Cold Magic (17 page)

The eru opened the carriage door and pulled down the step, and my husband climbed out. I hurried after him as he strode past the gateway into the courtyard and halted at the ruined threshold of the main building. He pulled a spark of light out of the air and let it swell into a ball; this he sent spinning over the ruins, like a dog let run on a long leash. By the look of scorched and broken furniture tumbled in heaps or smashed under fallen beams, the place had gone down fast, and recently. In places, the floor had collapsed to reveal the shattered remains of a network of ceramic pipes by which the Houses warmed their domiciles. It was an adaptation of the Roman hypocaust, providing a constant flow of heated air beneath the floorboards. Andevai scraped at the char with the tip of his cane, pulling an object closer. He crouched to fish it off the ground and, rising, dangled a cord from one finger, strung with the fragments of cowrie shells and the crumbling spars of burned vegetal matter.

“Arson,” he said.

He crushed the remains of the amulet in his hand, then shook its dust to the ground with murmured words I did not recognize. He carried a small silver snuffbox in his sleeve, but it contained salt, not snuff, and he pinched a few crystals between thumb and middle finger and scattered this over the threshold.

A cold wind rose out of the north. A light rain, spiced with fingers of stinging sleet, misted down out of the sky.

“Follow us after you have scouted the perimeter,” he said to the coachman.

I walked beside him back into town. Every house that we passed had shutters closed against the lowering night. The hilt of the ghost sword came alive in my hand, but apparently he still could not see it.

We reached the edge of the square and walked to the other inn. The smith waited in his doorway, arms still crossed, speaking no word of welcome. My husband did not acknowledge him, nor did he stray too close to the smithy, a place of power opposed to his own cold magic, even if no person who stirred the embers of fire magic could raise an equivalent level of power without being physically consumed by an uncontrollable blast of elemental fire.

No footman or liveried servant waited at the inn’s entrance to greet distinguished customers. As we approached the open gates, the lanterns sputtered and went out. I could barely distinguish the griffin talisman painted on the inn’s sign. We walked into a courtyard surrounded by the inn buildings and their double tier of balconies. At the door to the common house, he was stymied because no servant waited to open the heavy door, but I was not too proud to fix a hand around the door handle and drag it open.

“Catherine!” He made a gesture of protest.

I ignored him and crossed the threshold into a large, warm, and smoky room fitted with long tables and benches. It was at this hour empty except for the tempting smell of chicken broth and baking squash. Through a second door, which was propped open by a brick, I could see into an adjoining supper room where people were dining and chattering. With a frown, Andevai entered. The blazing fire in the hearth sank like a shy child hiding his face from strangers.

A man carrying a tray piled with dishes emerged from the supper room and stopped stock-still to stare at us, like an actor pretending shock in a Roman comedy. He cleared his throat uneasily. “How can I help you, maester? Maestra?”

“What happened to the House inn?” Andevai demanded. “When I last passed through here ten days ago, I stayed there.”

“It burned, maester.”

“I can see that it burned. It was destroyed by arson.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, maester.”

“I don’t suppose you would. No one ever does. When did it happen?”

“Nine days ago, maester. A rare conflagration.”

The fire flickered, struggling to stay alive. “So it seems. It is now too late for us to travel farther upon the turnpike and seek the next House accommodation.”

The innkeeper’s gaze flashed to the fire, and his breathing quickened. “I ask pardon for not recognizing you, Magister. We never see magisters such as yourself in my inn, begging your pardon. Indeed, Griffin Inn is no place you’ll be accustomed to, Magister. We’ve no specially heated rooms for cold mages like yourself, like the House inns are fitted with.” The man gestured with the tray toward the fire. “We heat with hearths and braziers. Anyway, we’ve only one room remaining for tonight, an attic room with several cots. Not even a proper bed.”

“You can clear a chamber for our use.”

The man took in an angry breath. “That I can’t, Magister. I can’t turn out those guests who’ve already made their arrangements and paid in advance. I’m not able to collect tithes from my neighbors as the House inn did, with the threat of House retribution backing up their demands should any not pay the tax. Anyway, Magister, even besides the attic room, we’ve only four sleeping rooms, none of them to your liking, I am sure.”

