thus transformed crude metals into the god’s weapons of war. Onlookers shifted back with suspicion and fear, for a conflagration might break out at any moment. Few of the blacksmiths were old, and all were male. I studied their stern faces with new eyes. No one talked about fire magic in Europa because it was considered too dangerous and volatile. Blacksmiths guarded their people and their secrets so securely that I had never truly understood what a fire mage could be until I traveled to Expedition.
Had James Drake tried to join a guild of blacksmiths, only to be turned away? Or had his family refused to allow it because as nobles they thought guild work beneath him?
A man in the last rank looked at me, his brow creasing as he dropped a puzzled gaze to my cane.
Blessed Tanit! It hadn’t even occurred to me to protect the cane from the sight of blacksmiths, who could see its cold steel with their fire-limned sight. We worked our way down until we found a place where we could dodge across the street. Carts passed, decorated with festival tableaux that included actual people standing in martial poses made famous by the old tales: Caesar’s victory at Alesia over the Arverni princes; the death of an Illyrian prince who had rebelled against Rome; the surrender of General Camjiata to a mage, a prince, and a Roman legate after the Battle of Havery. Certainly the festival had taken on an overwhelmingly Roman air! The usual tableau of the Roman legions kneeling in defeat at the battle of Zama before the Dido of Qart Hadast and her general Hannibal Barca was nowhere to be seen!
A line of drummers flew a rhythm along the street. Dancers wearing ram masks and ribbon-festooned ram costumes stepped alongside. Behind drummers and dancers rode a troop of turbaned mage House soldiers. Banners of light woven out of cold magic floated above them. The streaming gold banners were meant to impress the populace, although I thought them shabby compared to what embellishments Vai could manage. The magic whispered my sword awake.
Behind the soldiers rode the Tarrant militia, and behind it marched infantry with a legion’s eagle standard held proudly at the front of their ranks. The famous Roman Invictus cavalry in their red-and-gold capes brought up the rear. Fourteen years ago the Invictus had driven General Camjiata’s stubborn Old Guard into the river at the Battle of Havery and forced the general to surrender. No wonder we had seen the Havery tableau today.
In the shadows of alleys and under thresholds, folk with sullen expressions watched the parade but did not cheer.
Bee tugged on my sleeve. “
The man riding at the head of the cavalry was a good-looking fellow with a clean-shaven face, hawk’s eyes, and gold earrings gleaming against his black skin. Bee’s rosebud lips mouthed his name.
His roving gaze sought trouble in the crowd. Looking our way, he saw her. He rocked back in the saddle. Recovering, he turned to demand the attention of the bluff soldier riding next to him, his brother-in-law Lord Marius.
“Pull your scarf over your head and keep out of sight,” I said, wrenching Bee around as I indicated the nearest alley with my chin. “That way. Meet me in Fox Close. Go!”
I wrapped myself in shadow and dodged into the procession. The pounding of drums and blaring of horns washed over me. The masked dancers in their ram costumes spun as if I were a wind blowing through them. The men under the masks were blind except to the drums, but the ram spirits who flowed within the masks saw me. Their eyes were mist and ice, gleaming with power. They scraped the ground in a mocking greeting, and folk clapped and whistled as if the sweep of bows were part of the dance.
Their rumbling spirit voices whispered in the air. “Cousin! What do you hunt here? Why have you come?”
They could cut my concealing threads with their sharp spirit horns, but they let me pass unmolested. I sidled up alongside the horses in time to hear Lord Marius shouting to be heard above the drums.
“You need to give her up, Amadou! It’s been over a year since you saw her. You’re seeing the ghost of what you wish you’d had, now that you’re betrothed. If you’d wanted her that much you should have offered her marriage.”
“Against my aunt’s wishes and every sensible consideration? To an impoverished Phoenician of disreputable birth? Who turned out to be an agent of General Camjiata all along? I think not!”
“Then be sensible and let it go. You just saw someone who looks like her.”
“I’m sure it was her! We know the general means to return to Europa someday. Why not now? Look! There she is! Bring her to me!”
As he pointed toward the alley, I darted to the head of Legate Amadou Barry’s fine steed. Two slices ruined the bridle. His grip on the reins went slack. I ducked under his mount’s neck to deal the same damage to Lord Marius’s tack, although the animal rolled its eyes and pranced away from my scent. I cut my way through the troop, leaving a trail of sheared girths and tack. The drumming beat a pulsing rhythm around us as the dancing line moved on down the street while the beleaguered troop bottled up the road. Soldiers had to dismount to steady their horses.
Lord Marius scanned the trail of my invisible passage through the troops and into the crowd as a man follows the swirl of leaves. With gestures I could see and commands I could not hear, he sent soldiers scrambling after me.
Still wreathed in shadow, I clambered up onto a barrel and shouted, “Have you let yourselves be beaten down by fear? Shame! Shame! Have you already forgotten the words of the Northgate poet? Was it for nothing that he starved himself on the steps of the prince’s palace to demand new laws for the common people? A rising light marks the dawn of a new world!”
A gun went off. I escaped along a side street. A clamor of rocks being thrown and glass breaking serenaded me, but the sounds faded as I fled. I was winded by the time I fetched up on Enterprise Road, panting loudly enough that passersby looked around to see who was breathing like a steam engine. I leaned in the stoop of a closed shop until I caught my breath, then made my way to Fox Close. There was something odd about the neighborhood, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.
The lane was lined with modern gas lamps, although naturally they were not lit during the day despite the overcast gloom and smoky pallor. The lane lay deserted except for a man loitering at the corner with a hat pulled low over his brow. I did not see Bee and Rory.
I walked right past the law offices. When I retraced my path, no business sign met my eye, only a boarded-up house where the sign of orange letters against a feathery brown backdrop had once proclaimed GODWIK AND CLUTCH. The sign was missing; it had been taken down.
I mounted the steps. The door had been staved in with what appeared to be axe blows, then repaired with planks hammered over the rents. I jiggled the latch and found it unlocked. Cautiously I pressed it down, but remembered before I opened it that it would look awfully strange if anyone caught sight of the door opening by itself. It was quiet along the street, every window shut.
The man at the end of the lane vanished, stepping out of sight onto Enterprise Road. I opened the door and slipped inside. A muted light filtered from streaked mullioned windows above the door, illuminating the stairs that led up to the shadows of the first floor above. A tall mirror had been set on the stairs to catch any movement into or out of the house.
Trolls used mirrors in the complicated mazes they drew around their nests. I could not walk in a troll maze, nor could the Wild Hunt enter one because the confusing tangle of shards and glints woven into a troll maze cut the threads of shadow from the spirit world. I had saved Bee by sending her to troll town in Expedition, where the Wild Hunt could not reach her.
This was no part of a troll maze. This was a djeli’s mirror, like the one on the first-floor landing of our old home. In such a mirror, a djeli could see into the spirit world.
My image stared back at me, caught in all my surprise and consternation. Shadows coiled around me like living things leashed to my flesh. I resembled the spinning dancers in their wreaths of flowing ribbons. A silver cord stretched from my heart into the silent depths: the magical chain that bound me to Vai. I had never before seen it so clearly. I took a step forward and brushed fingers over the surface of the mirror where it seemed the glowing cord cut through into the other side. Where my fingers touched, they slid as into water, pulling through a viscous liquid neither cold nor hot but exactly the same temperature as my skin.
“Andevai’s bride! This I did not expect.” A djeli spoke from within the mirror.
