Cold Fire (9 page)

He led us up steps. The air grew wintry as we breached the surface through a marble tombhouse. We staggered blinking into what seemed a fierce brightness of day. Overhead, the sky was rent with blue. The storm had passed on, although cold soaked through our coats. Hailstones littered the ground. The city’s growl rose from beyond high walls.

Rory looked around with a bemused expression. “So many little stone houses. What people live here?”

“Only the dead,” said Bee.

“Do dead people live? I thought if they were dead, they did not live. It’s very confusing.”

“It’s the
tophet
,” I said. The walls had been reinforced with a spiked chain along the top to keep out vandals, treasure-seekers, and mischief-makers.

“What is a tophet?” asked Rory.

“Every Kena’ani child who died untimely in the first eighteen hundred years of the Kena’ani settlement in Adurnam was interred in this cemetery,” I explained.

“The remains of infants were placed here in dedication to the gods.” Bee sank onto a moss-covered stone bench as if exhausted. “But it was closed when my papa was a child, forty years ago. There were riots in the city after rumors spread that the Phoenicians were sacrificing children on Hallows’ Night and mixing their blood with wine and bread to keep away the Wild Hunt. Here in the tophet.” She sighed. “Just give me a moment. My legs are shaking.”

“I don’t think blood and wine would taste well together,” said Rory. “Why drink that?”

“It wasn’t
true
, you imbecile,” she snapped. “It was a
pernicious lie
!”

A gust of wind stirred my hair, like an unwanted premonition. “Bee, why did you notice the sign on that clockmaker’s shop?”

“The clock-faced owl? I saw it in a dream. I sketched it. When I saw it today, I knew we had to go there.” Her gaze, on me, looked so weary and worn that I wanted to tell her it would be all right, but I knew such words would be a lie. When I did not reply, she shook her head as if shaking off her fears and offered a teasing smile. “By the way, Cat, I saw a man’s face in the Fiddler’s Stone.”

“Who?” I demanded, remembering the woman who had told us girls went there to see the faces of their future husbands in the stone.

“Knives,” she said cryptically, mouth creasing down as if she was herself not sure.

Footsteps crunched on gravel. I should have heard sooner. A figure appeared where the gravel path hooked around a gaudy monument which was crested by a weathered representation of the lashing, intertwined sea monsters known as the Taninim.

“So here they are, the Hassi Barahal cousins.” Leaning on a cane and accompanied by his assistant, the revered headmaster of the academy Bee and I had attended regarded us with an expression whose depths I could not fathom. Even though I knew he had sent his assistant to find us, I stared at his regal features, seamed face, and silver hair as surprised as if I had been cast adrift on a wave-tossed sea to confront the toothy maw of a sea wolf.

With a snarl of rage, Rory dropped the bags. In a blur of gold too bright to be fully seen, he melted from man into huge, deadly saber-toothed cat, and sprang at the headmaster.

I threw myself into Rory’s line of attack.

Even as I was twisting, bracing myself to slam into him, the air distorted. An undulation of intense heat sucked the cold as into a vast shimmering furnace. A scaly beast gleaming of polished copper shuddered across the sky: eyes like burning emeralds, claws the length of my arms, wings that spanned the tophet wall to wall. Its jaw gaped to swallow him and us and all the city and then the world and finally all of existence.

I smashed into the cat’s massive fore-flank. I did not stop Rory, but we were both carried far enough sideways that he landed out of reach of the headmaster with me draped over his rippling shoulders. I leaped back and whacked him on the neck with my cane.

“Stop! Rory! Stop!”

The big cat cringed and dropped to a crouch. Its pelt shone with a pulse of light, and smeared into a black-haired young man.

“Let go of me!” cried Bee in a tone I recognized as exasperated rather than alarmed.

Stepping between Rory and the headmaster, I turned. The headmaster’s assistant had a hand on her arm, and was in the act of pulling her out of the way. He released her at once.

The headmaster looked as he had always looked: He was a tall, elderly black man of noble Kushite ancestry, a princely scholar of the most cultured and civilized of peoples, a man who was always calm. Why had I never noticed the fulgent green glamour of his eyes?

“Who are you?” Bee demanded.

Remnants of clothes hung like rags on Rory’s body. Even half naked, he appeared predatory. “I have to kill him, Cat. Surely you understand!”

“I’m beginning to think I understand much less than I ever thought I did!” I cried.

“And that wasn’t much,” muttered Bee, as if she could not help herself.

Had the light changed? The headmaster’s eyes were a pleasant, ordinary brown, not green at all. “Begging your pardon, Maester,” I said politely, “but if I am not mistaken, something rather strange just happened.”

“Indeed it did,” he agreed with the careworn smile of a man who has seen everything and has yet to be surprised. “Your young companion turned into a rather large cat and then back into a man. Certainly an unexpected occurrence. He must be cold. May I offer my coat?”

“No!” snarled Rory. I pressed the cane across his chest to check him.

“Kemal,” said the headmaster to his assistant. “If you will.”

The assistant took off his coat and gloves. Bee brought them to Rory.

I said, “Put them on.”

