“Blessed Tanit!” muttered Bee, looking at me. She remembered as well as I did the day we had sneaked through the headmaster’s office and heard an uncanny voice say the words “Rei vindicatio” as if to warn us. Mere hours later, Andevai had showed up at her parents’ house to use those same words to claim legal ownership of the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter.
The men huddled by the door murmured to each other at this mention of the famous head of the poet Bran Cof.
“What said the head of the poet?” demanded the man with the brick.
The headmaster’s assistant ignored everyone except Bee. “The head of the poet Bran Cof said he had a message for Tara Bell’s child. He said to meet you here.”
I was glad he was looking at Bee, so he didn’t see me shudder.
“Last time, the headmaster turned me over to the Romans,” said Bee. “How can I know he won’t do so again?”
“That was a mistake.” He gazed at Bee in the way a well-trained but hungry dog stares at a bone out of its reach, for he was yet another young male who had fallen in love with her beauty during our time as students at the academy. “On his honor and dignity, he will not allow it to happen again. If you wish to hear, come with me.” He vanished behind the curtain.
“He smells clean of lies,” said Rory.
The man with the injured nose straightened out the bloody handbill. “You think these two is the ones mentioned for the reward?”
“What’s that?” said the man with a hand on his ear. “The head of the poet Bran Cof speaks at last, did you say? Did he recite a poem to the just cause of our discontent? Or pronounce on the legal principle of men being allowed to vote for a tribune to represent us on the prince’s council?”
The other man scanned the print. “This says the prince of Tarrant offers a reward for the recovery of two Phoenician girls. They belong to one of the mage Houses.”
“Why should we hand girls over to the cursed mages?” said the man with the brick.
“It’s a cursed lot of money, enough to split twelve ways and still make us all rich.”
Outside, the street lay empty except for Roman guardsmen trotting up the streets using their round shields to shelter their heads from the pounding hail. In a moment, Legate Amadou might look in the windows and see us. The man with the bloody nose put his red-stained fingers on the latch and opened the door.
“Over here!” he shouted.
“Go,” I said.
The clockmaker flipped up the counter. Rory went first, Bee after, and me at the rear.
“Thank you,” I said to the clockmaker, and I shouldered past the heavy swags. Ahead, the hem of Bee’s skirt snaked along the plank floor under a second curtain and then too many more curtains to count. It was like chasing a serpent’s tail through baffles down a hallway. An oily smell made my lips pucker. I collided with Bee as the last curtain’s weighted hem slapped down behind me.
We stood in a chamber quite black except where flashes of luminescence flared and died like levers rising and lowering. Taps and creaks and rasps played out as if they were slowly winding down. There fell a last flare of movement. Then the dark poured like pitch over my eyes. The chamber’s air lay heavy with the rancid scent of old oil and a tang of char. My ghost-sword, which outside had flared in response to the cold magic of the storm, hung inert in my hand. A ripple of soft barks, snaps, clicks, and pops spread within the room: goblin chatter.
“Gracious Melqart,” breathed Bee. “We’ve stumbled into a goblin’s den. This must be one of those illicit daytime workshops the prince’s inspectors are always searching for.”
“Cat,” said Rory in an aggrieved and alarmed tone, “many small fingers are touching me.”
“They’ll just guide you to the stairs,” said the headmaster’s assistant from the darkness. “They don’t want you in here any more than you want to be here.”
Fingers tapped up my arms to my shoulders and around my back, as if measuring me for a new riding jacket. Like most people, I knew little about goblins except that sunlight burned them, they hid themselves beneath masks and robes even under starlight, and they were shaped much like humans. They sold their wares at night markets, and their workshops were legally required to close during the day. Which meant we were standing in a place where we could all be arrested.
A voice as brittle as winter grass spoke on my left side as a hand traced my arm. “One stinks of dragons. One smells of the summer sun. This one is bound between the worlds, like her sword. There is a price.”
“You and I have already agreed on the price,” said the headmaster’s assistant. When you could not see his skin, he sounded like an ordinary man, calm but displeased.
“For these three, it is not enough.”
Bee and I had, on a few occasions, bargained with masked and veiled goblin merchants at one of the night markets. “What do you want?” I asked.
“To call on you, spiritwalker, one time, at need.”
“Cat,” whispered Bee warningly. “Be prudent.”
“Done,” I said, for, unlike Bee, I could hear very faintly a commotion in the shop, maybe even the sound of a clock falling and shattering. The soldiers had arrived.