Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (42 page)

“I am sorry regardless to hear she was arrested,” I lumbered on, “but I am glad to
hear she was released in a timely manner to a safe place. I hope she is still writing.”

“She is still writing and her pamphlets travel across Europa.” Brennan nodded at Bee.

She withdrew her hand and tucked it into the bend of my elbow. “I pray your escape
was not too much of an ordeal, dearest. Is Andevai unharmed? I hope we will have time
to prepare him before he sees Rory wearing his ruined dash jacket.”

Brennan chuckled.

I sighed. “He is much the same as ever, as you will see. Bee, where is your sketchbook?”

She had it with her, for her sketchbook was like my cane: We never went anywhere without
them. I paged through to the sketch of the tailor’s shop.

“When Maester Godwik recognized the eggs atop the towers as the architecture of Sala’s
palace, I knew I had to come to Sala,” she said. “I hoped you would remember. And
you did!”

I flipped to the sketch of the false dream.

“Cat!” she whispered, with a glance toward Brennan, who had closed his eyes in a kindly
attempt to give us a little privacy. “Why do I need to look at this? I try to forget
I ever drew it.”

For the longest time I examined the fabric of the dash jacket worn by a man seen only
from the back. Shading and hatching became petaled flowers, while dots and lines evoked
the spray of fireworks exploding joyfully out of the flowers’ blooming splendor.

I said in a low voice, “Quite by chance and not by my doing, he is getting a dash
jacket made in this fabric. Can you bring about the future by drawing it?”

She snatched the sketchbook out of my hands and snapped it shut as if to close off
the drift of my thoughts. Brennan opened his eyes, looking startled.

“I have no power to bring about the future. I only have the curse of sometimes glimpsing
the future in visions that usually make no sense.”

She looked at Brennan in a way that made me realize she and he had discussed the subject
at length. I caught my breath, waiting for some confession, but she only turned back
to me with hands pressed together, palm to palm, as she spoke.

“I have done a lot of thinking about what you and I have seen, and what Queen Anacaona
told me. The women who walk the dreams of dragons walk unscathed through the Great
Smoke, which we might also call the ocean of dreams. People have long gone to augurs
and priestesses to have their dreams interpreted, because they believe dreams are
windows into the gods’ intentions. Yet surely most dreams are merely a jumble of thoughts
and images and fears and hopes. Or nothing more than indigestion.”

“Or brought on by too much whiskey,” murmured Brennan with a smile that brought a
rose’s bloom to Bee’s cheeks.

She went on as if he had not spoken. “I think the Great Smoke is very like the ocean.
It has shallows, and depths, and a shoreline. I believe it also has currents just
as mariners tell us our own oceans do. I now believe all strands of past, present,
and future commingle in the Great Smoke. Dragon dreamers walk the currents of the
future, even if we do not know what we are seeing.” She paused to brush her cheeks.
“Why are you staring, Cat? Is there something on my face?”

“No.” I struggled for a jest but could not find one. She looked so grave and scholarly,
quite unlike my bombastic and passionate Bee but exactly like a woman I could love
and admire just as much. “Was the leviathan that conveyed us across the Great Smoke
truly a dragon?”

“
Dragon
is a word we use to describe something we don’t understand. But to truly answer your
question, we must speak to the headmaster. To speak to the headmaster, we must travel
to Treverni Noviomagus.”

“Are you sure that’s where he is?”

Brennan nodded. “We have learned through our network of intelligencers that a man
answering to the description of the headmaster and bearing the name Napata is headmaster
of the New Academy in Noviomagus. The New Academy was founded two years ago.”

“Which would be the right time if he left Adurnam after we fell into the well,” added
Bee. “Furthermore, Cat, I think we will find him in Noviomagus on the Feast of Mars.
In nine days. That’s what I dreamed. Remember?”

I clasped her hands excitedly. “The secrets of the Great Smoke aren’t the only thing
he can tell us. He saved his assistant from the Wild Hunt. We need to find out how
he did it. He might be my only chance to save myself from my sire.”

Bee squeezed my hands in reply, for I could tell by her expression that she had not
told Brennan any of my secrets.

