Cold Magic (Untitled Kate Elliott Series #1)

by Kate Elliott

  The spirits that guarded the House did not want me. They were dragging me down into my worst memory, the one I had tried so hard to block out.

  We are drowning in the Rhenus River, and I have lost both Papa and Mama.

  “Daughter,” a male voice says urgently. His powerful arms push me up.

  I breached, heaving and coughing, and there I stood in the tiled pool, the water up to only my shoulders as I shook in the grip of memory, blinded by tears.

  “Once more,” they said.

  I was afraid.

  After that I was always afraid of deep water, which is shameful for the Kena’ani.

  But I had no choice.

  I pretended that a mother’s bracelet ringed my wrist, giving me my mother’s courage. I pretended that my papa was waiting with his stories and his cheerful smile. He would never let anyone harm me. I took in a huge shuddering breath and dropped down under the water.

  And came up again, water streaming down my face. I glanced around, fearing it had been too easy, that I had drowned in truth and emerged as one of the rephaim into my stone tomb.

  The sleep of the dead was not likely enlivened by men singing crude songs about male anatomy and sexual prowess or its particular lack, which I heard from beyond the curtain separating life and death or, at least right now, woman and man. I was warmed through from the heated water but shivering in my heart as I dripped up onto the stone. Yet, after all, memories cannot kill you. My companions roughly toweled me dry, although my thick hair remained damp. It had to be combed out wet, no easy task, although they seemed happy to fuss over my hair as they plied me with questions.

  “He’ll not have approached the marriage bed until the mansa has accepted you into the house.”

  A pause, pregnant with intention. I cleared my throat. When they saw I didn’t mean to answer this impertinent comment, they went on.

  “Is it true you Kena’anic women can take two husbands?”

  I was thankful to find something to feel annoyed about, because now I could talk. “It’s not common but not unknown. If a woman of stature is head of a trading house in a foreign city, she would, of course, marry a Kena’ani man who would spend much of the year traveling for trade. Then she might choose to take a secondary husband from among the local families, someone whose connections would bring benefit to the house.”

  “How can it be that men would put up with such an arrangement?”

  “Why do some people demand it of women but not of men? It is just another way of doing things. As my father would have said, folk will have their customs according to their nature and their surroundings.”

  “You’re a bold speaker, young one. I would advise you keep your lips pressed firmly closed when you meet with the mansa.”

  But they were not unfriendly as they pinned up my hair and wrapped it in a scarf according to the fashion of the House. I heard no hostile edge to their voice, unlike what it seemed Andevai was enduring over on the other side under a litany of songs, laughter, and taunting jokes. Of his voice, I heard no whisper.

  “Is it your custom that his attendants should speak so cruelly to him?” I asked.

  “Young men will taunt,” said the tawny-haired woman. “It’s their way.”

  The other continued. “It isn’t that surprising, Fama. He is not in his rightful place.”

  “Honestly, Brigida, you and I both know they resent him because he received abundance where they received scant. Still, they should not hold these grudges. It brings conflict and trouble upon all of us.”

  “Sss! Best speak of such things later.” They exchanged glances that spoke of shared knowledge. The House was like a sea of hidden currents and shifting whirlpools ready to suck me down.

  They examined my travel-worn riding clothes with frowns. “You’ll need fitting clothing. In time. In time. Go softly. Be respectful. And don’t speak.”

  Out I was hustled down a corridor whose walls were woven patterns. I caught a glimpse of a room with a vast hearth and many seats, but my chest was too tight for me to be able to see. It was all I could do to place one foot before the other, to be given coat and cloak and gloves, to be shown a door and step into the overcast day where I walked as stiffly as a sun-struck ghoul along the twisting garden path and over the gravel to a waiting landau.

  I halted, staring at the unfamiliar equipage.

