Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (89 page)

“No, that’s exactly the sort of adventure I would expect her to undertake.” Vai flicked
a finger along my cheek. “However, there is one thing we’ve all been waiting for you
to explain, Catherine.”

Rory had been leaning against the wall, arms crossed. He sighed as might a long-festering
boil when it is at last punctured. “You may as well tell the truth, Cat. When you
called the coach and four and the eru into this world to help you hunt down and kill
James Drake, you had to make a bargain with them that you would allow them to live
in your household for as long as they wished.” He opened his eyes wide and raised
his eyebrows, head jutted forward aggressively, in warning.

Blinking was all I could manage. “Oh.”

Vai said, “You can imagine our surprise when we brought you home from Tanit’s temple
and found the coach, the horses, a heavy bag of gold coins, and the two of them in
the stable.”

Bee leaned into my shoulder. “In the hay, indulging in a most ardent embrace. I thought
it was sweet, although Andevai did not find it as amusing.”

“Did you not, my love?” I asked.

“We found them a room,” he said. I hadn’t known the man could blush like that!

“Do they bide here still?”

“They do,” said Vai, “and in truth, it is convenient to have them, for we could not
otherwise afford to house a coach, much less stable four horses. I just find it a
little odd.”

They both stared at me with the expressions of people who suspect the worst but feel
you are not quite yet up to being accused of perfidy.

In the end it wasn’t just that I could wind shadows about me and sneak around where
people didn’t want me to go. It was that I understood the importance of misdirection.

“Now that we have a coach and four, you can go to Noviomagus, Bee. We can go as soon
as I’m stronger. Perhaps Chartji has some business for us to take care of there as
well, so we can combine work and love! I am sure there are radicals to meet with,
too, for it seemed to me that the prince and mage House in Noviomagus had not the
least interest in listening to the radical cause.”

“That would be delightful,” cried Bee, blushing.

“Yes, for the first hour, until you fall simpering into Venus’s coils and I am left
to mope about Noviomagus on my own, although that kindly steward I met at Five Mirrors
House might be sympathetic to my sad plight.”

Vai frowned. “What manner of reckless mischief you can get up to on your own or together
I don’t even like to think. Not that it’s any of my business, mind you, for I am sure
you can do as you please,” he added as Bee opened her mouth to expostulate.

“You ought to be cautious, though, Bee,” I added thoughtfully. “Maybe you did dream
of that fabric before Vai found it, and you just didn’t realize it. I know dragon
dreamers are barren when they mate with men, but Kemal isn’t a man even when he’s
in man form.”

“Cat!” Blushing, she clutched her sketchbook to her breast.

Vai was still vexing himself over my mention of the kindly steward. “I need to negotiate
with the mansa of Five Mirrors House regardless on another matter. Viridor can meet
me there. He and I have begun a correspondence regarding new pedagogical methods.
I’ll send a dispatch to alert them. Kofi needs to see something of Europa, and I wish
to introduce him around.”

So it was that twelve days later, with a light fall of snow dusting the ground, I
set off to escort my cousin to meet a dragon with whom she had the intention of becoming
romantically involved.

Bee was so charmingly nervous that she kept running back into the house for things
she was sure she had forgotten. The coachman stood at the horses’ heads, chatting
with Kofi. In company the eru had proven to be much more reserved than the relaxed
coachman, so she waited by the door with one eye on the sky, as if making sure a blizzard
was not about to drop in.

Shivering, I climbed in to warm myself with heated bricks tucked inside my fur cloak.
I had just received two letters. One was from Doctor Asante, written in the manner
of a close kinswoman desirous of getting to know better a beloved child from whom
she had been long separated. I had read it ten times already. The other was a letter
from Kehinde via Chartji, explaining that a printer had been jailed by the prince
of Colonia and asking if I might lend my skills to a mission to rescue the man before
he was executed for sedition. Colonia wasn’t far from Noviomagus. I could probably
manage it by myself.

“You’re looking thoughtful, love. What are you considering doing that I don’t want
to hear about until it’s over?” Vai arranged himself on the seat opposite with care,
as if he believed a many days’ journey in the coach would not wrinkle his clothing
simply because he did not wish it.

I smiled, for Rory and I had, between us and the coachman and eru, covered our tracks.
“I can’t help but be reminded of the evening you and I met and married all in the
space of an hour. Do you know, Vai, you’re so awfully handsome I suppose I might have
been able to fall in love with you that first evening when you took me away from my
aunt and uncle’s house, if only you hadn’t been so awful in every other way.”

He relaxed, stretching out his feet to tangle with mine. “My grandmother warned me
it is rash and reckless for a man and woman to join their affections in marriage just
for the sake of physical attraction. Marriage is meant to be arranged by the elders
so no trouble comes of it. Falling in love with my good looks would have been a terrible
mistake. If an understandable one.”

“I certainly had no chance to fall in love with your humble demeanor. Since I doubt
you have one.”

He glanced at me through half-lidded eyes in the coy way he had when he had drawn
out just the sort of teasing joke he loved me to make. Rory stuck his head in, gave
me a kiss, embraced Vai in a brotherly farewell, and bounded away into the house far
too eagerly.

“I was surprised when Rory decided to stay behind,” I remarked.

“You see, I did forget it!” cried Bee as she clambered in, plopped down next to me,
and set a basket on my lap. “Sweet yam pastries, crescent rolls, rice and peas that
Kayleigh made for Kofi, and a jar of Serena’s yam pudding. Rory has made me a bet
that he will seduce her before we return.”

