Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (60 page)

We all stared at him.

He explained with the patience of an elder to slow-witted children. “People often
lie with their words, even if they don’t mean to purposefully. But almost no people
can lie with their bodies. Do you need me to go and scold him?”

I wiped tears off my cheeks. “No. It would just make him worse. They praise and fawn
over him to his face and talk about his low origins behind his back. But they’re scared
of him, too, and so very impressed by how powerful he is.”

Bee nodded, stroking my arm. “What now, Cat?”

I flipped through the pamphlets to give my hands something to do. The writings ranged
from broadsheets in simple verse to Professora Nayo Kuti’s lengthy tracts. “It was
insupportable living in the mage House as the heir’s wife with nothing to do or look
forward to except—”

“You need not describe the whole,” said Bee quickly.

“But I won’t let the mage House have him. I love him too much to let them ruin him!”

“Only you could. Honestly, Cat, sometimes I don’t know how you put up with him.”

“No doubt I learned how to love annoying people by growing up with you!”

Rory snorted.

Without the least furrow of irritation, she smiled at Brennan in a gentle way that
made her look as radiant as a kind goddess standing in a heavenly beam of light. “I
suppose you did.”

She glanced toward the archway as the two trolls and Kehinde came into the room. Chartji
held aloft a candle lantern. Her taloned feet clacked as she walked in the oddly rhythmic
glide trolls had. She bobbed to acknowledge me.

Kehinde came forward with hands extended to grasp mine. “Cat Barahal! I am so pleased
to see you. May your heart be at peace.” She looked at our expressions, and raised
an eyebrow in inquiry. “What news do you bring?”

I drew myself up. “I’ve glimpsed the mage Houses and their princely and Roman allies
from the inside. I’m now convinced the general is the only one who can overthrow their
grip on power. But Vai will never support Camjiata as long as the general is allowing
James Drake to use fire magic to fight his battles. Nor should he. So I am going to
infiltrate Camjiata’s army and kill James Drake.”

Before anyone could respond to my bold and dramatic declaration, a shrill troll whistle
sounded outside, followed by a cascade of human whistles. The rumble of voices from
the chamber ceased so abruptly that for an instant I thought I had gone deaf.

“Here come the authorities!” said Brennan with a glint in his smile that got my heart
pounding, and not in a romantical way. He looked like a person spoiling for a fight.
“Kehinde, you and Bee go swiftly now. You, too, Cat.”

“I am an accomplished swordswoman,” said Bee.

“We need your voice most now,” said Kehinde. “Come along.”

To my surprise Bee meekly followed Kehinde and the trolls into the passage. The silence
in the far room was replaced by the trampling of feet as people hurried to rescue
the press.

Brennan shoved the table against the thick wall and climbed up on it to open one of
the deep-set windows. “Cat! Go along after them now.”

My stormy despair was overtaken by a desire to punch someone. I jumped up next to
him. “Give me a leg up. I can fight dirty in ways you never imagined.”

“Cat…”

I met his eye. “If you say because I am a woman, I am best away from the fight, I
will lose all respect for you.”

“Let her go first,” said Rory. “You won’t regret it.”

With a shrug he made a basket with his hands. I shimmied through the window into a
light well and up to the courtyard. A quick survey revealed many handy coils of rope
on the wagons. Tying an end to a post, I uncoiled it across the paving stones to the
far wall. When men wearing marshals’ uniforms ran into the courtyard carrying muskets
and flourishing halberds, I yanked on the rope with all my strength.

As I slammed back into the wall, the rope popped up tautly to waist height. None of
them saw it coming, for they could not see me. The force of so many men pushing into
the rope at the same time jerked me forward so hard I had to let go, but the men in
front stumbled and the men behind bumped into them. Into this confusion I waded with
my cane, whacking men in the back of the neck so they turned around to chastise their
comrades. I grabbed muskets and halberds out of their hands and flung the weapons
as far as I could. I trod on feet. Their boiled leather helmets made excellent balls
to be tossed high, so they had to throw up their hands to protect themselves as the
helmets crashed down. Flailing hands struck and pushed me. A burly man with stinking
onion breath bumped hard into me, so I dropped to a crouch and he smacked heads with
the man next to him. By sticking my cane between the legs of staggering men, I tripped
four in a row before they thought to start kicking.

