Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (61 page)

“Whatever happened with Kemal?” I asked.

She swirled the dregs of the ale in the mug. “Once we reached Havery, I sent a letter
to the New Academy. After some weeks I received a reply. He wrote all manner of pleasing
words, but he reiterated that he cannot leave the hatchlings until he is certain of
their safety. I cannot fault him for the sentiment, but I felt obliged to reply that
I could not visit him in Noviomagus given the current unpleasantness wracking Europa.
I have my work, too, you know! Speeches to declaim! People to scold into behaving
better! Blessed Tanit! Perhaps after all this he has reconsidered his partiality for
me now he has come into his full power.”

I considered my empty spoon. “We are a sad pair.”

“Dearest, what do you mean to do now?”

“Camjiata’s skirmishers were last seen near the town of Cena. If I can find his army,
I can sneak into his camp to kill Drake, and then return before Vai gets back from
Senones and finds out I left. Then I’ll convince him to leave the mage House and fight
for the general.”

“That’s your plan? Do you think it will be easy to convince him to leave now that
he’s heir? With his monumental vanity, he’ll believe he can change things from within.
That the mansa made sure to bestow such an honor on Andevai’s mother makes me respect
the man’s devious mind. Has Andevai been unkind to you? Is that what drove you away?”

“Not at all. If anything, he has been overly kind.”

“That being so, you might have chosen a more prudent and less dramatic and public
way of expressing your discontent.”

“I did express my discontent! He said that my being there made ‘all the difference,’
to
him
.”

She laughed. “I can see how that would have rubbed you the wrong way. Yet even you
must see Andevai will take this defection very ill.”

“I just had to get out of there.”

Rory slipped onto the bench beside me, winkled the spoon from my hand, and started
eating my porridge.

“Are you really willing to kill James Drake?” Bee asked.

“You have no idea how willing I am.” My fingers clutched my cane so tightly that,
had it been ordinary wood, I would have crushed it into splinters. “He means to kill
Vai regardless, so I must do it to protect Vai. Even if I cannot live in the mage
House and he cannot leave it and so we must be parted… at least I will know he lives
and thrives in his chosen place.”

Bee clapped one hand to her chest and the other, palm out, to her brow. “How affecting
these maudlin ramblings are! I shall expire in their wake!”

Rory pressed a hand to my forehead. “Are you feverish, Cat?”

“It’s not amusing!”

“What isn’t amusing?” Brennan strolled up, looking fresh and handsome without a trace
of hangover-sodden eyes. No wonder he was famous for his ability to hold his liquor!
He glanced at Bee, then at Kehinde coming down the stairs from the upper floor with
spectacles in
hand as she squinted shortsightedly across the courtyard. After ordering porridge
and ale, he sat next to me. Chartji and Caith joined us at the table. We exchanged
morning greetings. Caith began picking through a heaping platter of nuts and dried
berries, looking for the hazelnuts.

“Chartji, I’m wondering if you could see that this letter is dispatched to Expedition.”
I handed her the letter I had written to Kofi. “I know I have not a sestertius to
my name, and that we must already be deeply in debt to the clutch—”

“I have an idea about that,” said Bee.

“—but if you can send it with your regular dispatches to the Expedition office of
Godwik and Clutch, they will know how to get it to this person, because he knows your
aunt and uncle.”

Chartji’s crest flared with an emotion I could not interpret, but she took the sealed
letter and tucked it inside her jacket. “It will be done. An interesting and important
person he must be, this Kofi Osafo. The magister has already sent him six letters
via my offices.”

“Has he?” I asked, squinting as at a bright light. When was Vai writing to Kofi?

“I have long been in correspondence with Professora Alhamrai from the university in
Expedition, whom you know,” said Kehinde. “Recently we have been discussing the question
of the ice shelves and whether they are shrinking or growing and how we might measure
their extent. She has written about her theories of the properties of cold magic,
which like all things”—here she spared such a jaundiced eye for Brennan that he laughed
almost nervously, and she frowned as if she judged him a frivolous fellow—“can be
explicated using the principles of science alone.”