He obeyed, although by the curl of his lip I could tell he was affronted.

“Why do you think you have to kill him, Rory?” I asked, digging for patience.

His tone suggested he was completely disgusted with my callous disregard for his needs. “He’s one of the enemy!”

I could tell from Bee’s busy, bitten expression that she was thinking as wildly and desperately as a runaway coach careens over rugged ground.

“Are you a cold mage, Maester?” she asked. “Perhaps an un-Housed cold mage, making your own way in the world? Hiding your power?”

“I am no cold mage. But I invite you to return to the academy, where I will serve hot tea and we may conduct this conversation in decent warmth.”

Bee delivered her reply with queenly obstinacy. “I mean no offense, Maester, but the last time I took refuge with you, you handed me over to Legate Amadou Barry. I became little better than a prisoner in his exalted house, and I must say—” Her cheeks flamed, and she thought twice about what she must say.

He nodded. “You have my deepest apologies, Maestressa. I was mistaken in believing the Barry house was a suitable refuge for you. The offer of a cup of hot tea comes without price. On my honor as a Napata, I will not reveal your presence in the academy to anyone. No one will know except me, and my servants, who are bound to me.”

“I have to kill him,” said Rory. “Let me go, Cat.”

“No.” I kept the cane pressed to his torso, its hidden cold steel a leash on his straining form. “Maester, will you explain to us what we just saw? If that was not magic, then I surely have no idea what to call it. My cousin and I have had enough of being lied to, betrayed, and kept in ignorance.”

His grave smile made me ashamed of the impetuosity of my speech, and I lowered my gaze so as not to seem to be staring directly at him in a disrespectful way. “These are hard matters, Maestressa, as you correctly comprehend. Did the head of the poet Bran Cof speak to you two months ago?”

Tell no one.
I bit my lip. Bee fisted her hands.

“By your expressions, Maestressas, I will take that for a yes. A pity I was not informed at the time. Although I suppose when two young women are waiting in my office, perhaps with a purloined book in their keeping, they may prefer to keep silence rather than be subjected to questions. Might we go? My old bones feel the cold deeply. I note also your companion has bare feet now that his shoes have torn off.”

Rory said, as if he had decided he would have more success with being reasonable, “Just let me kill him, Cat. It will only take a moment.” He tensed, readying to spring.

A tongue of fire licked the wintry cold. The air pulled at me as if I were being drawn into the maw of a fiery furnace. Green flickered in the headmaster’s eyes, but his expression remained impassive as he examined Rory as if seeking beneath the skin to the cat beneath. I had a heart-squeezingly strong premonition—nothing magical about it—that our young, healthy, strong Roderic and the old, frail, fragile-looking headmaster were not remotely evenly matched. With the cane, I pushed Rory behind me. He was trembling, although I could not have said whether with anger, fear, or sheer shaking eagerness to pounce.

Bee’s delicate little hand caught hold of my wrist, tightening as I imagined the coils of a snake might crush the ribs of a larger animal. “Cat, we have to hear what the head of the poet Bran Cof has to say.”

“Ah! Ow! Yes! You go ahead. I’ll come after with Rory.”

She released my wrist and swept a courtesy to the headmaster as I tried to shake the pain out of my wrist while still holding Rory in check.

“Maester,” she said, “we will accompany you out of respect for your age and lineage. But it is likely the Roman legate and his minions are already on their way to the academy.”

“Then there is no time to waste, Maestressa. I give you my word I will not be party to your being taken prisoner by Romans, mage Houses, or princes.”

“Very well.” She nodded at me before accompanying them down the path.

A cold breeze chased up from the east, the last breath of the hailstorm Andevai had called to quell the crowds. It was better than muskets and swords as a weapon against people out on the streets, forcing them to flee inside. But the weakest and most desperate huddling in alleys or unheated hovels would expire in the deadly cold. Yet winter killed the weak anyway, didn’t it?

I cautiously drew back my cane. “Rory, explain yourself.”

“I have to kill him.”

“Those seem to be the only words you know any more. How can that respected and honored old man be ‘the enemy’?”

“He’s not a
man
! That body is just the clothes he’s wearing.”

I sat down hard on the bench, my heart knocking about my chest as if it had come loose from its moorings:
wings
,
claws
,
heat
. I covered my face with my gloved hands, and realized how horribly cold my flesh had become. “What do you think he is?” I said through my fingers.

“I don’t
think
. I know. He’s a serpent. A dragon.” He paced around the bench. “These stupid words you use aren’t the right ones! He is one of the enemy who encircles the world and traps us. You’ve seen what happens when the dreams of the mothers of his kind catch us unawares. Where I live it’s not like it is here in the Deathlands, where their dreams don’t reach. You can walk abroad day and night without fear of being caught and changed. They have always been and always will be the enemy.”

“Rory, sit down, your pacing is making me dizzy.” But it was his words that made my head reel. “How can he be a dragon?”

“He’ll eat me first. He’s much bigger and stronger. But I have to try.” If he’d had a tail, he would have lashed it. “Because he must want to eat you, too.”

“I have attended the academy for over three years. He could have eaten me at any time. Why wait until now, when he couldn’t have expected to see me again?”