  The harnessed team consisted of four good-looking horses chosen for build rather than matched by color, a detail of practicality that gave me the courage to accept an attendant’s arm as I climbed the steps into the carriage. The magister, warden of the gate, already sat in the seat facing the four-arched gate.

  What had happened to our carriage? My sword? The eru and coachman who had accompanied us all this way, whom I had come to feel were my only allies? Like me, they were bound to Four Moons House. Servants might pity me, but they had no power to change what was now happening.

  I climbed into the carriage and sat facing the magister with my back to the gate, trying to breathe normally and not in gasps and bursts. Andevai strode out of the house looking like he was eager to leave or eager to arrive or eager to be shed of all this, and I supposed he had come later because he was dressed yet again in a flattering jacket, tailored to his form and ornamented by a thin gold necklace. I looked away.

  “Magister,” he said from the base of the carriage.

  She gestured to give him permission to enter.

  I had not asked to enter! One humiliating mistake after the next! I had to behave as my father would have, observing, recording in my mind, and remembering so I could write it down and try to make sense of this bewildering rhythm of rules quite unlike the pragmatic customs of my own people. That’s what I would ask for, first of all, when I dared ask: notebooks, ink, pens. If I kept my father’s spirit in my heart and imagined his hand guiding mine, then I could behave as he had behaved, a steady walk down turbulent, storm-ridden roads.

  Three footmen perched on the back, faces without expression.

  A command spoken. A song for our passage. As we crossed under one of the arches, invisible threads caught on me, strings binding my lips and fingers and knees. Then we came clear of the shadow and the pressure released. We rolled to a halt. The warden of the gate descended, Andevai moved to the seat opposite me, and we two alone continued on our way. The horses shifted into an easy trot down a wide avenue that curved first around one slope and then around a copse of black pine and then around a wide pond dense with reeds. We drew up at a ring where the avenue circled a crude stone pillar and split into five paths. Andevai descended and poured water from a flask at the base of the pillar. He turned and looked at me, and for a moment I felt as uncomfortable as I had when Fama and Brigida had examined me when I was naked, as though he were inspecting me and deciding whether what he saw was adequate to the purpose. I did not understand his expressions at all; he was remote from me, and yet must a man not hold back a part of himself if he is to learn how to kill?

  He made an impatient gesture. Aei! Of course, I was to make an offering as well. I must copy what he did. Had I already forgotten?

  The servants’ expressions did not flicker by even one twitch as I clambered down, crunched across the gravel, took the flask from him, and poured water at the base of the pillar. What a fool I must look!

  We took the second turning and for some while drove through a vast expanse of orchard. I caught sight of field-workers walking in groups, carrying huge sheaves of straw that they heaped at the base of sapling trees planted among their elders. He leaned forward, scanning the laborers in their humble shawls and simple woolen tunics.

  “Stop!” he said. A smile obliterated his habitual mask of annoyed hauteur.

  He flipped open the landau’s low door and leaped out before the carriage came to a complete halt. By now, the field-workers had seen the carriage. He strode beneath the trees, and a young woman hurried over to greet him. She was tall and, I suppose, handsome, although that was difficult to tell from this di
stance. Her complexion was much like his, her hair wrapped in a scarf the color of clay. They embraced, then parted, but stood close together, speaking in the flood of words that betokens close knowledge, much to relate and much to hear. The other field-workers trudged away under the trees.

  I shut my eyes.

  Obviously, this was not Esi, whoever she was, for Esi had been spoken of as a woman born into the highest ranks within the House, descendant of those who had founded Four Moons House long ago, or of those who had married in accompanied by wealth or other valuable connections, or of those who had bred magisters and thus gained prominence.

  A mere field-worker, given attention by a House mage, can hope only to become a concubine, if a woman whose status is little more than slave can even be given so high and mighty a title.

  What did I expect? Handsome men are likely to find lovers, and how much more easily they may find them when they are also powerful and rich! It was best to face the truth.

  I opened my eyes.

