by Kate Elliott
“I want to hear what observations you made of the ice,” said Kehinde, “for I am sure there was a purpose to your investigation, not just the adventurous escapade of thirty-six overly energetic young males.”
“I am all ears,” said Brennan. “Rat that I am.” He winked at Chartji, whose grin sharpened.
Godwik took in a significant breath, as one does before commencing a lecture or a song.
Voices rose in the common room as men entered the inn.
Godwik fixed me in that odd way the trolls had, his head tilted to one side as if he were looking at me with only one eye. “Perhaps, before I begin, the Barahal will wish to check on her companion? I sensed a spot of trouble beforehand, did I not?”
He was an elder. I recognized that now in the lack of glossy sheen to his otherwise brightly colored feathers. Old, and wise, and clever. How in the name of Tanit had he felt the cold tide of Andevai’s anger an entire chamber away beyond a closed door? Was Andevai that strong, or did Godwik have senses the rest of us lacked?
“He’s being very quiet in there,” added Godwik, with one of those toothy grins that somehow translated into the gleam of his intelligent eyes.
I suddenly, overwhelmingly, and inexplicably felt a surge of liking for the old troll.
“Thank you,” I said, rising. “If I may. Don’t tell the story without me, I beg you. For I am eager to see if you ever actually reach the ice or just keep paddling down tributaries.”
He chuffed. Brennan laughed. Kehinde made a gesture, like a compatriot on the sidelines signaling to a fellow swordsman that it was a good thrust in a practice bout. Chartji’s crest raised, a reaction I could not interpret.
I opened the door letting into the common room in time to see an old fiddler raise his instrument to his chin and pluck the strings, testing its tuning. Another old man set his kora on a pillow, used one hand on a bench and the other on his cane to brace himself as he lowered into a cross-legged position on the pillow, and took the kora into his lap. Two younger old men—not quite so white-haired and creaky of limb—tapped curved hands over the skins of drums, heads bent to listen to the timbre. Around them, another dozen men, mostly old enough to need canes, settled onto benches as the innkeeper pulled ale and carried mugs four to a hand to the tables. They had the typical look of folk in this region: milk-white, freckled, tawny, brown, black, and every variety of mixed blood in between: One man had tightly curled reddish hair and freckles on a dusky face, another had coarse black hair braided, while others kept their thinning hair cut short and swept up in lime-washed spikes. A few had complexions blued with tattoos; some wore mustaches in the traditional style. There were even a few suspiciously Roman noses among them.
At the hearth, a man wearing the gold earrings of a djeli rekindled the fire, as djeliw could do even in the presence of a cold mage. Andevai stood halfway between the door and the nearest table.
“Here, now, Magister, sit beside me.” The eldest of the men, a farmer by the look of his simple clothing and weathered hands, spoke directly to Andevai.
Astoundingly, Andevai obeyed. Stiff and silent and proud he might be, but he sat meekly enough beside the white-haired old man and accepted a common mug of ale, and when the old men scattered a few drops of ale at the room’s little altar, he did likewise, and when they all drank, he drank. Then he glanced up and saw me standing in the doorway.
The old man followed Andevai’s dark gaze with his own. “Eh, maestra. This is no fitting room for a woman. Get you back to the supper room, now. We’ve men’s songs to sing.”
I skittered back, chased by their hearty laughter and Andevai’s glower, although what it portended I could not guess. Was he angry at me? Irritated at them? Frustrated at being stuck in a common inn for the night? Or was that annoyed arrogance just a quality inherent in his nature?
Hard to say, and, anyway, I was not about to ignore the words of an elder. As the fiddler’s bow pulled a tune from the strings and the drums answered in a counter-rhythm, I kicked the brick away and pulled the door to the supper room shut. At the table, I ladled more soup into my bowl.
“So, Maester Godwik,” I demanded as a song broke into full flower beyond the closed door. “What transpired in the villages to make you young bucks eager to leave?”
13
Godwik’s tale wound down many tributaries. He and his thirty-five compatriots were reduced to twenty-seven after battles with vicious saber-toothed cats, foaming rapids, a marauding troo, gusting winds, and a party of belligerent young bucks from a territory whose boundaries they had violated. But, at last, they reached the great wall of ice that marked the southernmost reach of the glaciers on the troll’s continent. Here, alas, Kehinde assaulted him with so many detailed questions about the color, texture, weight, height, volume, and consistency of ice that he never got to the sleigh of eru. Brennan and I by unspoken agreement rose to take a turn around the room. The other diners had quitted their tables some time ago, retiring, presumably, to their upstairs sleeping chambers for the night. We paused beside the door into the common room, where raucous laughter greeted the end of a rousing song.
“Let’s go in,” said Brennan.
“They said they were singing men’s songs.”
He had what my father would have called “a hearty laugh.” “I know this manner of old men. They were just seeing if they could intimidate you.”
“How do you know they’re old? You never went into the common room to see them.”
“They’ve been playing the songs old men play.”
He was easy to confide in. “Let me ask you, then. One of those old men—I’m sure he was nothing more than a humble farmer—ordered my… ah… my companion to sit down on the bench and drink with him. And he did!”
