Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

by Kate Elliott

  “Love, love, love, this is not what it will be once the war is over.”

  But it would. I knew it, and he did not want to know it.

  Yet he was right that a war was being fought. The old order did not want to die, and why should it? The radicals wanted change, and why wouldn’t they? Meanwhile Camjiata had a foot in each camp: His father and mother had both been born into the highest ranks, while his legal code would tear down the bed his noble forebears had long luxuriated in.

  The bells of conflict rang down through the interwoven worlds. The dragons lost their hatchlings and began to die out, so they walked their dreams through the minds of mortal girls and by this means hatchlings survived, even if the girls did not. The courts drank mortal blood to strengthen themselves, and the salt turned them into ghouls, and thus, unable to change, as ghouls they fell into the mortal world and spread the salt plague that had killed so many.

  So on and on, always the long struggle: The worlds are a maze with many paths.

  “What about my sire?” I asked. “What are we to do when Hallows’ Night comes, as it will?”

  “I have been discussing Hallows’ Night and troll mazes with the mansa—”

  I shoved him to arm’s length. “With the mansa!”

  “Beatrice is the one who revealed to him that we know how to escape the Hunt. You can’t wish people to die, Catherine! That’s all I told him, love. None of your secrets, I promise you.”

  I could not scold him. I did not want people to die any more than he did. “Yet troll mazes won’t help me,” I muttered, letting him gather me against him.

  He held me so close and so so sweetly. “My sweet Catherine, if we walk this road together, we will find a way through. I promise you, love. We will find a way.”

  When I kissed him, I could hold on to my patience for one more night. But I had to make something change.

  36

  At dawn a steward announced himself. Vai was commanded to accompany the mansa to the city of Senones to meet three Roman legions arriving from the east and discuss with them the difficulties of battling an army protected by a fire mage. He might be gone for weeks.

  After he left, I wept hot tears of frustration. Then I dried my eyes.

  In the indoor bedchamber, which we had never used, stood a writing desk equipped with paper, ink, and pens. I wrote an impassioned letter to Kofi because it was the only way I had to express the ferocity of my misgivings. Afterward I would have burned my bitter words, but I had no fire. Instead I concealed the folded paper inside the skull. For the longest time I stood at the open door of the suite, staring along the corridor. As long as my back was in sight, my attendants let me be. Now and again a servant passed on an errand. I could not quite comprehend how I had gotten here, wife to the heir of the mansa!

  A young steward sauntered into view, carrying a tray on which lay a sealed letter. He mistook me for an attendant because of the simple colors and sensible cut of my clothes.

  “Where is the woman who stewards here? I am instructed to give all correspondence that comes for the Four Moons heir to her first.”

  I made a pretty courtesy and flashed a flirting grin. “I shall take it in to her. She is attending on the heir’s wife, who has a headache this morning for that the men rode away.”

  He leaned closer, with a confiding smile that I rather fancied. “Is it true, what they say?”

  “What do they say?” I gave him a sly look to distract him as I slipped the letter off the tray.

  “That she can vanish from plain sight and walk through mirrors. That she is a spirit woman the heir captured in the bush and brought back to be his wife to show off his power. That’s why they can’t marry him to any other women, because she would kill and eat them.”

  “It’s all true!”

  “What does she look like?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary. Haven’t you ever seen her?” I heard footsteps behind me. “I’d best take this to the steward right away. You wouldn’t want me to get in trouble, would you?”

  “I could get you into the kind of trouble you’d like,” he said with a grin.

  I winked at him as I closed the door, then tucked the letter inside my jacket before anyone saw it. When they asked whom I had been talking to, I sniveled that a passing steward had told me the men had left already. With sobs I retreated to the summer cottage, the one place the djelimuso and steward would not follow. Gracious Melqart! What providence was this! The letter came from Chartji, and informed Vai that she and her three clerks had arrived in Lutetia and were putting up at an establishment called the Tavern with Two Doors just outside the city limits at the Arras Gate.

