Cold Magic (16 page)

I took a step back from such a cold hammer of anger that I felt it like a blow. He set down the cup so hard that it
shattered
. Like glass. Liquid splattered. He stared at the remains with an odd expression, as if he’d startled himself. Then, without one further word, he walked away, leaving me trembling. What a fool I knew myself to be, recalling Aunt’s whispered words:
For now, you must endure this. Give away nothing that might give them a further hold on the family.

While it was true that the armies of the Second Alliance had battled Camjiata to a standstill outside the city of Havery thirteen years ago, it was Four Moons House and the seventeen mage Houses allied with them that had actually destroyed Camjiata’s budding empire. Four Moons House could destroy the Barahals as easily as a nest of mice could be crushed beneath a giant’s boot.

I collected my breathing. I wiped my brow and then pulled on the gloves, pretending I was dressing myself in armor, a shell of control behind which I could hide.

“Maestra?” The coachman indicated the bread and cheese. “If you wish, you may finish what is left.”

“Don’t you and the… ah… the footman need refreshment?”

“We are already fed, maestra.”

Fear was a dull ache in my belly, as the stories would put it, but I was a Barahal, descendant of a long line of professional soldiers. You sleep when you can. You eat when you can. I ate it up quickly, for it was excellent bread and even more excellent cheese, sharp enough to make my eyes water. The coachman took away the platter and my cup and left the shattered cup beside the dying fire. The handle lay torqued in the dirt, warped by the power of his anger.

With a heavy heart, I trudged to the carriage, mounted the steps, and sat opposite him, next to a thick fur blanket someone had unearthed and tossed onto my seat. Warmth for the journey! I did not want to speak, but I knew I must.

“It is big enough to cover two,” I said, the words sounding thin and forced.

After a hesitation, he said frostily, “My thanks, but I’ve no need.”

He did not look at me as I wrapped the blanket over my lap and tucked it around my shoulders. The journey back to the road seemed even more jolting and jarring than it had coming in, but perhaps that was only the hammer of my heart as I waited for him to say something else.

Which he did not.

The road took a steep slanting descent down the northeastern slope of the chalk escarpment. We rolled into Anderida, the great chace: forest country marked at intervals by villages. In ancient days, the Romans had made charcoal in these uplands for the forges where they smithed their weapons of empire. We passed the rise of Greensand Camp with its old Roman posting station and signposts of a crossroads. The few folk out on the village street halted to watch us pass. Beyond the village, we passed men leading pack mules laden with wood.

We descended to lower ground and waited at the ferry crossing over the River Tarrant, whose name the princes of the Adurni Celts had taken as their title, so my father had written, in honor of the goddess once believed to dwell in the river. A prosperous village—I did not know its name—had sprung up around the ford but at this time of year, folk were busy in the dormant orchards and the withered fields, gathering in the last gleanings, stacking firewood, cleaning the privies, sweeping chimneys, and bringing in mast for the winter ahead. My husband watched this activity as if its rustic simplicity fascinated him, but in truth I could not guess his thoughts.

At the toll station on the north side of the ford, our House seal was all the payment we needed to pass. He did not speak one word for the rest of the day as we rolled along in a silence so tense it seemed I could taste it. Nor did he speak when, near dusk, as frost rimed the trees and the roofs of a tidy village, we rolled into the spacious court of an inn so empty of customers I realized it must serve only the Housed and their agents. He said nothing when the steward of the house came to escort me away to a finely appointed chamber on the second floor, overlooking a garden and, beyond it, the River Tarrant, whose wide loop we would cross again at dawn.

I took off gloves and overcoat and laid them over the back of a chair, against which I rested the black cane, and then washed my hands and face. Three braziers filled with red coals heated the room, and four candles encased in glass lanterns gave light. I ate alone, from a tray set on the elegant small table: The food was excellent, and there was plenty of it, more than I could eat. A washbasin, a nightdress, and an over-robe and fresh undergarments were brought by an exceedingly polite elderly woman, and my own clothing taken away to be tidied. As the door closed behind her, I heard a distinctive click. I went to the window and opened the shutters. It was a long drop to the ground, and outside the glass panes, bars blocked any attempts at a hasty exit. From somewhere below, I heard men laughing as at a shared joke. I closed the window and tried the door, but it was locked from the outside.