Brennan was tapping his thigh rather as Vai did when he was wound up, counting a drum
rhythm as if it helped him focus. “We will have to leave Sala tonight regardless,
before the ghana can close the roads.” He opened the window.

Dusk bled darkness over a street of tightly packed row houses. The carriage slowed,
and Brennan cracked open the door. As we passed the awning of a hat shop, he jumped
out and caught Bee as she sprang after him; I leaped likewise, and dashed through
the open door. The elderly shop attendant nodded as I followed Brennan and Bee through
the front room and out the back into an alley.

Several streets over, we entered a humble, whitewashed inn whose front room was swept
clean of customers. A young woman wearing a head wrap, wool gown, and calf-length
leather vest was bent over the stove, lighting a fire. She carried a baby in a sling
against her back.

As the door creaked open she said words in the local dialect that I understood as
“We’re closed.” When she glanced up she switched to the bastard Latin common among
laborers who had to speak to people from different regions of Europa. “In the back
upstairs. Ye was never telling us ye mean to be bringing a cold mage who would be
killing all the fires in the house, did ye?”

“My apologies, Maestra.” Brennan gestured for us to go ahead. “We intended no inconvenience.
I must warn you, there’s been fighting at the livestock market.”

“Angry Carnonos!” She stood with a gasp of outrage. “My brother is gone there! If
the ghana’s men come searching, ye cannot be staying…!”

Bee drew me down a passage and past a kitchen where a woman was cursing most alarmingly
about plague-ridden cold mages, and thence into a back wing of the building.

In a chilly passageway she took my face in her hands, forehead wrinkling as she peered
at me in the dim light. “Is all well? You escaped the spirit world unscathed and unbound?”

“Not unbound, but unscathed except for the ruin of one of his favorite dash jackets.”

With a hiccupping laugh she crushed me against her in an affectionate embrace. “Oh,
Cat! I’ve had all sorts of adventures but I felt so lonely without you.”

I pulled her hands down and squeezed them. “Not as lonely as all that, it seems. Answer
me truly! Is there something between you and Brennan?”

Her hesitation told me everything I needed to know.

“Blessed Tanit! Are you sleeping with him?”

Her fingers tightened on my hand. “We have been traveling together for months. I must
say there are benefits to being a young woman who knows she is barren, when it comes
to activities of the amatory sort. But I’m not in love with him, not in that way.
We’re more like attentive companions.”

“Attentive companions! Are you telling me you’re engaged in a companionably attentive
affair with one of the most notorious and dashing radicals in Europa?”

“Shh! Lower your voice. This isn’t the place to have this conversation!”

“Does he want to marry you?”

“Strangely, Cat, not every man wishes to marry me, starting with your husband and
ending with Brennan Du. I find it’s a relief to negotiate a relationship that is based
on respect and friendship rather than all this overheated romance.” Her voice dropped
so low I had to lean my head against hers to hear. “The truth is, he’s been in love
with the professora for years, but she is married. I heard Brennan and Kehinde arguing
once. She admitted that she dislikes her husband. It was a marriage arranged for her
at a tender age. You would think an intellectual of such radical sensibilities would
take it upon herself to shed such imprisoning traditional customs, but she refuses
to do anything that would bring dishonor upon her family.”

“There’s a great deal I do not understand about this situation!”

Brennan’s laugh floated from the kitchen, where he was evidently soothing the cook.

“I do not want to be discovered gossiping with you!” Bee finished, dragging me on.

Upstairs, at the very back, we entered a modestly furnished dining chamber lit by
cold magic and cooling rapidly. Rory lounged under a blanket on a threadbare couch
situated beside the brick chimney and its dead fire.

Vai rose from a chair. “Catherine! You look… confounded. Was there trouble? Beatrice!
Is all well with you? Have you peace and good health?”

Bee kissed him on either cheek in the effusive Kena’ani manner. “Andevai! Here you
are! What a startling color that dash jacket is! Please allow me to tell you how very
glad I am that you are back with us.”

“My thanks, Beatrice,” he said stiffly, taken aback by her enthusiastic welcome and
perhaps wondering if she disliked his new garment. The distinctively rich orange-red
damask did look well on him. Because the sleeve length was just right, I wondered
if the tailor had shortened the sleeves on the green jacket on purpose so he wouldn’t
wear it. “Catherine has been worrying about you.”

