Cold Fire (6 page)

“Cat, you think you can call your sire once you are in the spirit world.” Bee’s smile had a frightening effect on me: a tingling rush through my body that made me boldly wish to engage in a reckless act. Perhaps being exhausted and feeling cornered made us more reckless than usual. “If he is anything like Rory, he can cross back into this world in the shape of a man. That would bring a new piece into the conflict no one expects. How do we get to the spirit world?”

“When my blood was shed on a crossing stone, I crossed from this world into the spirit world. Once in the spirit world, I crossed back through a different gate. The hunters of Andevai’s village crossed likewise, so I was told. How would you get back, Rory, if you wanted to go?”

“My existence was very boring before you came, Cat. I lazed about, hunted a bit, sunned myself, ate, slept, and rested. I never had any fun. I don’t want to go back, and neither should you.”

“Oh, Rory.” I went to the door and put an arm around him. “You’ve asked for nothing. You’re the best brother I could ever have. But our situation here is impossible. We can’t keep running. You don’t have to come with us. We’ll give you money and you can wait with the bags at an inn. We’ll come back, I promise.”

Because he tended to laze about and look as sleek and indolent as any healthy cat, it was easy to forget he was a dangerous predator. He shook off my arm in a way that made Bee grab the knife as if she thought she might have to defend me.

His voice reverberated like the warning clangor of a bell. “Beware what you call, lest you be devoured by a creature hungrier than you. To drink from the fountain of mortal blood is to drink the essence of power. Every step in the spirit world is a perilous step.”

I did not fear him. He was my brother. I grabbed his hand. “What choice do we have?”

He seemed to get smaller, as if his fur were flattening. “It’s a bad idea.”

“To bring the knife, or not to bring the knife,” said Bee, “that is my question.” She set a denarius on the table before tucking the knife in her coat. “Where do we go?”

I said, “To the plinth that marks the foundation stone of the first Adurni settlement. Where two ancient paths met, according to the history of the founding of Adurnam. If any place in this city opens on a crossing into the spirit world, that must be it.”

“I don’t know, Cat. That part of town is filled with taverns, dogfights, and fatheaded young guildsmen seeking any excuse for a duel.”

“That sounds promising!” said Rory with a cocky grin that made me think he’d already forgotten his frightening words and our bad idea.

I fastened my cane to its loop and buttoned my coat as Rory picked up the bags. A saber-toothed cat, cold steel, and dreams that revealed the future. That would have to be enough. As we headed up the stairs, Bee began to hum under her breath the famous aria “When He Is Laid in Earth” from the recently staged opera
The Dido and Aeneas
, in which the queen of Qart Hadast, after defeating the Roman prince who sought to subdue her rule through marriage, presides over his funeral procession.

The Amazon waited in the entryway, shoulders against the door and arms crossed. “So here yee is,” she remarked in an odd accent. “Already, the general know yee lot shall leave.”

But instead of blocking our path, she opened the door. A blast of wintry air swirled in, numbing my face and chilling my heart. The history of the world begins in ice, and it will end in ice. So sing the Celtic bards and Mande djeliw of the north whose words tell us where we came from and what ties and obligations bind us. Here, we dare not forget the vast ice sheets and massive glaciers that cover the northern reaches of Europe. In the old tales, the ice is called the abode of the ancestors. Brennan hadn’t mentioned the phrase in his story of gruesome death, but Daniel Hassi Barahal had written it in his journals. I steeled myself, for wasn’t I seeking my ancestors?

The winter wind stirred the hem of the Amazon’s knee-length jacket. She wore a soldier’s boots, kept polished not to a fashionable mirror gleam but with an attention to cleanliness and wear, so they would last longer and support her when she hit rough ground.

“If yee wait with the door open, then the cold air come in. Make up yee mind. Go, or stay.”

“You’re not going to try to stop us?” Bee asked.

“They who fight with the general, fight of they own will. One thing I shall tell yee before yee walk. If ever any of yeen wish to contact the general, go to the tavern called Buffalo and Lion, in the district called Old Temple. Yee shall say the words ‘Helene sent me.’ We shall see yee again.”

“Our thanks.” Bee touched gloved fingers to her chest like a great lady of the theater about to make an exit. “And yet, farewell.”

She swept out the door and down the steps. Rory took in a breath as if scenting for danger, then followed, swinging the bags as if they weighed nothing. I could not stop myself from looking toward the closed door of Chartji’s office. Whatever went on there between the lawyer and Andevai was no longer my business. I had to leave that part of my life behind.

