obscene poetry as I was sure he was about to. Instead, he glanced around with an expression made comical by its wild exaggeration. “Where is the serpent? Where is she hiding?”