Cold Magic (Untitled Kate Elliott Series #1)

by Kate Elliott

  “I was raised in a hunter’s village,” he remarked to the dust motes swirling in the frigid air, “and furthermore, having followed you through the spirit world, I am more visibly chained to you, magically speaking, of course, than might otherwise be the case.” He touched a gold locket hanging at his throat, which he had not been wearing the last time I had seen him. “Also, I have a strand of your hair. In case you are wondering how I tracked you down.”

  He paused.

  Naturally I made no reply. Honestly, I could not understand why he would suppose I would be stupid enough to say anything. Also, he wore a jacket in the oranges and browns favored by working men, only his was so particularly tailored to his build that few working men could ever have afforded such style, and the fabric was such finely woven damask that it shimmered in a way to make a person wish to trace its shape on his body. His boots, if somewhat smudged by the dirt of back streets, had the gloss of finest leather, in fact, they were utterly gorgeous with a creamy black finish. In other circumstances, I would have been struck dumb in admiration.

  This was not one of those times. I was merely speechless with anger at my own self for being careless enough to get caught.

  “As it happens,” he went on, “you are being hunted through the city by the allied forces of the mansa of Four Moons House and by the militia and constabulary of the Prince of Tarrant. That they have not yet found you is only because an unlawful assembly has gathered at the council hall square this morning. Naturally the prince has had to mobilize his militia there to protect the city from disruption. Even so, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that you will be apprehended if I do not assist you.”

  Bee popped up over my back. “Do people really talk like that?” she demanded as she swept the curtain out of my hand and opened it wide.

  Seeing Andevai, she said, in an altered tone, “Oh.”

  “So at this point,” he concluded, without appearing to have heard her, for although his gaze briefly took her in, he fixed on me, “I feel obliged because of past missteps to render aid.”

  His complete lack of surprise in seeing Bee gave me the sudden uncomfortable idea that he had already been over here to part the curtains and see us sleeping. I did not like to know he had watched me while I was not only unaware of his presence but also unable to even think of defending myself. I grabbed my sword—it was again a cane—and sprang up from the warmth of the bed into the chill of a chamber inhabited by a cold mage.

  “Misstep? Is that what you call attempted murder? Or perhaps you meant a misstep because you did not succeed?”

  He rose, making no effort to draw his sword. “I cannot expect you to forgive me, Catherine. That is not why I am here—”

  “It seems obvious even to me, with my sleep-befuddled brain, that you are here as part of the hunt. You cannot expect us to surrender without a fight.”

  “I don’t expect you to surrender. Were you even listening? I’ve come to try to put things right—”

  I laughed scornfully. “Ha! It’s far too late for that! It was too late the day you forced the Barahals to hand me over.”

  “I did not force the Barahals to hand you over. I was sent to marry the eldest Barahal daughter, with no further instructions and, I might add, no knowledge of why or how the original contract had been made. I did what I was told.”

  “Tried to kill me!”

  “Cat,” said Bee in her reasonable tone. “Oughtn’t we to hear him out?” She rose, straightening and smoothing her rumpled gown. “You said yourself he expressed regret for the action. Also, it is obvious he could have killed you while we were sleeping. But he did not.”

  “My thanks.” He studied Bee. “This is the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter, isn’t it?”

  Even in disarray, curls half smashed on the side she’d been lying on and utterly tangled everywhere, modest gown somewhat askew and a pinch of sleep blearing her fine eyes, Bee was entirely and astonishingly adorable. Everyone always said so.

  He shrugged dismissively and shifted to glare at me. “Did it ever occur to you, Catherine, that I might begin to wonder why the mansa sent me to destroy the airship?”

  “The airship!” squeaked Bee.

  “Why would the mansa send me to marry the Barahal daughter, when so much is at stake? If she is so valuable, why not marry her to one of the magisters born into the house, not some village boy they all look down on? Why would the mansa tell me so little before he sent me out? Why would he not even tell me the single most important thing, that the diviners believed she would walk the path of dragons? The mansa never spoke one word of that to me. That I know anything about the dreams of dragons is because I had begun my training as a hunter, and the first thing a hunter learns about the bush is that when dragons shift in their sleep, a tide washes the spirit world and obliterates everything in its path that is not warded. Given the risk involved, why would they only give me my orders and send me off? Is it because they knew I would be unquestioningly obedient as I have always had to be as I struggled so hard to meet their expectations and fulfill my promise and protect my village?”

  “When you put it like that,” said Bee, “it is puzzling.”

  “Must you agree with him?” I cried, for I am sure I would never have switched sides on her with such alacrity.

  “Cat, I do not like him any more than you do, for he did try to kill you, and that I can scarcely be expected to forgive. But when you consider the situation rationally, it is puzzling.”

  “Thank you,” he said, looking very irritated and very handsome.

  No, of course he did not look handsome. I was merely exhausted from the exigencies of the last few days and made vulnerable to trivial considerations because I was worrying about Rory. One sees strange things in such a state of mind. One might think anything.

  “I have been forced to come to the conclusion,” he continued, “that the mansa considers me expendable. In rather the same way, I suppose, that the Hassi Barahal house considered you expendable, Catherine.”

