by Kate Elliott
I rubbed my aching eyes. “What is this place? A thieves’ den?”
“Careful where you step! Trolls are the most amiable creatures imaginable. Unless you take or break something that belongs to them. Come on.”
We ducked under mirrors, sidestepped a column of pewter candlesticks, and traversed a labyrinth woven of wire. The path doubled back, dead-ended, and once rewound us back the way we had come. The mirrored reflections made my vision throb. I feared that if I brushed anything, the entire collection would crash down. Dizzied, I leaned on the banister as I descended.
The second floor had three doors standing open to bedchambers. We had reached the first-floor landing when a thunder of hooves rattled the entryway on the ground floor below us.
A shout: “That roof, there. Yes, this building. I saw someone up there, my lord.”
“The door is locked, my lord captain.”
“Break it down.”
“Camlodus’s Balls! It’s the militia.” Eurig turned. “Go up and hide. I’ll divert them.”
I knew better than to argue. I raced upstairs just as the front door was smashed open and soldiers exploded into the house. The maze seemed a bad bet for hiding, so I bolted into one of the second-floor bedchambers. The room looked as though a whirlwind had hit it, clothing scattered in heaps across six high square frames with mattresses, which looked like more like nests than beds. The bright patterned fabrics gave the beds a patchwork feel: here a gold-and-green floral extravagance that might have been a barrister’s robe suitable for law court, there a ruffed dash jacket sewn out of a cotton printed with orange bars, blue scallops, and elongated rose-colored spectacles winged with peacock feathers whose eyes watched me.
“Stop!” cried a martial voice.
On the landing below, Eurig replied, “Here, now, my lord captain, Your Mightiness. What gives you leave to come barging in here?”
“I might ask what gives you leave to speak so disrespectfully to a man who holds both kinship to the prince, and a sword,” said a stentorian tenor. I recognized the voice of Lord Marius, whom I had first met at a ruined fort on a hill northeast of Adurnam, not more than a week before. Then, laughter had lightened his voice. Now, he blared.
“The prince of Tarrant?” retorted Eurig. “The man whose honor drains away drop by drop each day the Northgate poet refuses to eat? Our voices will be heard.”
“In the law courts, at least. What brings you to an empty troll’s nest?”
“They’re partners in a consortium with my employer.”
“I do believe you are lying. Are you angling for a ride on the plague ship, man?”
“Do you mean the one that’s sinking right now? So will injustice founder.”
“Arrest him,” said Lord Marius. “Search the premises.”
Threads of magic are woven through every part of the world because our world and the spirit world that lies athwart our own are intertwined. As footfalls approached the door, I drew the house’s shadows around me like a cloak and hid myself. Two men walked into the chamber. One was Lord Marius, a tall, lean Celt with a thick mustache, a clean-shaven chin, and short hair stiffened into lime-whitened spikes. His gaze swept the chamber with a smile of amusement brushing his lips, as Bee’s pencil might coax into life the humor of a man who prefers to laugh. He did not see me.
With him walked his brother by marriage, the young Roman legate Amadou Barry, whose father was both Roman patrician and West African prince and whose mother had been born into a noble Malian lineage. His Roman ambassadorial cape and the cut of his old-fashioned uniform certainly flattered him, although he had a frown on his handsome face.
“I admire his bravado,” Lord Marius was saying. “But I’ll have to have him fined for disrespect. I can’t challenge a laborer to a duel.”
“You Celts argue too much over fine points of honor. This seems like a chase after a wild goose, as you say up here in the north.” His gaze flowed right past me as he scanned the room. “Jupiter Magnus! Have you ever seen such a mess?”
Lord Marius had a hearty laugh. “Perhaps it merely belongs to a mind whose idea of tidiness isn’t the same as ours. It’s no worse than your sister’s dressing room.”
Amadou Barry halted three steps into the room. I eased back to the bed on which lay the peacock jacket. “Sissy was ever so. I’m amazed by the resourcefulness of those two girls.”
