Cold Magic

“In’t that the truth!” cried the innkeeper as she swept in on the wings of Bee’s final words. She poured mulled wine into the tin cup we were sharing. “Always it is lords and mages who grind us under their well-shod feet. Shoes that were made by the likes of us, weren’t they? Yet we are tossed a pittance and told to be grateful for the work, while they parade in the avenues and rest on finest linen and crow in the city council. Who hears us?”

“Indeed!” replied Bee emphatically, with raised eyebrows. “They have curbed our mouths with bridles and bits! Thus are we silenced.”

“The very words of the Northgate Poet!” said the innkeeper. “I took you for radicals. For you clearly aren’t nightwalkers. If you don’t mind my saying so, you ought not be out so very late. Not with your looks, and on such a night with a picketing planned.”

Bee and I glanced at each other.

“I thought it would have started already,” said Bee, batting her eyes in that invitingly innocent way she had.

The innkeeper was a stout, healthy woman old enough to be our aunt. She smiled warmly on us in the way older women do when you remind them of their daughter. “Och, no, lass. Word just came round early today, that tomorrow morning, the Northgate Poet means to go sit on the council steps and refuse to eat until the city council agrees to seat council members elected from the populace.”

“That’s a radical notion,” Bee said, eyes widening with real surprise.

“No different than what happened in ancient days, in old Rome, so the poet has declaimed. Them who can read, can read it on broadsheets being posted. Maybe you saw the one we nailed up by the door. In old Rome, plebeians had their own tribunes and their voices were heard. So you can sure we in the city mean to go picket by the steps in support of the poet’s hunger strike. It’s just that the prince does not like crowds and is threatening to call a curfew. He’ll not touch the poet, of course. But he may strike at us! So folk are building up their courage for tomorrow’s picket by drinking, and drinking men are like to have wandering hands, if you take my meaning.”

“That’s just what happened, maestra,” Bee agreed with the smiling alacrity that made people adore her. I kicked her beneath the table, to warn her that she was overdoing it, and she trod so hard on my foot the pressure brought tears to my eyes. “We sneaked out because we wanted to see the protest. But now we’re frightened, and it’s too late to walk home.”

“Phoenician girls, aren’t you?” asked the innkeeper with a sigh of resignation that made her ample bosom heave beneath the stained apron she wore over her winter jacket and skirts. A man called a name, possibly hers. She glanced toward the door that opened into the common room and flagged the man standing there, husband or brother perhaps, with a wave. “How like your sort to educate their girls in books and neglect common sense. What are your families thinking to let you go walking alone? I suppose it’s just as possible you climbed out the window and never asked permission.”

I choked down a mildly hysterical laugh, thinking of our flight into the garden. But then I thought of Rory and covered my eyes.

“There, there, lass,” she said pettingly. “All will be well. You come back with me into the kitchens. My kitchen girls share a bed in the scullery. They’ll be up all night, for I don’t expect this crowd will leave until dawn, and then for the council square. You can sleep there.”

“That’s very kind of you.” Bee reached into her sleeve for our coin. “How much for your trouble?”

The woman had a frown so deep and unexpected on an otherwise good-natured face that it was like a hard frost falling in the middle of summer. “You paid already for drink and meal. This other I do for my daughters’ sake, so it would fall poorly if I took payment. I only ask you go straight home in the morning and give up this rash adventure. Bad things happen to girls out on the streets on their own. Anyway, it’s no good for my reputation to have you sitting here. I’ve had more than one drunken man ask me about the pair of you in that leering way men have. As if I manage the sort of establishment where I offer up girls as well as ale!”

“We ask forgiveness if our presence here has caused you any sort of trouble,” said Bee in her most unctuous tone. “We never thought we’d run into men who… who put their hands where they aren’t wanted!” Her blushing innocence would have shamed the most persistent suitor. I rolled my eyes, but the woman melted as rivers thaw beneath a glowing spring sun.