Cold Magic

the lock and go in! And then when he ran after to check, the door had been frozen shut!'

'We mean to go in ourselves and see, maestressa,' said a burly man wearing a blacksmith's apron. 'Just step aside, and no harm done to your pretty face.'

I grabbed Bee's wrist before she could run forward and do something rash like slug a blacksmith. Glancing around, I did not see the innkeepers, but I heard footsteps ascending the stairs. Bee and I were alone against the mob.

'I will not allow you-' began Bee.

The boom of repeated musket fire cracked over her words, and we both ducked. Down rolled the thunder of hooves, screams and shouts and voices aflame with panic and rage. The crowd before us dissolved like salt stirred in water as two ranks of mounted militia wearing the green Tarrant jackets galloped up the street with swords flashing and muskets smoking. We watched helplessly through the fractured casement as men went down beneath the bright blades. The blacksmith hit the mul-lions and collapsed across the sill. A lad, blood bubbling up

through his hair, staggered, screaming, toward the window and fell before he reached the safety of indoors. The crowd scattered; the soldiers rode on, leaving the reek of fear and destruction behind them.

Then Andevai was in the room, striding past me to the window. He grabbed the body and heaved it out. He grabbed up big shards of glass from the floor and held them up to jagged edges. The temperature in the room dropped so precipitously that my eyes stung and my mouth went dry, teeth chattering. He knit the glass together, bent to pick up larger pieces, spinning out an icy frame in which to hold it.

I dashed forward to grab up shards and hand them to him, to make the work go more quickly. On the street beyond lay the two bodies before the window, and three more within view, two sprawled lifeless while a third, a man wearing a cap trimmed with a red ribbon, dragged himself along the cobblestones like a rat with broken hindquarters. Two women ran out from a building and hauled the red-capped man inside their door, him whimpering in a way to set me so on edge that I had to gulp down a sob.

'Why are you doing this?' I said, finding a measure of calm in our pointless and rather idiotic task.

'Broken things must be fixed,' he said. 'Also, if the front is closed up, looters and thieves are less likely to come inside.'

'I mean, why follow us back here?'

'Because you didn't come after me when I left,' he said. 'And I heard the shouting and the crash.'

'You could have walked into a killing mob.'

'Yes.'

It was so cold standing next to him that I might as well have been immersed in a snow bank, but I kept bending and handing, bending and handing, and the effort kept a core of warmth in my body. He remained intent on the glass, spreading in its

patchwork frame back across the gap more quickly than I would have believed possible. I could not discern what he was doing without a mirror to watch him in, but somehow he was able to knit the glass together by tracing the breaks with a hand.

'Why?' I asked.

He spoke without looking at me. 'I made a promise to myself that if I was not going to kill you, then no one would.'

'Very noble I am sure.' Musket fire popped in another street, startling me so badly I dropped a thick pane of glass, which broke in half at my feet. The street before us lay empty under a gray sky. 'Then why delay by fixing this window? If folk see you here, or recognize your work for cold magic, the innkeeper and her people will suffer.'

'Catherine, the militia just rode past. We can't go out quite yet. Anyway, people blame cold mages for everything. Cold magic is so commonly used to improve life that folk take it for granted.'

'Itw?'

He rushed on without having heard me. 'How few understand that cold magic saved most of them from a life of constant petty war and raiding. That it is the mage Houses that have secured them from the tyranny of princes.'

'Only to substitute their own tyranny. You're the son of slaves, Andevai! Bound for generation after generation to serve a mage House. Whether bound by princes or mages, what difference does it make to those who want freedom?'

'What is freedom?' he asked bitterly, 'and who is truly free? We are all bound by what we are, and where we come from.'

'Maybe,' I said slowly as I considered the turn my life had taken, the lies I had been told, 'because we do not look farther than where we have been told to look. Perhaps it would all appear very different if we weren't afraid of what we are. Or what we might become.'

He had cut his hand, blood smeared across one palm as he stared at me. He looked as if I had just struck him. I was rather struck myself. The words had come out, although I'd had no idea they were waiting on my tongue.

What was I most afraid of? Beyond the prospect of being hunted down and killed.

I was most afraid of being alone and unwanted.

'Cat, come look at this.'

I turned. While Andevai and I had been working at the window, Bee had evidently run back to the scullery to fetch our things. She stood bent over a table piled with our coats. Her sketchbook lay open as she drew with quick, measured strokes on the page. 'I didn't have time when we woke to think about what I'd dreamt last night, but now it's flooding back. Under the gaunt ribs of a whale… no… sheets of fabric and twisted metal… scorched wood… They're looking for something, digging in the wreckage…

' The words emerged in ragged bursts, as if she were running and thus out of breath. 'A man, tall, wheat- haired. With a mustache? I have never met him, but he knows you, Cat. He's standing with a troll… laughing… '

'Brennan?' I said.

Abruptly, Bee's hand stilled. Her eyes rolled up, and a shudder ran straight down through her body. She spoke in a deep, masculine voice, raspy with age. 'The airship.'

I had heard that voice before, from a dying man. I stared at her, my skin prickling as with ice, and yet it was a pressure of warm air that pushed in through the remaining gaps in the casement, bringing with it the reports of musket fire and the churning roar of the riot gathering force in distant streets.

Andevai's hand touched mine. The warm moisture of his blood trickled onto my skin. 'Is there something wrong with her? That's not her voice.'

For a moment, the touch of his hand and the comfort of his presence seduced me into tightening my fingers over his as I looked at him. 'I think she's talking about the Rail Yard.'

He stood very close, his expression not arrogant at all but focused, disciplined, and direct as he stared at me. Only at me. 'What do you want me to do, Catherine?'

Kiss me.

I yanked my hand out of his and strode across the chamber. I grabbed Bee just as she shuddered and shook herself, tongue flickering out of her mouth in a way that was not quite human.

'Cat, the airship,' she said hoarsely in her own voice. The cold had cracked her lip's, and she licked away a spot of blood. 'Look. The snow. A thread of smoke, there. A festival wreath. It might be today. Look how short the shadows are. They'll be there when the sun's at its highest. We've got to go.'

'Of course.' I shut my eyes and envisioned a map of the city. We stood in the district called Cernwood Fields, and if we made our way through the Bitters and across Dog Isle past Eastfair Market…

'I know how to get there,' said Andevai.

'You don't even live here,' I objected, opening my eyes. 'You're from the country.'

'I studied maps. Your face is bleeding, Catherine.'

Bee shoved my coat into my arms. 'You can argue later.'

I laughed. I am sure I sounded on the edge of lunacy, soon to be howling at the moon, as I tugged on coat and gloves. We pushed through the wreckage of tables and the splintered door. As we paused on the street, deserted but for the four sprawled and bloodstained corpses, Andevai absentmindedly licked the wound on his thumb. I gingerly brushed my gloved fingers over the cut on my chin, which I had thought healed over. A drop of blood beaded on the leather from the reopened cut, and all hough I had not meant to, I raised my hand and touched