“Dragons are cunning and patient and never strike until you least expect it.”

“I least expected it all these years. He’s no threat to us.”

“You just can’t see it! I can’t let you go to his lair.”

“This is not your decision!” Watching his bare feet tread the freezing ground made me wince. My lips were so stiff I could scarcely form words. I had to move, or I would die, too. I leaped up and grabbed his arm. “You’ll die of cold if you don’t get shoes and clothes! I couldn’t bear to lose you. But I have to go to the academy to hear the message.”

“Maybe he won’t eat Bee,” he admitted sullenly. “She does stink of dragons, like they licked her when she was sleeping and she just doesn’t know. I didn’t say anything about it, because she’s right, it is rude to say so, and I could tell neither of you knew or suspected.”

I embraced him, petting his arms and back until he relaxed a tiny bit. “Rory, how about this? You will go right now to the Old Temple District, to the inn called the Buffalo and Lion.”

“‘Helene sent me.’”

“Yes, that’s what you say when you get there. Right now I’m thinking Camjiata’s the only person we can trust to be interested in us purely for his own selfish reasons. That makes it easier to negotiate. You’ll keep the bags with you. Don’t lose them! You know how precious my father’s journals are to me.”

“Cat, you and I don’t know who our sire is.”

“I meant, my father who raised me, not the male who sired us. Bee and I will join you after we hear the poet’s message. We can’t stay at the academy anyway, so we won’t be far behind you. Then you can tell me everything you know about dragons.”

“I just told you everything I know,” he said indignantly. “Do you think I’m keeping secrets from you?”

I searched his face. Was he really my half brother? His eyes and hair were so very like mine, and yet he was not human but a wild creature, nothing tame. Yet I trusted him with my life. “No, I don’t think you’re keeping secrets. But it has to be this way. Promise!”

As if the words were forced out of him, he muttered, “I promise.”

I released him. “Ask on the street for Old Temple, and then the inn. Tell people the militia roughed you up during the riot. They’ll help you. Use your charm.”

“Oh!” he said, distracted by the thought of using his charm. “I
am
cold and hungry and thirsty. I could use some petting, too.”

“I don’t need to hear about that kind of petting.” I wiggled fingers into the hem of my jacket’s sleeve, fished out the last of my coins, and pressed them into his hand. “Buy yourself clothes and shoes, but try them on first, then haggle over the price, and make sure you get correct change.”

We ran down the path together. Kemal waited at the tophet gate.

“Tell me, Maester,” I said as he chained and locked the gate, “did the headmaster save you from the Wild Hunt?”

His hand paused as he was turning the key. He did not look at me. “Yes.”

“How?”

He slung the key, on its chain, over his neck. “It is not my place to speak of it.”

“Is he a dragon?”

As if goaded beyond measure, he met my gaze. “The headmaster of the academy is a man.”

“One just like you?” I demanded, for I sensed a riddle in his words.

His smile twisted scornfully, which startled me, for I had thought him a passive young person. “In the empire of the Avar, every albino child like me”—he touched fingers to his pale cheek—“belongs to the emperor. It is a crime punishable by death to hide such a child from the imperial governors. So I would answer you, ‘No.’ He is not a man just like me.”

“I take it that is all I am to hear on the matter.”

So returned the diffident exterior, like a shell covering vulnerable flesh. “My apologies, Maestressa.” He inclined his head with a polite bob of his shoulders and followed his master.

Bee and the headmaster were making their way slowly up the hill, the old man leaning on his cane and she with a hand beneath his elbow quite oblivious to his desire to eat either of us. Rory watched the headmaster’s back with a hooded gaze that did nothing to hide his wish to pounce.

“You promised,” I said.

“Yes, I promised.”

I gave him simple directions based on the bell towers and the high plinth that marked the site of the ancient village founded by Adurni Celts. I kissed him on either cheek, to seal our agreement, and waited at the tophet gate as he walked away down the main thoroughfare, lugging the bags. The wide avenue with its shops remained deserted, everyone in hiding.

I watched until he walked out of sight. Then I hurried up the hill, catching the others as they passed the old Kena’ani temple complex that was the original structure built on Academy Hill centuries ago. All that remained of the old complex was the walled sanctuary dedicated to Blessed Tanit and a grove of votive columns in commemoration of the holy trees felled during the Long Winter of 1572 to 1585. The gate into the sanctuary stood open. Within, a man wearing a heavy coat swept the porch of the priests’ house.

“The gate is always open,” the headmaster was saying to Bee, “due to an agreement made during the Long Winter, when the priests kept the gates open to provide warmth and sustenance to the destitute. It was that, or have the entire complex be burned down.”

“But it was destroyed anyway,” said Bee.

“Much of Adurnam burned at that time. Do you know what saved the city?”

“I do,” I said. “The arrival of the refugees from the empire of Mali. Certain of the refugees had secret magical knowledge, and they found common cause with the Celtic drua. From that union sprang the cold mages. With the rise of the cold mages, the Long Winter was vanquished. Or at least, that is the story we learned at the academy, Maester.”