I was his prisoner.

I threw myself on the bed and wept.

After the worst spasms had passed and I wiped my eyes and nose with a handkerchief, I forced myself to sit at the dressing table, regarding my wan face in the flecked mirror. I had looked worse, I am sure. Once or twice. I unpinned my hair to let it fall free, and as I brushed it the required one hundred strokes, I listened to the ordinary noises coming from the ground floor, where magisters must bide if they wished to be warm. Maybe he was in the chamber below me, preparing to come up, as was his duty. And mine.

With a grimace, I padded over to the chair to get the cane. As soon as I grasped the handle, the ghost sword flowered into existence. I almost laughed. Magic hides itself! Cane by day, it became a sword by night, when danger most threatens. I paced out an exercise: draw, return, draw, guard, and then into footwork, although I was careful not to stamp too hard. At the end, panting, I spun and clipped off the wick of one of the candles. The flame snapped out as by magic. This was a blade!

The cheery flame of the other candles caught me as with hope. The braziers breathed warmth. What a pleasant, fire-ridden room! Exactly the place no cold mage would care to enter. I blew out two of the candles and carried the fourth back to the bedside table, tucked myself in, and blew out the last candle. With the sword beside me, I fell aslee

Beneath the comfort of warm covers, one’s drowsy dawn thoughts wandered pleasantly. Our upcoming birthday celebration was sure to be memorable. Because the family could afford only one birthday feast, I had agreed to wait until solstice to share it with Bee. She had asked for and we had been promised an actual balloon ride. Imagine how it would feel to rise above the rough slumber of Adurnam at dawn! We might hope to see the wide marshy flats of the Sieve spreading beyond the city’s skirts, the distant rise of the Downs, and, if we were fortunate, even maybe so far as the mouth of the Rhenus River to the southwest where it spilled into the Bay of Brittany…

“Maestra?”

The truth poured over me like ice water. I sat bolt upright as a girl with tightly curled, short black hair stepped into the room with my clothing draped over an arm.

She startled back. “I’m sorry, maestra. I didn’t realize you were still abed. If I may say so, what lovely hair you have, maestra.”

Her cheerful smile coaxed an answering smile from me as I brushed black strands out of my face. “That is very kind of you,” I said as I climbed out from under the covers. “Is it so very late already? The bed is quite comfortable. It smells of herbs.”

“So it does,” she agreed cheerfully. “I myself sewed sachets and bound them with amulets to keep out bedbugs and other such irritations.”

Not all irritations, though.

My husband strode in as though it were his chamber, but pulled up short like a dog yanked back on its leash. The heat from the glowing coals in the braziers was sucked away in a sharp inhalation. He stared at me as though speech had been ripped from his throat.

I grabbed for my sword, lying on the bed, but all I found in my hand was the cane.

He flinched back as from a blow and rapped his own cane on the floor. “Are you not ready?”

The serving girl goggled at him. He wore an exceptionally fine dash jacket that, fitted through the torso, fell from the hips in loose folds to his knees. This one was paneled in a gold fabric set against a green of such elegance that even I took in a startled breath, because the fabric was so impressive, not because the buttery shine of the beaded gold collar caught high up against his neck looked so very well against the rich brown of his complexion.

I drew my cane across my nightdress like a shield. “Are we in a hurry?”

He blinked. “Ah. We are. Yes. Also, there is a chance the prince’s wardens may pursue anyone they believe tied to the incident…. It may not have been so very wise for me to go to the academy to find out what properties of the airship I could best exploit, although I admit I found out exactly what I needed.”

“Wouldn’t a cold mage deflate any balloon sack just by standing alongside it?” I asked, then bit my tongue.

“That’s part of it,” he said enthusiastically, then stopped and glanced at the young woman, who quickly bowed her head. “It’s best to assume we might be followed.”

I remembered the mob, the smoke stinging in my nostrils, the beat of flames against the sky. The howls of anger. Maybe my color changed.

He nodded, as if I had spoken. “Just so. The carriage is waiting.” He went out.