Yet I hesitated on the threshold. The clamor of the city assaulted me with the noise of rattling carts, ringing handbells, market-folk calling out their wares, and men crying the morning’s news:
The Northgate poet begins fourth day of hunger strike on the prince’s steps!
For a moment, I reveled in the sweet familiar sounds, the ones I had grown up with.

Then, out of nowhere and with no warning, a clangor shook me down to my boots. The sister bells, Brigantia and Faro by the river, rang to life with their alarm:
Fire! Fire! Call the watch!

Doors opened all along Fox Close and people crowded onto their front steps, their breath like white mist in the air as they looked into the sky for the origin of the trouble.

“The war begin,” said the Amazon. “But the princes and the mages don’ know. Not yet. So, gal. Go, or stay?”

“Cat?” Bee’s plaintive voice called from the street. In the house, I heard footsteps, people moving toward doors that were about to be opened.

“I’m going,” I said. And I went.

“A good morning to you, Maestressas and Maester.” A young man with dusty blond hair and a freckled white face stood beside an empty coal cart. “Is all well with you?”

“I have no trouble, thanks to my power as a woman,” I replied in the traditional way, and received a scathing look from Bee for my pains. “And you, Maester? Is all well with your family?”

“We have peace, thanks to my mother who raised me,” he said with a grin. “Though I wonder at the bells. I hope the fire’s not around here.”

He looked down Fox Close toward Enterprise Road. With the bells tolling the alarm, the streets of Adurnam had turned, like the snowmelt-fed streams of late spring, into foaming rivers full with a raging flow of people hurrying to get somewhere else. I didn’t relish making our way halfway across Adurnam in this tumult.

“Are you from this district?” I asked.

He made a flourish with his cap. “That I am. And my ancestors before me. Eurig is my name. Brennan Du asked me to get you across the city.”

I exchanged a glance with Bee. We would have to lose him, but not too soon. A shame, for he seemed nice enough. “Our thanks. We can’t give our names. My apologies.”

“I understand. This way.”

He picked up the handles of the cart and began pushing not toward Enterprise Road but deeper into the narrow lane of Fox Close. We walked alongside as he talked. “We’ll take Ticking Lane through the Lower Warrens. They’re perfectly safe despite the name. Most of the old buildings here have been knocked down and rebuilt. And there’s gaslight everywhere in this district. We used to be nothing more than a fishing village. Now we’re quite the most modern district in Adurnam, thanks to the trolls and the radicals.”

“How did you become a radical?” Bee asked.

“As the Northgate poet says, it’s no crime to think men have natural rights that ought not to be trampled on by ancient privileges.”

“Just men? Or women, too?” asked Bee with her most dangerously pretty smile.

He blinked, taken aback by this thrust. “Nature has suited women for a different role than that given to men.”

“Like Professora Kuti?” Bee demanded.

“Cat!” Rory nudged me with a bag. “I smell a lot of horses nearby.”

Angry shouts of protest rang from Enterprise Road: “The dogs are come to bite us with their teeth of steel.” “We need step aside for no man!” “Which will it be, lads? Freedom or fetters?”

A whip cracked. A man screamed. A column of mounted soldiers swept into sight around the corner where Fox Close met Enterprise Road. About half wore tabards marked with the four moons of full, half, crescent, and new: turbaned mage House troops, leading a spare horse. The rest wore the uniforms of the Tarrant militia except for a half dozen in red-and-gold hip-length capes, the mark of Rome’s ambassadorial cavalry. Pedestrians stumbled back to the stoops and railings.

“Keep walking,” said Eurig. “Don’t look back.”

“Eurig,” I said, “did the ancient village here have a crossroads?”

“What? The Fiddler’s Stone down by Old Cross Gate? The fishermen would bring their catch up from the shore and trade it to the folk who came over from the Roman camp. That was a long time ago.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Let’s move faster. Just don’t run.”

I looked back. The soldiers pulled up in front of the law offices of Godwik and Clutch. A man wearing a Roman cape dismounted just as the door opened and Andevai appeared on the steps. The rigid set of his shoulders betrayed his annoyance, and made me think he really had come to consult with Chartji on a matter so private he hadn’t told the mansa. From the steps, as if drawn by my foolish stare, Andevai looked our way down Fox Close. I saw him see me.

Quite deliberately, he strode down the steps, mounted, and turned toward Enterprise Road.

“He’s leading them
away
from us!” I said.

“Just keep walking,” said Eurig.

“Cat!” Bee was breathless. “Didn’t you recognize him?”

“Andevai? Of course I recognized—”

“It was Amadou Barry, with the Roman guard.”

Eurig turned his cart into a lane lined with craftsmen’s shops. Behind one window, clockwork toy horses and dogs clattered along a display counter. Behind another, four women sat at a table, filing and polishing tiny gears.

