Cold Fire

by Kate Elliott

  “One drop was enough,” I said.

  With an intake of breath, he stiffened, looking like a man who has no idea how he came to be standing in a place so far beneath his consequence. “There is no answer to that.”

  How was it he kept putting me on the defensive? “You misunderstand me. All I meant was, are you willing to hear what I have to say in front of another person?”

  Chartji’s crest rose slightly.

  “I do not fear her censure, if that is what you think. Anything said here won’t be repeated.”

  “I was trying to be thoughtful,” I said. “I meant only to spare your feelings.”

  “Please do not begin concerning yourself about my feelings now.”

  “Was there a time before this I would have had some reason to be concerned for your feelings? Perhaps after I was forced to marry you and you treated me with cruelty instead of kindness? Or perhaps when I was running for my life after you were commanded to kill me?”

  The troll’s faint whistle shivered the air. I fisted my hands, waiting for Andevai to cut me down to size.

  He shut his eyes, then opened them to look right at me, his voice tight and his tone rigidly formal. “I regret the high-handed way I behaved toward you on that journey almost as much as I regret not immediately rejecting the mansa’s command to kill you. But my regrets do not change the past. So say what you must, Catherine. I am not afraid to hear it.”

  My heart was hammering so hard I was dizzy. I brushed the back of a hand across my forehead and took a breath to steady myself. “You belong to Four Moons House. Legally, you belong to them. You had to marry me because you were ordered to do it. Once I was forced to marry you, I belonged to them, too, through the djeli’s binding that contracted me to you. You knew that’s what would happen. So in a way I think it was an attempt at kindness for you to think that you and I—that you thought I was—” Heat seared my cheeks. I could not go on.

  “Acquit me of kindness, Catherine. I meant what I said.”

  I certainly could not forget what he had said: “When I saw you coming down the stairs that evening, it was as if I were seeing the other half of my soul descending to greet me.”

  I gulped in air and got words past an obstruction. “Even if you believe that now, to Four Moons House I will never be anything except the mistake you made that lost them the person they wanted. The burden of protecting me from their indifference and spite will eventually wear away whatever affection you may currently believe you hold for me.”

  “I wish you would speak for yourself, Catherine, and stop telling me what I do and do not believe and how I will and will not act.”

  “Then I’ll speak for myself.” Because my hands were shaking, I clasped them together again. “I can’t live in Four Moons House as an unwanted creature whom everyone will scorn. And I know you said I could live in your family’s village, but I wouldn’t know how to live there. I’d be so out of place. Above all else, I know better than to chance what may happen tomorrow on a transitory passion felt today.”

  I had to stop.

  He said nothing. Yes, he was physically handsome, and attractive in some other intangible way. After those first disastrous days, he had made an effort to help me. His kiss had certainly pleased me in a most startling manner. But I did not love him. How could I? I didn’t even know him. And whatever he might think, he did not truly know me. He only believed he did.

  “I am sure it is to your credit that you tried to soften the blow,” I went on.

  “Soften the blow? ” His eyes flared.

  Had I been wiser, I would have stopped, because the fire in the hearth flickered.

  No one had ever accused me of being wise.

  “You were commanded to marry a woman against both your own will and hers. So you concocted a honeyed fable in your heart to make an unpleasant duty palatable. Just as you weave illusions out of light, you wove an illusion about us. One soul cleaved into two halves and then like destiny reunited—”

  The fire whuffed out with a puff of ash. A glimmer of ice crackled across the heavy iron circulating stove.

  “Are you quite through insulting me?” he demanded.

  Chartji’s crest was fully raised. I felt she was making ready to act precipitously in case someone lost his temper and brought down the house.

  “It’s not meant as an insult!”

  “Implying I don’t know my own mind is not an insult?” His jaw was clenched, his eyes had narrowed, and I heard a whispery groan of iron under strain. Yes. He was very angry.

