responses called from the crowd to questions or cues I did ndt recognize or hear. Brennan's attention had shifted entirely to the djeli's song, a tale familiar enough to wrap him in its weave. I was forgotten. Even Andevai's gaze drifted to the djeli, whose gold earrings glinted in the firelight as words poured out of him. The singer commanded the attention of every soul in the common room except mine, for I was floundering in the current of an unknown river.
Also, a faint rhythm not in keeping with the song nagged at my hearing. I stepped away from Brennan and pulled the supper room door open just enough to slip through, closing it after me. Kehinde and Godwik were deep in a technical conversation about katabatic winds.
Chartji looked up as I paused beside the table. 'Come to save me from these two and their interminable natural history? I can't abide rat music, I must confess, and I'm not tired enough to fall into a stupor.'
I raised a hand to ask for a moment's peace. The troll cocked up her muzzle and bent an eye on me as I crossed to the main window, unlatched one of the shutters at the base, and levered it away from the window. Cold exhaled from the bubbled glass, but I did not need the clarity of expensive glass to perceive that the distant scene of blurred blobs of light was in fact a phalanx of torches being borne along the road out of the south.
I leaned into the glass, night's chill a bite on my skin. I bent my concentration and listened past the tick-tick of sleety drops sliding off the roof to the ground and the creak of a stable door being shoved open and the burr of a pair of voices that, inside a shuttered house, were oblivious to what was going on outside. There! A party of rumbling feet and stamping hooves slowed
with hesitation as a young male voice called to them. At this distance, no person in this inn could have heard his words except for me.
'We're come from Adurnam. Did anyone arrive here before us?'
'A rider came before dusk from Adurnam. Foundered his horse to get here so quick. Is it true what he said? A ship came to Adurnam that sails in the air? And it's been destroyed by those cursed magisters?'
'It's true,' replied a different man in a grim voice.
'Are you with the Prince of Tarrant's wardens?'
'No. The prince went to the law court to try to get a legal ruling in his favor. Without a ruling, he's too cowardly to act against a mage House. But some of us aren't cowards. It's time the mages feel the sting of our anger. We've eyewitnesses among US who saw and can identify the cursed cold mage who did it. We almost got him in Adurnam, but he called down a storm and escaped.'
'A young magister has taken shelter at the Griffin Inn. It's got no veil of protection to keep you out. But you'll have to act fast to catch him unawares.'
My cheek burned against the glass.
A breath of summer's warmth eased in beside me.
'Trouble?' asked Chartji in a low voice.
I jolted back, banging my head against the shutter, then pushed its lower edge farther away so the troll could dip her narrow head in, glimpse the distant torchlight, and duck out again. There flowed from her muzzle a series of clicks and whistles, and Godwik's patter ceased on the instant. Kehinde, too, fell quiet; she shoved her sliding spectacles up her nose. I latched the shutters, feeling chilled to my core.
Chartji cocked her head at me, examining me with one eye, then the other. The movement was itself a question.
'Trouble,' I said intelligently.
'Legal trouble?' she asked, tilting her head in that trollish way. 'We're experts.'
'No. Not precisely.'
But I thought, What if I do nothing? What if I let them reach the inn, and what if they are indeed an illegal crew of radicals sent after Andevai Diarisso Haranwy? He has, after all, done a great deal of damage in Adurnam simply because the mage Houses detest the new technology, and he may be responsible for the deaths of people caught in the airship's destruction.
What if I do nothing and let them kill him?
Let them try. They had ridden all this way in pursuit knowing he was a magister. They'd sent a messenger ahead; they already had allies in town, maybe some already in the common room waiting to strike.
But Andevai would not stand idly by. He would defend himself, and it was not in the capacity of cold mages to distinguish the innocent from the guilty within the circle of their power any more than an ice storm can blister some trees in its path and leave others untouched.
If I did nothing, then it was the innocent people gathered in the common room listening to the djeli's tale who would suffer. Probably me, too. But them most of all.
'Peace upon you and all your undertakings,' I said to Chartji in the old Kena'ani way.
In perfect mimicry, she said, 'Peace upon you.'
I put out my hand and took her claw in farewell. 'I thank you for your hospitality. I will not forget it. Now I have to go.'
I ran to the door and tugged it open, and thanks be to Tank that Andevai looked up, and while I could not see my own expression, he could. We did not know each other at all, not really. We were strangers. But I looked at him, and he rose and spoke briefly to the old man as he stepped over the bench.
'Maestressa Barahal?' said Brennan, looking startled as I strode past him, as if he hadn't noticed me go back into the supper room.
'Fare you well,' I said to him over my shoulder. I met Andevai with every gaze in the place sidelong on us, no one wanting to be quite so bold as to stare directly on a cold mage.
He said in an undertone, 'What?' and I murmured, 'Torches, a big party,' and he said, 'This way.'
We walked to the back of the inn as the djeli rolled on with his tale. The innkeeper at his bar set down a pair of mugs as if he'd meant to offer them to us but thought better of it. Andevai pushed open the door into the kitchen, where a lass about my age looked up, red-faced, from the steam of a big kettle of some sickly sweet brew. Her eyebrows flew up as she gaped at us, but we were already through and out the back door into a kitchen yard coated in frost. I grasped my ghost sword, but I had forgotten my coat and gloves, and it was too late to go back because we were already committed. Out here under the cold sky, I could distinctly hear the clatter of hooves, although Andevai did not yet seem aware of the sound. He cast his gaze first toward the wall of the stables and then toward the woven hazel hurdle that fenced off the rest of the kitchen yard.
He spoke under his breath, as to himself. 'Where are those plague-ridden wraiths?'
He whistled four low notes.
I twisted the ghost hilt, and to my utter astonishment, the sword drew smoothly free. The naked blade gleamed, its length and weight perfectly balanced in my hand.
Its light cast an odd luster on Andevai's profile, making him look, for an instant, unsure rather than arrogant. As he stared at the blade, his gaze flared and his chin lifted belligerently. 'Where did you get that? That's cold steel. Only mage Houses forge and possess cold steel.'
There were many things I could and ought to have said, but instead I smirked. I might be dead by midnight's bell. This might be my only chance to gloat. 'It's my black cane. You never saw what it really was.'
He grabbed my right wrist, and I braced*, because I thought he meant to wrest the sword out of my left hand, but instead he tugged me after him to the gate of the kitchen yard.
'Do you know how to use it?' he asked.
'I'm a Barahal.'
He unbound the rope and shoved open the plaited gate. We staggered onto a muddy lane crackling with frost where wheels had left their imprints. The lane led away behind a block of row houses. He looked skyward, hearing clearly now the approaching hooves, the ring of harness, a man's call: 'There's the Griffin Inn!'
'They might be a party of innocent travelers caught late on the road,' he said as we trotted briskly down the lane toward open ground. The sky was overcast except in the north, where stars glittered.
'No. They're looking for you. They mean to kill you for destroying the airship.'
'We should never have stopped here. How well can you actually use a sword?'
Gracious Melqart, but the man had a knack for being annoying at the most inconvenient times!
'Barahals begin training at the age of seven. It's in the family, if you will, rather like cold magic runs in the House lineages.' Yet honesty compelled me, as if the sword's cold steel spelled my tongue. 'But I've never fought in anything but the practice hall.'
