Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

“Oh, Bee.” I hugged her despite the knife.

In the silence, a lamp hanging from a hook on the wall by the door hissed patiently as it consumed oil. The back door opened. I released her and grabbed my cane. She raised the knife. The red-haired man appeared in the kitchen door, cheeks ruddy from the cold. Seen close, he was younger and better-looking than I had thought, especially when he grinned to greet us.

“Salvete,” he said as he edged around the chamber, sticking close to the wide cupboard with pots, pans, and unchipped crockery set in neat display on its open shelves. One might almost think him leery of coming too close, although I could not fathom what might disturb him about two perfectly well-mannered young women, even if one was grasping a large kitchen knife and the other what must appear to be a polished black cane, the kind of ridiculous accessory carried by young men of wealth who were more concerned with fashion than utility.

“Peace to you,” said Bee. “Are you with the general?”

He reached the stove and held his gloved hands over it with a grateful sigh. “Whew! I just can’t get used to this cursed cold.”

“You’re not from the north?” Bee asked.

He looked pointedly at her knife. She set to work on another parsnip.

“I was born northwest of here, in fact. But I’ve been living as a maku in the city of Expedition for the last ten years. I’m Drake, by the way. James Drake.”

“I am Beatrice Hassi Barahal,” Bee said with her best queenly grandeur, “and this is my best beloved cousin”—she hesitated—“Catherine Bell Barahal.”

He offered a formal bowing courtesy, gaze shifting from her to me and back again. His eyes were so blue they were like a sizzle of bright hot light. “I must always be at the service of such remarkably pretty young women.”

Self-consciously, I smoothed my hands over the waist of my rumpled jacket and my well-worn and somewhat grimy riding skirt. I wasn’t used to such brazen compliments.

Bee’s stony demeanor cracked, and she responded with a smile that made his eyes widen. “But you must tell us more,” she said. “Expedition is in the Amerikes. How exotic!”

“Between North and South Amerike in the Sea of Antilles, to be exact, where the Taino and their fire mages rule. The winters aren’t cold there. Not like here, where cold mages rule beside princes and every soul lives under the shadow of the ice.” His fine blue gaze skimmed the length of my cane. “I can’t figure how a girl like you would be carrying cold steel. You’re not a cold mage.”

“Are you one?” I demanded.

He chuckled. “I don’t bite, so no need to guard against me.” His words were accented with the musicality of a western Celtic dialect overlaid with flat vowels that hinted at foreign lands.

Despite his pleasing grin, I burned with an acrid, suspicious question. “How do you know this is cold steel?”

“Maybe someone told me.” His chuckle suggested he would say nothing more.

“You didn’t answer my question,” said Bee. “Are you with the general?”

Drake glanced out the window. “Ask him yourself, for here he comes.”

Camjiata and Kehinde crossed the yard to the back door. I did not see Godwik or Brennan. Upstairs a door closed, and footsteps paced the length of the house. I heard the professora speaking to the general as they came down the passage.

“—But the airship was destroyed. It is certain a cold mage devised the sabotage.”

“So I was informed yesterday when I entered the city,” the general replied. “A shame. It would have made for a spectacular departure from Adurnam.”

“To think of destroying such a remarkable and beautiful object, both in design and concept! A new means of crossing the ocean between Europa and the Amerikes! Such antipathy toward invention and technology lies beyond my understanding. Such people ought not to hold power over the lives of others. But without the airship, how will you cross the ocean?”

They came into the kitchen, Kehinde blowing on bare hands to warm them.

“I’ve already set a new plan in motion,” Camjiata said as he walked to the table. He picked up Bee’s sketchbook before she or I realized he meant to so brazenly invade her private things.

“Unexpected,” he said as he flipped through the pages, many of which bore sketches of good-looking young men. “Yet as a way to record hopes and dreams, it’s quite as useful as words.”

Bee looked first as if all blood had drained from her face. Then she flushed in an exceedingly dangerous way that only ever presaged her rare but explosive blasts of volcanic temper. Just before she blew, Rory glided back into the room exactly as if he’d felt a warning rumble. He slipped up next to her and draped an arm over her shoulders in a way that made it look as though he were both soothing her and stopping her from stabbing the general.

Without looking up, Camjiata spoke in a coolly amused voice that made me think he knew exactly the effect his intrusion into her sketchbook was having on her. “Patience, and I’ll explain. The women who walk the dreams of dragons walk the path of dreams each in a unique way. Helene heard words of tangled poetry. I learned to unravel her words to reveal meetings and crossing points yet to come. For you see, she who can read the book of the future can wield her knowledge of the future as a kind of sword, one with an edge sharper even than cold steel.”

“Such a gift is a curse,” I said hoarsely.

He studied the page that contained the sketch of him standing in the entryway. Bee had drawn it days, or weeks, or months ago. “Maybe it is. But the women who walk the path of dreams have no choice about what they are. Do you know how my beloved wife died?” He turned another page. His brows furrowed as he considered lines that seemed to depict nothing more than a bench set against a wall under a flowering vine.