Cold Magic (Untitled Kate Elliott Series #1)

by Kate Elliott

  “Even if I were to eat in a public room, you can scarcely wish me to eat in your supper room, since I will extinguish your fire and then all your other customers will be cold.”

  “Even if you sit at the very farthest table from the hearth, Magister? I just want to make clear I’ve nothing to be ashamed of in my inn. We’re a respectable establishment well known for our savory suppers, our excellent brew, and clean beds. Yet I’ll tell you truly, we’ve never had a cold mage set foot in this establishment, not a Housed mage, not once, just hedge mages and bards and jellies and such.”

  “This corruption is absurd,” Andevai said with a glance at me, contempt trembling like unspoken words on his lips. Yet he would go on speaking. “Jelly is a substance congealed or, in its manner, frozen. A djeli”—he pronounced it more like “jay-lee”—“possesses the ability to channel, to weave, the essence that binds and underlies the universe. Like bards, they are the guardians of the ancient speech. I wish you people would use the word correctly to show proper respect.”

  A throaty, somewhat monotone voice called from the supper room with a request for more wine.

  The innkeeper’s mouth had pinched tight. “I’ll tell you this,” he began in a low, passionate voice, “you in the Houses may stand high, and you may look down on us who crawl beneath you, but there rises a tide of sentiment—”

  I saw my supper and my hope for a night’s sleep sliding away. “Maester,” I cut in, “what if I fetch a tray myself from the kitchens and take it up to the attic?”

  Checked, the innkeeper stiffened, maybe not sure whether I was being respectful or derisory.

  Andevai broke in. “Catherine, you are not a servant to fetch and carry what others are obligated to bring.”

  “I want to eat. I’m very hungry. If I fetch the tray, then I know we’ll eat.”

  “Furthermore,” my husband went on inexorably, “the Houses are the bringers of plenty, not of want. People should be grateful to us, who have spared them from the tyranny of princes many times over, who have saved them from the wars of monsters like Camjiata who meant to crush all beneath his boot.”

  “Get out of my house,” said the innkeeper so quietly that Andevai did not react, and after a moment I began to think he had not heard because there was no sound at all; even the conversation in the supper room dropped into a lull.

  For a moment.

  Then the sword hilt burned against my palm like ice.

  The fire whoofed out with a billow of ash like a cough. I felt as if a glacier loomed, ready to calve and bury me.

  “Catherine,” Andevai said in a low voice, “go outside. Now.”

  My skin was chapped from the cold, and my stomach was grumbling, and the soup smelled so good, and it was sleeting outside, and in only three days the end of the year would arrive and with it, on that cusp between the dying of the old year and the birth of the new, would rise my own natal day, my birthday, when I would welcome a full round of twenty years and therefore become an adult. Only now I was severed by magic from my beloved family and standing here cold and exhausted and hungry and far from the home I could never return to and meanwhile about to be kicked out into the night. And the worst of it was, Andevai was probably going to do something stupid and awful, because he was the arrogant child of a powerful House unused to being spoken to by a common innkeeper far below him in birth and wealth and without any cold magic to protect himself, and all I could think of was snuggling into a warm bed and sipping hot soup, because I was the most selfish, miserable person alive.

  To my horror, I began to cry hot, silent tears.

  “Excuse me, maester,” said the throaty voice. A personage loomed behind the innkeeper at the door of the supper room, its bright crest startling in the drab surroundings.

  Andevai looked over, no doubt surprised to hear himself again improperly addressed by a stranger, and then doubly surprised to see a troll who was, after all, not speaking to him but to the innkeeper. I sucked back my tears as the prickling anticipation of destruction abruptly eased: He was too startled to be angry.

  “You are quite run off your feet, maester—we can see that—but we have run out of wine, I am sorry to say, which comes about only because you offered us such an excellent vintage.” From a distance, trolls’ smooth, small feathers were easy to mistake for strangely textured skin, but this close, the drab brown feathers of this troll’s face stood in contrast to a crested mane of yellow feathers flaring over its head and down its neck. “If we might get more when you are able to fetch it. Our thanks.”

  “I’ll bring it at once.” The innkeeper bolted across the common room to an opening hung with a curtain.

