If ice had touched me a moment before, I was now flooded with hot alarm. “Has someone been following us all along?”
“It’s not what I see. It’s what I sense. I can feel threads of cold magic for some distance around me. The mansa is in Adurnam, and he is on the move—which means he is personally searching for you and Maestressa Barahal.”
“If you can feel the, ah, threads of the mansa’s movement, then can he not feel you in kind? Track us by following you, if he suspects you are with us?”
“He will be able to sense my magic.” He bit his lower lip, white teeth furrowing the lip as he studied me. I did not like that look. It reminded me of our hands touching, our fingers entwining, at the inn. I felt heat flood my face as I blushed.
He looked away sharply. “You’re right. It would be best for me to mark a trail back through the city as a decoy, although it is unlikely the mansa suspects I am trying to aid you.” He examined the gate as though to memorize the number and ornamentation of its iron finials with their resting eagles and coiled snakes. “It’s doubtful he will suppose me to have so much initiative. Or be rebellious.” His sour words surprised me. Before I could reply, he went on thoughtfully, finger and thumb tracing the trim line of his closely shaven beard to his chin in a way that was terribly distracting. “Or I could rejoin the mansa and try to lead him away from you until nightfall tomorrow brings the solstice, and thereby Maestressa Barahal’s release from the contract.”
“Surely a mage House can force my cooperation with or without a contract,” said Bee. “Kidnap me. Take me prisoner. I have no one to protect me. My family could not manage it even when they were here.”
“It’s true,” he agreed, “that folk without support or means are at the mercy of those who have the weapons, or the magic, or the followers to coerce them. My village knows that well enough, for it is how we became slaves. What he will not have is a legal contract to force your compliance. But if you do not choose to become part of Four Moons House, then you must find some other power to become client to.”
Bee looked at me. “I would rather sit in a cage and starve myself to death than share the bed of a man under the terms I was so insultingly offered!”
ked at Andevai. “Did you do that?”
“How could—” demanded Bee, and then closed her mouth.
A clink of dropped metal falling on metal came quite distinctly from beyond the workshops, followed by a curse in a male voice.
I raised a hand for silence and gestured that they should stay hidden. Then I padded down a lane between empty workshops toward the open space beyond. I drew on my glamor and became brick and dirt and broken glass, the battered surroundings of an industrial yard inhabited by the ghosts of projects abandoned because of destruction. A twisted hulk sprawled across open ground. Its vast ribs curved as high as the surrounding roofs, and flaps of shredded skin stirred in the breeze. Within the ribs mounded more fabric in coils and rumpled hills like the collapsed internal organs of a whale. Pockets of hard snow had settled into crevices and corners, making the remains sparkle. Although torn and burned, the airship’s skeleton had a graceful beauty.
Rats scrabbled in the wreckage: Three figures huddled around a fractured wood-framed basket, the remains of the gondola. A man plied a shovel; a woman knelt and picked through a heap of debris, trying to free something. The third figure had a troll’s plumage, and although its back was to me, it had turned its head so far around it was looking right at me. No head should be able to turn that far. I shuddered, and then, at last, I recognized them.
Fiery Shemesh! Chartji, Brennan, and Kehinde.
Chartji raised a hand in a gesture humanlike if odd in its rhythm, meant to beckon me forward. Then—thanks be to gracious Melqart—she turned her head back properly round to watch what Kehinde was doing.
I ran back to my companions.
“Come, quickly. They’re here! Just as you said, Bee.”
Andevai had his back to me, and his head positioned in the normal way, but he gestured in the direction of the main gate. “I’ll stay here.”
“Are you afraid to see the results of your handiwork?”
“I know what it looks like.”
“How can you know what it looks like? You were at the inn when the explosion hit.”
“Say what you will and think what you must, Catherine,” he said with so much force it seemed my lips prickled as though freezing into ice. Bee shivered, eyebrows drawing down dangerously as she frowned. “Someone must stay here to keep an eye on the gate. If I whistle, that will be your signal to run.”
If ice had touched me a moment before, I was now flooded with hot alarm. “Has someone been following us all along?”
“It’s not what I see. It’s what I sense. I can feel threads of cold magic for some distance around me. The mansa is in Adurnam, and he is on the move—which means he is personally searching for you and Maestressa Barahal.”
“If you can feel the, ah, threads of the mansa’s movement, then can he not feel you in kind? Track us by following you, if he suspects you are with us?”
“He will be able to sense my magic.” He bit his lower lip, white teeth furrowing the lip as he studied me. I did not like that look. It reminded me of our hands touching, our fingers entwining, at the inn. I felt heat flood my face as I blushed.
He looked away sharply. “You’re right. It would be best for me to mark a trail back through the city as a decoy, although it is unlikely the mansa suspects I am trying to aid you.” He examined the gate as though to memorize the number and ornamentation of its iron finials with their resting eagles and coiled snakes. “It’s doubtful he will suppose me to have so much initiative. Or be rebellious.” His sour words surprised me. Before I could reply, he went on thoughtfully, finger and thumb tracing the trim line of his closely shaven beard to his chin in a way that was terribly distracting. “Or I could rejoin the mansa and try to lead him away from you until nightfall tomorrow brings the solstice, and thereby Maestressa Barahal’s release from the contract.”
“Surely a mage House can force my cooperation with or without a contract,” said Bee. “Kidnap me. Take me prisoner. I have no one to protect me. My family could not manage it even when they were here.”
“It’s true,” he agreed, “that folk without support or means are at the mercy of those who have the weapons, or the magic, or the followers to coerce them. My village knows that well enough, for it is how we became slaves. What he will not have is a legal contract to force your compliance. But if you do not choose to become part of Four Moons House, then you must find some other power to become client to.”
Bee looked at me. “I would rather sit in a cage and starve myself to death than share the bed of a man under the terms I was so insultingly offered!”