Laborers swarmed out of the building on all sides. I snatched up as many muskets and
halberds as I could. Now mostly unarmed, and surrounded by men bearing hammers, adzes,
and axes, the marshals shrank back into a defensive group.

Brennan sauntered into the gap between the two groups without the least evidence that
he feared the muskets pointed at him. He rolled back his sleeves and put up his hands.
“I challenge you all to put down your weapons and settle this as real men do, with
our fists. Who will be first? It is sure not one man of you can outlast me.”

Onion-breath man shoved past his fellows. “Let’s see what ye have got.”

They circled in the manner of men putting on a show in a boxing
ring, but by the scowl on the marshal’s face and the measuring gaze of Brennan, the
fight was deadly serious. The marshal broke in to throw a blow that was easily parried
by Brennan, who followed with a jab that landed square on the other man’s nose. Blood
gushed like a pungent iron brine. I thought it prudent to back away lest I betray
myself. Other men bolted forward, and the courtyard dissolved into a mass of men slugging
each other. I backed up to the cellar windows and dumped muskets and halberds into
the window well. Rory watched the fight with a lazy smile.

“Aren’t you going in?” I asked. “To prove you’re a real man?”

“I’m not a man. I need prove nothing. If there’s trouble, I’ll pounce.”

“That’s not trouble?” The roil of the fight echoed against the walls.

“The marshals in Lutetia are underpaid and recruited from the plebeian class. They
don’t like to arrest men who share the same grievances they do. But they have no choice
but to obey orders even though they chafe at them. Now they can say they fought.”

Above, windows on the second story were thrown open. Bee stood framed in the opening.

“Enough! Those who oppress us feast on the blood we spill for them when we fight each
other! Who is our true enemy? Our neighbor whose children cry for bread in the evening?
Or the lord who throws the leavings from his heavily laden table to his pigs?”

As the fighting men paused to look up, women moved into the courtyard and thrust pamphlets
into the hands of the marshals.

“What d’ye mean me to do with this?” shouted Onion Breath, shaking a pamphlet toward
the upper windows. “D’ye think I can read?”

“If you cannot, then whose fault is that? The lord’s children can all read. They who
hold the lash do not want you to know you are not alone in speaking against its cruel
bite! Why do you think they hate printing presses or any person whose voice spreads
the news of a declaration of rights? Why do you think they fear a civil code whose
laws will demolish the privileges of the few? Why do you think they send the likes
of you to arrest printers and smash presses? Not for your sake! They aren’t protecting
you
! Go on, then! Go, but remember that you are our brothers. Remember that we fight
for you.”

She stepped back into the gloom as Rory tugged on my wrist. Abandoning the weapons,
we passed through a carpentry shop smelling of
sawdust and hurried by diverse passages into a hidden staircase and thus out onto
another street. Brennan strode up with Bee. He had a scuffed chin and an abrasion
on his right cheek. His trousers were ripped at the left knee.

“I’m getting slow,” he said. “Invincible Andraste! How did you do that, Cat?”

Bee shook her head to indicate that whatever else she had told Brennan, my secrets
had never passed her lips. “It’s a Hassi Barahal secret,” she said.

“Where are the others?” I asked as we set out.

“Taking down and moving the press,” he said. “That was a spectacular diversion, Cat.”

“My thanks.” My heart was still pounding, and I had barely caught my breath, yet I
felt alive as I had not for weeks now. Indeed, I was scarcely thinking of Vai constantly
at all.

“Diversions are her specialty,” said Bee with a laugh. “Dearest, I can’t imagine how
Andevai could ever imagine you would tolerate being closed within stultifying walls,
whatever attentions he might think to assuage you with.”

“Even I would get bored, no matter how good the petting was,” said Rory.

