Cold Magic (21 page)

“The light and shadow must reflect and darken consistent with the conditions of light at the time of the illusion,” he muttered to himself as he manipulated the patterns of light lifting and shadow falling.

Tiny soldiers faded, and a face appeared: lips, nose, eyes, and a shadow’s skein of long black hair. My face. He was weaving my face in light.

Before he could glance up to study me and see me looking, I shut my eyes.

The carriage rocked, jostling me, then steadied.

With my eyes closed, I could not fight off exhaustion. Thought faded.

When I woke again, he was asleep, propped as uncomfortably upright in his corner as I was in mine. It was the first time I had seen him asleep, his face in repose. Bee would have proclaimed his lineaments handsome: his lean face set off by the beard trimmed very, very short around a well-shaped jawline, his long black eyelashes, his skin the brown of raw umber seen in painters’ studios.

But Bee had not been forced to marry him.
It is easy to admire what you must not endure
, as my father had written years ago during the Iberian war.

My husband had killed two men in front of my eyes, and how many more in Adurnam’s Rail Yard I would likely never know. I fixed the ghost sword in its sheath between my body and the carriage and shut my eyes, but could not find rest.

Yet in the end I did sleep as we traveled east through the night, into dawn, and across the morning and came to a town on whose outskirts rose a House inn. I now understood these inns must be wrapped around with protections able to fend off assaults from whatever enemies the Houses had accumulated over the centuries since their founding. Should be able, although they had failed in Adurnam and in Southbridge Londun behind us.

We pulled into the inn court as hostlers hurried out. I staggered in Andevai’s wake into a parlor furnished with a sideboard, two couches, and a polished table with four chairs. While Andevai exchanged formal greetings with the steward in charge of the inn, I collapsed on the blessedly comfortable and unmoving daybed with my cane tucked against me. I fell asleep at once, waking when the door opened and servants carried in food on trays and set the covered dishes on the sideboard with platters and utensils and cups gracefully laid on one of the tables.

“We’ll serve ourselves,” said Andevai. He was standing at the window, as far away from me as was possible in the chamber. The servants shot nervous glances at him and hurried out, shutting the door behind them.

I staggered up onto unsteady legs and stumbled over to the sideboard, thinking I might expire just from the glorious smell. After washing, I uncovered every dish and heaped up a platter with so much food that my eyes hurt even as my mouth watered. I sat down and started eating.

After a while, having devoured about half the bounty, I paused.

He was still staring out the window into the gauzy light of an overcast day, the light beginning a subtle shift that heralded the arrival of one of the cross-quarter days that divide the year. The festival of Samhain was observed throughout much of the north, marking the end of the light half of the year and the beginning of the dark half. As day follows night, so light follows dark, and thereby Samhain, also called Hallows Night and Hallows Day, was celebrated by some as the end of the old year and the beginning of the new.

“Why don’t you ever eat?” I asked.

Without looking toward me, he spoke softly. “Every time I work magic, I am fed.”

I set down my knife and spoon, the path of destruction I had cut across the platter looking suddenly ominous. “What do you mean?”

His gaze flashed my way before he turned back to survey the out of doors. “The secret belongs to those who know how to keep silent.”

“The mage Houses would have to say so, wouldn’t they? Secrecy is the key to power.”

He left the window and walked to the table, standing with a hand on the back of a chair. “What do you mean?”

Was that anger that creased his eyes? We were both exhausted, and he looked considerably worse for the troubles we had encountered: His right sleeve was torn, his jacket rumpled, and his trousers stained black at the knees where he had knelt in the ashes.

“It’s what my father always said.”

“Why would he say that?”

“That should be obvious, if you know the history of my lineage.”

He shifted the chair back and sat opposite me. “The Barahals are a clan of hired soldiers, of Kena’ani stock, what others call Phoenicians. Their mother house is based in the city of Gadir on the coast of southern Iberian near the Straits of Hercules. I was informed one evening that I was required to travel to Adurnam to marry the eldest daughter of the Adurnam Hassi Barahal house. Haste was required, so I left the next morning. Beyond that, I was told nothing, and I’ve had no time to learn anything else.”

