beside him, but the door to the house had been shut and the curtains were all drawn. I bent in order to see the nursery windows on the third floor, and I was sure I saw a face staring out through the misty panes. The cold mage shuttered the window with a snap. Tears stung my eyes. I blinked repeatedly to drive them away.
The coach rocked as the coachman and the footman heaved on my traveling chest and settled themselves. 1 heard the clink
of coin or other objects changing hands as the old man was given a final offering and dismissed to find his own way home through the bitter night. The coachman slapped his whip against wood and then whistled. More smoothly than I imagined possible, the coachman eased into theacarriage court and turned the bulky equipage around. Then we rolled out onto the street, wheels rumbling on stone, returning the way they had come.
He opened the window on his side. I looked onto the square. The streetlamps gleamed, fading as we passed them and flaring back into life. Snow swirled over the grass and the familiar trees of the park: the oak tree we called Broken Arm because of the time Bee fell while climbing; the five groomed cypresses all in a row, like children in uniform lined up at school; the drowsing cherry tree, dreaming of next year's fruit. The stele showed her back to me, plain stone. Maybe I would never see the votive's serious face again. I shivered.
'Such gaslight will be outlawed soon enough,' he muttered, twitching a shoulder as if in discomfort as we passed yet another streetlight, which flickered. He closed the shutter, leaving us in the dark.
Or him in the dark, anyway. I could use the faint threads of magic that were stitched through the world to enhance my vision in the dark, just as I could listen for the hiss of the streetlight spurting back to life behind us.
He fingered his left cuff and drew out an object from the sharp creases, maybe a key or a scribe's knife, something formed out of one of the noble metals and small enough to fit lengthwise within the palm of his hand. He fiddled with it, then began tapping it against one thigh to one beat while he drummed lightly with his other hand on his other thigh to a different beat, three against two.
The coach rolled through unseen streets. The journey dragged
on for so long that my anger and fear began to congeal into a dreary sort of resentment. Yet run as it would, my mind could not come up with any reason why Aunt and Uncle had sold me to Four Moons House. My thoughts ticked over with the revolution of the wheels; ideas and bursts of anger and fear clattered in time to the fall of hooves on stone in counter-rhythm to the hiint patter of the cold mage's hands. What disaster had forced their hand? What contract had they sealed? What documents were in the envelope? Why had they done it, and why had they never warned me? Had the head of Bran Cof tried to warn me? Or maybe Aunt and Uncle weren't the responsible ones. Had my parents got into trouble and used me as surety to get out of it? Did this have anything to do with their deaths?
Fiery Shemesh! Had I really seen an eru?.
The personage sat there in the dark, silent but for the play of his hands, until I began to wonder if he even knew he was drumming.
A hundred cunning retorts and cutting stage lines lilted across my tongue, but I bit them down. Let him not believe me to be so cowed, or grateful, or honored that I would beg for any scrap of pity or kindness or, for that matter, some idea of what was going on and what might happen to me now.
I would not speak until spoken to.
We left the residential streets and entered a commercial district where I could hear the popping race of goblin chatter and conversations in a dozen variants of Latin. His hands stilled, and he seemed to be listening. A Greek demanded directions in his choppy diction. On the other side of the street, a man declaimed in stentorian tones, 'We must stand together. We must raise our voice. We must demand a seat on the city's ruling council. Our own councillors, elected by us, not appointed by the prince.' The Northgate Poet! Now, at least, T knew where we were.
I smelled the luscious aroma of coffee and heard the rumble of masculine conversation from inside a coffeehouse, where brew and the company of like-minded raconteurs could be imbibed, a place where a woman would never dare set foot. Farther away, handbells rang a rhythm and abruptly ceased. Close by, a peddler called, 'What do ye lack? What do ye lack?'
Answers, I thought. Questions.
The cold mage coughed into a patterned kerchief.
I sat up straighter, waiting for the words I was sure would come.
He lowered the handkerchief and resumed his drumming.
The coach rolled along thoroughfares that stayed alive after the fall of night. Beggars clacked for alms. Bells conversed: first an opening from the sharp tenor of the bell that guarded the temple dedicated to Komo Vulcanus, answered by a scolding bass out of Ma Bellona-Valiant-at-the-Ford, and the high, excited response of the sister temple towers, Brigantia and Faro by the river.
He brought the handkerchief up to his face again, but this time to cover the reek of urine and vomit off the street. I was made of sterner stuff. A flood of noise marred our passage down a street filled with lively evening life, the scent of spilled beer and the off-key singing of drunken men.
'Away with the oppression of mages! Why should they break our gaslights just 'cause they don't like 'em?'
'Nay, it's princes and their greedy kin who trample us!'
'You take your choice: taxes or fetters!'
'Nay! Nay! Let's call, like the Northgate Poet says: freedom or letters!'
'Oi! There's one of them bloody House coaches now. As you please, boys! As you please! We're many, and they're few.'
A heavy object slammed into the side of the carriage. I grabbed the seal to keep my place as a roar of voices mobbed
around us and began, with the weight of their bodies, to rock the vehicle back and forth. If my heart thundered, it was no more than what I hoped the horses would do: gallop out of there.
'Clear off! Clear off!' shouted our coachman, although how I could know it was his voice I can't say. It carried so.
Jeers and curses greeted his cry.
'See how you like the mud when you freeze yer pale white arse in it!'
I ip em over! 1 lp em over!
Maybe my teeth were chattering. 'What are you going to do?' I demanded.
His hands stilled. He'd shut his eyes!
Even cats can't see through wood. Nor could I. But I saw a spray of sparks, like Han fireworks spitting gloriously in five colors. A blue sizzle landed in my glove, as if it had spun right through the carriage walls, and it burned not hot but deadly cold as it seared my skin. Men screamed, more in fear than in pain, and the mob scattered as the vehicle lurched forward, throwing me sideways so I hit my shoulder and bit down a yelp. I would not cry in front of him.
My husband said, quite clearly, in his precise, cultured voice, 'A pox upon that cursed wraith!'
We rolled on. The blue sizzle popped and vanished.
'You are uninjured?' he asked stiffly. A spark pricked the darkness and expanded into a wan cold light by which he examined me with a frown.
I was shaking, and my shoulder ached, and I clung to the seat strap, wanting Bee beside me to face him down and wishing Aunt was there to smooth my hair and offer me a cup of hot chocolate, but…
But.
But.
But the truth was that I was trembling too hard to get anything out of my mouth.
I heard a chant rise in our wake like a nest of hornets maddened by smoke:
'Better to perish by the sword than by hunger!'
'Let princes and lords rot in their high castles with none to serve them!'
'Into the mire with them magisters and their foul cold magic!'
'I trust you are not too rattled,' he said in a clipped voice. 'Once we are out of the/city, it's unlikely we will have to endure any more such unfortunate disturbances.'
I thought of a hundred terribly clever and scathing rejoinders I might make to a man who could sit there