  “Is this an effort to make me feel sympathy for your situation by comparing our plights?”

  “Yes.” Then he looked startled, as if that was not the word he had meant to say. “I meant, no, not at all.”

  I had not realized Bee had so many smirks in her. She looked at me in the most annoying way possible, blinking thrice as though to send me a message, which I ignored with a frown I hoped would blister that knowing smile right off her lovely face.

  “Go on, Magister,” she said in a tone that invited confidence. “I, at least, am listening.”

  He had a way, I had come to recognize, of drawing himself up with shoulders braced and chin lifted that made him look exceedingly arrogant, but however vain and arrogant he actually was, there was more to that look than met the eye. “You have no need and certainly no desire to feel sympathy for me, Catherine.”

  “That’s right, I don’t,” I agreed with a cruel smile. “By any chance is your shoulder paining you?”

  “It has healed,” he said curtly. “Catherine, I am just trying to explain why you should consider trusting me.”

  “What has become of the innkeepers and their staff?”

  “I found the inn locked up and deserted. Leaving you entirely unprotected, I might add, and quite asleep. I expect they went to the council square to swell the ranks of agitators.”

  “If the inn was locked up,” said Bee, “how did you get in here?”

  “I expect he shattered the lock,” I said before he could answer.

  “Can he truly do that?” Bee asked. “I mean, that’s what people say cold mages can do, that you can measure their strength by their ability to shatter iron and extinguish fires, but—”

  “Yes, he can really do that.”

  Her eyes widened as she examined Andevai with an expression that could have been awe, anxiety, or admiration. “Oh.”

  “Are you done speaking for me?” he asked with a sarcasm I’m sure I’d not earned.

  From
the other room, a clock ticked over.

  As if the clicking of its mechanism were a signal, a hazy thud sounded somewhere outside. Andevai tipped his head back to listen. Bee looked a question at me. A series of rumbling reports rolled like distant thunder.

  “Are those muskets?” whispered Bee.

  A thunk struck at the front of the inn, causing both Bee and I to skip backward. We heard hacking blows, a man’s curse, and the clatter of metal chains spilling to the ground. A door groaned. Feet tapped on slate, and voices spoke from the common room.

  “Whsst! Have all the fires gone out? Didn’t you bank them properly, lad?”

  “I did, maestra!” was spoken indignantly.

  “Hush!”

  Several people were sniffling or weeping, their gasps flavored with fear.

  “Get up, then, to the roof. Keep an eye out. Girl, stop your crying. It does no good.” Footsteps split off to pound upstairs.

  “That lock was shattered,” the man’s voice spiked, “but then the door sealed with no lock, like it was frozen shut.”

  “Not so loud. You two, get the door shut and barred. Julius, you come with me. We left those two girls sleeping in the back. Hurry!”

  The innkeeper and her man burst into the scullery, she holding a rolling pin and he an ax.

  Andevai turned to face them, but he did not draw his sword.

  The innkeeper’s eyes widened as she took in first the fireplace’s cold ashes, all heat sucked from them, and then Andevai. No one could mistake him for anything but the scion of a wealthy house, yet her tone was more blunt than respectful. “We want no trouble out of cold mages, Magister. It’s the prince’s corrupt council we’re protesting.”

  From the common room came the squeak of tables being shoved, and thumps as they were turned on their side.

  “You shall get no trouble from me,” said Andevai. Yet he did not budge, as if, I suppose, he thought he was protecting us from them in a manly and courageous fashion.

  Booms shuddered the air, and we all flinched as a shattering fusillade of pops resounded from nearby. A shrill echo of screams and shouts followed.

  The innkeeper lowered her rolling pin. “This is no refuge for a high and mighty personage of your sort, Magister.”

  Two young men appeared, panting and sweaty, gripping iron pokers from the fire. “The militia has gone to war against us!”

  The woman nodded grimly. “All we can do is lock our doors and tuck our heads under.” Another set of reports made a staccato rhythm, interspersed with cries and more screams. “If there’s blood on the streets, then there is worse to come.”

  “Bloody princes!” cursed the man.

  “The beast has been roused,” cried one of the young men defiantly. “So cries the poet!” The poker in his hand shook as he trembled, watching Andevai as if he expected him to lash out to punish him for such radical words.

  Andevai said nothing, nor did he move.

  “What beast?” Bee asked. “What do you mean?”

  “Many are angry,” said the innkeeper, “but now we have found our voice.”

  As if to emphasize the truth of her statement, muskets fired yet again, closer now, thunder echoing in a closed tin. In their wake swelled a rising tide of voices whose pure intensity reminded me of the hum and ring of the dragon’s turning in the spirit world.

  Bee stepped out from behind Andevai. “Maestra,” she said politely, not begging, “that’s a fearsome noise outside. Might we shelter in the inn until the tide has passed?”

  The woman sighed as she looked at Bee. Everyone always did.

  “He cannot,” she said, as if she thought we had invited him in or that we were his companions. “Even if I wished to, which I am sure I do not, I dare not offer shelter to a cold mage. Were he to be found here, they’d burn down my inn.”