“You were warned the Barahals would have little conversation and fewer manners.”

He crossed his arms and leaned back.

I knew I should not bait him, so I shoveled in more food. Yet, having chewed and swallowed, I was gnawed to bursting by my swelling grievances. I opened my mouth to eat more and instead words poured out. “It’s true the Barahals have served as mercenaries for hundreds of years. But we began as messengers. Couriers. We were not always uncouth soldiers, brutes paid to kill.”

He did not flinch. No doubt he had forgotten about the two men he had so recently slain.

I backtracked, anyway, lest he think I was criticizing him. “You must know that the Kena’ani built a sea-trading empire three thousand years ago.”

“Yes, yes, even I must know that. Everyone educated knows that the Romans and the Phoenicians fought to a standstill in the Mediterranean wars two thousand years ago.”

“Well, after that, we maintained our ports and markets and ships against the might of their land empire. In Europa, meanwhile, the Celtic tribes and nations shifted allegiances and quarreled and built their cities and armies with the grain and metals we Kena’ani brought them.”

“I’m not sure from this tale how sea traders came to be mercenaries and spies.”

“You have to know of the salt plague in western Africa that released the ghouls from the depths of the salt mines.”

“Of course. The Koumbi Mande people—my ancestors—were the first ones attacked.”

“It happens that about the same time as the diaspora, the nation known as Persia rode out of the eastern Levant and conquered the great Kena’ani city of Qart Hadast, which you may know as Carthage. So my people also had to flee their home. Some went to their kinfolk in Gadir and the Iberian colonies. Many traveled even farther north, to Adurnam, Havery, and Lutetia, for instance. Many were cut off from their old sea-trading routes, so they had to find a new way to make a living. That is how the Hassi Barahal lineage was established. First we became messengers. Couriers often have to fight to protect themselves, so some hired out as soldiers. And that led to scouting, spying, and scholarly work.”

“Is spying meant to be less uncouth than soldiering?”

My anger sparked. “Many condemn mercenaries for their trade without considering the culpability of those who pay them. That’s what I meant. People with power do not want to share the secrets that allow them to stay in power. Or at least, that’s what my father always said.”

He kept his gaze steady on me. “So the Barahals decided to make their living stealing secrets from one set of powerful people and selling them to another.”

I found wisdom enough to imprison any further statements inside my throat by working halfway through a mound of baked squash drenched in butter. I patted my mouth with a linen napkin and with vast self-control considered three pink slices of roasted beef and a fan of sliced apples precariously tucked against them on the edge of the plate.
Keep silence.

“I sense there is more you wish to say,” he said.

“That’s all I feel is safe to say. My father spent his life traveling. He called himself a natural historian. He recorded his observations. Whenever he had reason to sojourn in a city with a branch house of any of the Hassi Barahal cousins, he would leave his full journals with them. In time, the journals were gathered under my uncle and aunt’s roof.”

“Thus you prove my point.” He reached across the table, prized an apple slice from my plate, and ate it. “Those who remain silent cannot have their secrets stolen and then sold in the market, or to their enemies.”

I felt anger flush my cheeks. “That’s not what my father was doing. Natural historians seek to understand the world. Some scholars hoard what they’ve learned, as dragons are said to hoard gold and gems. Others choose to share so many may be enlightened.”

“To what purpose?”

“To what purpose do the Houses wield cold magic?”

He snagged another apple slice and paused, the apple like a tutor’s rod, held to emphasize a point. “Before the Houses rose, farmers and craftsmen labored under the whim of princes and lords, who strove with each other in incessant war.”

“That’s what the Houses must say, isn’t it? I don’t see how they are so different from princes. They just use a different weapon to hold on to their power.”

“So say the radicals, who desire to overturn the harmonious order of things.” He ate the slice of apple, picked up a spoon, and dug into the remains of my baked squash. “But the radicals are disruptive spirits, who sow trouble.”

“Like destroying an airship?”

