Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (39 page)

“I could just eat you up,” he murmured, pressing me back against the wall to kiss
me.

I wrestled free. “Blessed Tanit. You are drunk!”

“Given my previous experience with you when you were drunk, I can’t help but wonder
what you will be like in bed when…” He noticed the skull sitting on a side table.
With a visible start he recoiled a step. Then he grabbed his coat and draped it over
the skull. That he looked inordinately pleased with his cleverness confirmed my belief
that he had imbibed too much liquor.

“I felt it prudent to maintain my wits in a strange household. Why were you outdoors?”

“We drummed the festival dance in the courtyard. It started to snow.” He tugged me
into the bedchamber, steered me to the bed, and grappled me down on it. “Since it
is the Feast of Matronalia to honor the Roman goddess of childbirth, they all wanted
to know if I have gotten you pregnant yet. I had to tell them it was not yet the auspicious
season for us.”

“They do seem inordinately interested in your fertility. Magister Vinda asked if you
were here on your Grand Tour.”

He stiffened, and not in an amorous way. His mood lurched from lasciviousness to fury
as he sat bolt upright. “Our offspring is not the mansa’s to sell or trade as he wishes.”

“I set her straight, I assure you,” I said soothingly, stroking his arm.

He leaned against the headboard, looking away from me and thus forcing me to contemplate
the beauty of his eyes and strong cheekbones. The sulky set of his lips made me want
to kiss them. “Do you have any idea how insulting it is to be treated as if you are
nothing more than a highly regarded stallion with desirable conformation?”

Several jesting comments raced against each other in an effort to reach my tongue
first, but I yanked on the reins and tried another tactic to calm him. “When I was
waiting tables at the boardinghouse, some men treated me as if I were nothing more
than a womanly form they’d like to fondle and take to bed.”

He glanced sidelong at me with a swift measure to take in exactly those conforming
attributes. His thunderous frown eased slightly. “They surely did.”

I bit down a smile. Levity would be fatal at just this moment. I chose a feinting
attack. “Magister Vinda wondered if I was looking to dally with one of their women.
Or get pregnant by one of their men.”

He put an arm around me. “Why would they think you would be interested in anyone else
when you’re married to me?”

That he could speak such conceited words with such humble sincerity never failed to
delight me. “I suppose it would depend on whether I can get satisfaction. If I must
dash the hopes of the many, then you must accommodate the desires of the one.”

“Must I, Catherine?” He had a way of saying my name that made it seem like the most
burning caress whose touch inflamed my entire body.

“Yes. You certainly must.”

My growling stomach woke me. Both bed and window curtains had been pulled back to
admit the light of a sunny winter morning. Vai sat at a dressing table in front of
a large mirror, shaving. He wore trousers but nothing else, so I ogled his back, with
his workman’s muscles. There was an old scar across his mid-back, as well as a fading
bruise on his left shoulder that he had acquired during our escape. I admired the
way he turned his head by degrees to get a new angle, and the methodical way he trimmed
using a comb, razor, and tiny pair of scissors.

Then I got bored.

Was the man trimming hair by hair to get the exact look he wanted?

“Gracious Melqart, Vai. How much time do you spend on your grooming? Wouldn’t you
rather come back in bed with me?”

He met my gaze in the mirror. “Of course I would, love. But I’m meeting Viridor and
the lads for breakfast. They’re going to show me the schoolroom—”

“The schoolroom?” Dumbstruck, I contemplated a new side to his character.

“They lost most of their older mages in an epidemic of cholera ten years ago. They’ve
had to rebuild their schoolroom without the teachers. I told them I would outline
the lesson plans used at Four Moons House so they can institute a rigorous curriculum.”

“I thought the secret belongs to those who remain silent.”

“The mansa always says that every mage, no matter how young or old or how he came
to Four Moons House, must be educated in mage craft. To instruct every mage helps
all mages regardless of what House they belong to. Anyway, if we mean to speak of
freedom as if we
believe it is a right for our communities to claim, then we must mean it for all communities,
not just our own. The children here deserve the same education I received, don’t you
think?”

