'It is,' said the troll as its toothy grin sharpened, 'but only we females.'
I stuck out my hand a little too jerkily. 'Well met, Chartji. I'm called Catherine Hassi Barahal.' The name fell easily from my tongue; too late I recalled I was someone else now, although I did not know who.
The featherless skin of its-her! — palms was a little grainy, like touching a sun-warmed rock. For an instant I felt the scent of summer in my nostrils, a whisper like falling water, the breath of cut grass and the juice of crushed berries. Then she let go.
'Interesting,' she said as she looked me up and down, as if she saw something surprising in my height, my hair, my eyes, or my features. 'Can it be you are a child of the Hassi Barahal house, originally established in Gadir? The old histories call your people 'the messengers,' known to bring messages across long distances in a short time. There's a branch residing in Hav-ery, founded by Anatta Hassi Barahal. The left-handed Bara-hals, they call them. I see you hold your… ah'-she seemed about to say one word but changed her mind-'your cane in your left hand.'
'Why, yes!' I laughed out of sheer surprise. Even in the cold common room, bereft of fire, the air felt abruptly balmier. 'Almost no one knows the ancient origin of our House. I'm from Adurnam. The Havery Barahals are cousins. My aunt's great-grandmother's descendants, in fact.'
'They are acquaintances of ours. Come sit, come join our clutch.'
I followed her into the supper room, eager to stay within the orbit of one who linked me, however tenuously, to my family. She was tall, as trolls were, a hand taller than Andevai, graceful on her feet, although her gait hitched strangely. She seemed unaware of the glances fired her way from the other two tables of diners, well-to-do merchants or artisans by the look ol their fashionable clothing, gold and silver necklaces and bracelets, and tiny leather charm cases sewn to their sleeves. Respectable people not happy to be sharing a supper room with a pair of trolls, even if the trolls were dining with people.
'I hope he did not insult you,' I murmured, feeling a flush creep up my cheeks.
'It's a common observation made by humans who are born with this property you rats call cold magic. Now, here are my companions. Catherine Hassi Barahal of the Adurnam Hassi Barahals is joining us for supper. And…' She did not turn her torso to look back toward the door but swiveled her head so far around to get a look behind that I gasped. The toothy grin flickered. 'My apologies,' she said, turning to face forward again as the two human companions hid smiles. 'I forget how that startles your kind.'
I did not need to turn to know that Andevai had not entered the room, because the fires warming the supper room and the candelabra lighting continued to burn merrily.
'Here is Maester Godwik. Rats, pay attention.'
The two humans at the table rose to offer hands to shake in the same radical manner.
'I am Kehinde Nayo Kuti,' said the woman in a very pure, mannered accent that betrayed her origins from one of the Mediterranean cities. She was small framed and black skinned, with her hair done in multiple braids and a pair of thick spectacles riding on the bridge of her nose. She wore robes sewn of strips of patterned fabric dyed in deep oranges and yellows and browns quite unknown in these northern climates but ones that made her glow in contrast.
The man was considerably taller, one of the pale Celts with blond hair cut short and a luxuriant mustache in the old style, a local by his easy manner and casual working man's dress of belted tunics and trousers. 'Just call me Brennan Toure Du.'
'Du? Thar means 'black-haired.''
'It's a long story, to be punctuated by a great deal of whiskey and several fistfights,' said Brennan with a charming smile, by which I understood I wasn't going to hear it.
Kehinde chuckled, and the two trolls chuffed, almost like wheezing.
'My apologies for not standing.' Maester Godwik looked slighter and shorter than Chartji, but instead of drab brown, he was feathered in vivid blue with a handsomely contrasting pattern of black and green along his elaborate crest. He raised a cane as in salute. 'Injury, I am sorry to say. Clumsiness comes with age. As the sages say, 'wisdom achieved at long last, but now too damned frail to climb Triumph Spire where the young bucks preen.' I am Godwik. A solicitor with the firm of Godwik and Clutch, with offices in Havery and Camlun and soon in Adurnam. Although if you are generous-hearted, you will not despise me on account of my having taken to the solicitor's trade. Is your companion not coming in?'
