Cold Magic (Untitled Kate Elliott Series #1)

by Kate Elliott

  Not until I stuck my head around the corner. A mob of torches bobbed along the street, heading toward us from both directions. Men brandished shovels and clubs and swords; behind the front line, crossbows were being leveled. Voices chanted, but fortunately the bells were so loud I couldn’t make out what the crowd was screaming beyond “kill!” and “burn!” and “revenge!”—the usual furious shouts that come right before a mob’s victims are swarmed and brutally hacked to death.

  Fear came in a rush so strong that for an instant I could hear nothing except an indeterminate roaring. It seemed I would choke on terror.

  A howl cracked over the mob, muffling the peal of the bells. Every burning torch shuddered and snapped out. Just like that. An icy wind blew through, shattering tree limbs and dropping men as though they’d been punched. Through the crowd rolled the coach, ghastly where the twisting light of the conflagration, still burning strong, caught in its lineaments. The horses no longer looked like flesh-and-bone beasts; they galloped about an arm’s span above the ground, the white-haired coachman flicking his whip over manes as translucent as icicles. The other creature hung off the riding board in the back, looking no longer anything like a human being but rather a storm of cold magic so powerful it began to pelt ice along the street.

  They pulled up alongside us as men wailed in fear, faces pressed into the ground. The eru leaped down from the back, flipped out the stairs, and opened the coach’s door, as precisely as would any humble footman serving an exacting household. My husband climbed in without looking back, but I stared at the eru, who paused in the midst of chaos and looked right at me.

  “Greetings, Cousin,” it said in a voice that sounded so perfectly normal I should not have been able to hear it above the clangor of the bells and the wail of the storm winds and the cries of the mob. “I’ll offer you a gift, if you’re inclined to accept. For I think you may need this.”

  It flicked an object off the rack on the roof where boxes were tied and tossed it to me, hilt first. I caught it instinctively, felt its weight and balance mold to my grip. If there’s one thing a Barahal knows, it is the sword. For it is true we are born to a lineage long scorned, if necessary, to the rule of the powerful: that of the hired swords and spies who across the centuries have done the dirty work of princes, bankers, guilds, and mage Houses. Djeliw and bards never sang praise to us, although we Barahals had always served honorably, paid the bitter price, and finished the job.

  My husband called from inside the coach. “What is taking so long? We must move.”

  The horses stamped restlessly. The cold cut to my bones, and my teeth chattered. The eru turned away, and only then was I able to drag my cold-heavy legs up into the coach. I collapsed onto the seat facing him. He slammed the door shut. The stairs thunked into place beneath the undercarriage. The coach jerked forward once, twice, and a third time, slamming me back each time against the box.

  The coachman shouted, “Ha-roo! Ha-roo!”

  Blue sparks spun, and then we were rolling with a grinding roar along the cobbled street. I had a blinding headache.

  “I didn’t see you had a cane,” he said, so surprised he sounded neither irritated nor supercilious.

  I gaped, for I still felt a sword’s hilt molded as if to my hand, but when I looked, it was as if with doubled vision: a ghost sword slim and straight and gleaming, layered within and around a fashionable ebony cane like the one my husband carried, an affectation of perfectly healthy and wealthy young men that Bee and I often mocked. Where was Bee now? Was she thinking of me, sleepless, in the room we had shared for over thirteen years? Had she noticed the distant fire in a far district of the city and wondered what it signified? If it would spread? If the entire city would go down in flames?

  Hastily and awkwardly, I changed the subject. “Blessed Tanit! Surely that was a mage storm. I didn’t realize you were so powerful.” Yet I was shaking in the face of the immense power raging around us, for either he had raised that storm untrammeled and barely out of breath, or he had bound an eru, a creature of the dread ice, which had raised the storm on his behalf.

  Vanity blinds even powerful men to blatant attempts at distraction.

  He tugged at the neck of his jacket, straightening it where it was rumpled. “My abilities were unexpected, that’s true. So unexpected that the masters of Four Moons House did not even recognize what they had until the diviners of five rival houses were caught asking questions in the villages. I was the strongest spirit in a generation, so they said, although diviners have a way of exaggerating to emphasize their own importance.”

  Glory loosens the tongue! He rattled on in that clipped, arrogant way he had.

  “That’s why I was given the honor and the privilege of this assignment.”

  There I sat, an honor and a privilege. The contract sealed by magic. Why on earth did Four Moons House want a daughter of the Barahal clan?

  He twisted in his seat, flipped the latch, and slid open the window set into the back of the coach. Behind us, the glare of light made bright the sky, roofs limned as with a painter’s knife, licks of flame curling skyward at erratic intervals as skeins of fuel caught. There was an ammonia sting in the air that made my eyes water and a flavor odder still that I wasn’t familiar with.

  The flames illuminated his satisfied smile. “Done well, if I must say so. Completely destroyed! They were sure I was too inexperienced to manage it!”

  He was talking about the conflagration! I wasn’t the honor and the privilege at all. To him, I was an afterthought, a mere task.