  She stepped away from him and took three paces toward me before he caught her wrist and pulled her to a halt. They exchanged heated words. She scolded him; he retorted. Even so, they parted with another embrace. He strode back to the carriage as she ran after the other field hands.

  He swung up in one huge stride and sat down hard on the seat opposite.

  I could not help myself. “Who is she?”

  His gaze struck with such fury that I flinched.

  But I wasn’t to be cowed. I had already drowned, hadn’t I? I was already dead to my old life. “If there’s some arrangement I need to know about, best you tell me now.”

  He stared into the orchard as the field-workers walked away into the trees, a song rising as they walked. He spoke so low I thought he was hoping that the footmen, seated behind him, would not hear what he must now confess.

  “That is my sister. Seven years ago, walking among those field-workers, that would have been me.”

  16

  It is an odd thing, truly, to feel a twinge of compassion for a person you have no reason to wish to feel sympathy for. An odd thing. We halted at another stone pillar and made another offering. Then we drove up a gentle slope in a straight line as the orchard fell away behind us. The great house, with its central round tower and main edifice with a two-storied wing flown out to the right, loomed before me like a beast waiting to devour me. Whatever words I might have been thinking of saying expired on my tongue.

  Or so I thought. For then they abruptly flew out of my mouth. “You were a common laborer? A slave to the land? To Four Moons House?”

  “Just keep silence, Catherine,” he said in a flat voice. “Can you manage that much?”

  I closed my lips on silence, its taste like ashes.

  The main estate of Four Moons House was a palace, in its own way, with round rooms at either end and its bulk stretching behind. The carriage pulled up before the grand escalade. Out of the interior swarmed a host of people who formed two lines for a formal greeting.

  An elderly man wearing white robes and the gold earrings of a djeli limped out, leaning on a cane, speaking in a kind of singsong chant. “He returns! He returns! With his power, he was sent out. With his power, he returns. It is sure he has accomplished what was demanded of him.” Here he looked at me, and naturally he took a step back, as if surprised by what he saw. The scarf that looked so handsome on the House women made me feel ridiculous.

  Up the stairs I walked, looking neither to my left nor right, keeping my head high; that was the sum of what I could manage. I could not look people in the eye; it might not be the custom here. I was also afraid of what I might see in their expressions.

  A hand to be shaken, in the radical way, or a kiss between equals as was the custom of my people; there was none of that here. There must be giving way, the lesser before the greater and I in Andevai’s wake, or at least within the ripples made by his passing. We mounted the steps, made an offering of water at the threshold, crossed under the door, and passed beneath a roof so high that birds flew in the rafters. To the right and then the left, through corridors wide enough to be chambers and all with heat rising from the floor. Left again, and right, and I found myself standing in a large room beside a high bank of arched windows over windowpaned doors. The glass looked over an expansive and prettily landscaped garden enclosed by the wings of the house, and a high stone wall.

  “Catherine,” Andevai said, grasping my left elbow with his right hand.

  I wished I had my sword as he guided me toward closed double doors reinforced with strips of sullen iron. My father had written: The strength of the most powerful cold mages can be measured by the magister’s ability to extinguish fires and shatter iron.

  A servant opened the right side door. Andevai stepped back to allow the elderly djeli to go in first. Then I had to walk beside him. My throat was choked with tears. My pulse was a hammer of sound in my ears, like runaway horses.

  The mansa was standing at a table beneath a rank of windows, surveying papers strewn across some kind of architectural drawing unrolled and fixed at its edges to lie flat. He could be no one else. He was tall and heavily built. He looked neither old nor young. His face was black and his eyes blacker, although his hair, close-cut, was a coarse, tightly curled red. Maybe he resembled the warden of the gate. Maybe they were cousins, or maybe they weren’t related at all but simply both descendants of blacksmiths and sorcerers, their ancestors the mixed children of the Afric south and the Celtic north who had made common cause long ago. They had countered the power of chieftains and princes but had not become lords themselves, at least not in name. For after all, the only son of a prince may rule after his father whether he is a good prince or an incompetent one, but if the only son of a magister is not a mage, then nothing can raise him to that position.

