Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

She left me to stir the slumbering fire back into a blaze and make the morning porridge while she sat at the kitchen table, studying the sketch. In a modest tailor’s shop, two men sat cross-legged on a platform raised off the floor. Glass-paned windows spilled light over half-made garments draped across their laps. A cat sat under the platform, barely visible in the shadows. Bolts of cloth were stacked on a table next to a privacy screen. On the opposite side of the street, buildings housed a row of shops. Seen through the window directly opposite, beneath a sign that read QUEEDLE AND CLUTCH, a troll was being measured for a coat. In the distance, above snow-dusted roofs, rose two slender, square towers, each topped with what looked like a huge golden egg.

“Here we see the problem exactly as General Camjiata described it to me,” I remarked, gesticulating with the wooden spoon. “You have to recognize an actual place or piece together the meaning of disparate images to form a message. Then you have to fix a date to it. The cat in the shadows could be me. The most likely person we know who would be in a tailor’s shop is Vai. The snow suggests some time between October and April.” I allowed myself to hope that I would rescue Vai and thus end up in a tailor’s shop waiting for him.

She flipped through the pages, scrutinizing several sketches of the academy. “The general told me the same thing. He is better at interpreting my dreams than I am. The Taino behiques were going to teach me what they know about dream walking after Caonabo became cacique. But of course instead I had to leave. Ah! Look.” She displayed a drawing of the headmaster’s study, with its mirrors, bookshelves, and chalkboards. The long table was usually piled with books and scrolls, but in the sketch the tabletop was set with five place settings, as for dinner. Seen from the back, I was dressed in a fashionably cut jacket and skirt. Bee pointed to a murky reflection of me in a mirror that also showed a red wreath hanging on the back of a door. “Here is a festival wreath with the sword of Mars, today’s festival. There is a lit lamp. Five people will be invited to dinner in the headmaster’s study after dark this evening, and you’ll be there.”

“I don’t recognize the clothes I’m wearing. Still, I suppose this will act in the nature of an experiment. We’ll have time to go to the law offices first.”

Rory strolled into the room wearing nothing but a towel and a smile. “Mmmm. I like porridge! Can we have some more of that sugar on it? Someday I want to pour sugar all over an attractive body and then lick it off—”

“Rory!” cried Bee, clapping her hands over her ears.

“Blessed Tanit!” I muttered as my cheeks flamed, for my thoughts did stray to my husband. I busied myself handing over a sober waistcoat and jacket of an ambivalent but sophisticated gray. “You’re not to wear any of Vai’s other dash jackets unless you ask me first. You can wear this one and the one you ruined.”

huckled. “Now you’re talking about Andevai.”

I smiled. “That’s better. I like to hear you laugh.”

Rory relaxed as Bee’s hand lost its death grip on the comb and her strokes grew lighter. “Caonabo intends to change some of the old laws, like the strict one on quarantine. The worst of the old epidemics burned themselves out several generations ago. The behiques can treat illness more effectively now. But people naturally fear bad things will happen if they don’t do everything exactly as they always used to do it. Change frightens people.”

“Or threatens them,” I said. “That’s why the mage Houses don’t like technology. It threatens their power. That’s why they defeated and imprisoned General Camjiata, because his legal code threatens their power, too…”

We took possession of Cook’s bedchamber next to the kitchen. Bee and I shared the bed while Rory slept on the floor beside it, resting on the pallet our man-of-all-work Pompey had used in the kitchen at night. “I never sleep alone,” he said, “it makes me nervous.”

“Hush,” said Bee, pinching out the lamp.

In the darkness the memory of Cook’s scent settled over me: She had always smelled of flour and onions, but in a comforting way, not an unpleasant one. Home rose around us, although it was dark and abandoned. We could stay the night but never truly return.

Yet the house embraced us. With Bee slumbering beside me in the old familiar way and Rory snoring softly on the floor, I slept soundly.

14

I was awakened in the morning by Bee crawling over me to get to her sketchbook. I slid deeper under the blankets as she perched on the edge of the bed and sketched. Just enough gloomy light leaked through a basement window for her to see the paper. When she had finished, she ran out to use the privy. I followed. Gray clouds promised rain.