“Good fortune with that,” Vai said. “Serena is not interested in dalliance.”

“How would you know?” I demanded.

He flashed a smile, silently laughing at me. “She’s angling for a prestigious marriage
with a very promising magister from Five Mirrors House. There are two powerful candidates
to be heir, and the mansa there wants to move one out of the way so there is no trouble.”

Bee batted her eyelashes as her most dangerously honeyed smile lit her face. “If that
is the case, don’t you worry about bringing such a powerful magister into Four Moons
House?”

He looked at her blankly. “No. Why would I?”

Kofi stuck his head in. “I shall ride up front to see the countryside. Fair wild,
I call this!”

“I want to hold on in back with the eru,” I said.

“No!” Bee and Vai spoke at the same time, as Kofi shut the door.

“You are so recently recovered, dearest,” said Bee. “It really is outside of enough
that you are making such a long journey so soon.”

“It was your idea!”

“It was your idea!” retorted Bee primly. “I only agreed because it is time
I
got to have an adventure!”

“Because giving radical speeches and slamming down rude hecklers as soldiers march
to arrest you is not an adventure? Wrestling an overloaded rowboat for hundreds of
miles down the Rhenus River with only a lazy cat for company is not an adventure?
Sleeping with the most famously handsome radical in Europa—”

“What?” said Vai. “Bee and Brennan Du… what?”

“—is not an adventure? Not to mention the part where you marry
a prince of the Taino, or are asked to run for a seat on the first elected council
in Europa.”

Bee sighed happily, paging through her sketchbook with the dreamy blush of an addled
schoolgirl. “Yes! Who knows what will happen next?”

The latch’s sliver eyes and wire mouth glittered as its sour little voice woke. “I
won’t know. No one tells me anything.”

In the sudden hush that throttled the ones I loved best in all the world, the coachman
snapped his whip and cried, “Ha-roo! Ha-roo!” The eru leaped onto the back of the
coach, and we rolled out onto the street, wheels rumbling on stone.

Bee put her nose down by the latch, which matched her glare for glare.

In a low voice Vai said, “I thought you were just making that up to entertain us,
like you do.”

“What do I ever make up, I should like to ask? Andevai! You do believe I punched a
shark, don’t you?”

“Yes, love, I believe you punched a shark just like I believe you drank coffee with
the Master of the Wild Hunt on the streets of Havery on Hallows’ Night.”

Bee sat up. Her eye turned on me as her expression bloomed into the full flower of
indignant suspicion. “But she did punch a shark. James Drake was on the beach and
saw it happen. He told the general and me all about it.”

They looked at each other, sharing an unspoken thought, and then they looked at me.

In the depths of the ice, wreathed in ice, sleeps the Wild Hunt, and when it wakes,
all tremble in fear. In the depths of the black abyss there drifts in a watery stupor
the leviathan whose lashing tail can smash ships into splinters and drive the sundered
hulks under the waves. In the depths of the smoke lies coiled in slumber the Mother
of All Dragons. If she stirs, waking, the world changes. So we are told.

But none of that seemed at all frightening compared with the prospect of Bee and Andevai
united in exasperation and anger, against me.

Me!

I thought about how many days it was going to take us to reach
Noviomagus and how many hours of that time they were going to spend scolding and haranguing
me as only they could.

“Everyone knows all the good parts except me,” groused the latch. “For instance, where
are we now and where are we going? Why? How did we get here?”

There is more than one way to skin a cat. Or at least, if you’re the cat, to stay
unskinned by rebuking tongues and accusing eyes for just a little longer.

“Fortunately, it’s a very expansive story and one I can tell you if you don’t mind
hearing every piece of it all. At length.”

“Catherine, I believe you owe us some manner of explanation!”

“Cat, what have you been hiding from us?
What did you do?
”

“I don’t mind, no matter how long it takes!” said the latch, with the nearest thing
to a real smile I had ever seen on its dour face. “Do you have any of that coffee
stuff? That was very tasty.”

“We can get coffee along the way like we did before. Let me see. There’s a great deal
you don’t know, so it’s best if I start at the beginning.”

First I peeked into the basket to see that there was indeed a jar of Serena’s most
excellent yam pudding tucked to one side. Then I settled myself more comfortably on
the seat and smiled at my beloved if fulminating cousin and my handsome if reproachful
husband. Finally I winked at the latch that had just saved me.

The latch winked shyly back, like a child caught out on its first budding infatuation.

Never let it be said I could not talk my way out of any trouble that I could not punch.

“The history of the world begins in ice, and it will end in ice.”

April Quintanilla

K
ATE
E
LLIOTT
has been writing stories since she was nine years old, which has led her to believe
either that she is a little crazy or that writing, like breathing, keeps her alive.
Her previous series are the Crossroads Trilogy (starting with
Spirit Gate
), The Crown of Stars septology (starting with
King’s Dragon
), the Novels of the Jaran, and a collaboration with Melanie Rawn and Jennifer Roberson
called
The Golden Key
. She likes to play sports more than she likes to watch them; right now, her sport
of choice is outrigger canoe paddling. She has been married for a really long time.
She and her spouse have three children, as well as a miniature schnauzer (aka the
Schnazghul). Her spouse has a much more interesting job than she does, with the added
benefit that they had to move to Hawaii for his work. Thus the outrigger canoes.