With a startled frown he paused to examine his face in the mirror, as if he had just
discovered an impertinent flaw. He slid the comb into his beard and trimmed hairs
by shaving the razor along the comb.

A plain linen dressing robe lay folded by the bed. After slipping it on I padded over
to stand behind him. The floorboards breathed a comforting heat. I felt truly relaxed
for the first time since the morning he and I had woken up on the bed he had built
for us, after the night we had consummated our marriage. How I missed that bed!

I traced the angled scar on his back. “How did you get this?”

His hands tightened as he caught in a breath. After a moment he blew away the hairs
on the razor with an exhalation. “In the youth hall at Four Moons House.”

“Bad enough they were allowed to taunt and bully you with words. They were allowed
to actually beat you and harm you? This looks like a knife cut! No one put a stop
to it?”

His frown sharpened to an arrogant sneer as he fastidiously wiped off the shaving
kit and packed it away into a tiny wooden box in which each tool fit exactly. “I was
the village boy, remember? Did Magister Vinda really think I was here on a Grand Tour?
Viridor said nothing about it.”

In the face of this uncomfortable shift of mood, it seemed wise to calm him. “Vinda
is a diviner and can tell perfectly well how powerful a cold mage you are. She can’t
have known you would see it as an insult. To her it would seem a compliment. There
was a time you didn’t refuse.”

“Because I was young and ignorant. I boasted about how women offered themselves to
me. For the longest time I thought I was so irresistible that women would travel to
Four Moons House for a chance at my bed. What a fool I looked to everyone! How they
laughed and mocked me.”

“Yes, and that’s all in the past now, love. White Bow House has been very hospitable.
It’s not fair to be angry at them.” I fetched his shirt and jacket, thinking that
clothes would distract him.

His frown faded as he pulled on his shirt. “I’m not angry at them.
Viridor has been more than generous. He’d like to have us stay as guests for as long
as we wish. I know you want to get to Havery as soon as possible, love, but I do think
it wise for us to recover from our arduous journey before we go on. Just a week or
two.”

“Yes, of course we must stay. We need to find a tailor’s shop.”

“That’s already arranged.” He buttoned up his much-abused jacket. “After breakfast
and the schoolroom, Viridor and the lads and I will be going down to Cutters Row.
That’s what they call the tailors’ district here. Viridor offered to see that I have
decent clothes to wear.”

I managed not to burst out laughing. “That’s exceedingly generous, especially since
he can have no conception of what you mean by ‘decent.’ But I meant that we need to
find a particular tailor’s shop, one that’s opposite a troll-owned shop called Queedle
and Clutch.” I explained about Bee’s dream.“I’m hoping it might be her I’m meant to
meet. Just as she dreamed she and I would meet at Nance’s that night in Expedition
after the areito.”

He smiled as if our fierce misunderstanding at Nance’s had attained the glamour of
a fond memory, for he was the sort of person for whom an unconditional triumph quite
eradicates any troubling defeats. “Well then, my sweet Catherine, I shall insist we
patronize whichever tailor shop sits opposite Queedle and Clutch. Come here. I don’t
have to leave quite yet.”

White Bow House’s hospitality could not be faulted. With plenty of food and a comfortable
bed we regained our strength quickly. The hypocaust system built under the well-appointed
house made it easy to weather a short but ferocious cold snap that would have killed
us had we been caught out on the road.

Yet fourteen days passed, the weather warmed up, and still there was no sign of Bee.
I busied myself earning a little money by writing pamphlets for a troll-owned printer.
Vai took for granted that the mage House would provide for all our needs, but I wanted
funds of my own in my purse.

On a cloudy afternoon I trudged through sleet along Printers Lane with a sheaf of
papers tucked in a satchel. Magister Vinda accompanied me together with two male attendants
as guards and two young women to hold umbrellas over our heads. I was sure the four
servants were slaves in all but name, clientage-born as Vai had been. But since
they were country-born youth who could not speak anything but the garbled rural dialect,
I had been unable to hold extended conversations with them.