“Everyone has underestimated them, that is sure. Not least you, Amadou. Were you just that sure she would accept the—ah—position as your mistress?”
“I am a prince and a legate. Her family is impoverished and not respectable. She can’t ever hope to receive a better offer.”
Unless it was an offer to throttle him. As if a fire had been laid in the hearth and lit, my temperature rose.
“Quite so. I’m surprised to hear a Phoenician refused a lucrative contract—” Lord Marius broke off, gaze tightening. “Did you see something?”
Calm. I had to remain calm.
“In Beatrice? Faithful Venus, Marius! Even you must see something in her. She is the most delectable—”
“If I have to hear you praise her shining eyes and cherry lips one more time, I will have one of my men shoot me to put myself out of my misery.”
“She will not sigh when I am dead,” said Amadou.
“Nor will she lie with you for gold, it seems, which is the next line in the famous poem by the Thrice-Praised poet Bran Cof.”
Amadou sighed. “I misplayed my hand. I was too accommodating.”
Lord Marius paced the chamber, passing an arm’s length from where I stood with my buttocks crushed against the high metal frame of the bed, holding my breath. “Women are hard to please. I could have sworn I saw a flicker of movement. Must have been the light.”
“How do we know the girls are anywhere near this district? Much less in this house?”
“The mansa specifically told me to follow the cold mage. We’re not to trust him. If he says to go left, then we go right.”
“Ah, so that’s why you turned this way when he wanted to ride back to Enterprise Road.”
“That’s right. Then one of my soldiers saw the cold mage see someone up on this roof, and my man thought it was a female, so here we are.” Lord Marius paced to the door and glanced into the hall. He gestured to someone before turning back. “You know, Amadou, whatever you think about your Beatrice’s raven-black ringlets and bonny curves, this business of hunting down girls makes me uneasy. It’s beneath us. Meanwhile, that commoner in the hall is right, curse him. The Northgate poet sits on the steps of my cousin’s court. Each day the poet does not eat, he heaps more shame on my clan’s honor. I fear we are not getting out of this without a bloodbath.”
“The plebes will mob and riot. It’s in their breeding. We’ve known that in Rome for centuries. The sooner the militia drives the rabble off the streets, the better for all. If more blood were spilled, there’d be less trouble.”
“Do you suppose so?” drawled a far-too-familiar voice. “I would think a timely hailstorm would drive people inside without causing undue harm.”
Andevai walked into the bedchamber. I could not call his expression a smile.
“That’s an interesting thought, Magister,” said Marius. “Can you manage such a storm?”
Andevai’s cool vanished like frost under the sun. “Of course I can!”
“I meant no offense, Magister. It would be a cursed sight better way to restore order than cutting people down. In my experience as a soldier…”
Gaze straying from Lord Marius to the bright disorder of clothing and fabric strewn across the beds, Andevai saw me.
He saw me.
Lord Marius had broken off. “Magister? What’s wrong?”
Andevai blinked. “I was…just…stunned…” His gaze flickered to the bed. “That jacket. Orange bars. Blue scallops. Peacock-winged spectacles. And a ruff ! Quite stunning. You would have to really…wear colors…and lace…to pull that off in a jacket.”
“Yes, you would have to,” said Lord Marius with a laugh, glancing toward me—at the jacket—and back at Andevai. The look he gave the man I had to call my husband was so frankly appreciative that I blushed. “You’re quite the decorative specimen yourself.”
“My thanks,” said Andevai in the most absentminded manner imaginable. I blinked so hard I thought he must surely hear me warn him with my eyes to stop staring at me.
Amadou Barry sighed in the manner of a man wanting to change the subject. “Speaking of shooting oneself. Do we search the roof ?”
“What say you, Magister?” Marius’s amused and avid gaze remained fixed on Andevai.
“I say nothing,” said Andevai, glaring right at me in the most shockingly idiotic way.
“We were told you could lead us to the girl you wed.”