By the time we reached the tavern I had worked up an impressive hunger. The Tavern
with Two Doors was made up of two squares of buildings, one for human people and one
for feathered people. Each had a central courtyard, linked by a shared wing. This
central wing housed the kitchens, one for each courtyard, and other service rooms.
Part of the ground floor, beneath the upper floor, lay open as a wide portico. Because
it was summer, tables were set here, where rats from one side and trolls from the
other could congregate as they wished. We took a table here. Men strolled up, a few
to flirt with Bee but most to argue the serious business of radical philosophy. People
spoke of rising up against the prince in order to open the city gates to Camjiata’s
army.

I ate my way through three platters of meats flavored with sauces, but more than that
I relished the talk, the laughter, the freedom to say what I wished or to get up and
take a turn around the trolls’ courtyard had I the desire to do so, which I did more
than once before the trolls went to bed at nightfall. Kehinde appeared late, having
conveyed the
components of the jobber press to its next hiding place. Rory slipped off to talk
to the young man I had seen him with earlier.

I ate an entire tray of mouthwatering pastries while everyone else was debating the
question of whether women could bear the burden of having the same rights as men,
because if I had not kept my hands busy I would have punched every man who argued
that women simply could not have any independent legal capacity separate from their
fathers, husbands, or sons. I could have sat there all night, listening to Bee and
Kehinde eviscerate them, with Brennan tossing in the occasional joking remark to assuage
male vanity. We almost did sit there all night, talking under the gleam of lanterns
because the Parisi prince, in concert with Two Gourds House, had forbidden the installation
of gas lighting anywhere in the city or its outer districts.

The first birds chirruped a dawn song as we staggered to our rest. Brennan and Kehinde
had taken a narrow room above the kitchens whose window looked over the trolls’ courtyard.
Here rooms were cheapest, since the trolls made many people uncomfortable. Chartji
and Caith slept elsewhere.

A screen divided the room to create privacy. On the side where Kehinde and Bee slept
was a bed just wide enough for two, supplemented by a narrow pallet, which Bee set
on the floor as Kehinde took off her shoes by the light of a candle.

“Let you and Cat share the bed, Bee. I shall take the pallet for as long as Cat is
with us.”

“Are you sure, for we surely do not mind taking the pallet,” Bee said with such solemnity
that I gaped at her downcast gaze and folded hands. Tension bled between the two women,
yet their polite respect toward each other seemed sincere.

“There are two of you. It is unreasonable of me to take the larger space.” She glanced
at the door as Brennan came in, looked our way, then vanished behind the screen. He
whistled as he fussed around getting ready to sleep. A chair clacked as he shifted
it. Ropes squeaked as he lay down. The tilt of Kehinde’s head made me think she was
blushing.

Bee slanted a portentous glance my way. “Cat and I will be glad to share the bed.”

“Where is Rory?” I whispered as I settled onto the bed in my shift.

Kehinde chuckled. “He takes care of himself.”

As Bee snuggled down between me and the wall, the professora pulled off her tunic
and lay down in trousers and under-blouse.

I whispered. “Kehinde, if I may ask, I heard you were arrested by the prince here
and had to return to Massilia. Isn’t it risky for you to come back now?”

After a silence in which I thought I had perhaps offended her, she said, “The work
must be done despite the risk. It is more important than one life.” She blew out the
candle.

Brennan coughed.

Bee and I lay side by side in the old familiar way, holding hands.

“After the war, we’ll set up a little household together, you and me and Rory,” she
whispered. “Men can come and go if we approve it or wish it, dearest. We don’t need
them to live.”

“Yes.” My shattering despair subsided to a weary throb. “I can manage anything as
long as we are together.”

It was almost midday when Bee and I woke. Kehinde still slept, a hand gripping the
end of one of her locks as if she had never let go of a child’s habit. Brennan was
gone.

We dressed and went out to wash our faces in a trough. The sun burnished the ebony
of Bee’s curls as she rubbed shadowed eyes. “Blessed Tanit! Cat, why did you let me
drink so much?”

In late morning most of the tables were empty. We settled where we could look over
the trolls’ courtyard but also see into the courtyard of the other half of the inn.
There we saw Rory laughing next to his friend. Bee tended her hangover with a mug
of beer and a bowl of broth. I devoured a splendid spelt porridge garnished with butter
and a creamy pear sauce.