Cold Magic

“Why?” I asked.

He spoke without looking at me. “I made a promise to myself that if I was not going to kill you, then no one would.”

“Very noble I am sure.” Musket fire popped in another street, startling me so badly I dropped a thick pane of glass, which broke in half at my feet. The street before us lay empty under a gray sky. “Then why delay by fixing this window? If folk see you here, or recognize your work for cold magic, the innkeeper and her people will suffer.”

“Catherine, the militia just rode past. We can’t go out quite yet. Anyway, people blame cold mages for everything. Cold magic is so commonly used to improve life that folk take it for granted.”

“It is?”

He rushed on without having heard me. “How few understand that cold magic saved most of them from a life of constant petty war and raiding. That it is the mage Houses that have secured them from the tyranny of princes.”

“Only to substitute their own tyranny. You’re the son of slaves, Andevai! Bound for generation after generation to serve a mage House. Whether bound by princes or mages, what difference does it make to those who want freedom?”

“What is freedom?” he asked bitterly, “and who is truly free? We are all bound by what we are, and where we come from.”

“Maybe,” I said slowly as I considered the turn my life had taken, the lies I had been told, “because we do not look farther than where we have been told to look. Perhaps it would all appear very different if we weren’t afraid of what we are. Or what we might become.”

He had cut his hand, blood smeared across one palm as he stared at me. He looked as if I had just struck him. I was rather struck myself. The words had come out, although I’d had no idea they were waiting on my tongue.

What was I most afraid of? Beyond the prospect of being hunted down and killed.

I was most afraid of being alone and unwanted.

“Cat, come look at this.”

I turned. While Andevai and I had been working at the window, Bee had evidently run back to the scullery to fetch our things. She stood bent over a table piled with our coats. Her sketchbook lay open as she drew with quick, measured strokes on the page. “I didn’t have time when we woke to think about what I’d dreamt last night, but now it’s flooding back. Under the gaunt ribs of a whale… no… sheets of fabric and twisted metal… scorched wood… They’re looking for something, digging in the wreckage….” The words emerged in ragged bursts, as if she were running and thus out of breath. “A man, tall, wheat-haired. With a mustache? I have never met him, but he knows you, Cat. He’s standing with a troll… laughing….”

“Brennan?” I said.

Abruptly, Bee’s hand stilled. Her eyes rolled up, and a shudder ran straight down through her body. She spoke in a deep, masculine voice, raspy with age. “The airship.”

I had heard that voice before, from a dying man. I stared at her, my skin prickling as with ice, and yet it was a pressure of warm air that pushed in through the remaining gaps in the casement, bringing with it the reports of musket fire and the churning roar of the riot gathering force in distant streets.

Andevai’s hand touched mine. The warm moisture of his blood trickled onto my skin. “Is there something wrong with her? That’s not her voice.”

For a moment, the touch of his hand and the comfort of his presence seduced me into tightening my fingers over his as I looked at him. “I think she’s talking about the Rail Yard.”

He stood very close, his expression not arrogant at all but focused, disciplined, and direct as he stared at me. Only at me. “What do you want me to do, Catherine?”

Kiss me.

I yanked my hand out of his and strode across the chamber. I grabbed Bee just as she shuddered and shook herself, tongue flickering out of her mouth in a way that was not quite human.

“Cat, the airship,” she said hoarsely in her own voice. The cold had cracked her lips, and she licked away a spot of blood. “Look. The snow. A thread of smoke, there. A festival wreath. It might be today. Look how short the shadows are. They’ll be there when the sun’s at its highest. We’ve got to go.”

“Of course.” I shut my eyes and envisioned a map of the city. We stood in the district called Cernwood Fields, and if we made our way through the Bitters and across Dog Isle past Eastfair Market…

“I know how to get there,” said Andevai.

“You don’t even live here,” I objected, opening my eyes. “You’re from the country.”