Cold Magic (Spiritwalker 1)

He passed by without seeing me. A trooper led up two horses, one burdened with a figure wrapped in a blanket and tied onto the saddle: a dead man.

“Marius, is this wise?” called Amadou, jogging up. A stain marred his jacket sleeve and his back was covered with flecks of grass, as if he had been pushed onto the ground. “You’ll be riding alone. An easy target.”

“They’ll not attack the cousin of the Prince of Tarrant in broad daylight, knowing that if I turn up as a corpse, Four Moons House must accept full blame. That ass-biting turd of a cold mage took a fool’s reckless chance. I can’t imagine what possessed him to think he could crawl into my camp with his soldiers and kidnap a person to which I—I!—had given my protection. I’ll ride to the manor and send reinforcements. They’ll see what they’ve woken by offending one of the Tarrant kinsmen!”

Without any indication he had seen me, he mounted and, with the other horse on a lead behind his own, rode off alone through the ramparts.

“Break down the camp,” said Amadou in a voice accustomed to command.

The men obeyed with alacrity. At the academy, I had thought him charmingly modest. If I had called him the vainest youth I had ever met, I had only done so to twit Bee for her infatuation. Certainly compared to a man like, say, Andevai, he had no vanity to speak of.

He walked over to the tent I had slept in just as Rory emerged. They spoke briefly. Amadou swung around and surveyed the camp, his gaze passing over me before he turned back to my brother with a puzzled shrug. Rory did not point me out, although he obviously knew right where I was even if no one else could see me. I had forgotten my glamor.

I sat by the hearth and brushed off my skirts, shaking off my concealment.

“There she is,” said Roderic.

Legate Amadou Barry walked over. “I hope your rest was a peaceful one, maestressa.”

“What happened to that soldier?”

“Blooded by cold steel. We had a few minor injuries, but he alas is dead. We’ll leave immediately after the camp comes down. You’ll ride at the center of the formation lest their crossbowmen decided to take a shot at you. However, it seems we’ve driven them off, for they are nowhere to be seen this morning.”

A man had died on account of me.

Blessed Tanit, make his passing gentle and his journey an easy one. Give peace to his family.

The low-hanging clouds made gray of the world. Our mood as we set out had the harsh tone of untuned, jangling strings. Later, it began to rain.

The next day in the late afternoon, without further incident, we reached Adurnam.

28

No one had warned Bee. A servant opened a door, and I entered the sitting room behind Amadou. At first, his body shielded me from her view. I beheld a spacious chamber lit by many lamps against the encroaching dusk. The walls were painted with chevrons and angled stripes in red, black, and yellow. An oak mantel carved with lizards capped a brick fireplace inset with a circulating stove; the fire within radiated so much heat that I began to sweat, and to think about how filthy I was. I could not catch my breath.

On one of the Roman-style couches sat a proud-looking woman no older than Aunt Tilly, wearing embroidered damask robes whose vivid orange and green shone. Her elaborate coiffure of braids was complemented by gold earrings shaped like hoops that dangled to her shoulder. She was an elegant, graceful, beautiful woman of Afric ancestry; Amadou resembled her. The twin sisters were seated on stools on opposite sides of a table, stringing beads and coins and other small objects onto a chain. Both set down their work and glanced up with bright smiles.

“Amadou!” they cried, and then they glimpsed Roderic, behind me, and looked away.

As Amadou walked forward to greet his aunt, I saw Bee seated on the other couch holding a sketchbook on her lap and a pencil in her left hand. Her thunderous frown, directed at the open page, made me giggle, in some part with delight but also because after all this time I was so desperately relieved to see her alive and well. Yet what was she so angry about?

She heard my chortle. She looked up. With a deafening shriek, she flung sketchbook and pencil halfway across the room as she leaped up. Her expression entirely transformed, she charged across the space between us and threw herself into my arms. I would have wept, but Bee’s embrace was so crushing I could barely get air into my lungs much less find breath for sobs.

We stood this way for a while, smashed together, holding tight, my cane pressed between us. I could not think. We were reunited. That was all that mattered.

Eventually, I opened my eyes. Over her head, I watched Roderic making his courtesies to the aunt, who clearly found him as charming as he found himself. Amadou pulled up two wooden stools with legs carved to become antelopes, and the men sat down in front of his aunt. Rory smiled at the twins as Amadou bent forward to confer with his aunt, who held his right hand between hers.

Bee must have felt my attention shift. She released me from the vise. I took in a long gasping breath, then staggered forward, aware I had snubbed the woman who had sheltered Bee. But she was gracious, and her nieces seemed genuinely if shyly pleased to see me again, although I am sure I had not ever been kind enough to them at the academy to deserve their generous greeting.

“You remember my half brother Roderic, Beatrice,” I said, hoping I would not have to kick her. “It’s been ever so many years since we last saw him.”

She fixed her full-bore stare on me, drilling for secrets. Then she swept over to him.

“How could I possibly forget dear Rory!” With a flourish, she kissed him smartly on either cheek and rather more warmly than he had clearly expected.

He glanced at me as if for aid in dealing with a flower whose beauty might hide poisonous thorns.

Bee stepped back from him and eyed Rory an instant more, then cast a look toward Amadou so brimming with fulmination that I would have laughed if she had not appeared ready to stick a knife in him… or to kiss him. It was difficult to tell. He pressed a palm to his forehead, realized he was doing so, and looked to his aunt with a plea.