Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

Brennan was tapping his thigh rather as Vai did when he was wound up, counting a drum rhythm as if it helped him focus. “We will have to leave Sala tonight regardless, before the ghana can close the roads.” He opened the window.

Dusk bled darkness over a street of tightly packed row houses. The carriage slowed, and Brennan cracked open the door. As we passed the awning of a hat shop, he jumped out and caught Bee as she sprang after him; I leaped likewise, and dashed through the open door. The elderly shop attendant nodded as I followed Brennan and Bee through the front room and out the back into an alley.

Several streets over, we entered a humble, whitewashed inn whose front room was swept clean of customers. A young woman wearing a head wrap, wool gown, and calf-length leather vest was bent over the stove, lighting a fire. She carried a baby in a sling against her back.

As the door creaked open she said words in the local dialect that I understood as “We’re closed.” When she glanced up she switched to the bastard Latin common among laborers who had to speak to people from different regions of Europa. “In the back upstairs. Ye was never telling us ye mean to be bringing a cold mage who would be killing all the fires in the house, did ye?”

“My apologies, Maestra.” Brennan gestured for us to go ahead. “We intended no inconvenience. I must warn you, there’s been fighting at the livestock market.”

“Angry Carnonos!” She stood with a gasp of outrage. “My brother is gone there! If the ghana’s men come searching, ye cannot be staying…!”

Bee drew me down a passage and past a kitchen where a woman was cursing most alarmingly about plague-ridden cold mages, and thence into a back wing of the building.

In a chilly passageway she took my face in her hands, forehead wrinkling as she peered at me in the dim light. “Is all well? You escaped the spirit world unscathed and unbound?”

“Not unbound, but unscathed except for the ruin of one of his favorite dash jackets.”

With a hiccupping laugh she crushed me against her in an affectionate embrace. “Oh, Cat! I’ve had all sorts of adventures but I felt so lonely without you.”

I pulled her hands down and squeezed them. “Not as lonely as all that, it seems. Answer me truly! Is there something between you and Brennan?”

Her hesitation told me everything I needed to know.

“Blessed Tanit! Are you sleeping with him?”

Her fingers tightened on my hand. “We have been traveling together for months. I must say there are benefits to being a young woman who knows she is barren, when it comes to activities of the amatory sort. But I’m not in love with him, not in that way. We’re more like attentive companions.”

“Attentive companions! Are you telling me you’re engaged in a companionably attentive affair with one of the most notorious and dashing radicals in Europa?”

“Shh! Lower your voice. This isn’t the place to have this conversation!”

“Does he want to marry you?”

“Strangely, Cat, not every man wishes to marry me, starting with your husband and ending with Brennan Du. I find it’s a relief to negotiate a relationship that is based on respect and friendship rather than all this overheated romance.” Her voice dropped so low I had to lean my head against hers to hear. “The truth is, he’s been in love with the professora for years, but she is married. I heard Brennan and Kehinde arguing once. She admitted that she dislikes her husband. It was a marriage arranged for her at a tender age. You would think an intellectual of such radical sensibilities would take it upon herself to shed such imprisoning traditional customs, but she refuses to do anything that would bring dishonor upon her family.”

“There’s a great deal I do not understand about this situation!”

Brennan’s laugh floated from the kitchen, where he was evidently soothing the cook.

“I do not want to be discovered gossiping with you!” Bee finished, dragging me on.

Upstairs, at the very back, we entered a modestly furnished dining chamber lit by cold magic and cooling rapidly. Rory lounged under a blanket on a threadbare couch situated beside the brick chimney and its dead fire.

Vai rose from a chair. “Catherine! You look… confounded. Was there trouble? Beatrice! Is all well with you? Have you peace and good health?”

Bee kissed him on either cheek in the effusive Kena’ani manner. “Andevai! Here you are! What a startling color that dash jacket is! Please allow me to tell you how very glad I am that you are back with us.”

“My thanks, Beatrice,” he said stiffly, taken aback by her enthusiastic welcome and perhaps wondering if she disliked his new garment. The distinctively rich orange-red damask did look well on him. Because the sleeve length was just right, I wondered if the tailor had shortened the sleeves on the green jacket on purpose so he wouldn’t wear it. “Catherine has been worrying about you.”

“Of course she has! I’m sorry to say we had trouble today. A violent altercation broke out between the ghana’s troops and some loitering trolls.”

Rory whistled under his breath. “Glad I missed that.”

“I am sadly sure the town is in for a very bad night. Can you and Cat be ready to depart within the hour, Andevai?”

He took my hand and looked me up and down to make sure I was all right before releasing me. Footsteps in the hall brought me around with my sword half drawn.

Brennan entered the room. “Magister, next time we’ll bring you in through the stables so you don’t put out all the fires. Can you be ready to leave within the hour?”