“Surely he would obey. They are elders.”
“He’s a magister.”
Brennan shrugged. “He’s Mande, as I am. If an elder says to sit, then you sit.”
“You’re Mande? Not Celtic? The Mande lineages came from West Africa.” I eyed his pale skin and reddish blond hair.
His grin flashed. “That’s where some of my ancestors came from. I’m also, by breeding, a Brigantes Celt. That’s where I get my looks. There’s probably the blood of a Roman legionnaire back there as well. Most everyone in these territories is tartan, aren’t they? In my village, we call ourselves Mande because we’re clients to a mage House whose founders came over from the Mali Empire.”
“Four Moons House?”
“For reasons I can’t explain, I really can’t tell you. My apologies.”
“None taken. It seems you left the village, though. The one north of Ebora.”
“I don’t know how much you hear about it down here, but many of the miners in Brigantia are angry about their working conditions and low pay. What can laborers do when the law courts are controlled by the prince and his jurists?”
“Surely jurists are impartial!”
He smiled sadly, as if sorry to be the one to rip the wool from my eyes. “Of course that is what they say. I’ve even encountered a few who are. Anyhow, the workingmen and women in my village spent ten years raising funds to sponsor two likely lads to attend the academy in Camlun. I was chosen mostly, I admit, because I was a good fighter and they figured I could protect the other lad.”
“Did you?”
He raised his left hand. His knuckles were scarred, and his little finger set crookedly, as though it had been broken more than once. “He learned enough to be taken on at law offices in Ebora. He is now a solicitor, a burr chafing at the robes of the courts.”
“I’m surprised the mage House allowed it. Couldn’t they have stopped you? The villagers are held in clientage to the mage Houses. Bound by old contracts or by entrenched custom to serve their masters in perpetuity. They’re practically slaves.” I thought of my own marriage and flushed. “My apologies. That sounds very offensive, doesn’t it? It’s what I was taught at the academy in Adurnam.”
He had a very nice smil
e, meant to be reassuring, and I felt my face grow warmer even as I reminded myself that an assured man like him could have no possible interest in an inexperienced and ignorant girl like me. “Legally it’s not an inaccurate description, just an incomplete one, as Godwik and Chartji and my age-mate who went with me to the Camlun academy would be sure to tell you. What rights you possess as a person who stands in a client status to a lord or a mage House will be different for different people. You remain, however, a dependent, an inferior to their superior rank.”
As I was now, bound to Four Moons House.
He went on. “But again, it’s never quite that simple. A powerful mage House remains powerful because its elders know how to harvest their fields. One of my great-grandmothers who worked a season up at the magisters’ estate house came home with more than her wages. That happens all the time. The child she bore wasn’t a cold mage—my grandfather, that was—so he stayed in the village. But the mages keep watch, to see if a cold mage sprouts in one of our stony gardens. Before my age-mate and I were allowed to leave, we had to stand before a mage seeker to make sure no thread of cold magic was wound into our bones and blood. Beyond that, they cared nothing for what we did as long as it caused them no immediate trouble. Honestly, I think it had not yet occurred to them that the law that protects privilege can also be turned around to break it down. We just have to be patient and hardheaded. But had I been a cold mage, even a weak one, I’d never have escaped. They’re harsh jailers, especially to their own.”
“Are they?”
“I expect their privileged sons and daughters are content. Why would they not be? Those without magic are well trained as clerks, administrators, and soldiers. As for cold mages, the only thing they need fear, so the stories tell us, is becoming too powerful and attracting the notice of the Wild Hunt.”
“Then you believe the Wild Hunt serves the unseen courts?”
“The Wild Hunt and the courts are facts that do not need my belief to exist. I know what killed my grandfather.”
“I’m sorry to hear of his death in such unpleasant circumstances.”
“My thanks. You have a kind heart.”
Out of the bramble of conversation beyond the door, a new rhythm was struck, followed by a descending line on the kora underlaid by drawn-out notes on the fiddle. The audience whistled in anticipation.
“Come on,” said Brennan, touching my arm. “This should be something.”
He pushed open the door. I crept in his wake. Women had crowded into the common room, seated on benches over by the innkeeper’s serving bar, while younger men stood along the other wall. The oldsters remained at the center, closest to the hearth. Only Andevai sat out of place, stuck at the left hand of the eldest who, gesturing, called the djeli out of his corner by the fire.
Brennan leaned his broad shoulders against the wall beside the supper room door. I closed the door and stood beside him, wondering if Andevai would look my way, see me, and disapprove, but he sat with elbows on the table and head bent, listening to the old man speak into his ear just as the djeli was listening to the play of the instruments. A smile flashed on Andevai’s lips at some comment made by the farmer. I hadn’t even imagined he could smile! I had a momentary hallucination that, in these surroundings, my proud husband was comfortable.
The djeli extended his arms, the full sleeves of his robes belling out like a vulture opening its wings. He called out words in a language I did not know but that I could guess was one of the Mande languages, which like the Celtic languages survived in their purest form among bards and djeliw. The conversations in the room stilled. The old farmer sat back, and Andevai looked up. He saw me just as Brennan bent to speak into my ear.
