Cold Magic (Spiritwalker 1)

I glanced in now, as I always did when I passed, wondering if the goddess would summon me to the court of truth at which all my questions about my parents would be answered. Our ancestors marked sacred ground with a lustral basin for washing at the entrance, an arcade of pillars, and a marble altar whose ceiling was the blessed heavens. The sign of Tanit, protector of women, face of the moon, both bright and dark depending on Her aspect, was carved on the gates, on each pillar, and on the altar stone.

In one corner of the enclosure, a pair of elderly priests in shabby robes shivered on the raised porch of the winter house. A veiled woman stood at the base of the steps. She held a birdcage in one hand and a basket covered with a scrap of linen in the other.

Bee kept striding, but the woman’s tense posture drew my gaze, so I paused to watch.

The supplicant set the laden basket down on the porch. The priests accompanied her to the altar stone. Their feet squeaked on the afternoon’s dusting of fresh snow. Their shaven heads and exposed ears looked shiny with cold. The drape of the woman’s loose robes hid the identity of the bird, but when they reached the altar and withdrew a turtledove from the cage with gentle hands, I knew the woman had come to ask for the blessing of a child.

Their bodies blocked the brief ceremony. One of the priests would break the bird’s neck; his arm moved sharply as he afterward cut off the head. Blood would be spilling on the stone, but the wind was blowing both smell and sound away from me. Probably the cold air was already congealing the blood. Feathers, bones, and flesh would be consumed in fire, while the priests would eat as their evening’s meal whatever provender the supplicant had brought in the basket.

“Cat!” Bee had stopped lower down on the walk.

Four street sweepers worked on the intersection beyond her. As I hurried toward her, my hands began to stiffen and my lips felt blue.

“What happened to you?” she asked, falling into step as I strode up.

“A woman in the temple made a burnt offering. Probably hoping for a child.”

“She’d be better served asking her physician to examine her husband for signs of pox.”

“Who’s heartless now? My father wrote… let me see…” I dredged words out of my memory. “ ‘Until the scholars can fully explicate how our actions in this world echo in the spirit world, we ought to assume any action may have repercussions we can’t predict.’ ”

She glanced at me, then veered toward the street sweepers—thin children younger than Hanan and as ill dressed for the cold as I was—and pressed a bronze as into the gloved hand of each startled child.

When she caught up with me, she spoke in a low, firm voice. “I admit there are forces in the world we do not understand. But the priests of our people are relics of another time. Still, even relics have to eat. I suppose there’s no harm in the offering if it comforts her and feeds them. So, do you think Maester Amadou likes me?”

“Why do you even ask?” I demanded, laughing.

She flashed me a triumphant smile as she linked her arm in mine. Her cheeks were bright with the cold. She’d pulled off her hat to give to me, and her hair spilled in unruly black curls to her shoulders. The afternoon’s dusting of snow made our passage easier as we walked downhill, but without coat or cloak, I was, like the impoverished priests, shivering deeply.

Where we passed the remains of the ancient town walls, the land dropped away into a wide hollow. Now filled with buildings, in ancient times it had been a harbor and marshland shore. The eastern hills lay smeared with a smoky pallor of coal haze in the failing afternoon light, but I could easily see the triple spires to the west that housed three of the mighty bells whose music made the city famous. A single high plinth, visible across the distance, marked the site of the village founded by the Adurni Celts when they had come to do business with foreign traders on the marshy banks of the Solent River.

“Look!” shrieked Bee, pointing.

Other students, walking in the same direction, halted and stared, then began to clap and cry out to alert others. For there sailed the airship over the eastern district of the city, visible from here because of the contour of the land. Like a bird, it moved in the air without plunging to earth, but it had such an astonishing shape, not like a balloon at all but rather like a balloon caught at opposite points and drawn out to an ovoid shape. Half cloud and half-gleaming fish, it floated against the sky as might a lazy, bloated creature so well fed it has no need to look for supper. A huge basketlike gondola hung beneath, and to our shock and delight, lines were tossed—barely visible as faint threads at this distance—to unseen people below. We watched as, hooked and caught, it yanked up against the tautening ropes, and the process of winching it down into the Rail Yard commenced.

“Best we hurry,” said Bee. “You’re cold.”

We made our farewells to the other pupils and turned left at the high walls of the long-abandoned tophet, whose gates were always locked. A coal wagon rumbled past. Serving women walked with baskets weighing heavily on their arms.

“That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!” cried Bee. “I can’t wait to draw it! Only I’ll give it a fish’s eyes and a mouth and tail. As if it were really alive!”

From the main thoroughfare and its shops, we turned into a residential district populated a hundred years ago solely by families of Kena’ani lineage and built to their preferences: balustrades along the upper-floor windows and colonnaded front doors. These days, a diverse group of households with common mercantile interests shared the district. It was a clean, prosperous neighborhood, safe even in the evening because of the recent installation of gaslight on the major streets. Fenced parks with handsome trees and shrubbery ornamented the small squares, each centered around a carved stone monument. After a brisk fifteen-minute walk in which Bee remained oddly silent, no doubt distracted by her memories of Maester Amadou’s dark eyes and the magnificent airship, we arrived at Falle Square and home.

When we reached the gate of our once-grand four-story town house, we closed the wrought-iron gate behind us and climbed the steps to the stoop. The door opened before we reached it. Aunt Tilly ushered us in with kisses and, after dusting the baking flour off her hands, helped us shed our boots and Bee her coat.

“Your cheeks are ice! Cat, how could you be so foolish as to run out without your coat?” She gave me a grave look. “I discovered them in the parlor this morning before anyone else was the wiser. Well, you’re just fortunate you never get sick.”

She herded us past the public rooms, which we rarely used once the cold weather set in, to the small sitting room in the back over the kitchen. The stove shed heat through the floor. The abrupt change in temperature made me sweat. After stepping downstairs into the kitchen to ask Cook to heat milk for chocolate, Aunt returned and sat between us on the threadbare settee. She chafed our stiff hands between her own warm ones.

“You’re looking bright, Beatrice,” she said to her daughter.

“We saw the airship, Mama!”

“Did you? And you, Catherine? You look darkly menacing, as if you are tumbling sharp-edged rocks through that busy mind of yours. Did the airship please you not so well?”

“No, it was spectacular. Bee is going to draw it but call it an airwhale, a mythical creature of the heavens.”

“But that frown is still there. What subject has set you thinking so hard?”