'Sit, if you please,' said Chartji to me, kindly meant.
I found abruptly that my knees were weak and my chest empty of air, because Andevai had been going to wield his magic to punish the innkeeper for his disrespect, but then after all, he had not done it. I sagged into a chair at the end of the table, with Kehinde and Brennan to my right and Godwik facing me. Chartji kindly brought a pitcher and basin so I could wash. After setting these items beside me, the troll hoisted a bottle, poured the remainder of dark liquid into an empty cup, and shoved it over to me.
'You're trembling,' she said. 'This should fortify you.'
I downed the contents of the half-full cup in one gulp. A sherry burned straight down my throat, so strong the rush blew through my head as Brennan laughed, the trolls grinned, and Kehinde handed me the last hank of bread. It was good bread wiih a crisp crust and moist insides, still warm.
The innkeeper bustled in with a tray so laden with bottles, cups, plates, and covered dishes I was amazed the entire edifice did not crash to the ground. He deftly unloaded a tureen of soup, a pair of bowls and cups and spoons, and two bottles of wine at our table before hurrying on to the demands of the other tables of diners, now staring askance at us as I set to on the soup rather like, I suppose, an infestation of locusts embodied in a single flesh.
'That reminds me,' said Godwik, 'of the time when I was a fledgling, and my bucks and I'-he nodded at Kehinde-'my age group, you know, any cohort of young cousins and neighbors hatched near the same time form an association for various enterprises-'
'My people have similar associations,' she replied, nodding.
'— decided to paddle the length of Lake Long-Water, as I'll call it in this language, although we call it something rather more complicated in our own. We planned to battle north into the very teeth of the katabatic wind. Our hope and intention was to reach the vast cliff face of the ice, which we, in our part of the world, call what could be simplistically translated to 'the Great Ice Shelf That Weights the North.''
'Have some more soup,' said Chartji, ladling out of the tureen in the most casual way imaginable, very neat- handed despite her claws, 'because this will take awhile.'
'Did I get off track?' asked Godwik, crest rising as his feathers flared.
'Just a bit, Uncle,' said Brennan with a grin that made you want to trust him.
'An expedition to measure the extent of the ice would be most valuable,' said Kehinde. 'If we could confirm that the ice shelf runs unbroken across the pole and could survey the southern face of the ice on the northern continents, we could calculate the surface extent of the ice. By comparing that to such
evidence as is available from ancient records, we might thereby speculate whether the ice face is stable or if it is shrinking or growing and by how much.'
'A venture is being assembled now, on the shores of Lake Long-Water, by a corporation of clutches,' said Godwik, and although it was hard to read emotion in his somewhat monotone and slightly slurry voice, there came about him a change, for I was pretty sure the addled tale-teller concealed a wickedly sharp mind beneath the prattle.
Kehinde leaned forward eagerly. 'You trolls may have better luck, then. The lords and princes of Europa have no interest in such an expedition, not since Camjiata's defeat. They do nothing but wrestle for precedence, useless parasites as they are. And, of course, the mage Houses continually place obstacles in the path of scholars. They sue our associations and academies to rob us of binding, and pressure their assemblies and local courts to agree to laws forbidding importation or manufacture of such new apparatuses as would make such ventures feasible. I'm so thrilled we'll be able to see an airship in Adurnam. There's a ship that can cross the ice!'
Heat flushed my face. I worked on at the soup, pretending more interest in my supper than in the conversation, and the soup was indeed very good, flavored with leeks, parsnips, salt, and a smattering of precious pepper.
'No one can cross the ice,' said Brennan with a brooding look. 'My grandfather was slaughtered by the Wild Hunt. He had been hired to assist a group of scholars attempting a reconnaissance of the Hibernian Ice Sheet in the northwest.'
