Cold Magic (18 page)

“Why, yes!” I laughed out of sheer surprise. Even in the cold common room, bereft of fire, the air felt abruptly balmier. “Almost no one knows the ancient origin of our House. I’m from Adurnam. The Havery Barahals are cousins. My aunt’s great-grandmother’s descendants, in fact.”

“They are acquaintances of ours. Come sit, come join our clutch.”

I followed her into the supper room, eager to stay within the orbit of one who linked me, however tenuously, to my family. She was tall, as trolls were, a hand taller than Andevai, graceful on her feet, although her gait hitched strangely. She seemed unaware of the glances fired her way from the other two tables of diners, well-to-do merchants or artisans by the look of their fashionable clothing, gold and silver necklaces and bracelets, and tiny leather charm cases sewn to their sleeves. Respectable people not happy to be sharing a supper room with a pair of trolls, even if the trolls were dining with people.

“I hope he did not insult you,” I murmured, feeling a flush creep up my cheeks.

“It’s a common observation made by humans who are born with this property you rats call cold magic. Now, here are my companions. Catherine Hassi Barahal of the Adurnam Hassi Barahals is joining us for supper. And…” She did not turn her torso to look back toward the door but swiveled her head so far around to get a look behind that I gasped. The toothy grin flickered. “My apologies,” she said, turning to face forward again as the two human companions hid smiles. “I forget how that startles your kind.”

I did not need to turn to know that Andevai had not entered the room, because the fires warming the supper room and the candelabra lighting continued to burn merrily.

“Here is Maester Godwik. Rats, pay attention.”

The two humans at the table rose to offer hands to shake in the same radical manner.

“I am Kehinde Nayo Kuti,” said the woman in a very pure, mannered accent that betrayed her origins from one of the Mediterranean cities. She was small framed and black skinned, with her hair done in multiple braids and a pair of thick spectacles riding on the bridge of her nose. She wore robes sewn of strips of patterned fabric dyed in deep oranges and yellows and browns quite unknown in these northern climates but ones that made her glow in contrast.

The man was considerably taller, one of the pale Celts with blond hair cut short and a luxuriant mustache in the old style, a local by his easy manner and casual working man’s dress of belted tunics and trousers. “Just call me Brennan Touré Du.”

“Du? That means ‘black-haired.’ ”

“It’s a long story, to be punctuated by a great deal of whiskey and several fistfights,” said Brennan with a charming smile, by which I understood I wasn’t going to hear it.

Kehinde chuckled, and the two trolls chuffed, almost like wheezing.

“My apologies for not standing.” Maester Godwik looked slighter and shorter than Chartji, but instead of drab brown, he was feathered in vivid blue with a handsomely contrasting pattern of black and green along his elaborate crest. He raised a cane as in salute. “Injury, I am sorry to say. Clumsiness comes with age. As the sages say, ‘wisdom achieved at long last, but now too damned frail to climb Triumph Spire where the young bucks preen.’ I am Godwik. A solicitor with the firm of Godwik and Clutch, with offices in Havery and Camlun and soon in Adurnam. Although if you are generous-hearted, you will not despise me on account of my having taken to the solicitor’s trade. Is your companion not coming in?”

“Sit, if you please,” said Chartji to me, kindly meant.

I found abruptly that my knees were weak and my chest empty of air, because Andevai had been going to wield his magic to punish the innkeeper for his disrespect, but then after all, he had not done it. I sagged into a chair at the end of the table, with Kehinde and Brennan to my right and Godwik facing me. Chartji kindly brought a pitcher and basin so I could wash. After setting these items beside me, the troll hoisted a bottle, poured the remainder of dark liquid into an empty cup, and shoved it over to me.

“You’re trembling,” she said. “This should fortify you.”

I downed the contents of the half-full cup in one gulp. A sherry burned straight down my throat, so strong the rush blew through my head as Brennan laughed, the trolls grinned, and Kehinde handed me the last hank of bread. It was good bread with a crisp crust and moist insides, still warm.

The innkeeper bustled in with a tray so laden with bottles, cups, plates, and covered dishes I was amazed the entire edifice did not crash to the ground. He deftly unloaded a tureen of soup, a pair of bowls and cups and spoons, and two bottles of wine at our table before hurrying on to the demands of the other tables of diners, now staring askance at us as I set to on the soup rather like, I suppose, an infestation of locusts embodied in a single flesh.

