Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

The entry hall lay empty, not a single pupil scurrying late to class under the frieze with its princely white yam, winter wheat, towering maize, and other carvings of plants. Another arch led me into the glass-roofed central courtyard. No one was about. Rain pattered an erratic drumbeat on the glass roof. Although it was early spring, a scent like summer kissed my lips, the smell of the spirit world sensed through the water in the ancient sacrificial well at the center of a paved labyrinth. The blood of sacrifices offered generations ago stung at my nostrils. A year and almost three months ago, Bee and I had fallen through the well into the spirit world. I paused now in the quiet courtyard, looking toward the well, which was covered by an iron grate. My blood would open a path from here into the spirit world, but how would I find Vai in all that vast and changing landscape?

Bee was right: The headmaster knew more than he had ever let on. We had to talk to him.

In a rush of clattering footsteps, a crowd of boys and young men swept into the courtyard, all chattering excitedly. They were dressed in old-fashioned robes cut in the fashion of boubous, a plain drapery of muted colors designed not to excite the eye. I caught snippets of words, and it seemed they had been out to watch the festival procession. Although they had not witnessed the disturbance I had caused, rumor of its occurrence had spread. When an older man with blond hair and the ruddy features of a heavy drinker entered the courtyard at the tail end of the procession, they all hushed so quickly that the voice of the one poor boy who hadn’t noticed rang out.

“—They heard a voice say, ‘A rising light marks the dawn of a new world.’ ”

As proctors carrying willow wands converged on the hapless speaker to whip his hands, I looked in vain for a line of girls. I was the only woman in the glass courtyard; no female proctors or servants flocked at the edge of the shuffling horde of youths. The overly talkative boy was biting his lip so as not to cry out under the humiliating punishment as everyone stared.

I could not bear to watch, and anyway, I needed to find the headmaster. A staircase led up to the long corridor and the closed door of his study. The well-oiled latch eased down with a soft click. I slipped inside.

For an instant I thought I had accidentally walked through the wrong door into the wrong room, because nothing in the spacious chamber looked as I remembered it. The chalkboards and desk had vanished, replaced by gilt-embroidered chairs that looked as uncomfortable as they were showy. The bookshelves had been cleared of all their books and scrolls, and they now displayed gold cups, gold bowls, and brass or silver wine flagons. One bookcase held nothing but a grisly collection of skulls, arranged from the largest at the top left to the smallest at the lower right, which horribly seemed to be a baby’s actual skull. On the long table lay not a dinner service for five but so many empty wine bottles and empty glasses I did not bother to count them. Only the circulating stove set into the fireplace and the pedestal holding the head of the poet Bran Cof remained from the last time I had entered this room. It surely did not look like the study of a scholar with the many diverse interests and formidable intellect of the headmaster. It took no great acumen to suspect that he had been replaced as master of the academy.

The skulls stared hollow-eyed at me in stubborn silence. The head of the poet Bran Cof sat atop the pedestal in a stony slumber, his brow furrowed with deep thoughts and his lips pinched closed over all the poems and legal knowledge he had hoarded throughout his famous life. With his hair sticking up in stiff spikes and his bushy eyebrows a little raised, he looked noble and magnificent and just a trifle startled, but I knew he was a filthy-minded and staggeringly unpleasant old man who tried to bully young women into kissing him. His body was imprisoned by my sire, who could not only command the poet but also see through his eyes and speak through his mouth. If I woke the head, would my sire reach through him and trap me with the chain of his voice, as he had before?

I had to risk it.

And I knew just the way to wake him up.

Emphatically not with a kiss. I shattered one of the wineglasses on the table and pricked my arm enough to draw blood. This bead I smeared on the head’s lips and eyes. The cold grain of his face smeared and smoothed into warm flesh. His eyelids fluttered, then popped open with a look compounded as much of fear as of anger.

“You fool! What do you mean by waking me with blood?”

“I need to ask you some questions.” I took a step back, for the transition from stone to flesh disturbed me.

His gaze sharpened to a leer as he recognized me. “The girl whose eyes are amber. Woken with kisses, I see. You have the look of a woman about you now, shaped by a man’s caresses. Did you escape the marriage, or embrace its carnal pleasures?” His tone had a greasy unctuousness that made me want to wash myself, but fortunately a new thought struck him before he started quoting obscene poetry as I was sure he was about to. Instead, he glanced around with an expression made comical by its wild exaggeration. “Where is the serpent? Where is she hiding?”

“My cousin? I will bring her to torment you if you do not answer my questions. Have you seen my husband? The Master of the Wild Hunt stole him from me.”

A look of cunning creased his features. “I can offer you pleasures the man will surely not have thought of. If you’ll just come a little closer…” His tongue moistened his lips.

I lost my patience and my temper. “Do you really think comments like these make me find you attractive? Or are you deliberately trying to put me off? I love him. If you have the least sliver of a human heart left to you, help me find him. Then you can compose a poem about our travails and triumph!”

His face went so still that for several shaky breaths I thought he had fallen back into sleep.

But he blinked, and spoke in an altered tone, like an impatient teacher scolding a student who is slow to learn. “Best hurry, kitten. You should not have woken me with blood, for the masters crave it and will come seeking it the instant its scent reaches their grasping claws. As it will.”

“I thought my sire was the only master. You serve him, but surely you don’t feed him with your blood.”

“The hunter takes souls, not blood. It amuses him to keep me, because of my knowledge of the law. I was not sacrificed to the courts. Instead I was imprisoned in this terrible state, head separated from body.”

“Yes, I met your body in my sire’s palace.” I shuddered, remembering the way Bran Cof’s headless body had stumbled to serve his master’s bidding. With a gasp, I raised a hand to my mouth. “Blessed Tanit! What terrible thing might my sire do to Vai?”

“You know nothing about the courts and your sire, do you?”

Lowering my hands, I took a threatening step closer. “Tell me what you know!”

His sneer turned mocking as he looked me up and down in a most intrusive way. “For each kiss you give me, kitten, I’ll tell you a secret.”

I lifted the shard of glass. “Tell me what I want to know, or I’ll smear my blood all over your face for the courts to suckle dry!”

His lips pulled back in a horrible grimace, yet he also laughed with a slightly hysterical rasp. “You know not of what you speak, girl. The spirit courts crave mortal blood, for blood gives them protection from the tides and allows them to sustain their power. You cannot challenge them.”

“We shall see about that!”

It wasn’t until the latch clicked down that I realized I heard voices. It was the work of a moment to hide myself in shadow as a servant showed two men into the room.

Lord Marius and Legate Amadou Barry had come looking, just as Bee and I feared. They did not see me, nor did they notice that Bran Cof’s eyes were tracking them, because Amadou Barry walked straight to the tall windows so he could look out over the rose garden, and his brother-in-law followed him without looking around.