Cold Fire

“It’s just hard to imagine he really is a saber-toothed cat,” whispered Bee.

“I heard that!”

“Then don’t eavesdrop!” Bee called after him.

He padded up the main stairs toward the front entryway.

I went to the door, but the low passageway was empty, so I crossed back to the table. “That was certainly a disturbing story, but you must admit, Bee, we don’t know if it is true. Maybe Brennan was trying to frighten us into cooperating with them.”

She shook her head as she set a parsnip onto the cutting board. “Then he’d do better to ask why he and his comrades first met you while you were traveling in the company of a cold mage, when everyone knows cold mages are the enemies of Camjiata. Maybe he thinks we came here to spy on the radicals for the mage Houses.”

“It would be just as easy to say that Camjiata and the Hassi Barahal house set me to spy on the mages.”

“I wish that’s what Papa and Mama had meant to do with you. Sent you to spy on Four Moons House, I mean. I could forgive them for that.” She pulled a hand over her thick black curls and pulled them back as if to tie them in a tail, a gesture I knew meant she was troubled and nervous. “What I find so puzzling is why the general would walk into the city of Adurnam. He knows the ruling prince here is his sworn enemy. Doesn’t he fear he’ll be recaptured? How does he hope to get out of here without being caught?”

“All I know is the last place we want to be is in the same house as the most wanted man in Europa. Could you put that thing down before you stab me with it?”

She skewered me with a gaze that would have felled stout oxen, had they been unfortunate enough to cross her path. “I am a Hassi Barahal. I never put down the knife!”

I began to smile, but something in the tense way she began slicing the parsnip into even roundels killed my words.

She finally looked up with a crookedly trembling smile. “I don’t want to die like that.”

“Oh, Bee.” I hugged her despite the knife.

In the silence, a lamp hanging from a hook on the wall by the door hissed patiently as it consumed oil. The back door opened. I released her and grabbed my cane. She raised the knife. The red-haired man appeared in the kitchen door, cheeks ruddy from the cold. Seen close, he was younger and better-looking than I had thought, especially when he grinned to greet us.

“Salvete,” he said as he edged around the chamber, sticking close to the wide cupboard with pots, pans, and unchipped crockery set in neat display on its open shelves. One might almost think him leery of coming too close, although I could not fathom what might disturb him about two perfectly well-mannered young women, even if one was grasping a large kitchen knife and the other what must appear to be a polished black cane, the kind of ridiculous accessory carried by young men of wealth who were more concerned with fashion than utility.

“Peace to you,” said Bee. “Are you with the general?”

He reached the stove and held his gloved hands over it with a grateful sigh. “Whew! I just can’t get used to this cursed cold.”

“You’re not from the north?” Bee asked.

He looked pointedly at her knife. She set to work on another parsnip.

“I was born northwest of here, in fact. But I’ve been living as a maku in the city of Expedition for the last ten years. I’m Drake, by the way. James Drake.”

“I am Beatrice Hassi Barahal,” Bee said with her best queenly grandeur, “and this is my best beloved cousin”—she hesitated—“Catherine Bell Barahal.”

He offered a formal bowing courtesy, gaze shifting from her to me and back again. His eyes were so blue they were like a sizzle of bright hot light. “I must always be at the service of such remarkably pretty young women.”

Self-consciously, I smoothed my hands over the waist of my rumpled jacket and my well-worn and somewhat grimy riding skirt. I wasn’t used to such brazen compliments.

Bee’s stony demeanor cracked, and she responded with a smile that made his eyes widen. “But you must tell us more,” she said. “Expedition is in the Amerikes. How exotic!”

“Between North and South Amerike in the Sea of Antilles, to be exact, where the Taino and their fire mages rule. The winters aren’t cold there. Not like here, where cold mages rule beside princes and every soul lives under the shadow of the ice.” His fine blue gaze skimmed the length of my cane. “I can’t figure how a girl like you would be carrying cold steel. You’re not a cold mage.”

“Are you one?” I demanded.