“That reminds me,” said Godwik, “of the time when I was a fledgling, and my bucks and I”—he nodded at Kehinde—”my age group, you know, any cohort of young cousins and neighbors hatched near the same time form an association for various enterprises—”

“My people have similar associations,” she replied, nodding.

“—decided to paddle the length of Lake Long-Water, as I’ll call it in this language, although we call it something rather more complicated in our own. We planned to battle north into the very teeth of the katabatic wind. Our hope and intention was to reach the vast cliff face of the ice, which we, in our part of the world, call what could be simplistically translated to ‘the Great Ice Shelf That Weights the North.’ ”

“Have some more soup,” said Chartji, ladling out of the tureen in the most casual way imaginable, very neat-handed despite her claws, “because this will take a while.”

“Did I get off track?” asked Godwik, crest rising as his feathers flared.

“Just a bit, Uncle,” said Brennan with a grin that made you want to trust him.

“An expedition to measure the extent of the ice would be most valuable,” said Kehinde. “If we could confirm that the ice shelf runs unbroken across the pole and could survey the southern face of the ice on the northern continents, we could calculate the surface extent of the ice. By comparing that to such evidence as is available from ancient records, we might thereby speculate whether the ice face is stable or if it is shrinking or growing and by how much.”

“A venture is being assembled now, on the shores of Lake Long-Water, by a corporation of clutches,” said Godwik, and although it was hard to read emotion in his somewhat monotone and slightly slurry voice, there came about him a change, for I was pretty sure the addled tale-teller concealed a wickedly sharp mind beneath the prattle.

Kehinde leaned forward eagerly. “You trolls may have better luck, then. The lords and princes of Europa have no interest in such an expedition, not since Camjiata’s defeat. They do nothing but wrestle for precedence, useless parasites as they are. And, of course, the mage Houses continually place obstacles in the path of scholars. They sue our associations and academies to rob us of funding, and pressure their assemblies and local courts to agree to laws forbidding importation or manufacture of such new apparatuses as would make such ventures feasible. I’m so thrilled we’ll be able to see an airship in Adurnam. There’s a ship that can cross the ice!”

Heat flushed my face. I worked on at the soup, pretending more interest in my supper than in the conversation, and the soup was indeed very good, flavored with leeks, parsnips, salt, and a smattering of precious pepper.

“No one can cross the ice,” said Brennan with a brooding look. “My grandfather was slaughtered by the Wild Hunt. He had been hired to assist a group of scholars attempting a reconnaissance of the Hibernian Ice Sheet in the northwest.”

“The Hibernian Ice Expedition was set upon by dire wolves,” said Kehinde. “So say the accounts of the men who found the remains of the expeditioners.”

“In the village I come from, north of Ebora, where on clear winter days we can see the face of the ice, we know better.”

Kehinde was shaking her head. “That there are forces in the world we do not understand is evident to all, but that does not mean that with proper investigation and measurement it cannot be explained by rational means.”

“The Hassi Barahals are known as a family who collects information,” said Chartji to me. “What have they to say about all this?”

“It’s true my father traveled as part of the family business and recorded both his observations and accounts told to him by the people he met,” I said, eager to move the subject away from airships. “For instance, many villages, especially in the north, tell tales of the Wild Hunt. Sometimes the Hunt is merely the agent of natural death, marking the souls of those who will die in the coming year. But other tales say that the Wild Hunt hunts down and kills or carries off people who have drawn the notice or the anger of the day court and the night court, which are the unseen courts said to rule in the spirit world.”

“Their power is so vast it lies invisible to us,” said Brennan. He wore on his left hand a massive and rather ugly bronze ring, which he touched now as if it were an amulet to protect him against the gaze of the unseen courts.

Kehinde crossed her arms, giving him a skeptical look. “What is invisible to us is nothing more than that which we do not comprehend. The tides and threads of magic that can be harnessed and manipulated by mages and bards and others like them do not thereby prove the existence of ‘courts,’ which no human or troll has ever laid eyes on.”

“What of eru?” I said cautiously. “In tales, they’re often called the servants of the courts. Although it’s usually said they appear as human to our eyes.”