Rory, lagging behind, ran to catch up. “They’re coming back. That Lord Marius is with them now. He must have told them to turn around.”

Eurig whistled shrilly. Five shops down, a burly man wearing an apron streaked with grease stepped out onto the lane. He nodded, and we hurried past him into a large room where persons bent over an alembic from whose unstoppered rim rose a misty thread. An acrid smell made my eyes water. Rory sneezed. From behind a curtain came the sound of hollow clapping.

“Up on the roof and over to the troll nest,” said the aproned man. “They’re all out at the steamworks, and I’ve got their permission. I’ll put your cart out back. Lads, get your masks on.”

“What’s that awful smell?” Bee asked.

“A scent to keep the prince’s hounds at bay, Maestressa,” he said. “You won’t be able to come back down, but they won’t be able to come in.” He dragged aside the curtain to reveal stairs.

A handbell rang three times. We climbed the stairs to the first floor in pace to the odd clapping noise. Workbenches filled the first-floor chamber, strewn with glass pipes, gleaming gears, and a discarded tartan cap. A dozen workers were grumbling as they reached under their benches for cloth masks. Scars mottled their ashen faces. The second floor was crammed with crates, and the third with neat rows of cots. A stair-step ladder led to a long, low attic with a dormer window and more cots.

I pressed a hand over my nose. My eyes were really beginning to sting.

Rory was staggering. “Poison!” he choked out.

“Move,” said Eurig. “The fumes will kill us.”

I pulled down the latch and opened the window. The winter air hit like a blast. A crow sat on the peak of the roof opposite. I was so sure it was watching me that I could not move.

Bee pushed past me and out the window. Shaking myself, I followed. We chivvied to the right around the chimneys and out of sight of the lane. Across a warren of roofs, it was possible to see the river embankments and docks crowded with vessels. A massive flock of crows wheeled in the sky.

“Look!” Bee’s fingers tightened painfully on my arm.

A fire blazed on the wide pewter expanse of the Solent River.

Greasy smoke billowed. Ripples of heat rolled upward against a dawn sky made dank and low by clouds. A hulk anchored beyond the docks was burning with fiery abandon.

“Isn’t that a prison ship, Cat? All those people chained in the holds must be trapped.”

Rory crawled into sight, wheezing. Eurig slouched after, dragging the bags.

Upriver, a sloop flying the prince of Tarrant’s ensign flowed into view. The deck was covered with uniformed men, some in clusters around the guns, others with swords, pikes, and crossbows ready to board.

Eurig shaded his eyes. “They mean to sink the hulk. Follow me.”

Bee released my hand. “They’ll let the prisoners burn? Or drown?”

He cast her a disgusted look. “Of course they will. That’s the plague ship.”

“A plague ship?” I stared at him. “What plague?”

“The salt plague.”

“The salt plague never left West Africa. It can’t cross water or survive the desert.”

He laughed in a coarse way that made me blush with shame. “Of course it can cross water. In a ship. That’s how our noble prince keeps agitators in line. There’s a cage of salters on that hulk. A political prisoner gets put in that cage, and he will get bit. The plague will infest his blood, and he will become a salter just like the others. He’ll crave salt and blood as his mind and body rot.”

Bee’s fingers closed over my forearm, grip tightening as Eurig took a step closer.

By the tension in his shoulders and the cant of his head, he meant us to feel intimidated. “My sweet lasses, there is no cure for the salt plague. And every person who is bit gets infested and becomes a salter in their turn. It would be better to be dead. So don’t wonder why we send those salters to rest at the bottom of the tide where they can’t bite us. Scarred Hades! Get down!”

A corner of Ticking Lane was visible between two chimneys. Horsemen rode past. We ducked, then crawled to where a sloped plank gave access to a higher roof. We climbed up, but once there, Rory vomited a vile spew that, horribly, had the slimy remains of feathers in it.

“Just…need…moment…rest,” he murmured, sinking to hands and knees.

“You’re turning green,” said Bee as I covered my mouth and nose with a hand. “You scout ahead. I’ll stay with Rory and the bags.”

Wincing with distaste, Eurig was eager to lead the way over the uneven rooftop with its chimney pots, then up steps to a wide ledge boasting a decorative wrought-iron bench, as if people sat up here. We looked over the rebuilt warrens. Trolls in pairs and threes, never singly, hurried through interconnected lanes and alleys, intermixed with men and women carrying goods on their heads or backs. One of the trolls cocked its feather-crested head, spotting us but moving on. Two bright-plumaged trolls leaned out an attic window several houses down, looking toward the conflagration. A woman hanging out washing had paused to stare at the disaster out on the water.