  We sloped around a corner and rumbled down a deserted street, its doors and gates shut against the night. He snapped shut the board and sank back into the cushioned seat. The winds had died. The roil and clamor of the conflagration and the hunting, furious mob faded. One by one, the bells ceased their toll as fire horns woke in the distance, calling men to man the water brigades.

  “What did you do?” I demanded.

  “The airship, of course. Weren’t you paying attention?”

  “The airship?”

  “I destroyed the airship of course.”

  “You destroyed the airship?”

  “Must you repeat everything I say?”

  Of course, the mage Houses hated airships. They hated the busy technology of combustion, the scalding power of steam, the schemes and contraptions imported across the ocean by those cursedly clever trolls and their treacherous human allies in faraway Expedition. While foreign engineers were lecturing on design principles in the halls of the academy, a House had sent its agent into the Rail Yard where the huge airship from Expedition was being stabled.

  Gracious Melquart! The man had walked arrogantly into the academy library and used their scholarly materials to figure out how and where and when to do it!

  “You did it alone?” For I wondered where the eru had been, and what manner of creature the coachman might actually be. Perhaps he was human, as he appeared to my eye, but perhaps he was not. Unlike the man I had been forced to marry, I wasn’t arrogant enough to believe I comprehended everything.

  “You doubt I could?” he retorted dangerously.

  “Since I know nothing about you or Four Moons House, I’m scarcely likely to have any opinion on that subject, am I?”

  “Spoken resentfully! You should be cognizant of the honor shown to you by Four Moons House, established by the Diarisso lineage, who with their sorcery brought so many families and households safely across the desert.” For a breath, a sniff, a blink, a humbled tone of awed respect for these ancestors shone in his voice like the glimmer of sunlight on water. Then the tone was gone. “Certainly I did not expect to find myself bound in such a way, to a person—” He broke off.

  “I was never told of any sort of contract.”

  “It falls to the mansa to speak to you of the contract. For now, it would be better if we were silent.”

  “I don’t even know your name!”

  “My name?”

  “Must you repeat eve
rything I say?” But my embarrassed and pathetic counterthrust sailed right past him, missing its mark.

  “It was spoken in the contract to seal the binding. Weren’t you listening?”

  Anger is better than tears. “Did it ever occur to you that I might have been too stunned to listen? That I had no expectation, no warning. Did you even think—” I gulped down tears. I could not go on. I had humiliated myself in front of him, and that was the very last thing I ever wanted.

  He exhaled sharply, as at a powerful emotion. The illumination dimmed until the interior was mostly shadow. He settled back on the cushions and closed his eyes. We rolled along. Now and again the coachman’s whip snapped, a sound like the crack of kindling fire, although combustion of all things is anathema to the cold magic so assiduously nurtured and cultured and studied for so many generations by the mage Houses that wove their power out of the vast breathing spirit of ice that is the soul of the hidden Ancestors.

  At length he stirred, then spoke barely above a whisper, as though he feared the servants outside might hear and thus gain power over him by the rule of naming. “Andevai Diarisso Haranwy.”

  Still embarrassed, I could not resist prodding him. “You name yourself in the Roman style, I collect. Yet you are obviously not of Roman descent.”

  His eyes opened. “How can you be sure no one in Four Moons House is of Roman descent? Even the highest patrician’s child and the poorest slave woman’s whelp may come to the attention of the magisters if such a child has been gifted by the gods with a soul touched by cold magic. Also, we can pick and choose when it comes to marriage, as must be obvious to you today. Anyway, why should it be surprising we use the Roman style of naming? Is ‘Catherine’ not a derivation from a Roman form with an ancient Greek origin?”

  “Do you mean to insult me?”

  “How am I insulting you? You misunderstand me. I am only explaining why it is unexceptional for people not of direct Roman descent to use a common style of naming where once the Romans ruled. Perhaps you Phoenicians have a different view on the subject.”

  “Naturally we do, being contrary according to the nature we were born with, which is one of the lies the Romans told. For one thing, we are Kena’ani, not Phoenicians. We can borrow from the Greeks of ancient days as easily as the Romans could, so it’s perfectly normal for children of Kena’ani lineage to take given names derived from the Greeks. We are not restricted to the names of generals and queens from our illustrious history, although people seem to think we ought to be!”

  “Are you attempting to convince me otherwise? Anyway, I never heard that ‘people’ thought anything particular of Phoenicians except—” Abruptly his lips closed hard over unspoken words.

  “Except what?”

  He did not reply.

  “I am not afraid to hear whatever you are afraid to say.”

  That riled him. “Very well. You must know what people say far better than I do. During the siege of Carthage, the queen of your people sacrificed her own firstborn child and that of every household to the god of the city. Who therefore brought down lightning and storm winds to destroy the besieging Roman army.”

  “And thus Rome’s attempt to gain power over the seas was broken by a heartless people who care for nothing except the profits they can make as merchants and who therefore are willing to sacrifice even their own sweet infants to angry Moloch,” I finished in a trembling voice. Keep silence! my aunt had said. But I could not bear to be passively submissive, to bow my head and let people speak such lies. My ancestors had not battled Rome to a standstill two thousand years ago by bowing their heads and baring their throats. “Are you done maligning my people? It is easy to toss comments and descriptions into the air when they do not fall back upon you but rather paint others—others whose clothes you will never have to wear—in an unflattering light so you can feel better about yourself.”