  And her three clerks. Caith was one clerk. Who were the other two?

  When Prince Caonabo arrested me, I had not allowed myself to be detained all mild and acquiescent, although who knows what I might have done had the man been cunning enough to shower me with ardent kisses and embraces, for clearly I was susceptible to such blandishments.

  Instead I had leaped into action.

  I conceived a violently imprudent plan.

  I begged the steward to take me for a tour of the schoolrooms, since the heir and I hoped to bring into the world many well-behaved children. In one schoolroom I made myself useful with the older children by engaging them in a geography lesson in which they described to me in great detail the particulars of a map of Lutetia. When I returned to my rooms I kept the door to my suite open while I paged through books of fashion on a couch by the door. Every time I heard footsteps I took a turn around the sitting room that led past the door.

  At mid-afternoon my labors were rewarded when the young steward ambled past, obviously on the lookout for me. Men did strut about life with a strong sense of their self-importance!

  “Shh!” I whispered, “for they keep me trapped here. They don’t want me to talk to people lest I say unkind things about the heir’s wife.”

  “Have you unkind things to say of her?” he asked with keen interest as he ogled my chest. “I hear all kinds of smoke but have seen no fire.”

  “I could show you some fire,” I said with a look meant to inflame his interest. “I’ve nothing to do but sit for hours in the garden. Not that the heir’s wife needs watching by people like us.”

  “Is it true a djelimuso guards the suite at all hours, day and night?”

  “It is. I can’t hope to slip out as long as her eye is open! The frustrating part is that I could be gone for hours and she would never know, if I could just get out this door.”

  He was eager to show me what he could accomplish! We arranged for him to create a distraction in the morning at second bell, after which I would meet him at a place he named that I pretended to know the location of. He hadn’t even asked my name, although by the evidence of his gaze he had become well acquainted with the shape of my breasts.

  I hid Chartji’s letter in the skull and retrieved the one to Kofi, and retreated to the summer cottage, where I threw tantrums and also actual objects any time anyone attempted to enter. By evening they simply waited outside for me to ring. At dawn I rang for broth and informed them I felt so ill I wanted only to sleep all day and must on no account be disturbed. Then I dressed in my boots, my riding skirt, and my repurposed cuirassier’s jacket, which gave me the look of a humble but respectable woman. My cane and my locket gave me courage. The cacica I had to leave behind, because I saw no way to move her without the djelimuso’s wondering why. Anyway, I had to leave Chartji’s letter somewhere I could hope Vai would think to look for it.

  What distraction the young steward concocted I did not know. As soon as I heard a commotion from the sitting room, I was up a tree and onto the wall and thence over the sloped roofs. Without djeliw following my every move it was easy for me to escape, as the mansa had known it would be.

  With my newly acquired knowledge of Lutetia as a map in my head, I enjoyed a refreshing walk down to the lovely Sicauna River and over a stone bridge and across the holy island dedicated
to the Lady of the River with her diadem and boat. On such a fine sunny day many people walked the streets, but I sensed a mood of fear and anticipation. I strode along a wide boulevard leading to the northwest. The long facades of the buildings were broken by gates leading to interior courtyards. Flagstones shone, drenched by pools of light from the midday sun. Side avenues broke away to smaller temples, shops, and city manufactories powered not by steam but by hand. A long line of shuttered windows down one narrow lane bore the plain white stamp of goblinkind, but their workshops were closed down for the day. I saw no trolls at all, because no trolls were allowed into the central city by order of the Parisi prince.

  After several miles I reached Arras Gate, built across an old defensive wall of earlier days. Folk stood in line at a toll station, arguing with the guards over the cost of import duties on the items they were carrying into the city. Wrapped in shadow I walked right through, no one the wiser. Outside the gate more buildings spread along the Arras Road, for the city was growing outward. To the left rose a wooded hill on whose height stood a holy sanctuary dedicated to one of the aspects of Mars the Soldier. Farther off to the left I glimpsed the smokestacks of a factory district. I asked directions to the Tavern with Two Doors.