The girl smiled in a sisterly way. “He’s not a kinsman of yours, is he?”

“No! Not at all. Not in a kinsman blood relation kind of way. We met for the first time two days ago.”

She did not take offense at my tone. Evidently, like Bee, she could interpret my mood and draw her own conclusions. “He has beautiful clothes, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“The Houses are rich; everyone knows that.” I had not meant the words to come out with such sarcasm.

She chuckled. “Surely we do know that, who serve them. But forgive me, maestra. He said the carriage is waiting urgent, and I’m blabbering on. What help can I offer? I’ll brush your hair, if you wish.”

I smiled. “I’d like that. Just a few strokes, for I must finish quickly.”

She was a good companion on an anxious morning, because her words flowed in a soothing spill. “My brother, he’s an apprentice at a tailoring shop in Adurnam, where you must have come from. When he visits at festival, he brings us the tailoring books and the fashion books to look over. I know what he would say about
that one
. If you don’t mind my saying so.”

Leaning closer, I murmured, “What would your brother say?”

“Privately, I’m sure,” she said in the voice of a person thrilled to be offered a venue for speaking her mind instead of remaining mute before arrogant cold mages. “Privately, he would say that the finest of clothes must be worn with a coolness that does not draw attention. A man who draws attention is trying too hard.”

A brutal hammering rose from downstairs, like someone pounding on a door. Startled, I jerked away from the brush.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, twisting the hair neatly up and pinning it into place. “I hope no one heard me. I meant no offense.”

“None was taken in this chamber, I am sure.” I was sorry to lose her lively presence, but I knew what I would need to get through another day. “Is it possible for you to go downstairs to the kitchens and pack a basket of bread and cheese and apples, or anything? I would be most grateful to you and to those in the kitchens.”

She favored me with a look heavy with sudden pity. “Blessings on you.” She looked around the chamber, which in the light of day resembled nothing as much as a luxurious prison house with its barred windows and iron-bound door. “I suppose you’ll need them.”

It proved an exceedingly long, joltingly uncomfortable, and tediously silent day. After the incident with the shattered cup, I was unwilling to attempt conversation lest I inadvertently anger him, and despite that brief discussion of airships in my chamber, he now displayed no interest in me whatsoever. He even declined my offer to share with him the contents of the basket: an apple, walnuts, two loaves of fresh bread, a wedge of pungent cheese, and two halves of a chicken neatly wrapped in waxed paper. Mostly, I thought about my family. Why this had fallen on me I did not know, but I would do my duty because I loved my family and they loved me. I would do my duty to honor the memory of my father and mother.

We rolled at twilight out of the Great North Wood and past willow hurdles fencing off gardens and then alongside clusters of round cottages grouped in compounds and beyond them substantial rectangular houses set back individually from the road. We had arrived in Southbridge, that part of the old Roman town of Londun south of the ancient bridge.

The carriage slowed as we turned onto the high road. The road widened to form a square around an old Roman temple. The high road plunged north toward the bridge, unseen in the gloom except for the distant glitter of watch-lights, while we took the rightward passage. We passed an inn whose gateway was lit by twin lanterns, a row of shops closed and shuttered, and a wide, paved court that sheltered a smithy still glowing within, gates flung open to let heat roil out. A burly man covered in a smith’s apron strolled into view and lounged at the gate, thick arms crossed as he stared at our carriage. From within the smithy, the syncopated beat of a hammer rang, crossed and elaborated with the lighter rhythms of other pounding: the chatter of a higher-pitched hammer, the sassy countervoice of women pounding grain in a neighboring courtyard. The blacksmith simply watched, turning with our passage as if the force of his gaze were driving us out beyond the fiery furnace that was his purview.

Beyond the smithy, the road forked again, a dirt lane ribboning off into fields while the paved turnpike shot east toward Cantiacorum and eventually to Havery, some days’ travel away. We passed more whitewashed houses and then a fenced-in area that in summer was certainly a grand garden. Beyond wall and garden lay a burned and blackened ruin, a once-noble structure with a courtyard and more buildings in back, all scorched, roofs fallen in, black soot everywhere. We pulled up in front of the smashed gate.