Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

As we ate, I looked around. The office was fitted out with interior gaslight, which I had never seen in Adurnam. Slatted windows opened into a chamber where two trolls and a man wearing ink-covered aprons were setting type in a press. Discarded sheets of paper with uneven printing advertised a citizens’ meeting: in support of the Proposal for an Assembly composed of Representatives elected from the entire Population of Expedition.

When we had finished eating and drinking, Keer cocked her head, looking at me first with one eye, then with the other, then full on, muzzle slightly pulled back to hint at teeth within.

I found my voice. “My business is this. I need to send an urgent message to two family members in care of the Adurnam office of Godwik and Clutch. Since your office must exchange dispatches with your Europan offices, I thought I might be able to include a letter with your post.”

“Yee shall have better fortune after hurricane season.”

“Hurricane? What is that?”

“Hurricane is the local word for cyclone. The cyclone is a violent storm which forms over water. Hurricanes rise most commonly in July, August, and September. Elsewise the ocean waters is too cool to sustain them. Therefore few ships risk the voyage to Europa until late October.”

Beyond the screen, pens scratched across paper. Late October would be too late to warn Bee. “Is there no way to send a dispatch now?”

Keer shifted her shoulders in a sliding way that struck me as quite inhuman. She said, “How met yee with Godwik and Chartji?”

A shiver of alarm crawled up the skin of my back, for with a lunge she could rip off my face with her talons and then eat me neatly down with those teeth, as long as I didn’t fix my sword through her heart first, if I could even find her heart and if she only had a single one. Instinct urged me to trade information for information.

“First, we were chance met at an inn. Later, my cousin and I went to the law offices because Chartji had told us to come to her if we needed legal services. We were offered employment. Not by Godwik himself, mind you, but by his associate, a professora named Kehinde Nayo Kuti.”

Keer exuded an odor, like sun-dried grass, that made me think of a creature waiting for its prey to creep into view. “Tell me a story of Godwik.”

A cautious smile carried me forward. “He told me a tale about his fledging trip with his age cohort. Six to a boat and six boats in all, north to the shores of Lake Long-Water. They planned to battle into the teeth of the katabatic wind that sweeps down off the vast cliff face of the ice. But I never heard about that, for meanwhile, and before they even reached Lake Long-Water, he and his thirty-six companions were reduced to twenty-seven after battles with saber-toothed cats, foaming rapids, a marauding troo, gusting winds, and a party of young bucks from a territory whose boundaries they had violated. You may wonder how it all started!”

Keer chuffed, crest rising. “I hear his voice in yours. Therefore, I will help you. A sloop may be embarking this coming Venerday if the weather holds. Have me your letter before then, and I shall see it posted with we usual pouch.”

“How long will it take to get there, and an answer to return?”

“Who can know? A month each way, if the weather holds fair and the winds cooperate and the ship does not sink. So, likely it will be longer.”

A month each way! That would be barely enough time for me to hear back from her before Hallows’ Night at the end of the October, and then only if all went well. What choice did I have? I had to try. “In truth, Maestra, I am destitute. I have neither pen nor paper, nor payment for delivery costs.”

Keer bent forward, examining me in the same way, I imagined, that a bored and fed hawk considers a squirming mouse trapped within reach of its talons. “I can offer you work in our clutch’s corporation. In recompense for the employment you were not able to take up in Adurnam. The cost of letter and dispatch can come out of your earnings. You can nest in a room above our offices.”

The words hit me like a blow. Employment. A room. I need never see Vai until a year and a day were up and our marriage dissolved. Never again.

“Here is more tea,” said Keer.

I had to drink another cup, because I could not speak.

“My offer has surprised you,” Keer said at length.

I dredged for words. “I am unexpectedly overwhelmed, Maestra. But I already have employment and a room.” I could not bear to disappoint Aunty Djeneba. Surely it was easier to hear all the gossip at the boardinghouse than confined in an office. Surely. What if the wardens caught a glimpse of me so close to the gates? Where was Drake, anyway? “Let me start with a letter,” I finished weakly. “I’ll bring one before Venerday.”

“No one enters into an association without a great deal of negotiation and thought.”

“No, of course not.” My thoughts tangled and collided as if I stood in a maze of mirrors, staggering from Bee to Vai and back again, she whom I might not be able to save and he with whom I had no future.

Keer let out a hiss of breath like steam escaping from a kettle. “You rats. If you simply agree, without contesting, then I will always stand above you in the—as you call it—the pecking order. Really, where is the fun in that? You rats are too fond of your entrenched hierarchies.”

The words charmed me into a grin. “My apologies. I was preoccupied by another matter.” I roused the part of me accustomed to being sensible. “I assure you, I will return ready to duel.”

The teeth showed again. “That, I will enjoy. Now. You require paper, pen, and ink.” Was it my imagination, or had her way of speaking changed as she spoke to me, vowels shifting sound, cadence altering?

We began bargaining over the cost. The troll did not strike me as discourteous or greedy; if anything, I sensed that each transaction was a chance to play a game I could barely perceive whose rules I did not understand. Even after hard bargaining, the few coins I possessed did not suffice to buy a sheet of foolscap and a dram of ink, much less the dispatch service.

With polite words I took my leave, in my confusion turning the wrong way. The crowded shop fronts and offices debouched into a square on the north vault of the old city walls where rose a huge gate carved with a lion on one side and a buffalo on the other. A hulking palace sprawled along one side of the square, marked with the lamp and staff of the warden’s service. This edifice was Warden Hall. A tall, powerfully built young man with scarred cheeks was pushing a flat cart laden with baskets of fruit toward a side entrance. After a moment, I recognized Vai’s friend Kofi.

Wreathed in shadow, I followed him. Clouds were piling up in the east, heavy with rain and streaked with gray smoke rising from the factory district. I sneezed, grit in my eye. Kofi paused at the corner, wiping his forehead with a kerchief as he studied the clock tower of Warden Hall.