She left me to stir the slumbering fire back into a blaze and make the morning porridge while she sat at the kitchen table, studying the sketch. In a modest tailor’s shop, two men sat cross-legged on a platform raised off the floor. Glass-paned windows spilled light over half-made garments draped across their laps. A cat sat under the platform, barely visible in the shadows. Bolts of cloth were stacked on a table next to a privacy screen. On the opposite side of the street, buildings housed a row of shops. Seen through the window directly opposite, beneath a sign that read QUEEDLE AND CLUTCH, a troll was being measured for a coat. In the distance, above snow-dusted roofs, rose two slender, square towers, each topped with what looked like a huge golden egg.

“Here we see the problem exactly as General Camjiata described it to me,” I remarked, gesticulating with the wooden spoon. “You have to recognize an actual place or piece together the meaning of disparate images to form a message. Then you have to fix a date to it. The cat in the shadows could be me. The most likely person we know who would be in a tailor’s shop is Vai. The snow suggests some time between October and April.” I allowed myself to hope that I would rescue Vai and thus end up in a tailor’s shop waiting for him.

She flipped through the pages, scrutinizing several sketches of the academy. “The general told me the same thing. He is better at interpreting my dreams than I am. The Taino behiques were going to teach me what they know about dream walking after Caonabo became cacique. But of course instead I had to leave. Ah! Look.” She displayed a drawing of the headmaster’s study, with its mirrors, bookshelves, and chalkboards. The long table was usually piled with books and scrolls, but in the sketch the tabletop was set with five place settings, as for dinner. Seen from the back, I was dressed in a fashionably cut jacket and skirt. Bee pointed to a murky reflection of me in a mirror that also showed a red wreath hanging on the back of a door. “Here is a festival wreath with the sword of Mars, today’s festival. There is a lit lamp. Five people will be invited to dinner in the headmaster’s study after dark this evening, and you’ll be there.”

“I don’t recognize the clothes I’m wearing. Still, I suppose this will act in the nature of an experiment. We’ll have time to go to the law offices first.”

Rory strolled into the room wearing nothing but a towel and a smile. “Mmmm. I like porridge! Can we have some more of that sugar on it? Someday I want to pour sugar all over an attractive body and then lick it off—”

“Rory!” cried Bee, clapping her hands over her ears.

“Blessed Tanit!” I muttered as my cheeks flamed, for my thoughts did stray to my husband. I busied myself handing over a sober waistcoat and jacket of an ambivalent but sophisticated gray. “You’re not to wear any of Vai’s other dash jackets unless you ask me first. You can wear this one and the one you ruined.”

He gave me a look as reproachful as if I had called him a dog. “I’m not carrying that cursed chest if I’m not to be allowed to wear any of the extra-fine jackets.”

“Hush, you two,” Bee said. “While we’re gone, we’ll hide our things under the floor in the carriage house.”

We tidied up, closed down the stoves, and set the pot to soak. After explaining our errand, I returned the head of the cacica to the basket so we could take her with us.

We left the house by the back gate. Mid-morning delivery carts rumbled through the residential district, but otherwise the lanes were quiet. The farther east we walked, the busier the streets got. People hurried past with their faces painted red, headed for the festival procession. Many wore ribbons of the colors of the Tarrant princely clan, while others wore red-and-gold tabards to mark their allegiance to the god. Instead of looking excited and delighted, many appeared grim and even belligerent. Strangest of all, no one in the crowd was wearing the laborer’s cap that was the mark of radical sympathies.

Caught in the middle of a clot of people, we found ourselves pushed onto Old High Street. The wide thoroughfare led toward the district called Roman Camp where lay the main temple dedicated to Mars Camulos. With a clash of cymbals and a blast of trumpets, the festival procession marched into view. The sting of fire magic tamped down like buried coals gave spice to the air.

It was traditional for the guild of blacksmiths to lead the way, marching in ranks in their leather aprons and carrying nothing in their hands except the power of a blacksmith’s magic, which contained and channeled fire and thus transformed crude metals into the god’s weapons of war. Onlookers shifted back with suspicion and fear, for a conflagration might break out at any moment. Few of the blacksmiths were old, and all were male. I studied their stern faces with new eyes. No one talked about fire magic in Europa because it was considered too dangerous and volatile. Blacksmiths guarded their people and their secrets so securely that I had never truly understood what a fire mage could be until I traveled to Expedition.