Andevai looked sharply away and appeared to be searching walls and ceiling for any remnant of good taste. “Is that what you were told? I wonder if this is meant to be a tailor’s shop, or if they only raided one and got all the pieces mixed up.”
Amadou Barry whistled. “You didn’t come to this district to get information on where she fled?”
“I was on my own business.”
“You’re not going to give her up, are you, wherever she’s gone?” said Marius. “Good for you. I liked her. That girl has spine and courage.”
“We should check the roof,” said Amadou.
Andevai’s gaze skipped back to me.
I widened my eyes and mouthed, broadly, “Yes. Say yes.”
“Ye-es,” he said slowly, brow crinkling with a question.
“Yes?” said Lord Marius with a surprised glance at Amadou.
I lifted my chin and mouthed, “Say yes. Say go up on the roof.”
“Yes,” said Andevai more decisively. “By all means, go up on the roof.” Then, with what was even for him an excess of haughty pride, he turned his glare onto a startled Lord Marius. “Are we going up? The soldiers told me they found a troll’s maze. Whatever that is. I’d like to see.”
The captain raised a hand as if catching a tossed ball. “A troll’s maze! We’re leaving.”
Amadou glanced at Andevai. “They could have come over the roof.”
“There’s a goblin workshop locked up for the day on one side. On the other, they’re poisoning themselves with arsenic or some such. I don’t see how the girls could have gotten in here before us. And I’m not risking a troll’s maze. One foot wrong and the whole thing will crash down. Then we’ll be years haggling in court for damages. Trolls love haggling in court. Amadou, I suspect you’re right: This detour is a chase after a wild goose. Let’s go. They’re out there somewhere. I promised the mansa I would recover them and return them to him.”
Lord Marius went out. Amadou Barry followed.
Andevai crossed to the bed and picked up the jacket, holding it high so it swept along my left side. “Now I understand how you were able to get out of Four Moons House without being seen,” he whispered. “What magic conceals you? None I’ve ever heard of.”
“Listen! The mansa told them not to trust you. If you say left, then they’ll go right.”
Anger flashed in the flare of his eyes. “Is that so?”
“They were following you, to try to find us.”
“Were they, now?” His gaze narrowed as he contemplated an object, personage, or situation that annoyed him very much.
“Magister?” Amadou Barry stepped halfway back into the room. “Is something amiss?”
“I just can’t keep my eyes off it,” said Andevai, gaze skating above the collar of the jacket as his eyes met mine. “There’s so much about its tailoring I don’t comprehend. But it doesn’t truly belong to me, so I fear I must leave it behind. Although you never know. I haven’t given up on gaining something so very close to my heart.”
My cheeks were so on fire that I was amazed the legate could not see me.
Amadou Barry appeared startled by Andevai’s passionate words. “It’s a bit…over-complicated for my taste. We’re leaving now, Magister.”
“My thanks for the warning,” Andevai said, his gaze on me.
He tossed the jacket over the other clothes and turned away. At the door, he paused with a hand on the frame. I tensed, waiting for him to glance over his shoulder one last time.
A deep heavy boom shuddered the house.
“By Teutates!” cried one of the men, “they’re firing cannon on the river!”
Without looking back, Andevai walked out.
“Bring the prisoner,” said Lord Marius from the passage.
I heard Andevai. “By the way, Legate, how did you come to seek me out at the law offices?”
They clattered out, taking Amadou’s answer with them, and leaving me with a cold wind rising up through the shattered door and the jangling tinkling off-key chime from the chamber upstairs.
7
The jacket Andevai had held glared at me accusingly through its rose-colored spectacles with their peacock wings. I haven’t given up. I was standing there, as congealed as cold porridge, when Bee appeared in the doorway, radiant with alarm.
“Cat! We heard raised voices. What happened?”
“I don’t know whether to be annoyed or flattered.”
Rory slouched into sight beyond the threshold, hauling the two bags. “I feel like a half-dead antelope my mother has just dragged in for dinner.”
I hastened to his side. “I’m sorry. Let me take one.”
