We shrank into the shadow of an alcove. I set down my bag and slipped my ghost-sword from its loop on my outer skirt. It looked like a black cane, but at night I could twist its hilt and draw a sword. I waited, poised to strike. Rory tensed like a big cat about to spring. Bee sucked in and held a breath. Ahead, a troop of mounted men clattered toward the nearest intersection.
Rory sniffed, then licked his lips. “I hear other people, too. I smell iron and that nasty stuff you call blackpowder.”
In the house nearest us, a shutter shifted as someone inside peeked out. I closed my eyes, tasting the air and listening with senses far sharper than Bee’s. The wind carried the clop of hooves but also a hiss of men whispering, the click of a boot heel on stone, the lick of flame and the sting of burning.
“Stay here,” I whispered, shoving the heavy bag into Rory’s arms. They obeyed.
In the interstices between our world and the spirit world lie threads of magic that bind the worlds together. I drew the threads as shadow around me to conceal myself from ordinary sight. Staying close alongside the buildings, I skulked forward. In the intersection, no one moved, but I heard the jingle of harness grow louder as the soldiers approached. Movement stirred in an alley to my right. A tiny flame flared, lighting the shape of a mustachioed mouth and the gleaming barrel of a gun. After a hissed whisper, the flame was snuffed out.
I stepped back against the wall of the building at the corner just as the first rank of turbaned mage House soldiers rode into view. Sparks flowered. At least ten sharp gunfire reports echoed down the houses. Horses snorted and shied. Two soldiers crumpled forward. One tumbled from his horse. His boot caught in the stirrup, and the panicked horse dragged him sideways. A volley of crossbow bolts loosed by the mounted soldiers clattered against the buildings on either side of the alley. A glass window shattered, and bolts thunked into wood shutters.
“They’re bad shots!” shouted a man from the alley. “We’ve got them, lads! Fire!” But instead of loud reports, the only sound was a series of deadened clicks.
The mage troop swept forward as a seam of icy white light ripped across the air as if an unseen blade cut through the night to penetrate to daylight behind. A bright, cold fire bubbled out from the rift. The light moved as if pushed, spheres like lamps probing the alley and the stone faces of the buildings to reveal thirty or more men in hiding. The hiding men desperately tried to shoot, but their shiny new rifles simply failed to fire. The presence of an extremely powerful cold mage had killed their combustion.
With my back pressed against the stone, I willed myself to be nothing more than stone, nothing to see except what anyone would expect to see looking at an old, grubby, smoke-stained wall. Even so I dared not move, though I knew cold mages could not see through my concealing threads of shadow. A man dressed not in armor but in flowing robes rode forward from the back of the troop. His was an imposingly dignified figure with his graying black hair plaited into many tiny braids and his black face drawn down in an angry frown. I knew him: He was the mansa, the most powerful cold mage in Four Moons House and therefore its master.
In that knife’s-edge moment before the men in the alley broke and ran, the mansa lifted a hand as he addressed a comment to his companion, a middle-aged blond Celt dressed in the uniform of the prince’s militia. “They are smuggling in rifles despite the ban on new technology. Just as we suspected.”
The temperature dropped so precipitously that my eyes stung and my ears popped as the pressure changed. With a whispering groan, metal strained. Men screamed as the iron stocks of their rifles twisted and, with a sound more terrifying than that of any musket or rifle shot, shattered as easily as if they were glass. Many writhed on the ground, torn and bloodied by the shrapnel. A few staggered away down the alley, trying to escape.
“Capture them all!” shouted the militia captain in a braying tenor.
“I want any who survive,” said the mansa, studying the scene with a brow smoothed by his easy victory.
“You mean to execute them?”
“No. I mean to bind these rebellious plebeians into clientage. They, and their kinfolk, and their descendants will all be bound to serve Four Moons House. To execute them will merely inflame their kinfolk to further rebellion. But if these discontented men drag their households into servitude with them, that will breed resentment among their own kin for their folly in fighting against the natural order and losing what freedom they have. With your permission, of course. They’re your subjects.”
“A wise course of action. That will make the radical agitators think twice.”
Blessed Tanit! His companion was the prince of Tarrant himself, the very man who ruled the principality centered around the city of Adurnam, on the Solent River, in northwestern Europa.
Really, I could think of no man I wanted to meet less than these two. As the soldiers mopped up the scene and the mansa and the prince sat in perfect amity at the center of the intersection, chatting about some man’s thwarted marriage prospects, I edged backward until I felt it safe to remove myself from the wall and hurry back to the alcove where Bee and Rory waited. I shoved in between them, trembling.
“What happened?” Bee whispered. “I heard shots. And then screams.”
“We have to backtrack. The mansa and the prince are with those soldiers.”
“Are they hunting for us? Does the mansa know we escaped?”
“I don’t think so. He said nothing of it. I still think his people won’t discover we’re gone until morning. Give me a moment.” I shut my eyes, the better to envision the map of Adurnam I carried in my head, with its winding streets, secluded alleys, and dangerous warrens.
“You’re shaking,” said Bee, putting an arm around me.
“Men just died. And it was a shock to see the mansa again. By law Four Moons House owns me. He has a legal right to recapture me. And if he catches us, he will find a way to own you, too.”
“I think we should go now while they’re busy eating the wounded and dying,” said Rory.
Bee stiffened. “You imbecile, we don’t eat people—”
“Hush. Rory’s right.” I stroked his arm, because he liked that, and he gave a rumbling sigh. “We need to go while they’re busy mopping up. I’ve got a better route. We’ll creep back to Old Temple and go along the river. We’ll be hard to follow if we cut through the goblin market.”
I slipped my cane back into its loop and picked up the bag. We crept back down the street as quickly as we could, but no scouts rode our way. If anyone inside the shuttered houses noted our passing, they called no alarm. Eventually we relaxed a little.
nstead of loud reports, the only sound was a series of deadened clicks.
The mage troop swept forward as a seam of icy white light ripped across the air as if an unseen blade cut through the night to penetrate to daylight behind. A bright, cold fire bubbled out from the rift. The light moved as if pushed, spheres like lamps probing the alley and the stone faces of the buildings to reveal thirty or more men in hiding. The hiding men desperately tried to shoot, but their shiny new rifles simply failed to fire. The presence of an extremely powerful cold mage had killed their combustion.