Cold Magic

“We must hand both young women over to the magisters?” asked Amadou.

“There’s terrible news. Camjiata has escaped his island prison.”

Bad news can strike with the deadly precision of a knife stabbing up under the ribs. In the entryway, Amadou Barry gasped aloud.

“The story goes that the girl may be crucial to efforts to track him down before he calls together a new army,” continued Marius.

“Catherine Hassi Barahal?”

“No. The other one.”

“But Four Moons House is trying to kill Catherine Barahal.”

“Do you know what my cousin, the prince, said to me? For you can be sure I said those exact words to him. He said”—here Lord Marius’s voice changed, as an actor’s does when playing a different role; in this case, he spoke in a reedy, nasal tenor meant as a satire—“ ‘one death cannot count against the tens of thousands who will come to grief if Camjiata rises again.’ And do you know what I said to him, Amadou?”

“You said,” interrupted Amadou, “that someone else could marry Beatrice who could keep her safe and secure.”

“I certainly did not! The sooner you purge yourself of this infatuation, the easier you’ll sleep at night. I said, that accepting the need for a mage House to secure the lass through magical binding, don’t they have other cold mages in their house who can marry her without having to kill the first one?”

I grabbed Roderic’s wrist and tugged him over to Bee as I spoke. “I’m coming to think this business of marriage is tremendously dangerous for young women. We have to get out of here.”

“Oh, good,” said Roderic. “I was getting bored. I can cause a distraction.”

Bee set her hand on the latch. “What manner of distraction?”

“You won’t believe it,” I said.

“You’d be surprised what I would believe,” she retorted. “I have actually read your father’s journals, you know.”

“He’s not my father.” I did not mean the words to come out so defiantly.

She looked at Roderic. “Be spectacular, Cousin.” The latch opened easily. Like everything in this house, it was well crafted and fastidiously tended. In the entryway, the two men were still arguing in low voices. From outside came the tik-tik of bare branches disturbed by a rising wind. Dusk, and then night, would hide us, but it would also become bitterly cold.

“We’ll draw attention without cloaks or coats,” I said, fingering the handle of my cane, now trembling with the hidden hilt of the ghost sword as night approached. “I have coin left, but what use is that to us if we freeze?”

Bee secured the sketchbook in her bodice. “Callie showed me where there’s a night market for cheap clothing. I also know how to get over this garden wall.” She swung a leg over the sill. “Let’s go.”

I looked at Rory.

“I’ll track you down,” he said.

I took hold of his hand. “They are soldiers.”

He smiled, looking supremely satisfied with himself. “So were the others.”

“Don’t kill him,” whispered Bee hoarsely. She grasped Rory’s hands with her own. “Please don’t…”

“Little cousin,” he said, “if it displeases you, then I would not dare.”

Bee nodded, slipped over the edge, dropped into the garden, and ran for the shelter of the nearest hedge.

“Rory,” I said, but the words were like whetted steel, too sharp to speak.

“I will keep them busy only long enough so you have space to run. Then I’ll run, too. But, Cat, if they were to cut my spirit from this flesh, I am not sure if I would perish in truth or merely return to my own land. You must not regret this. We are kin. I am bound to help you. Now go quickly.”

I kissed him on each cheek, then slipped over the sill and, ghost sword in hand, dropped down onto a graveled strip that ringed the house. How long ago that night seemed when I’d clambered over broken glass at the inn. Clearly I was fated to be spending an inordinate amount of effort escaping out the back through gardens.

I did not look back as I dashed into the shadow of the hedge where Bee was waiting for me. At the yew trees, I laced fingers together and made a brace for her foot; she climbed. Once she braced herself in a perch, she pulled me up after. Branches dragged at my clothes. Leaves like the kiss of thin, cold lips pressed against my cheeks. As we surveyed our next move, a clamor erupted from the house.

She climbed up on my shoulder and heaved herself to the top of the wall. With her own weight as counterbalance, she hauled and I scrambled up beside her. Poised on the wall’s crest, we scanned the dim expanse of the garden behind, the garden before, and the buildings—stables below and loft above—that abutted the mews.