“The djeli is reminding us that his kind, the masters of speech, hold the traditions of the ancestors. Now he’s asking if there is anyone from the Soso lineage here. That’s so he won’t inadvertently insult anyone when he tells his story, by making the Soso king look bad. He’s a Keita djeli and therefore likely to be telling an episode from the Sundiata cycle, in which the Soso king is the enemy and evil besides. So if there is a Soso present, he’ll tell a different version, maybe skip over any episode in which the Soso king plays a vindictive role.”
Every gaze in the room turned toward Andevai, as if they all knew he would nod and reply with a few words. Which he did, exactly as if their eyes had called gesture and speech from him. A few glanced toward me and as quickly away as the djeli spoke again. The music shifted rhythm so effortlessly that it was like flying along a perfectly smooth road, hooves syncopating and wheels scraping beneath as an anchor pattern, and besides all that, there lit a tip-top-tip-top into the gaps. Looking toward me, Andevai began to stand as if to come over and scold me. The old farmer put a hand on his elbow and stayed him.
Andevai sat down like a meek child. The djeli launched into his song, his words punctuated at intervals by responses called from the crowd to questions or cues I did not recognize or hear. Brennan’s attention had shifted entirely to the djeli’s song, a tale familiar enough to wrap him in its weave. I was forgotten. Even Andevai’s gaze drifted to the djeli, whose gold earrings glinted in the firelight as words poured out of him. The singer commanded the attention of every soul in the common room except mine, for I was floundering in the current of an unknown river.
Also, a faint rhythm not in keeping with the song nagged at my hearing. I stepped away from Brennan and pulled the supper room door open just enough to slip through, closing it after me. Kehinde and Godwik were deep in a technical conversation about katabatic winds.
Chartji looked up as I paused beside the table. “Come to save me from these two and their interminable natural history? I can’t abide rat music, I must confess, and I’m not tired enough to fall into a stupor.”
I raised a hand to ask for a moment’s peace. The troll cocked up her muzzle and bent an eye on me as I crossed to the main window, unlatched one of the shutters at the base, and levered it away from the window. Cold exhaled from the bubbled glass, but I did not need the clarity of expensive glass to perceive that the distant scene of blurred blobs of light was in fact a phalanx of torches being borne along the road out of the south.
I leaned into the glass, night’s chill a bite on my skin. I bent my concentration and listened past the tick-tick of sleety drops sliding off the roof to the ground and the creak of a stable door being shoved open and the burr of a pair of voices that, inside a shuttered house, were oblivious to what was going on outside. There! A party of rumbling feet and stamping hooves slowed with hesitation as a young male voice called to them. At this distance, no person in this inn could have heard his words except for me.
“We’re come from Adurnam. Did anyone arrive here before us?”
“A rider came before dusk from Adurnam. Foundered his horse to get here so quick. Is it true what he said? A ship came to Adurnam that sails in the air? And it’s been destroyed by those cursed magisters?”
“It’s true,” replied a different man in a grim voice.
“Are you with the Prince of Tarrant’s wardens?”
“No. The prince went to the law court to try to get a legal ruling in his favor. Without a ruling, he’s too cowardly to act against a mage House. But some of us aren’t cowards. It’s time the mages feel the sting of our anger. We’ve eyewitnesses among us who saw and can identify the cursed cold mage who did it. We almost got him in Adurnam, but he called down a storm and escaped.”
“A young magister has taken shelter at the Griffin Inn. It’s got no veil of protection to keep you out. But you’ll have to act fast to catch him unawares.”
My cheek burned against the glass.
A breath of summer’s warmth eased in beside me.
“Trouble?” asked Chartji in a low voice.
I jolted back, banging my head against the shutter, then pushed its lower edge farther away so the troll could dip her narrow head in, glimpse the distant torchlight, and duck out again. There flowed from her muzzle a series of
clicks and whistles, and Godwik’s patter ceased on the instant. Kehinde, too, fell quiet; she shoved her sliding spectacles up her nose. I latched the shutters, feeling chilled to my core.
Chartji cocked her head at me, examining me with one eye, then the other. The movement was itself a question.
“Trouble,” I said intelligently.
“Legal trouble?” she asked, tilting her head in that trollish way. “We’re experts.”
“No. Not precisely.”
But I thought, What if I do nothing? What if I let them reach the inn, and what if they are indeed an illegal crew of radicals sent after Andevai Diarisso Haranwy? He has, after all, done a great deal of damage in Adurnam simply because the mage Houses detest the new technology, and he may be responsible for the deaths of people caught in the airship’s destruction.
What if I do nothing and let them kill him?
Let them try. They had ridden all this way in pursuit knowing he was a magister. They’d sent a messenger ahead; they already had allies in town, maybe some already in the common room waiting to strike.
But Andevai would not stand idly by. He would defend himself, and it was not in the capacity of cold mages to distinguish the innocent from the guilty within the circle of their power any more than an ice storm can blister some trees in its path and leave others untouched.