Cold Fire (7 page)

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.

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.

“This won’t work,” said Bee. “That
hurt
.”

“Bee can’t cross,” said Rory, “but you will, Cat. Your blood opened the gate.”

Heaving, I dropped to my knees into a crackling carpet of snow. Nothing came up. My finger smarted. My tongue burned, and I swallowed blood.

“Someone is peeking at us through the boarded-up door,” said Bee. “I don’t like this place. And that crow looks like it’s hoping to peck out our eyes.”

Recovering from the wash of weakness, I groped along the wall with Bee in the lead and Rory behind. Unearthly voices rushed and mumbled in my ears as if I stood with one foot in the spirit world. A magnificent stallion cantered out of the wall, muscles rippling along a coat more brown than bay, and then it was gone. A saber-toothed cat lolled in our path, huge jaws widening in a startled yawn as she saw me, and then she was gone. A winged woman emerged from the coal haze that smeared the sky, her skin as black as pitch and yet glowing as with hidden embers, and then she was gone. A leaf trailed across my cheek with a glistening line of dew.

A shining face, masked and unkindly, filled the alley like a towering cliff of ice ready to calve and bury me. Chill fingers closed on my heart until I couldn’t think or breathe.

“Cat?” Bee’s fingers closed over my hand.

Then it was gone, and the voices fell silent. I sagged against Bee, and she held me up.

“There’s blood on your lip,” she said hoarsely.

I licked it off, its tang as bitter as seawater.

We staggered out to the old arched gate just as a company of soldiers rode up the lane.

“Beatrice! You’ll not escape me this time!”

Legate Amadou Barry reined up beside us, accompanied by a dozen Roman guardsmen in swirling red-and-gold capes and carrying burnished round shields more decorative than useful. Amadou bent from the saddle with the ease of a man accustomed to horseback and reached for Bee, meaning to sweep her up. She leaped back, the kitchen knife flashing as she took a swipe at him.

“I’m not yours to take!” she cried.

“You must get out of here! A riot’s about to break out. It isn’t safe.”

“Safer here than in a golden cage.”

“Beatrice, you have no idea of the cruelties of the world. I will protect you.”

“Legate, you have no idea of how condescending you sound. I’m not interested in your kind of protection.”

Had I ever thought him a diffident and humble young man? He was not even arrogant. He was simply a man of such exalted rank that he existed above considerations like arrogance and humility. He grabbed Bee’s wrist and twisted until she dropped the knife. “You’re coming with me.”

Rory leaped. He slammed into Amadou, and Bee jerked free as both men went tumbling to the ground. Guardsmen converged. A sword flashed down at my brother’s head. I parried with my cane as Rory rolled away. A cane made of wood would have been riven by steel, but the soldier’s blade shivered to a dead stop with a ringing
shringgg
. Rory jumped to his feet, yanked the rider’s leg out of the stirrup, and heaved him off the other side.

Bee grabbed the knife and sliced the bridle of Amadou’s mount. The harness slipped. We retreated toward the gate as Amadou Barry got to his feet, his expression so blank I wondered if he had actually lost his temper. The bridle was a loss.

On the other side of the gate, the crack of firearms split the air, punctuated by furious howls and the stiffly barked commands of a military captain: “Turn! Make formation!” More reports answered, sharp and short. The Roman guardsmen looked startled. Those were not muskets.

“Rifles!” shouted a male voice from afar. “Fire again, lads! We’ve got the muscle now! They’re only got swords and pistols!”

From the militia, in answer: “
Charge!
 ”

“Run!” I cried.

We pelted up the lane away from the old gate. The roar of a full-fledged battle crashed over us. People squeezed through the archway, disrupting the Roman guardsmen as they tried to assemble around their legate. With swords drawn and crossbows leveled, the men drew into a tight formation. Bricks flew from the crowd. The curve of the lane took us out of sight.

“Blessed Tanit!” cried Bee, near tears, “let him not be harmed! Oh, how hateful he was!”

“I wish you would make up your mind!” The noise of a district ablaze with fighting echoed around us, as if every lane, alley, and dank alcove had gone up in flames. “He’s not at all what I first thought he was.”

“That’s why it makes me so angry!” She looked ready to carve her anger into one of the houses we passed. “I thought I could trust him, but I can’t!”