“Never again peahens. I’m off feathers forever.” He dipped his head to touch his cheek to mine. “You’re all right, though. So I’m better already. What happened to our guide?”
I hugged him. “Eurig sacrificed himself for us. We can’t risk going back to the law offices to warn them. We’ve got to find this Fiddler’s Stone at Old Cross Gate.”
“It’s a bad idea,” said Rory.
“Did Andevai betray us?” Bee asked.
“Quite the opposite. He’s the one drawing them off. The mansa is having him followed.”
“He seems strangely loyal to you, in an exceedingly peculiar sort of way.” She paused, examining my stiffening expression. “I won’t tease, Cat. Let’s go.”
In the wake of the militia’s passage, the lanes had emptied. We crept out a maze of back alleys that let onto the crowds of Enterprise Road, east of Fox Close. Women hauled baskets and pots balanced atop their heads. One gray-haired woman staggered along beneath a whole sheep, which was quite dead, all light gone from its eyes. The third person I asked told us to head east. I led with the cane, Rory hauled the bags, and Bee took the rear guard with the knife in her pocket and a small knit bag in which she kept her sketchbook and pencils slung over her back.
A band of young males swaggered past. They bellowed in perfect four-part harmony a song about the misadventures of an “ass” who was not a donkey but the prince of Tarrant. We reached an open area where five roads met. A line of carts and wagons loaded with casks, sacks, and open crates of unfinished hats had locked to a complete halt. The singing youths blocked the intersection. Arms linked defiantly, they began singing a familiar melody. Its usual lyrics, about a lass abandoned by a worthless lover, had been replaced by the challenging political phrases of the Northgate poet: A rising light marks the dawn of a new world.
I grabbed the sleeve of a passing costermonger. “Maester! Where’s Old Cross Gate?”
“Why, this is it! Trouble brewing. You don’t want to be caught in this.” He shoved on, using his cart to part the crowd.
I stepped in front of a pair of women with baskets on their heads. “Where can I find the Fiddler’s Stone?” I cried.
“An ill-starred day to be looking in the stone for the image of your future husband, lass,” said the elder. “But it’s past the arch and then in the little court to the right.”
It took us a moment to spot an arch in an unimposing old wall to our left. The opening was barely high and wide enough for a wagon. We fought through the crowd and slipped
through it onto a side street lined with dilapidated old houses ripe for the transforming dreams of architects. A tiny lane pitted with ruts and filthy with crusty and yellowed snow took us to a little crossing where three alleys met. The Fiddler’s Stone was a squat granite monolith listing over like a drunk. The surrounding buildings were dank. Excrement had frozen in mounds alongside broken steps that led to ramshackle doors. All the windows were boarded up. But a wreath of frozen flowers draped the stone’s peak like a flaking crown.
Rory licked his lips. “I smell summer.”
“Give me the knife, Bee.” I pulled off my right glove, set the blade to my little finger, and sliced. The skin creased and reddened, but no blood appeared.
Bee snickered. “Do you want me to do it?”
“No! You’ll hack off the whole finger just to be sure.”
“Give me that.” She pulled off her own glove, took the knife, and neatly opened a delicate cut on her palm.
“Let your blood fall on the stone,” I said.
Warmth stung on my own hand as a bead of blood oozed red down my finger. All at once, I tasted summer on the wind.
“Like this?” Bee held her hand above the stone. Her blood dripped onto the grimy surface.
“Cross now! Hurry, Bee.”
Bee slammed into the stone.
“Ouch!” said Rory.
Bee took three steps back and tried again, as if sheer force of will could force rock to open. She thudded into stone, then cursed with pain.
My drop of blood slipped. A stain appeared on the stone and was absorbed. A roll of distant thunder whispered. A crow fluttered down to land atop the stone. The earth sank beneath my feet as stone and soil melted away.
“Cat’s going through,” said Rory.
“Not unless I go with her!” Bee dragged me stumbling back as Rory snarled and that cursed crow cawed like a captain alerting its troops.