  The words were my father’s. I felt their truth resonate like power in the closed space.

  Blessed Tanit! What an idiot I was. I braced myself for a furious retort, but he remained silent for so long I began to think he had fallen asleep.

  At last he cleared his throat and said in an expressionless voice, “You might consider rebuttoning your jacket, for it looks very slovenly. Was there anything else you felt it necessary to say to me?”

  My mouth tasted of ashes, the leavings of this tiny victory. “No,” I said in a small, tight voice, grateful for and even a bit amazed by his restraint. I could not begin to imagine what thoughts were chasing through his mind. He shifted, turned his head, and closed his eyes. He did fall into sleep then, as if exhaustion had swallowed him whole. His head rocked on the upholstered backrest to the rhythm of the coach, his breathing as light and shallow as if he were running in his dreams from gouts of flame and shimmering crossbow bolts.

  The hilt of the ghost sword burned cold against my hand. I saw its dual nature while he saw only a fashionable cane. That meant he wasn’t as clever or as powerful as he thought he was, was he? I was still bound, but I was no longer entirely helpless.

  And yet, new questions rose like so many spawning fish. Why could I see the threads of magic that knit ghost sword and ebony cane into one object? Why had the eru given it to me?

  For as I clutched the hilt, I heard in my memory’s ear the chary whisper of the eru’s voice that had sounded so clearly despite the noise raging around us.

  Greetings, Cousin. You may need this.

  11

  Long into the night we rolled, and at length I dozed. When I woke shivering in morning’s gloomy light, I saw he had opened the shutter on his door. We had left the city behind and rattled through a patchwork of neat townships, gardens, pastures, and farms, all half obscured by a sleeting rain. I wanted a heavy wool shawl or winter coat against the cold but had nothing. I had lost my gloves in that headlong escape, so my aching fingers fumbled as I unbuttoned and evenly rebuttoned my jacket.

  Pasturage spread green where hills sloped upward in the distance. A hare sprang alongside the road, heading back in the direction we had come. Cattle grazed meekly under the watchful eye of half-grown lads who turned their heads to watch us rumble past. No doubt we were an unusual sight. Toll roads were traveled only by those who could afford carriages, and in any case at this time of year with winter breathing down off the ice, folk did not like to travel. I was suddenly wishing for Bee, to draw strength from her presence, but I was alone. A black cane bumped against my booted feet. I stared at it, but in daylight it was just an ordinary cane. It is strange what the mind can dream up when it is frightened. Wishful thinking, as Bee would say, will sting you when you stick your nose too deep into a sweet-smelling flower.

  For a while we ran alongside a rail track. I leaned forward to get a better look as we passed a tiny depot where a long rail car sat on the siding, a new team of horses being harnessed to the vehicle as passengers paced the station walk. One man, rigged out in an ankle-length worsted coat like a radical, shook a fist in our direction.

  CURLING GAP, the depot sign said. I recognized the name of a village on the edge of the outer district of the city of Newfield. If we were passing Newfield, that meant we were traveling northeast on the Adurnam-to-Camlun Pike. I reached to unlatch the shutter, but my husband’s sharp gesture checked me.

  “You can’t open that shutter.”

  “I just wanted to see if I could see the Newfield round tower,” I protested. “It’s very famous.”

  “You can’t open that shutter,” he repeated, as if I were a simpleton.

  I did not want to argue a trifle—I did not want to argue at all, although smacking my fist into his face seemed an attractive option—so I twisted my fingers together to make sure they didn’t attempt something I would later regret. Instead, I stared out the open window on his side: rectangular farmhouses flanked by granaries and byres, rubbish heaps at pasture’s edge, here and there a village of the distinctive round houses that my father had noted were known especially among the north
western Celtic tribes and certain of the Mande tribes who had fled West Africa over three hundred years ago.

  The man I had to call my husband sat opposite me, arms crossed as he stared out the window. He seemed to be looking inward, mulling deep thoughts like spiced wine. He was still smudged and stained from his night’s adventures: a torn sleeve, a streak like mud on his left cheek, a chaff of straw caught in his carefully trimmed beard. He had a proud face more Afric than Celtic and very handsome eyes, of the kind Bee loved to swoon over, so brown they were almost black, thickly lashed and finely formed. He had boasted of destroying an airship. He had been glad to do it, no matter its cost to others in material and labor. Perhaps in lives.

  He shifted forward, and I averted my gaze hastily, but he wasn’t interested in me. The road was beginning to rise into the chalk hills. Somewhere up here stood the famous windmill, but because it lay on the western side of the road and my shutter remained closed, I had no chance to see it. We drove into a wood of black pine, and soon I saw nothing but pine beyond the ditches that flanked the raised roadbed.

  He grabbed his own cane—polished ebony inlaid with gold—and, thrusting it out the open window, rapped the side of the carriage.

  “The beacon!” he called.