He didn’t even blink. “We in the north have lived at peace for many generations because of the stability provided by the mage Houses. What do the trolls who brought over that airship know of our land? They call us rats! They live far away across the western ocean. They’re interfering with what they do not understand.”

I cut the beef into pieces and slid the plate a handbreadth toward the center of the table. Like my father, I was curious about human behavior. “What is it the trolls do not understand? That the Houses stand in the way of innovation and industry?”

“Do they suppose that the technology of combustion will not come to the attention of the unseen courts as its use spreads? That airships will not be viewed as a threat if any attempt is made to mount an expedition over the ice?” With a two-tined fork, he speared a bit of meat and ate it, and then another piece and a third. I was so engrossed in watching him eat off my plate without apparently realizing he was doing so that his subsequent words floated past like clouds out of my reach. “Are they so naïve and ignorant to believe that the unseen courts will not retaliate as they have in the past, and that when the courts retaliate, many more people will suffer than will ever hope to benefit by these clever toys?”

“You believe in the existence of the unseen courts,” I breathed as he stabbed more meat. I sat with all the wind knocked out of me as he ate through most of the meat before I could find breath enough to speak. “How can we know for sure, when no human or troll has ever seen the courts?”

He set down his fork. “I do not ‘believe’ in the unseen courts, Catherine, any more than I ‘believe’ in the sun. Like the spirit world, the courts exist despite my belief or lack of belief, whatever that means. Isn’t it strange how the new modes of fashion ignore the truth, or claim it is something else? How can you
not
believe in the courts when you are being conveyed in a carriage harnessed to creatures molded in the manner of horses that have not been changed out since Adurnam? If they were ordinary horses, they would have long since foundered and expired. You may naturally perceive the coachman and footman who serve me as men, but they are not.”

“Oh,” was all I said as I snagged the last piece of meat. I could hoard my own secrets!

“You don’t believe me!” he said triumphantly. Condescendingly. He grabbed the last slice of apple. “But it is nevertheless true. Why did your father, the natural historian, refuse to recognize the existence of the unseen courts?”

“He didn’t disbelieve. He just had no proof. They are ‘unseen,’ after all. He recorded a hundred village stories in his journals about the spirit world and the courts. But stories, of themselves, are not proof.”

“The Wild Hunt is not a story. Those with too much power, or too much curiosity, are hunted down and eradicated. Much as we hunt down and eradicate pests and mice and crawling things from our houses. Where is your father now, Catherine?”

I set down my utensils and bit my lip. My eyes stung.

He looked at his fork. At my plate. At me. His color seemed heightened. He slapped down the fork, scraped back the chair, and jumped to his feet.

“We’ve stayed too long.” He crossed to the sideboard and rang the bell.

The door opened and an older man stepped into the room. His springy black hair was plaited in rows. His indigo boubou was so crisp and crinkly that the cloth rustled as he moved. “Magister, what is your wish?” His voice was as harmonious as his appearance.

Andevai relaxed and acknowledged him with a polite nod. “A change of clothing both for myself and my wife, maester. Something more appropriate for her, if you please.”

“These fit me,” I broke in. “Other garb might not be so accommodating for travel.”

“Ah. Well, then, fit her with fur-lined boots and cloak and gloves, a woolen underjacket. She’ll need furs for the carriage. Heated bricks.”

“I’d like to wash,” I said, a little desperately, feeling all my dirt.

“I’ll have a basin with warmed water brought, with towels, maestra,” said the man. “Then you may at least wash your face and hands.”

“That will be all there is time for,” said Andevai. “Make it quick.”

“And a basket of food to take with us in the carriage,” I called as the door swung shut.

I heaped more food on my platter. It was easier to eat than to think of my parents. Or the Wild Hunt. Had the Wild Hunt killed my parents because they’d known something they weren’t meant to? But, no, it wasn’t possible. They had not died on Hallows Night.

Andevai went to stand at the window, as cold and proud as if we had never spoken or as if he had never eaten off my plate as casually as I might have forked delicacies off Bee’s. I had a suspicion that he might not really have been aware he was eating, that he’d done it without thinking.