  “And plates for the new guests,” called the troll as the curtain slashed down behind the innkeeper. The creature turned an eye toward me. It wrinkled its muzzle to expose teeth, a gesture perhaps meant to be a grin recognizable by humans as a friendly smile, but overall the effect was of a big, sleek, feathered lizard displaying its incisors as a threat. “We’d be honored to guest you. If you wish to sit with us, of course. My companions are good company, so they assure me. Witty, well read, and willing to put up with me, so that may be a point in their favor. Or it may not be. You will have to determine that for yourselves. I’m Chartji. I won’t trouble you with my full name, which you would not understand in any case. I’m a solicitor currently employed by the firm of Godwik and Clutch, which has offices in Havery and Camlun, although I’m originally from Expedition. I’ve been employed in Havery for the past four years, but we’re setting up new offices in Adurnam.”

  It thrust out a hand, if one could call it a hand, what with its shiny claws curving from the ends of what might be fingers or talons, offering to shake in the style of the radicals and laboring classes. Andevai actually took a step back, and the troll’s head tilted, marking the movement.

  “So it’s true what they say about trolls,” he said.

  Fiery Shemesh! Could he never stop offending people?

  “It is,” said the troll as its toothy grin sharpened, “but only we females.”

  I stuck out my hand a little too jerkily. “Well met, Chartji. I’m called Catherine Hassi Barahal.” The name fell easily from my tongue; too late I recalled I was someone else now, although I did not know who.

  The featherless skin of its—her!—palms was a little grainy, like touching a sun-warmed rock. For an instant I felt the scent of summer in my nostrils, a whisper like falling water, the breath of cut grass and the juice of crushed berries. Then she let go.

  “Interesting,” she said as she looked me up and down, as if she saw something surprising in my height, my hair, my eyes, or my features. “Can it be you are a child of the Hassi Barahal house, originally established in Gadir? The old histories call your people ‘the messengers,’ known to bring messages across long distances in a short time. There’s a branch residing in Havery, founded by Anatta Hassi Barahal. The left-handed Barahals, they call them. I see you hold your… ah”—she seemed about to say one word but changed her mind—“your cane in your left hand.”

  “Why, yes!” I laughed out of sheer surprise. Even in the cold common room, bereft of fire, the air felt abruptly balmier. “Almost no one knows the ancient origin of our House. I’m from Adurnam. The Havery Barahals are cousins. My aunt’s great-grandmother’s descendants, in fact.”

  “They are acquaintances of ours. Come sit, come join our clutch.”

  I followed her into the supper room, eager to stay within the orbit of one who linked me, however tenuously, to my family. She was tall, as trolls were, a hand taller than Andevai, graceful on her feet, although her gait hitched strangely. She seemed unaware of the glances fired her way from the other two tables of diners, well-to-do merchants or artisans by the look of their fashionable clothing, gold and silver necklaces and bracelets, and tiny leather charm cases sewn to their sleeves. Respectable people not happy to be sharing a supper room with a pair of trolls, even if the trolls were dining with people.

&nb
sp; “I hope he did not insult you,” I murmured, feeling a flush creep up my cheeks.

  “It’s a common observation made by humans who are born with this property you rats call cold magic. Now, here are my companions. Catherine Hassi Barahal of the Adurnam Hassi Barahals is joining us for supper. And…” She did not turn her torso to look back toward the door but swiveled her head so far around to get a look behind that I gasped. The toothy grin flickered. “My apologies,” she said, turning to face forward again as the two human companions hid smiles. “I forget how that startles your kind.”

  I did not need to turn to know that Andevai had not entered the room, because the fires warming the supper room and the candelabra lighting continued to burn merrily.

  “Here is Maester Godwik. Rats, pay attention.”

  The two humans at the table rose to offer hands to shake in the same radical manner.

  “I am Kehinde Nayo Kuti,” said the woman in a very pure, mannered accent that betrayed her origins from one of the Mediterranean cities. She was small framed and black skinned, with her hair done in multiple braids and a pair of thick spectacles riding on the bridge of her nose. She wore robes sewn of strips of patterned fabric dyed in deep oranges and yellows and browns quite unknown in these northern climates but ones that made her glow in contrast.