Godwik gave me a sudden, knowing look, although how I could read such emotion on his snout of a face I was not sure. Then he winked at me, as if we shared a joke.

“Rats and trolls love to tell stories about rats and trolls,” said Chartji, “and tend to see rats and trolls wherever they can. Meanwhile there are dragons in the mountains of Cathay and along the rim of the Pacific Ocean. In the Levant, goblins drowse under the rule of the Turanians. When the salt sickness was unleashed from the deeps of the salt mines of the Saharan Desert, a plague of ghouls overran western Africa.”

“It wasn’t a ‘tale’ that forced my people and so many others to flee our homeland,” agreed Kehinde. “Greedy men who should have known better forced enslaved miners to dig where anyone could have told them they ought not to dig. When the first hive of ghouls was released, there was nothing anyone could do to stop more from hatching.”

“That is my point.” Chartji gestured, as in a court of law. “The existence of creatures who are not human or troll does not thereby prove the existence of the courts.”

“I saw a sleigh of eru once, each one wearing spirit wings like a shroud about their body.” Godwik hoisted his cup and flashed a toothy grin at me as Brennan and Kehinde looked in amazement at his quiet statement. I choked on a spoonful of soup. I wanted to ask if they had all possessed three eyes, but dared not. He took a swig of wine before setting down the cup with a flourish that drew looks from the other tables. “Indeed, it was on that very expedition paddling the length of Lake Long-Water that I was telling you about. My bucks and I, six to a boat and six boats in all, the age group of seven villages—I must call them villages, although they are not precisely villages as you rats build and organize such things. We set out laden with dried fruit and nuts to supplement the fish we expected to catch as we journeyed. You may wonder how it all started! What had transpired in the villages to make us eager to leave.”

“I want to hear what observations you made of the ice,” said Kehinde, “for I am sure there was a purpose to your investigation, not just the adventurous escapade of thirty-six overly energetic young males.”

“I am all ears,” said Brennan. “Rat that I am.” He winked at Chartji, whose grin sharpened.

Godwik took in a significant breath, as one does before commencing a lecture or a song.

Voices rose in the common room as men entered the inn.

Godwik fixed me in that odd way the trolls had, his head tilted to one side as if he were looking at me with only one eye. “Perhaps, before I begin, the Barahal will wish to check on her companion? I sensed a spot of trouble beforehand, did I not?”

He was an elder. I recognized that now in the lack of glossy sheen to his otherwise brightly colored feathers. Old, and wise, and clever. How in the name of Tanit had he felt the cold tide of Andevai’s anger an entire chamber away beyond a closed door? Was Andevai that strong, or did Godwik have senses the rest of us lacked?

“He’s being very quiet in there,” added Godwik, with one of those toothy grins that somehow translated into the gleam of his intelligent eyes.

I suddenly, overwhelmingly, and inexplicably felt a surge of
liking
for the old troll.

“Thank you,” I said, rising. “If I may. Don’t tell the story without me, I beg you. For I am eager to see if you ever actually reach the ice or just keep paddling down tributaries.”

He chuffed. Brennan laughed. Kehinde made a gesture, like a compatriot on the sidelines signaling to a fellow swordsman that it was a good thrust in a practice bout. Chartji’s crest raised, a reaction I could not interpret.

I opened the door letting into the common room in time to see an old fiddler raise his instrument to his chin and pluck the strings, testing its tuning. Another old man set his kora on a pillow, used one hand on a bench and the other on his cane to brace himself as he lowered into a cross-legged position on the pillow, and took the kora into his lap. Two younger old men—not quite so white-haired and creaky of limb—tapped curved hands over the skins of drums, heads bent to listen to the timbre. Around them, another dozen men, mostly old enough to need canes, settled onto benches as the innkeeper pulled ale and carried mugs four to a hand to the tables. They had the typical look of folk in this region: milk-white, freckled, tawny, brown, black, and every variety of mixed blood in between: One man had tightly curled reddish hair and freckles on a dusky face, another had coarse black hair braided, while others kept their thinning hair cut short and swept up in lime-washed spikes. A few had complexions blued with tattoos; some wore mustaches in the traditional style. There were even a few suspiciously Roman noses among them.