  On such a beautiful summer’s day, trestle tables filled the tavern’s outdoor courtyard. Men drank and ate and argued. A youth read aloud from a pamphlet for those who could not read.

  “ ‘A Declaration of Rights and a Civil Code. Book One. Title One. Chapter One. Every person shall enjoy civil rights.’ What do you think of that, eh? Every person!”

  A lively argument arose among the men over who could be deemed a person. Did the word person include women? Inside, to my delight, I immediately spotted Rory seated in a corner next to a young man. They were sharing a mug of beer mostly, I thought, for the chance to dandle each other’s fingers. I gently eased my shadows away so no one would be startled by my sudden appearance. Seeing me, Rory broke off. Excusing himself with an apologetic smile, he made his way to me. I followed him to the back, into a separate building made up of rooms where, for the first time, I saw trolls. In a sequestered courtyard clusters of trolls drank and ate. After so long, I had forgotten trolls saw my cane as a sword even in daylight.

  “Roderic, what is that shiny blade?” called one red-and-yellow male, the question followed up by whistled inquiries from all around the courtyard. Feathered people turned to look with the bared teeth of trolls mimicking human emotions, in this case amusement and curiosity.

  “My sister has come to visit,” he replied, at ease in this flock. “Has Chartji flown off?”

  Yes, she had, in company with the Honeyed Voice.

  “The Honeyed Voice?” I asked as Rory hurried me out the back past a warren of lanes hung with mirrors and shards of glass whose flashing and spinning made me reel and gag. I felt like the very threads of being were unraveling.

  “Those troll mazes are unpleasant, aren’t they?” He steered us to a lane lined with shops whose windows had only glass, no mirrors. I leaned against a wall as nausea and headache did a frenetic dance that slowly receded. After a while, he went on. “The Honeyed Voice is what the feathered people call Bee. It’s a play on words. She’s a Bee and she gives speeches…”

  “I know, Rory. I figured it out.”

  “What’s got your hair up?” He peered at me. “You’ve had a fight with him! People do that, you know. After some talking and petting, it will all be set right again.”

  “We haven’t had a fight.”

  His tone changed. “Cat, don’t lie.”

  “We didn’t have a fight. It’s just the mansa got his claws into Vai. I have to rescue him, only he doesn’t want to be rescued, he has everything he thinks he ever wanted. He can’t see what kind of man he is going to become if he stays there. He thinks he can change them but they’re changing him.”

  I burst into tears. Rory patted my back and fended off the impertinent queries of passersby by telling them his sister had had a row with her husband, nothing that wouldn’t be fixed once he had had a manly talk with the rogue of a popinjay his sister had foolishly married all for being dazzled by the man’s peacock feathers and melting eyes.

  I could not help but laugh.

  “That’s better,” he said.

  “Where is everyone else?” I asked. “Chartji’s letter said you were at the tavern.”

  “That’s where we sleep. Today they’re addressing a secret convocation of radicals. We’ll go there.”

  He led me on a road that ran parallel to the old city walls. As we entered the interior courtyard of a large compound, I drew the shadows around me. People were hammering in workshops on the ground floor. Men sawed in the courtyard beside wagons piled with rope for haulage. The carpenters touched the brims of their red caps in a signal, and made no move to stop Rory. We descended a flight of stone steps into a basement lit by oil lamps and heavy with tobacco smoke, the scent of the Antilles. The fragrance made me lose hold of my threads, but no one took any notice of two more in the crowded cellar.

  The smell of strong coffee wafted from a bar where men, and a few women, talked in the local cant at a speed I could not understand. The women wore loose, simply cut gowns, while the men wore neckerchiefs tied in exciting knots over jackets cut short in front and long in back.

  At the back of this cavernous space, Kehinde Nayo Kuti was giving a demonstration of her jobber press. She wore a knee-length tunic over belled trousers in the Turanian style common in the south. It was practical garb for a traveler, and the brown fabric almost hid the many ink stains where she had unthinkingly wiped her fingers. Standing on a box, Bee acted as the professora’s voice.