A voice from an unseen watcher cried out: “Militia in the warrens! Bloody Romans, too. And mage House soldiers! Quick, lads, stow the rifles.”

“Get down!” snapped Eurig. “Anyone might see you.”

I stepped behind a chimney as he tugged open a trapdoor. We descended steep steps through an attic crammed with crates, baskets, and sealed ceramic jars. The floor below had no walls, only support pillars. Mirrors fragmented me into a hundred pieces: etched mirrors, hand mirrors, bronze mirrors, mercury mirrors, all hanging from the beams or propped on racks or braced on stands. Among them, displayed on a maze of shelving, lay gleaming objects of every shape and size: polished gold bracelets, bowls of metal gears, glass pipettes sealed over liquid mercury, steel blades, a flintlock rifle recently oiled. The shadow threads that bind the world seemed to have caught in the maze, tangling through my head. A discordant melody echoed faintly through the maze, the disharmony making my temples pound.

I rubbed my aching eyes. “What is this place? A thieves’ den?”

“Careful where you step! Trolls are the most amiable creatures imaginable. Unless you take or break something that belongs to them. Come on.”

We ducked under mirrors, sidestepped a column of pewter candlesticks, and traversed a labyrinth woven of wire. The path doubled back, dead-ended, and once rewound us back the way we had come. The mirrored reflections made my vision throb. I feared that if I brushed anything, the entire collection would crash down. Dizzied, I leaned on the banister as I descended.

The second floor had three doors standing open to bedchambers. We had reached the first-floor landing when a thunder of hooves rattled the entryway on the ground floor below us.

A shout: “That roof, there. Yes, this building. I saw someone up there, my lord.”

“The door is locked, my lord captain.”

“Break it down.”

“Camlodus’s Balls! It’s the militia.” Eurig turned. “Go up and hide. I’ll divert them.”

I knew better than to argue. I raced upstairs just as the front door was smashed open and soldiers exploded into the house. The maze seemed a bad bet for hiding, so I bolted into one of the second-floor bedchambers. The room looked as though a whirlwind had hit it, clothing scattered in heaps across six high square frames with mattresses, which looked like more like nests than beds. The bright patterned fabrics gave the beds a patchwork feel: here a gold-and-green floral extravagance that might have been a barrister’s robe suitable for law court, there a ruffed dash jacket sewn out of a cotton printed with orange bars, blue scallops, and elongated rose-colored spectacles winged with peacock feathers whose eyes watched me.

“Stop!” cried a martial voice.

On the landing below, Eurig replied, “Here, now, my lord captain, Your Mightiness. What gives you leave to come barging in here?”

“I might ask what gives you leave to speak so disrespectfully to a man who holds both kinship to the prince, and a sword,” said a stentorian tenor. I recognized the voice of Lord Marius, whom I had first met at a ruined fort on a hill northeast of Adurnam, not more than a week before. Then, laughter had lightened his voice. Now, he blared.

“The prince of Tarrant?” retorted Eurig. “The man whose honor drains away drop by drop each day the Northgate poet refuses to eat? Our voices will be heard.”

“In the law courts, at least. What brings you to an empty troll’s nest?”

“They’re partners in a consortium with my employer.”

“I do believe you are lying. Are you angling for a ride on the plague ship, man?”

“Do you mean the one that’s sinking right now? So will injustice founder.”

“Arrest him,” said Lord Marius. “Search the premises.”

Threads of magic are woven through every part of the world because our world and the spirit world that lies athwart our own are intertwined. As footfalls approached the door, I drew the house’s shadows around me like a cloak and hid myself. Two men walked into the chamber. One was Lord Marius, a tall, lean Celt with a thick mustache, a clean-shaven chin, and short hair stiffened into lime-whitened spikes. His gaze swept the chamber with a smile of amusement brushing his lips, as Bee’s pencil might coax into life the humor of a man who prefers to laugh. He did not see me.

With him walked his brother by marriage, the young Roman legate Amadou Barry, whose father was both Roman patrician and West African prince and whose mother had been born into a noble Malian lineage. His Roman ambassadorial cape and the cut of his old-fashioned uniform certainly flattered him, although he had a frown on his handsome face.

“I admire his bravado,” Lord Marius was saying. “But I’ll have to have him fined for disrespect. I can’t challenge a laborer to a duel.”

“You Celts argue too much over fine points of honor. This seems like a chase after a wild goose, as you say up here in the north.” His gaze flowed right past me as he scanned the room. “Jupiter Magnus! Have you ever seen such a mess?”