“You are deliberately insulting me.”

“I am telling you the cold truth, Magister. Maybe you choose to take it as an insult, if you’re not accustomed to hearing the truth spoken to you.” The man’s knuckles were clenched to a pallor around the tray. It took a courageous man to speak so frankly to a cold mage.

The fire sighed to embers. The hilt of the ghost sword grew cold against my palm.

“We’ll take the attic room,” I said, too loudly, because I did not intend to see the innkeeper’s pewter cups shattered in a fit of rage. “We’ll need extra blankets, as many as you have, if you don’t mind, maester. But the principles of convection suggest that hot air rises, so up in the attic we should be warm enough even with no brazier to heat the room.”

The man had expressive eyebrows; one quirked now, cocking up as he examined me. He looked again at Andevai to identify what possible relation we might have, and nodded. “Supper is served in the supper room, maestra. Or must I also address you as Magister?”

“No. Thank you.”

His eyebrows lifted again before he recovered his composure. “I’ll send my niece to show you up when we’re done serving supper, but you’ll have to have your own people carry up your cases or what have you, as we’re shorthanded tonight what with the wedding of my wife’s cousin’s nephew in Londun. I would have shut up the inn and gone over the river myself for the wedding feast if not for—”

A trill of laughter—humanlike but not human—lilted out of the supper room.

The man nodded at me, pointedly not looking at Andevai. “Business is business, maestra. We serve any who pay with hard currency and comport themselves like decent folk. If you’re wanting a wash, there’s a trough out by the stable where you can fill a pitcher. There’ll be a basin up in the room to pour in and wash out of.”

“We will receive a tray of food in our private chamber,” said Andevai abruptly.

The man’s lips thinned. “As I said, Magister, tonight we haven’t the means for private service no matter what I might wish one way or another, for besides the lad out in the stables, it’s just me and my brother’s daughter. She’s tending the kitchen, and I’m running food into the supper room, and soon enough I’ll have customers here in the common room as well to pull drinks for, the usual locals with their music and talk.”

“Even if I were to eat in a public room, you can scarcely wish me to eat in your supper room, since I will extinguish your fire and then all your other customers will be cold.”

“Even if you sit at the very farthest table from the hearth, Magister? I just want to make clear I’ve nothing to be ashamed of in my inn. We’re a respectable establishment well known for our savory suppers, our excellent brew, and clean beds. Yet I’ll tell you truly, we’ve never had a cold mage set foot in this establishment, not a Housed mage, not once, just hedge mages and bards and jellies and such.”

“This corruption is absurd,” Andevai said with a glance at me, contempt trembling like unspoken words on his lips. Yet he would go on speaking. “Jelly is a substance congealed or, in its manner, frozen. A djeli”—he pronounced it more like “jay-lee”—”possesses the ability to channel, to weave, the essence that binds and underlies the universe. Like bards, they are the guardians of the ancient speech. I wish you people would use the word correctly to show proper respect.”

A throaty, somewhat monotone voice called from the supper room with a request for more wine.

The innkeeper’s mouth had pinched tight. “I’ll tell you this,” he began in a low, passionate voice, “you in the Houses may stand high, and you may look down on us who crawl beneath you, but there rises a tide of sentiment—”

I saw my supper and my hope for a night’s sleep sliding away. “Maester,” I cut in, “what if I fetch a tray myself from the kitchens and take it up to the attic?”

Checked, the innkeeper stiffened, maybe not sure whether I was being respectful or derisory.

Andevai broke in. “Catherine, you are not a servant to fetch and carry what others are obligated to bring.”

“I want to eat. I’m very hungry. If I fetch the tray, then I know we’ll eat.”

“Furthermore,” my husband went on inexorably, “the Houses are the bringers of plenty, not of want. People should be grateful to us, who have spared them from the tyranny of princes many times over, who have saved them from the wars of monsters like Camjiata who meant to crush all beneath his boot.”

“Get out of my house,” said the innkeeper so quietly that Andevai did not react, and after a moment I began to think he had not heard because there was no sound at all; even the conversation in the supper room dropped into a lull.