  The mansa looked at Andevai, and the mansa looked at me, and I stopped dead because my heart could not beat and my feet could not move. Maybe they spoke formal greetings, the three of them between themselves. I could not be sure because I was empty.

  Then the mansa spoke directly to me. His voice was a voice, nothing special and nothing strange in it, except that it commanded me.

  “Are you the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter?”

  “I am the eldest,” I whispered, eyes cast down, remembering Aunt’s words.

  “You are the eldest Adurnam Hassi Barahal daughter?” he repeated.

  “I am the eldest.”

  “You are the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter?”

  “I’m the eldest.”

  “If I may, Mansa,” said the djeli. “What she says is no lie, but I am troubled. If you will allow me, may I ask?”

  The mansa nodded.

  “Repeat these words as I speak them,” said the djeli in his resonant voice. “ ‘I am the eldest daughter born into the Adurnam Hassi Barahal house.’ ”

  “I am the eldest—” daughter. I meant to speak the word, but no sound came out of my mouth. “I am the eldest—” Hassi Barahal. Still no voice emerged. “But I am older than Bee is,” I said hoarsely.

  “There was another one?” asked the djeli. “Another daughter of the Hassi Barahal family, in the house, when you were taken?”

  My face burned hot and my hands burned cold. Lips sealed, my father had said. Tell no one, my mother had said. Give away nothing that might give them a further hold on us.

  “There was another girl of the right age in the house?” demanded the mansa.

  Andevai blinked, and blinked again. “Yes, Mansa.”

  “You asked three times?”

  Stammering, Andevai forced out words. “Th-three times. They said to me exactly what she said to you. She is the eldest. So I married her, by the binding marriage, sealed by a bard, just as you commanded me to do, Mansa.”

  “And did you first ask, specifically, is this one the right girl or is that one the right girl? The girl we wrote the contract for?”

  After a silence, he said in a chastened voice, “No, Ma
nsa. I did not ask specifically about the other girl.”

  In the depths of the earth, wreathed in fire, lies coiled in slumber the Mother of All Dragons. Dreaming, she stirs, and the earth shakes, and volcanoes spit ash and fire, and the world changes.

  In the depths of the ocean, deep in the black abyss, there drifts in a watery stupor the Taninim, called also leviathan. Yet they may be roused, and if they are so, then the lashing of their tails smashes ships into splinters and drives their sundered hulks under the waves while the shores are swept clean in a tidal fury.

  In the depths of the ice, wreathed in ice, sleeps the Wild Hunt, and when it is woken, all tremble in fear.

  So we are told.

  But when a magister powerful enough to rule as the head of a mage House is struck rigid with fury and he is standing not ten paces from you, then you will wish you had to face one of the others instead.

  The house was built of stone, and yet it shuddered. Glass in the paned windows cracked. The iron bands on the door groaned, as though shrinking in fear. Beneath the floor, ceramic shattered.

  “What a fool you are!” said the mansa.

  “Mansa,” said the djeli, “you can send out a young person on your errand to rest your feet, but it won’t rest your heart. Let me discover what has happened.” He turned to face me, extended a hand palm up in a gesture that might have seemed reassuring if it were not a spell to call my voice to speak truth. “Is yours the blood of the Hassi Barahal clan?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, and then I closed it, because the word I wanted to say would not come out. All I could say was, “So I have always been told.”

  A sick dread crawled in my belly. I swayed, sure I was about to faint. Andevai stared at me as if I were a serpent that had reared up to confront him. To contest him.

  To cheat him.

  “They said—!” he exclaimed. “They said she was the eldest Barahal daughter.”

  “Is that what they said?” asked the djeli. “They must have chosen their words carefully, knowing the contract was sealed by magic.”