  “The press can be taken apart and moved if the authorities raid. Besides that, when your prince demands another tax be levied on printers and pamphlets, think how hard it is to track it down. What you cannot chain, you cannot hold!”

  “I’d like to hold you, sweetheart!” shouted some sad wit.

  Bee pointed him out to laughter and applause. “If that is the best you can do in the way of courtship, Maester, then like this press I shall have to seek my words elsewhere. I have come to Lutetia to speak of justice and revolution, not to waste my time with men who are not serious about the great struggle we have undertaken.”

  “Cat Barahal!” Brennan Du slid in beside us to shake my hand. “Chartji thought you might show up. Where is the cold mage?”

  I sighed, for of all the things I had thought of, how to answer this question to anyone except Bee or Rory was not one of them.

  Rory said, “He’s a prisoner of his vanity.”

  “I beg your pardon? A prisoner of the banditry?” Brennan rubbed his ear. The roar in the chamber was astoundingly clamorous. Chartji and Caith flanked Bee, who was now wrangling with hecklers sure that women had no cause or right to speak in a public venue. “Come this way.”

  We moved into a low passage and emerged into an old storage room lit by two basement windows. Lines of afternoon light cast gold over a table strewn with pamphlets, blank sheets of foolscap, and pens and ink.

  He slid a pamphlet out of a heap. “Your account of the revolutionary philosophy of the Expedition radicals has traveled across Europa while you have laid low. Many have read it. Have you been a prisoner or a spy?”

  “Cat!” Bee appeared, trembling as she rushed to embrace me.

  “Oh, Bee! I’m so glad you’re here!” To my horror, I again burst into tears.

  “Dearest! Has some terrible calamity befallen Andevai?”

  Pleased with his cleverness, Rory repeated himself. “He’s become a prisoner of his vanity.”

  Brennan chuckled. “Was he not that already? As the djeliw say, vanity is a mark of weakness, humility that of strength.”

  “The mansa made him his heir!” I cried.

  Brennan whistled with real admiration. “When I suggested you spy in the mage House, I had no idea you would do so with such success!”

  “Heir to Four Moons
House?” demanded Bee. “So he will become the next mansa?”

  I nodded, too choked to speak.

  She patted my hand. “Blessed Tanit! No wonder you’re crying! If there is one enticement Andevai could not resist, that would be it.”

  “It gets worse,” I sniveled. “The mansa brought Vai’s mother along to be prisoner with his sisters. Now with his elevation his mother is elevated, too! She was born a peddler’s daughter and now she’s the honored mother of the heir to Four Moons House!”

  Brennan whistled again. “Bold Teutates! Remind me never to play chess with the mansa. That will have secured the young man’s loyalty. You can’t ask a man to take a course of action that will seem to him to be dishonoring his mother.”

  “Did you ask him to give up the heirship, Cat?” Bee asked. “Or did he cast you out so he could secure a more valuable bride?”

  “Of course he didn’t cast me out!” I crumpled a pamphlet in my hands. I hated the way my anger and distress surged like storm tides, ripping me this way and that until I could not even think straight for wanting to cry one moment and rage the next.

  “Of course he didn’t cast her out,” said Rory with a disdainful sniff. “For one thing, his scent is still all over her, and pretty fresh. For another, he would think it would make him look bad, as if he’s ashamed of Cat. If there’s one thing he truly hates, it’s the thought of looking bad or feeling demeaned in front of other people. No, there’s one thing he hates worse. He hates people thinking he is ashamed of where he comes from, because a part of him is ashamed of it.”

  We all stared at him.

  He explained with the patience of an elder to slow-witted children. “People often lie with their words, even if they don’t mean to purposefully. But almost no people can lie with their bodies. Do you need me to go and scold him?”

  I wiped tears off my cheeks. “No. It would just make him worse. They praise and fawn over him to his face and talk about his low origins behind his back. But they’re scared of him, too, and so very impressed by how powerful he is.”