“Thus am I scolded,” he said with a lightly mocking smile. “But what I want to know
is how any fire mage can survive if he has not been accepted into the guild of blacksmiths.
Everyone knows that a person born to the flame will die young in a fire of their own
making.”

I said, “James Drake survives by channeling the backlash of his fire magic into living
people. An ordinary person will die if so used, but cold mages can absorb most backlash
without harm.”

Brennan whistled.

“A fascinating struggle between fire, which many natural historians believe releases
energy, and this sort of freezing or locking of energy
that it might be said the cold mages do,” said Kehinde. “Where does the fire go when
it flows into the cold mage?”

“We believe it disperses into the spirit world. The Coalition will fight by using
the presence of cold mages to kill the combustion of Camjiata’s superior weaponry.
The general will fight by using Drake to throw the backlash into the cold mages, because
when cold mages are acting as catch-fires, they can’t kill combustion or work magic.
Not to mention he will burn his enemy’s houses, goods, and camps, and generally terrify
the population.”

Brennan considered a spoonful of porridge. “This is valuable information, Cat. If
the mages nullify Camjiata’s superior weaponry, then without this fire magic, the
general may lose. The Invictus Legion is already here, working in concert with Lord
Marius. My spies tell me three more legions are on the march from Rome to join the
Coalition.”

“Yes. Vai and the Four Moons mansa were sent to Senones to meet them. Camjiata’s skirmishers
have been spotted near the city of Cena.”

“You are indeed an excellent spy, because I have not heard that news,” said Brennan
appreciatively. “But it doesn’t change the fact that we can’t risk harming the general’s
best weapon.”

“Drake is an unscrupulous criminal! He kills people by burning them alive!”

“So does war,” said Brennan. “So does revolution. So do the mage Houses and the princes
with their unjust laws. Which deaths do you choose?”

“Justice can only ultimately be gained through law,” said Kehinde. “But to get the
law, it seems we must have the war.”

“It seems wrong to me that people say terrible acts have to be tolerated because it
serves our goals. If we can only win by allowing a man like James Drake to murder
people indiscriminately and in such an awful way, then how are we different from the
princely and mage Houses who rule by standing on the backs of those who serve them?”

Brennan offered me a courtly flourish. “Maestra, never believe the radical cause is
without its own dilemmas and contradictions. We need Camjiata, and I believe he needs
us.”

“What happens when he doesn’t need you any longer?” I demanded. “And what happens
when Drake decides he no longer needs Camjiata? What do you think, Chartji?” I added,
for all this time she had been
listening with cocked head, picking at a bowl filled with nuts and sun-dried fruit
but not popping more than one or two into her mouth.

She lifted her muzzle toward the courtyard of the feathered people. Because trolls
went about their business during the day, the open expanse scattered with high tables
and inclined perches lay mostly vacant. Only a few groups gossiped and negotiated
in the corners, well away from each other.

The courtyard thereby provided an ample stage for the entrance of a man.

He wore a striking garment in the local style, quite different from his usual dash
jackets. I was stunned by how extremely flattering it looked on what was, after all,
an already well-formed figure. The unbuttoned front of the jacket was cut to the length
of a waistcoat, displaying light-colored lawn trousers as well as a black waistcoat,
while the back of the garment swept in two long tails to his knees. The black brocade
of the fabric had a weave so tight that the cloth shone in the sunlight. To this muted
ensemble he had added a neckerchief of the most shocking orange-and-gold fabric, simply
tied, to give a splash of color.

He looked very very angry as he slapped gloves against a palm and scanned the courtyards.
He had not yet seen us at our table in the shadow of the portico.

A curse rose from the kitchens as the stoves went out. Brennan slipped a hand under
his coat as for a knife. Rory began to rise.

Chartji said, “Please sit down, Roderic. If fur flies, my brethren may grow heated.”

Bee said, “I shall take care of
this
.”

When he saw her emerge into the light, he strode to her as an arrow flies to its target.

“Andevai! I am overwhelmed with joy at seeing you safe and well after our long separation!”

“Where is she?” he demanded in a tone so grippingly arrogant that it took my breath
away, and not in a pleasant way.