  “Not with me in it, they can’t,” said Andevai in a tone that made me either want to kick him or to laugh. Because it was true.

  “Can you defend yourself against knives and shovels and axes and scythes and whatever other instruments they will bring to pull down these good timbers and you to lie crushed beneath them?” she asked, not belligerently but not meekly, either. She passed the rolling pin into her other hand and signaled to the two young men to go around us and out the door that led into the side yard. “How many can you fend off before they overwhelm you? Are you willing, Magister, to let strangers die—me and my people—by forcing them to shelter you, who have entered this house without invitation or permission? Whatever you are, I am sure I wish no harm to you in particular as long as you leave alone me and mine. But I will not risk my people and my livelihood for you. No offense meant.”

  Remarkably, he endured this speech without the least sign of emotion, no cracked glass, no shattered cups; perhaps he was accustomed to the right of older women to scold him.

  “I will depart, maestra, if you will be so kind as to tell me how to get out of here without running straight into the mob.”

  “Out the back and through the yard, there’s a gate into the alley.”

  The rising tide had indeed grown to the roar of a once-slumbering beast now roused. I felt their outrage through the soles of my feet.

  Andevai pulled on his greatcoat and walked to the door. With a hand on the latch, he turned to address Bee. “This I meant to tell you before we were interrupted, Maestressa Barahal. Five days ago, your father returned to the Hassi Barahal house. The mansa’s agents had already secured the house in expectation of capturing you or Catherine if you returned there. They took your father into custody instead. I thought it right to warn you that his presence in Adurnam may be used to draw you in. By no means should you go home to try to free him before the solstice, because the mansa himself has come to Adurnam to track you down.”

  He clicked down the latch.

  “I regret whatever trouble I have caused you,” he said to the innkeeper, and with this he opened the door and vanished into the yard behind the inn.

  Bee moaned, sagging against me. “Papa came back to find me! And he’s now in their clutches! What will we do?”

  “If Rory were here, we might manage a rescue between the three of us.” But to speak his name forced me to contemplate that he might have been killed. A brother found, and then so swiftly lost. How careless of me! I sucked in a harsh breath, grabbing Bee’s hand as I searched for words, although I did not know how to comfort either of us.

  The sound of breaking glass sprayed like shards over us, followed by a smashing crash as an impact hit the front door hard enough to make the entire inn tremble.

  A howl rose like wolves scenting blood. “Death to mages!”

  “Burn them who suck the life from our children!”

  Bee yanked her hand out of mine and bolted, pushing past the innkeeper and her husband.

  “Bee!” I shouted after her.

  “I won’t allow kindness to be repaid with destruction!” she cried, and ran into the kitchen, out of my sight.

  Ba’al protect us! I ran after her. The innkeepers followed at my heels through the kitchen and the ale room and the empty supper room into the black-beamed common room. Bee stood behind a table, facing the front of the inn. One of the doors was cleaved in two, planks snapped and gaping, and a long casement window lay half in pieces on the floor and half in jagged patterns still affixed within what remained of the frame. Outside, a surly crowd of men crowded forward to surge in, but it seemed Bee’s presence, staring them down, had arrested the forefront in the act of clambering across the damaged sill.

  “By what right,” she cried, “do you invade this peaceful house?”

  “A boy says he saw a cold mage come in here.”

  “There is no cold mage in this building!”

  The power of Bee’s voice caused them to look over their shoulders and address remarks to the men pressing behind them. This shoving, restless crowd was inflamed by drink as much as by anger. I stepped up beside Bee, wishing my cane were a sword and not, in daylight,
just a cane.

  A man with a ripped coat and blood on his face called, “Aulus also says he saw the cursed cold mage shatter the lock and go in! And then when he ran after to check, the door had been frozen shut!”

  “We mean to go in ourselves and see, maestressa,” said a burly man wearing a blacksmith’s apron. “Just step aside, and no harm done to your pretty face.”

  I grabbed Bee’s wrist before she could run forward and do something rash like slug a blacksmith. Glancing around, I did not see the innkeepers, but I heard footsteps ascending the stairs. Bee and I were alone against the mob.

  “I will not allow you—” began Bee.

  The boom of repeated musket fire cracked over her words, and we both ducked. Down rolled the thunder of hooves, screams and shouts and voices aflame with panic and rage. The crowd before us dissolved like salt stirred in water as two ranks of mounted militia wearing the green Tarrant jackets galloped up the street with swords flashing and muskets smoking. We watched helplessly through the fractured casement as men went down beneath the bright blades. The blacksmith hit the mullions and collapsed across the sill. A lad, blood bubbling up through his hair, staggered, screaming, toward the window and fell before he reached the safety of indoors. The crowd scattered; the soldiers rode on, leaving the reek of fear and destruction behind them.

  Then Andevai was in the room, striding past me to the window. He grabbed the body and heaved it out. He grabbed up big shards of glass from the floor and held them up to jagged edges. The temperature in the room dropped so precipitously that my eyes stung and my mouth went dry, teeth chattering. He knit the glass together, bent to pick up larger pieces, spinning out an icy frame in which to hold it.