“I must admit, Magister,” I said to Vinda, “you are the last person I thought would
embrace so enthusiastically such radical principles as an elected Assembly and the
right of women within a community to stand for Assembly just like men.”

“Why should that surprise you?” she asked. “I see no reason women should not act in
the same capacity as men. Is the mage craft within a woman’s body worth less than
that in a man’s? Has the Lord of All not given both women and men voices with which
to speak and to sing?” She paused. “You look surprised.”

“I thought the mage Houses objected to anything new, like the combustion engine or
airships or any sort of radical philosophy. In Adurnam, it’s only been in the last
fifteen years that girls were even allowed to attend the academy college. Of course
we sat upstairs in the women’s balcony, or at separate tables on the other side of
the room from the boys. I thought mages must therefore also object to educating women.”

“Where do you think the fashion of educating girls alongside boys comes from, if not
from mage Houses? We have always trained our girls as well as our boys.”

As we arrived at that moment at the establishment Pinfeather & Quill, I had no opportunity
to reply that my own people had done the same. A bell tinkled as we entered the front
room. Its counter was covered with printed pamphlets, and a press thumped in the back.
The smell of ink and dust pervaded the air. A drably feathered troll pushed through
the curtain separating the two rooms.

“Magister Vinda. Maestra Bell Barahal.” Tewi had the facility of all trolls to mimic
human accents exactly and had quickly adapted her speech to mine, so she was much
easier for me to understand than were most of the residents of Sala. “How is it with
you this day?”

We shook hands. She had a bitter scent, like aniseed, not unpleasant but not attractive.
Her head swiveled almost back-to-front to mark the entrance of a second troll, a shorter,
brightly plumaged male. He gave a bobbing courtesy, but his gaze tracked us in a most
alarming way. With ink-stained talons he poured out tea and uncovered bowls to reveal
nuts and dried fruit, then stood by the door measuring the
four nervous servants as for dinner. Tewi paced through the formalities in a rote
way different from Chartji’s or Keer’s, as if she had taught herself rules for how
to deal with humans rather than having grown up among them.

After the preliminaries Tewi indicated the papers. “You are finished with the third
article? The pamphlets describing the Taino kingdom have sold well so far.”

“This is my description of how Expedition’s radicals overthrew the Council and instituted
an Assembly and charter. General Camjiata figures prominently in the tale.”

“Timely!” Tewi paged through the text. I liked watching her taloned fingers shift
each sheet with a flick that stubby human fingers could not match. “We have just received
news from Iberia.”

“You have news of General Camjiata?” This was the first I had heard of the general
since the mansa’s declaration—almost a year ago, in Adurnam—that Camjiata had made
landfall at Gadir.

Tewi went on. “A coalition of southern Gallic princes marched into northern Iberia.
They hoped to take the general by surprise before he could consolidate his allies
and raise an army. However, the general defeated the coalition in a battle near the
city of Tarraco. We’re printing a broadsheet with the sensational news now.”

Vinda leaned to look at the broadsheet with its screaming headline “Iberian Monster
Devours His Enemy!” Her sudden motion caused the male troll to take an assertive step
forward with feathers fluffed out. I grasped at my cane just as Tewi whistled. The
male checked himself and flattened his crest.

Vinda was so intent on the broadsheet that she did not notice. “I thought Camjiata
was killed fifteen years ago when the Second Coalition defeated him at the Battle
of Havery.”

“No, they took him prisoner and held him on an island,” Tewi answered. “He escaped
over two years ago and found refuge in the Antilles before returning to Europa.”

Hard to believe it had been over two years ago that Vai had walked into my life! The
spirit world had stolen so many months from me.

“Maestra Tewi, where do you get the news?” I asked. “The princes and mages who oppose
Camjiata will wish to suppress such tidings, lest discontented folk think to quarrel
on his behalf.”

Tewi did not bare her teeth in an imitation of a smile as Chartji did. She bobbed
her shoulders in a movement perhaps meant as a show of agreement but which I found
threatening. “What the ghana of Sala knows, he keeps to himself. But other rats travel
the roads, and other rats talk.”