  “That’s not how I meant it. You didn’t kill me when you had the chance. You aided me when you could. You defied the mansa by telling him you would stop anyone who tried to kill me. So I thank you for that. But Bee and I have our own problems. A husband is one complication too many.” My hands were squeezed so tightly my shoulders ached. I untangled my fingers and separated my hands. “I’ll make no objection if a way can be found to dissolve the marriage. Let you go your way, and me mine. It’s for the best.”

  “So be it.” His gaze flashed up, and if there was a murderous piercing spear in those fine brown eyes I am sure he did not mean it literally. Perhaps he was finally reconsidering the wisdom of believing he had fallen in love at first sight. People could convince themselves of anything.

  “Will that be all, then?” Chartji said to me.

  “Yes.” I was barely able to croak out the word. Over here, it seemed terribly hot, although the rest of the chamber shivered with cold.

  “If you will.” She indicated the door. “The magister and I aren’t finished.”

  I let her usher me out, and as I turned back to see if Andevai had watched me go, she closed the door in my face.

  5

  Let him go his way, and me mine. Our lives led down different paths. I was well rid of him and the way he was contemptuous one moment, a proud cold mage from the top of his well-groomed head to the tips of his gloriously polished boots, and then the next might be mistaken for a staidly polite and provincially traditional—if unusually good-looking—village lad who was trying too hard to fit into a world where he was not welcome but could not be turned away.

  Impatient with these niggling thoughts which like bad-mannered visitors simply would not leave, I ran downstairs. That idiot Bee had not left, although she had put on her coat. Seeing me, she opened her mouth, perhaps to comment on the way my eyes were red from unshed tears or that I had been parading around in my unkempt bodice and skirts like an overworked scullery maid. Then she closed her mouth and instead handed me my riding jacket. Rory was lounging by the fire as might a cat sunning itself on a rock.

  We were not alone.

  Kehinde sat in a chair opposite Bee, holding a parsnip. Brennan leaned against the wall beside the door, so perfectly at ease it took a moment to realize how quickly he could block the door. The contrast between them was striking. He was muscular, blond, and white-skinned, with the look of a man used to waiting until he had to explode into action. Small-framed, she was fidgety, touching each unsliced parsnip as if her hands needed something to do while her mind worked; her skin was black, and she wore her long black hair in locks.

  “We need to talk.” She pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose.

  “I didn’t say anything to him about the general being here!”

  “Sit, please.” Kehinde spoke without force or anger. I sank onto the bench, all energy drained. “Why did you come? To seek our help to return to the Hassi Barahal motherhouse in Gadir?”

  “No,” said Bee, with a glance at me. I let her talk. “We’re not returning there.”

  “Why not? They are your community. What are we, if we have no community and no family?”

  “‘We’ are left to fend for ourselves,” said Bee. “Let me just say that our family betrayed us and we no longer trust them. We hoped to find refuge with radicals. We thought you of all people would understand why we don’t want to be bound into clientage, practically legal slavery, to a mage
House or a prince’s court…or some patrician household from Rome.” Her voice fell to a whisper, but she recovered. “We can be useful to the cause. We are not without skills.”

  “The Hassi Barahal house is known to be employed in the business of selling information,” said Kehinde. “You might be spying on us. After all, after you came, the cold mage arrived.”

  I was getting annoyed. “Turn that around! Why would Chartji make an appointment for a cold mage to come to your office at the same time the most wanted man in Europe is to be here?”

  Brennan laughed. “An unfortunate case of bad timing, and close calls. Rather exciting, don’t you think?”

  “For you it will always be a game, Du,” said Kehinde, measuring him with a frown. “The more you skate onto the thin ice, as you say here in the north, the better you like it.”

  He shook his head, watching her closely. “Oh, no, Professora, you know it is not a game to me. Risks must be taken if we mean to get what we want.” He flashed his enchanting smile at Bee, and then at me. “I think the girls are a risk worth taking.”

  “Maybe we’re the ones who should be asking if we can trust you,” said Bee. “Like Cat said, you’re the ones meeting with the general. And the cold mage!”