  The man was considerably taller, one of the pale Celts with blond hair cut short and a luxuriant mustache in the old style, a local by his easy manner and casual working man’s dress of belted tunics and trousers. “Just call me Brennan Touré Du.”

  “Du? That means ‘black-haired.’ ”

  “It’s a long story, to be punctuated by a great deal of whiskey and several fistfights,” said Brennan with a charming smile, by which I understood I wasn’t going to hear it.

  Kehinde chuckled, and the two trolls chuffed, almost like wheezing.

  “My apologies for not standing.” Maester Godwik looked slighter and shorter than Chartji, but instead of drab brown, he was feathered in vivid blue with a handsomely contrasting pattern of black and green along his elaborate crest. He raised a cane as in salute. “Injury, I am sorry to say. Clumsiness comes with age. As the sages say, ‘wisdom achieved at long last, but now too damned frail to climb Triumph Spire where the young bucks preen.’ I am Godwik. A solicitor with the firm of Godwik and Clutch, with offices in Havery and Camlun and soon in Adurnam. Although if you are generous-hearted, you will not despise me on account of my having taken to the solicitor’s trade. Is your companion not coming in?”

  “Sit, if you please,” said Chartji to me, kindly meant.

  I found abruptly that my knees were weak and my chest empty of air, because Andevai had been going to wield his magic to punish the innkeeper for his disrespect, but then after all, he had not done it. I sagged into a chair at the end of the table, with Kehinde and Brennan to my right and Godwik facing me. Chartji kindly brought a pitcher and basin so I could wash. After setting these items beside me, the troll hoisted a bottle, poured the remainder of dark liquid into an empty cup, and shoved it over to me.

  “You’re trembling,” she said. “This should fortify you.”

  I downed the contents of the half-full cup in one gulp. A sherry burned straight down my throat, so strong the rush blew through my head as Brennan laughed, the trolls grinned, and Kehinde handed me the last hank of bread. It was good bread with a crisp crust and moist insides, still warm.

  The innkeeper bustled in with a tray so laden with bottles, cups, plates, and covered dishes I was amazed the entire edifice did not crash to the ground. He deftly unloaded a tureen of soup, a pair of bowls and cups and spoons, and two bottles of wine at our table before hurrying on to the demands of the other tables of diners, now staring askance at us as I set to on the soup rather like, I suppose, an infestation of locusts embodied in a single flesh.

  “That reminds me,” said Godwik, “of the time when I was a fledgling, and my bucks and I”—he nodded at Kehinde—“my age group, you know, any cohort of young cousins and neighbors hatched near the same time form an association for various enterprises—”

  “My people have similar associations,” she replied, nodding.

  “—decided to paddle the length of Lake Long-Water, as I’ll call it in this language, although we call it something rather more complicated in our own. We planned to battle north into the very teeth of the katabatic wind. Our hope and intention was to reach the vast cliff face of the ice, which we, in our part of the world, call what could be simplistically translated to ‘the Great Ice Shelf That Weights the North.’ ”

  “Have some more soup,” said Chartji, ladling out of the tureen in the most casual way imaginable, very neat-handed despite her claws, “because this will take a while.”

  “Did I get off track?” asked Godwik, crest rising as his feathers flared.

  “Just a bit, Uncle,” said Brennan with a grin that made you want to trust him.

  “An expedition to measure the extent of the ice would be most valuable,” said Kehinde. “If we could confirm that the ice shelf runs unbroken across the pole and could survey the southern face of the ice on the northern continents, we could calculate the surface extent of the ice. By comparing that to such evidence as is available from ancient records, we might thereby speculate whether the ice face is stable or if it is shrinking or growing and by how much.”

  “A venture is being assembled now, on the shores of Lake Long-Water, by a corporation of clutches,” said Godwik, and although it was hard to read emotion in his somewhat monotone and slightly slurry voice, there came about him a change, for I was pretty sure the addled tale-teller concealed a wickedly sharp mind beneath the prattle.

