Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

“Are his fire mages loyal to you, or to him?”

His hesitation was so brief that I noticed it only because I was strung to a high pitch. He smiled crookedly. “You perceive my situation.”

Drake strode into the attic from the other end. “Why did you rush away before I was done speaking to Cat? I want—”

“James!” His curt tone betrayed not a glimmer of disquiet. He might have been slapping down any underling. “Cat has business that will not be possible to manage once we’re on the move.”

He opened the door and ushered me into an attic room with a sloped ceiling, four windows, a dozen lit lamps, and six people sitting at a table writing or reading dispatches.

A man I did not know glanced up. “Ah, General! We’re just about done here. The Barahals have almost finished that cipher for your orders for Captain Barca.”

The Barahals. There were two people in the room I had once thought I had known, before the day they had thrown me to the wolves.

Uncle Jonatan didn’t even look up, so intent was he on a message he was turning into code. He had always been single-minded, more involved in his work than with his family, yet not a bad father for all that. His curly hair had entirely gone to silver since I had last seen him. The wrinkles in his forehead cut deep.

Aunt Tilly had paused to dip her quill in ink. Her face bore the beloved frown that meant she was considering how to stretch the turnips in the bin so no one in the house would go hungry. Her dark hair was pulled back in a bun and tucked under a scarf. Her merry, round face looked the same but for the dark circles under her eyes that spoke of hours of fretting. Yet she had always been able to dredge up a smile to hearten her children and ameliorate their disappointments, for just as Uncle Jonatan had remained engrossed in work, she had cared most about the well-being of those she loved.

Drake came up beside me in Vai’s stolen clothes. How I hated him! He put a hand on my back in a proprietorial manner that made me tense, and him smile.

“Why would you bring a spy to spy on spies?” he demanded of the general. “I know she plans to betray us, but what you mean to gain by abetting her I cannot fathom.”

eal’s ending gladdened me, for escape from Drake’s presence beckoned the way a street filled with the best fabric and tailoring shops calls to a fashionable woman with a limitless purse. Camjiata ushered me out of the room with a speed that took my breath away. Doctor Asante cut off Drake with a question that allowed us to get out the door, and the door shut behind us even before Rory could follow me. The general’s fingers pinched so hard I almost yelped.

“Wait before you speak,” he murmured.

He escorted me swiftly out of the hall and up a set of back stairs to a modestly furnished loft. Four young officers, one an Amazon, studied a table covered with maps. They acknowledged our entrance with salutes. He pressed me past them through an inner door into a long attic storeroom whose boxes and crates had been shoved back to leave room for bedrolls and gear. A window at the far end looked over the front of the market hall and the main square to an old stone castle tower rising above green trees.

Camjiata paused at a closed door that led into another room set in under the eaves. Hand on the latch, he paused. Long golden spears of late-afternoon sunlight lanced in through the window to illuminate his figure as in a portrait. As in a dream. His hair was pulled back and tied with an incongruously bright-green ribbon that matched the old-fashioned bottle-green dash jacket he wore, cuffs trimmed with lace.

He turned to address me with a serious look that quite disarmed me, for who would offer such a direct and confiding gaze to an enemy? His tone had an intimate color, as if despite everything he trusted me enough to speak his true mind.

“I need you to kill him. You’re the only one who can.”

40

This was what it meant to walk the dreams of dragons, for I had swum through this very moment when I had slept in the belly of the beast as we crossed the Great Smoke. That journey in the ocean of dreams had given me a brief taste of Bee’s gift. I was too astounded to speak.

Footfalls hammered up the back steps.

“But not until we defeat the Coalition and their Roman allies,” he went on, as if I had already agreed. “If we lose now, the mages, princes, and Romans will use their victory to crush the radicals and all dissent for another generation.”

“You created a monster,” I said.

“No, the monster created himself. Why do you think people hate and fear mages? Surely you can see their fears are not irrational. Still, young men are weapons that experienced men will wield. My weapon has proved more dangerous than I imagined. I doubt even Andevai Diarisso can stop him now.”

“Are his fire mages loyal to you, or to him?”

His hesitation was so brief that I noticed it only because I was strung to a high pitch. He smiled crookedly. “You perceive my situation.”

Drake strode into the attic from the other end. “Why did you rush away before I was done speaking to Cat? I want—”

“James!” His curt tone betrayed not a glimmer of disquiet. He might have been slapping down any underling. “Cat has business that will not be possible to manage once we’re on the move.”

He opened the door and ushered me into an attic room with a sloped ceiling, four windows, a dozen lit lamps, and six people sitting at a table writing or reading dispatches.

A man I did not know glanced up. “Ah, General! We’re just about done here. The Barahals have almost finished that cipher for your orders for Captain Barca.”

The Barahals. There were two people in the room I had once thought I had known, before the day they had thrown me to the wolves.