  “She’s got us at knife’s point there,” said Brennan, still looking amused.

  Bee’s brow furrowed and her gaze darkened as if storm clouds had swept down. We were in for a blow. “It’s easy for you to laugh. You’re a man. Maybe you’re entirely legally free, or maybe your northern village is entangled in some kind of clientage to a mage House. I don’t know. But you, Professora, surely you as a legal scholar will understand our situation. Even though my cousin and I are twenty and legally adults, the Hassi Barahal elders in Gadir can dispose of us however they wish simply because we are female and unmarried.” She flashed me a glance to remind me to keep my mouth closed about the unfortunate fact that I was already married. As if I wanted to brag about it! “So you can see that radicals who speak of overturning an oppressive legal code might interest us.”

  “I understand perfectly.” Kehinde glanced at Brennan. To my surprise, he looked away, biting his lower lip. She toyed with the ends of several of her locks. “We dispute the arbitrary distribution of power and wealth, which is claimed as the natural order, but which is in fact not natural at all but rather artificially created and sustained by ancient privileges. Of which marriage is one. Yet we still have a problem. It appears you are being pursued by the same mage Houses and princes who wish to capture the general. Until Camjiata leaves Adurnam, you cannot stay here.”

  “You’re turning us away,” said Bee wearily.

  “Not at all. I have been formulating an idea that our organization might have a use for two young women trained by the Hassi Barahal clan. Godwik agrees with me. Indeed, Maester Godwik finds you to be of the greatest interest. I consider his judgments to be based on sound reason.”

  “Unlike mine,” murmured Brennan.

  She did not by so much as a flicker of the eye indicate she had heard this. “It was odd to hear the general say his wife had had a vision that he would meet a Hassi Barahal daughter who, as he declaimed so poetically, will walk the path of dreams. And then of course there was the oracle about Tara Bell’s child. Such oracles being clouded and obscure exactly so that any outcome can be acclaimed as the prophetic one.”

  “I wouldn’t discount such words,” said Brennan. “But I am no city-raised sophisticate. I’m just a miner’s son who has seen too much death.”

  “When people die in troubling and violent ways, we seek a story to explain it, however far-fetched.” She raised a hand to forestall Brennan’s retort. “That forces exist in the world which we cannot account for is manifestly true. Through observation and experience, scholars seek to describe the natural world and plumb its depths. I have for years been in correspondence with a well-regarded scholar who lives in Adurnam. I have now had the chance to speak with him in person, and I find him every bit as impressive as his letters indicated. He will shelter you until such time as it is safe for you to join us. You must ask to share a shot of whiskey with Bran Cof—”

  “Everyone knows the poet Bran Cof is long dead,” said Bee. “If you can call that death, when your head is stuck on a pedestal and everyone is waiting for you to speak.”

  “I like that whiskey stuff !” said Rory, sitting up.

  Kehinde eyed him as if trying to decide whether his insouciance was an act that disguised a razor-sharp mind and will, or if he was exactly as he seemed. “The name is a code to show you are part of our organization.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Why Bran Cof ? Where do you mean to send us?”

  “There is an academy in Adurnam. Its headmaster will shelter you.”

  Bee slanted a glance at me, and I scratched my left ear, and Rory stood to stretch with an exaggerated yawn, because he understood we were speaking with gestures, warning each other and him. Bee and I had attended the academy for over two years. We knew the headmaster well. We had trusted him. When Bee had stayed behind in Adurnam after her parents and family fled on a ship bound for Gadir, she had gone to him for shelter. And he had turned her over to the custody of Amadou Barry, whose home had been a gilded cage that dazzled Bee until the legate made his insulting proposal, offering to make Bee his mistress. But Kehinde and Brennan didn’t need to know any of that.

  I took a step back to leave the stage to Bee. With her black curls, rosy lips, and big brown eyes, she looked entirely adorable and innocent and trusting. “It is so generous of you to take an interest in us. But you know the risks we face. The factions hunting us. Why help us?”