For a moment.

Then the sword hilt burned against my palm like ice.

The fire
whoofed
out with a billow of ash like a cough. I felt as if a glacier loomed, ready to calve and bury me.

“Catherine,” Andevai said in a low voice, “go outside. Now.”

My skin was chapped from the cold, and my stomach was grumbling, and the soup smelled so good, and it was sleeting outside, and in only three days the end of the year would arrive and with it, on that cusp between the dying of the old year and the birth of the new, would rise my own natal day, my birthday, when I would welcome a full round of twenty years and therefore become an adult. Only now I was severed by magic from my beloved family and standing here cold and exhausted and hungry and far from the home I could never return to and meanwhile about to be kicked out into the night. And the worst of it was, Andevai was probably going to do something stupid and awful, because he was the arrogant child of a powerful House unused to being spoken to by a common innkeeper far below him in birth and wealth and without any cold magic to protect himself, and all I could think of was snuggling into a warm bed and sipping hot soup, because I was the most selfish, miserable person alive.

To my horror, I began to cry hot, silent tears.

“Excuse me, maester,” said the throaty voice. A personage loomed behind the innkeeper at the door of the supper room, its bright crest startling in the drab surroundings.

Andevai looked over, no doubt surprised to hear himself again improperly addressed by a stranger, and then doubly surprised to see a troll who was, after all, not speaking to him but to the innkeeper. I sucked back my tears as the prickling anticipation of destruction abruptly eased: He was too startled to be angry.

“You are quite run off your feet, maester—we can see that—but we have run out of wine, I am sorry to say, which comes about only because you offered us such an excellent vintage.” From a distance, trolls’ smooth, small feathers were easy to mistake for strangely textured skin, but this close, the drab brown feathers of this troll’s face stood in contrast to a crested mane of yellow feathers flaring over its head and down its neck. “If we might get more when you are able to fetch it. Our thanks.”

“I’ll bring it at once.” The innkeeper bolted across the common room to an opening hung with a curtain.

“And plates for the new guests,” called the troll as the curtain slashed down behind the innkeeper. The creature turned an eye toward me. It wrinkled its muzzle to expose teeth, a gesture perhaps meant to be a grin recognizable by humans as a friendly smile, but overall the effect was of a big, sleek, feathered lizard displaying its incisors as a threat. “We’d be honored to guest you. If you wish to sit with us, of course. My companions are good company, so they assure me. Witty, well read, and willing to put up with me, so that may be a point in their favor. Or it may not be. You will have to determine that for yourselves. I’m Chartji. I won’t trouble you with my full name, which you would not understand in any case. I’m a solicitor currently employed by the firm of Godwik and Clutch, which has offices in Havery and Camlun, although I’m originally from Expedition. I’ve been employed in Havery for the past four years, but we’re setting up new offices in Adurnam.”

It thrust out a hand, if one could call it a hand, what with its shiny claws curving from the ends of what might be fingers or talons, offering to shake in the style of the radicals and laboring classes. Andevai actually took a step back, and the troll’s head tilted, marking the movement.

“So it’s true what they say about trolls,” he said.

Fiery Shemesh! Could he never stop offending people?

“It is,” said the troll as its toothy grin sharpened, “but only we females.”

I stuck out my hand a little too jerkily. “Well met, Chartji. I’m called Catherine Hassi Barahal.” The name fell easily from my tongue; too late I recalled I was someone else now, although I did not know who.

The featherless skin of its—her!—palms was a little grainy, like touching a sun-warmed rock. For an instant I felt the scent of summer in my nostrils, a whisper like falling water, the breath of cut grass and the juice of crushed berries. Then she let go.

“Interesting,” she said as she looked me up and down, as if she saw something surprising in my height, my hair, my eyes, or my features. “Can it be you are a child of the Hassi Barahal house, originally established in Gadir? The old histories call your people ‘the messengers,’ known to bring messages across long distances in a short time. There’s a branch residing in Havery, founded by Anatta Hassi Barahal. The left-handed Barahals, they call them. I see you hold your… ah”—she seemed about to say one word but changed her mind—”your cane in your left hand.”