Cold Magic

“My condolences on your loss, maestra,” I said politely.

Someone in the back muttered an imprecation, and people shook their heads with a frown.

“Ach, nay, lass,” she replied, touching an amulet that hung from a cord around her neck. “He’s not passed. The House captain liked his measure and how he sat a horse, so they took him into the company. We hope for some good to come of the connection. He’s not been allowed to visit home yet, but he sent money and a steer for his sister’s wedding.”

“He said he’d send for me,” said Emilia tartly, “but I’ve not heard one word since he rode off all high and proud. I suppose he’s too good for the likes of us now.”

“The lad will do what’s right,” said the innkeeper sternly.

“Until the House soldiers run afoul of radicals and he finds himself staring down a musket held by one of his own kinsmen!”

“That’s enough, Emilia!” said an older man standing in the back. With an expression that betrayed how ill used she felt, she stepped back as he went on. “Lads will make promises to lasses. You know how it is. Drink, duel, and dally. And a bit of livestock raiding when they’re bored. I don’t suppose you lost any cattle, did you, Maester Barr?”

This lame joke forced a few chuckles.

“Only the horse,” replied Roderic. As his grin widened, I was sure he was about to say something that would annoy and embarrass me. “And a very fine and handsome horse it was, to be sure. A glossy creature, more brown than bay, and exceedingly well groomed and ornamented.”

He was laughing at me with his cursed eyes as my cheeks went up in flames, although I was sure I did not know why.

“That reminds me of a song,” said Emilia.

The women laughed; the men groaned. But the fire was blazing and the night was long, and folk will want entertainment after the tedium of a day’s work. Emilia’s song detailed the amorous adventures of a water horse who fell in love—if love was the right word—with a series of young women who passed beside the lake in which the creature dwelled and from which he emerged in the form of a good-looking young man of exactly the right sort to catch a young woman’s fancy. She had a clear voice and a pleasing timbre, and every local knew the chorus, whose euphemisms about mounting and galloping embarrassed me. We did not sing these sorts of songs in the Barahal house. Rory caught right on and sang the chorus as if born to it.

In the laughter and pounding of tables that followed, I said, to no one in particular, “I thought kelpies drowned and then devoured their victims!” The words, innocently spoken, only caused the gathered folk to laugh even harder until I am sure my face was as red as if burned.

I retreated to the bartender’s domain as Emilia—like Bee, she enjoyed being the center of attention—began another song, this one mournful and dreary and containing numerous references to summer rain, sodden flowers, and dead lovers. The bartender was a young man who smiled sympathetically as I rested against the bar. He slid a mug of ale down to me, and I sipped, savoring the brew. Two men with distinctly foreign features approached the bar and asked for a drink. They spoke, haltingly, the formal Latin of the schoolbook, hard for locals to understand here in the north where three languages had been thrown into the same pot and stirred. They were obviously not southerners like the woman Kehinde whom I had met with Chartji; she’d been from Massilia, and whatever other languages she might speak, she’d spoken Latin with the flawless casualness of the native speaker. So had the trolls, now that I thought about it. Only Brennan had used the local cant.

“Salvete,” I said to the men as I set down my mug. Greetings.

“Salve,” replied the elder. The younger made a gesture of greeting, cupped hand touched to chest, but said nothing and kept his gaze lowered.

“You are come a long way,” I said politely, for they both had long straight black hair not unlike my own and complexions something like Rory’s, but with features so distinctive that I wondered where on Earth they had come from. They were not from around here.

“A long way,” agreed the elder. He seemed about to say more but stopped. From his expression, I thought it likely he was stymied by the language.

“You are from Africa,” I said to encourage him.

He shook his head. “From Africa, no. From Africa, we are not.”

“From beyond the Pale? In the east?”

“This I know not, this pale. My apologies, maestra.”

The younger addressed words to the elder in a language I did not recognize. Some of the words rang familiarly, but its cadence had a music of its own, entirely new to my ears.