She bestowed an aggressive greeting kiss. “Now you are to say, ‘How lovely to see
you, Beatrice, and indeed it relieves my mind to know that you and Roderic survived
your adventures unscathed after we were so rudely and violently parted on the river.’
”

“I must assume you came to Lutetia with Chartji in answer to my letter, and have concocted
some scheme to rip Catherine from me.”

“To which I reply, ‘My thanks for your good wishes, Andevai. It was a frightful journey,
not an adventurous one at all. I was cold and hungry and damp. After we sold the boat
to the most unpleasantly contemptuous man I have ever had the misfortune to meet if
I do not include you when you are in this unreasonable mood, we had perforce to walk
for twenty days over the muddiest paths and in the worst continual sleet I have ever
experienced…’ ”

He was staring at her with such an expression of imperiousness being torn to shreds
by her sarcastically cheerful tone that Brennan choked down a laugh, and Kehinde shushed
him.

“… and I sickened!” she said, finally releasing his elbows. “I suffered the most grievous
fever and cough for a month! ‘Goodness, Beatrice,’ you are to say now. ‘How very glad
I am that you survived this dreadful experience and took no lasting harm from these
travails!’ ”

“Where is she?” he repeated. “I found the letter from Chartji hidden in the skull.”

I could not bear it any longer. I got up and walked out into the courtyard.

“So,” he said, without the least change of tone. “Gave you a single thought for me
and my situation, Catherine? Did it not occur to you that the instant they discovered
you gone they would send a messenger after us? Can you imagine how it looked for me
in the company of the mansa”—his voice darkened and grew thick—“and his cursed nephew,
and our exalted allies to be informed that my wife had absconded like a criminal?
I had to turn tail like a dog and come riding back lest I be accused of being a conspirator!
With the nephew to supervise my journey, no less! So the damage is done. Are you content
now that you have made me look like a fool?”

My cheeks burned with the sting of humiliation.

Bee slapped him.

He took a step back, not in retreat but in surprise. Every troll in the courtyard
slewed around to stare. Many shifted their weight forward, ready to lunge. He brushed
at the outer corner of his right eye, where perhaps one of her nails had jabbed. A
cold eddy of air swirled down over us.

“You will not speak to Cat that way! I don’t care if you are her husband or the emperor
of Rome. You will not! If you could think past your monstrous self-regard for one
moment, you would pause to ask yourself why a woman who adores you as much as she
does—although her devotion to you quite defies explanation—would take flight in such
a precipitous way.”

His lips pressed together, his hands clenched, and his chest actually thrust out as
he assumed the stance of a belligerent man making ready to respond with every hoarded
sharp scrap of anger.

Chartji glided past me and thrust out her taloned hand. “Well met, Andevai,” she said.
“I came at your request, as you see.”

In the reflexive manner of a man who has had good manners drilled into him since childhood,
he shook hands. Hers tightened over his, holding him so he could not let go. The cold
air eased as if cut off.

She said, “Not here. It would be unwise. My brethren are accustomed to rat behavior,
but some of these are young and not yet fully in control of their impulses. Rather—I
might add in the capacity of your solicitor—like you, Magister.”

His eyes flared. He jerked his hand out of her grip. The watching trolls stiffened,
and even Chartji gave an aggressive bob of the head. Rory trotted out into the sun,
unbuttoning his jacket, lips curled back.

“Kehinde, don’t go out there,” said Brennan, but she did, walking out into the sun
with Brennan following right behind her to face Vai.

“Here is my answer, all of you ranged against me!” For once his undoubted beauty could
not smooth away the distasteful contours of his conceit. “You have chosen your place
then, Catherine! And I mine!”

He strode off toward the archway that led from the trolls’ courtyard to the street
beyond.

Goaded by a stab of pain both hot and desperate, I shouted after him. “Now we see
what manner of man you have decided to become! Just like the ones who tormented you!”

He staggered to a halt in the shadow of the arched passage, catching himself with
a fist on the wall. For a long, drawn-out silence no one moved, not him, not us, not
the trolls.