  Kehinde extended a hand, and to my shock Bee handed her the knife. The professor used the tip to investigate the ranks of sliced parsnips. “It is quite remarkable how evenly they are each sliced, as if each cut were measured beforehand by something other than your eye. Unless you find an isolated barbaric village, perhaps in the wilds of Brigantia”—she glanced at Brennan—“you must see you have entered the conflict whether you wish to or not. If it is true your dreams reflect a cryptic vision of the future—and I assure you I will need evidence—then you will never be let alone. Never. I am no different than anyone. I can think of ways to employ your gift to benefit the cause I cherish. But I will only ever approach you as a partner, and you will be free to leave our association at any time. It is your decision.” She set down the knife.

  “What about your alliance with the general?” I asked.

  Brennan smiled wryly. “Harsh conditions make for odd bedfellows. Our organization has its own reasons for considering an alliance with the general.”

  I nodded. “That makes sense. He’s a soldier. You’re only radicals. He must be better able to fend off princes and mages than you are.”

  “You will have to decide whether swords and rifles, or words and ideas, are more likely to win the day,” said Kehinde.

  “I’m all for swords and rifles,” I said.

  “Do not discount the power of words and ideas,” she said with a smile I dearly wished I could trust. “Their touch seems soft at first, but you’ll find it can be lasting.”

  “Well, then,” said Bee. “We’ll take you up on your offer. We’ll leave right away.”

  Rory collected the two bags as I pulled on my riding jacket, coat, and gloves.

  “I’ll arrange for someone to escort you across the city who knows the backstreets to keep you out of sight of the militia,” said Brennan. “And may I ask, what is in the bags?”

  My father’s journals, our sewing baskets, some clothes and diverse small necessities. What coin we had was sewn into Bee’s gown, with a few coins tucked into my sleeve. He had such a charming smile, but I hardened my heart against confiding even such innocuous information.

  “Our things,” I said.

  Kehinde rose. “I’ll come to the academy when it is safe for you to return. It would be best to go out the front so it looks as if you came for an appointment
and left. If you’ll excuse me, I must prepare for my negotiations with the general.” She shook hands with Bee and me.

  “Rory,” I said.

  He stared at me with those golden, innocent eyes. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Shake hands. It’s the custom, among radicals.”

  He set down the bags and shook hands with Kehinde. She left.

  With a lazy grin, Rory gripped Brennan’s hand a bit too hard and a bit too long. I felt a shift in the temper of the air as Brennan took his measure, like coiling up rope in readiness to snap it out.

  Bee said, “Rory, stop that.”

  With a put-upon sigh, he let go, leaving Brennan to shake our hands.

  He leaned toward me—too close, for I flushed—and murmured, “Is he really your brother?”

  After all, I just could not resist. I daringly drifted close enough for my lips to brush the tips of his hair as I whispered, “What confuses you is he’s really a saber-toothed cat who followed me home from the spirit world.”

  I expected him to laugh, but instead he pulled back and gave first a very searching look at Rory and then, less comfortably, a long and intent look at me.

  “Well,” he said, ambivalently, and with his forehead creased thoughtfully, he went out.

  “That was naughty.” Bee shut the door so we could have privacy. “Are you smitten?”

  “Men like that don’t look at girls like me.”

  “I think he likes the professora. It’s almost tempting, isn’t it, to join the cause just to fight near him. Or it would be, if we didn’t now know they are in league with the headmaster! Who handed me over to Amadou Barry. Who is a Roman legate. And the Romans are allied with the mage Houses against Camjiata. Who has come to this house to negotiate with the radicals. It doesn’t even make sense!”

  Rory circled back to the stove. “Are we going back out into that awful cold? I’m starving.”

  “So am I,” I said, “but we’ve got to go.”

  “Camjiata knows something about walking the dreams of dragons,” mused Bee. “Maybe we should ally ourselves with him.”