  Kehinde leaned forward eagerly. “You trolls may have better luck, then. The lords and princes of Europa have no interest in such an expedition, not since Camjiata’s defeat. They do nothing but wrestle for precedence, useless parasites as they are. And, of course, the mage Houses continually place obstacles in the path of scholars. They sue our associations and academies to rob us of funding, and pressure their assemblies and local courts to agree to laws forbidding importation or manufacture of such new apparatuses as would make such ventures feasible. I’m so thrilled we’ll be able to see an airship in Adurnam. There’s a ship that can cross the ice!”

  Heat flushed my face. I worked on at the soup, pretending more interest in my supper than in the conversation, and the soup was indeed very good, flavored with leeks, parsnips, salt, and a smattering of precious pepper.

  “No one can cross the ice,” said Brennan with a brooding look. “My grandfather was slaughtered by the Wild Hunt. He had been hired to assist a group of scholars attempting a reconnaissance of the Hibernian Ice Sheet in the northwest.”

  “The Hibernian Ice Expedition was set upon by dire wolves,” said Kehinde. “So say the accounts of the men who found the remains of the expeditioners.”

  “In the village I come from, north of Ebora, where on clear winter days we can see the face of the ice, we know better.”

  Kehinde was shaking her head. “That there are forces in the world we do not understand is evident to all, but that does not mean that with proper investigation and measurement it cannot be explained by rational means.”

  “The Hassi Barahals are known as a family who collects information,” said Chartji to me. “What have they to say about all this?”

  “It’s true my father traveled as part of the family business and recorded both his observations and accounts told to him by the people he met,” I said, eager to move the subject away from airships. “For instance, many villages, especially in the north, tell tales of the Wild Hunt. Sometimes the Hunt is merely the agent of natural death, marking the souls of those who will die in the coming year. But other tales say that the Wild Hunt hunts down and kills or carries off people who have drawn the notice or the anger of the day court and the night court, which are the unseen courts said to rule in the spirit world.”

  “Their power is so vast it lies i
nvisible to us,” said Brennan. He wore on his left hand a massive and rather ugly bronze ring, which he touched now as if it were an amulet to protect him against the gaze of the unseen courts.

  Kehinde crossed her arms, giving him a skeptical look. “What is invisible to us is nothing more than that which we do not comprehend. The tides and threads of magic that can be harnessed and manipulated by mages and bards and others like them do not thereby prove the existence of ‘courts,’ which no human or troll has ever laid eyes on.”

  “What of eru?” I said cautiously. “In tales, they’re often called the servants of the courts. Although it’s usually said they appear as human to our eyes.”

  Godwik gave me a sudden, knowing look, although how I could read such emotion on his snout of a face I was not sure. Then he winked at me, as if we shared a joke.

  “Rats and trolls love to tell stories about rats and trolls,” said Chartji, “and tend to see rats and trolls wherever they can. Meanwhile there are dragons in the mountains of Cathay and along the rim of the Pacific Ocean. In the Levant, goblins drowse under the rule of the Turanians. When the salt sickness was unleashed from the deeps of the salt mines of the Saharan Desert, a plague of ghouls overran western Africa.”

  “It wasn’t a ‘tale’ that forced my people and so many others to flee our homeland,” agreed Kehinde. “Greedy men who should have known better forced enslaved miners to dig where anyone could have told them they ought not to dig. When the first hive of ghouls was released, there was nothing anyone could do to stop more from hatching.”

  “That is my point.” Chartji gestured, as in a court of law. “The existence of creatures who are not human or troll does not thereby prove the existence of the courts.”

  “I saw a sleigh of eru once, each one wearing spirit wings like a shroud about their body.” Godwik hoisted his cup and flashed a toothy grin at me as Brennan and Kehinde looked in amazement at his quiet statement. I choked on a spoonful of soup. I wanted to ask if they had all possessed three eyes, but dared not. He took a swig of wine before setting down the cup with a flourish that drew looks from the other tables. “Indeed, it was on that very expedition paddling the length of Lake Long-Water that I was telling you about. My bucks and I, six to a boat and six boats in all, the age group of seven villages—I must call them villages, although they are not precisely villages as you rats build and organize such things. We set out laden with dried fruit and nuts to supplement the fish we expected to catch as we journeyed. You may wonder how it all started! What had transpired in the villages to make us eager to leave.”