“Of course she has! I’m sorry to say we had trouble today. A violent altercation broke
out between the ghana’s troops and some loitering trolls.”

Rory whistled under his breath. “Glad I missed that.”

“I am sadly sure the town is in for a very bad night. Can you and Cat be ready to
depart within the hour, Andevai?”

He took my hand and looked me up and down to make sure I was all right before releasing
me. Footsteps in the hall brought me around with my sword half drawn.

Brennan entered the room. “Magister, next time we’ll bring you in through the stables
so you don’t put out all the fires. Can you be ready to leave within the hour?”

“No. Nor do I see the need to do so.”

I cringed at Vai’s brusque tone. Rory smirked, as if he found the situation amusing.
Brennan sighed wearily, and Bee opened her mouth to make a scalding retort.

Vai sailed right over her. “However the ghana reacts to this disturbance, I will have
no trouble leaving Sala. I see no need to go sneaking off and freezing and besides
that leaving disgruntled innkeepers at every stop because I kill their fires. Nor
will I agree to camping out in the woods in this damp and cold. Not when I can have
every expectation of peace traveling as a magister in a coach generously provided
by White Bow House. No prince or ghana or lord—or radical—will prevent me from making
sure my wife travels in comfort to Noviomagus.”

“Goodness, Cat!” said Bee. “He still talks in exactly that same pompous way.”

His gaze flicked to her. “If you are trying to irritate me, it won’t work.”

“How could it, when you are already so very irritating?” she muttered.

“Because as I was just about to say and now will say, there is no reason the three
of you cannot travel with us. We told our hosts we were separated from our servants,
so you will pose as our retinue. All of us can leave Sala in a way uncomplicated by
searches, seizures, and concerns about where we will sleep every night.”

“Pleasant to have all such mundane details settled,” said Brennan with a wry grin.

“How do I get to serve?” Rory fluttered his eyelashes in a way that made Brennan chuckle
as at an old joke that hasn’t lost its charm. “By the way, Cat, you were so very wrong
when you told me that first day
in Lemanis that I can’t wear women’s clothing. I have made several friends in the
last months who enjoy it when I dress in women’s drawers and other garments.”

“Rory!” Bee cried in a long-suffering tone redolent of many shared experiences I would
likely never know anything about. “You need not say just whatever comes into your
mind, as I have had reason to tell you before.”

“I just wanted Cat to know! I don’t mind being scolded for something I did wrong,
but I don’t think it fair to be scolded when I did nothing wrong!” Oblivious to the
stupidity of poking an already annoyed wasp, he addressed Vai. “Do
you
wear women’s drawers?”

I braced myself. Bee pressed fingers to her forehead, wincing. Brennan rocked forward
on his toes, clearly expecting the same outcome I was.

Vai smiled indulgently at Rory, as if they were the best of joking friends. “No, I
do not. But I can’t see why you shouldn’t wear them if you wish to. It’s just that
they’re cut for a different shape.”

I exchanged startled glances with Bee at this unexpected display of relaxed camaraderie,
for if there was one word I would not have used to describe Vai, it was
relaxed
. Footsteps scraped down the hall. Rory stood, the blanket sliding off to reveal him
wearing the green floral dash jacket. Blessed Tanit! Had I gotten hit on the head
and was I now dreaming that Vai had given one of his precious jackets to someone else?

“Chartji and Caith cannot believably pose as your servants, Magister,” Brennan went
on as the door opened to admit the lawyer Chartji and her clutch-nephew, the young
troll Caith.

I took a step back, a shade too abruptly, because Caith’s head slewed around like
that of a predator spotting the furtive skittering of its hapless prey. A vivid memory
of the troll ripping out the belly of the horse, guts spilling, steam rising from
the hot innards, blinded me for a blink of an eye.

A blink was all it took for them to take the leap and make the kill.

“The feathered people need not pose as my servants,” said Vai, startling me back to
myself. He crossed to shake Chartji’s hand. “Chartji is my solicitor, after all. A
pleasant coincidence that we stumbled across each other here in Sala. We have a great
deal to discuss.”