A deep vibration knifed through my body. The somber bass of the bell dedicated in the temple of Ma Bellona, he who is valiant at the ford, cried across the city. The authoritative tenor of the bell dedicated in the temple of Komo Vulcanus, who keeps his secrets, answered. The sister bells joined, followed by the droll bass of Esus-at-the-Crossing and Sweet Sissy’s laughing alto. Last and most unexpectedly, because it was so rare, the raw contralto of the queen of bells, the matron of plenty and protection who guarded the shrine of Juno Lennaya, filled the air with a din that shook houses. Through the voice of its bells, Adurnam had joined in the conflagration.

We pressed on. The cursed lane tossed us straight back into the churning chaos of a street as wide as Enterprise Road. Its pavement was lined with the newest gaslight fixtures, although half of the glass shades had been shattered. The sheer mass of people surging along the street brought us up short. Everyone was shouting and cursing, the buzzing of voices like a nest of angry bees.

Rory used the bags to batter a way through the crowd. We plowed in his wake.

“Watch it!” A man threatened me with a cane. My blow broke it in half, and he fell back.

As we reached another intersection locked with wagons and carts, thunder rumbled.

Rory cocked his head. “That’s not horses.”

Bee pointed to a shop whose sign bore a clock-faced owl. “There! We have to go in there.”

We reached the awning. Bee opened the door and went in with Rory. An icy taste ground through the gritty flavor of coal smoke. My ears popped as the air changed. My sword’s hilt burned. I shut the door hard behind us, shop bell jangling.

The man at the counter had silver hair, spectacles, and a shop full of ticking clocks, no two of which showed the same time. He set down calipers.

“Maester,” I said, “begging your pardon for the intrusion, but if you have shutters, I recommend you close your shop now. A storm’s coming.”

“Maester Napata, they’re here,” he called, not to us. “Just as you said they’d be.”

A howl of wind shook the windows. Hail pummeled the streets like the peppershot of muskets. People scattered, seeking shelter anywhere they could. The shop door burst open and a dozen weathered toughs in patched laborers’ coats staggered in. One had a bloody nose, which he was staunching with a crumpled handbill. Another held a hand over his ear. A third brandished a brick, cursing magisters and princes in equal measure. They fell silent as a young man stepped out past a curtain.

The man’s uncanny blanched features might have been those of a ghost called from the miserable gloom of Sheol. Then he saw Bee, and he blushed, easy to see because he was an albino. He was no ghost. He served the headmaster of the academy.

What on Earth was the headmaster’s loyal dog, as we had always called him, doing here?

“If the head of the poet Bran Cof once spoke to you,” said the young man, his words burred by a foreigner’s accent, “please to come with me now. The Thrice-Praised poet spoke to the headmaster at dawn.”

“Blessed Tanit!” muttered Bee, looking at me. She remembered as well as I did the day we had sneaked through the headmaster’s office and heard an uncanny voice say the words “
Rei vindicatio
” as if to warn us. Mere hours later, Andevai had showed up at her parents’ house to use those same words to claim legal ownership of the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter.

The men huddled by the door murmured to each other at this mention of the famous head of the poet Bran Cof.

“What said the head of the poet?” demanded the man with the brick.

The headmaster’s assistant ignored everyone except Bee. “The head of the poet Bran Cof said he had a message for Tara Bell’s child. He said to meet you here.”

I was glad he was looking at Bee, so he didn’t see me shudder.

“Last time, the headmaster turned me over to the Romans,” said Bee. “How can I know he won’t do so again?”

“That was a mistake.” He gazed at Bee in the way a well-trained but hungry dog stares at a bone out of its reach, for he was yet another young male who had fallen in love with her beauty during our time as students at the academy. “On his honor and dignity, he will not allow it to happen again. If you wish to hear, come with me.” He vanished behind the curtain.

“He smells clean of lies,” said Rory.

The man with the injured nose straightened out the bloody handbill. “You think these two is the ones mentioned for the reward?”

“What’s that?” said the man with a hand on his ear. “The head of the poet Bran Cof speaks at last, did you say? Did he recite a poem to the just cause of our discontent? Or pronounce on the legal principle of men being allowed to vote for a tribune to represent us on the prince’s council?”