Cold Magic

“Look!” shrieked Bee, pointing.

Other students, walking in the same direction, halted and stared, then began to clap and cry out to alert others. For there sailed the airship over the eastern district of the city, visible from here because of the contour of the land. Like a bird, it moved in the air without plunging to earth, but it had such an astonishing shape, not like a balloon at all but rather like a balloon caught at opposite points and drawn out to an ovoid shape. Half cloud and half-gleaming fish, it floated against the sky as might a lazy, bloated creature so well fed it has no need to look for supper. A huge basketlike gondola hung beneath, and to our shock and delight, lines were tossed—barely visible as faint threads at this distance—to unseen people below. We watched as, hooked and caught, it yanked up against the tautening ropes, and the process of winching it down into the Rail Yard commenced.

“Best we hurry,” said Bee. “You’re cold.”

We made our farewells to the other pupils and turned left at the high walls of the long-abandoned tophet, whose gates were always locked. A coal wagon rumbled past. Serving women walked with baskets weighing heavily on their arms.

“That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!” cried Bee. “I can’t wait to draw it! Only I’ll give it a fish’s eyes and a mouth and tail. As if it were really alive!”

From the main thoroughfare and its shops, we turned into a residential district populated a hundred years ago solely by families of Kena’ani lineage and built to their preferences: balustrades along the upper-floor windows and colonnaded front doors. These days, a diverse group of households with common mercantile interests shared the district. It was a clean, prosperous neighborhood, safe even in the evening because of the recent installation of gaslight on the major streets. Fenced parks with handsome trees and shrubbery ornamented the small squares, each centered around a carved stone monument. After a brisk fifteen-minute walk in which Bee remained oddly silent, no doubt distracted by her memories of Maester Amadou’s dark eyes and the magnificent airship, we arrived at Falle Square and home.

When we reached the gate of our once-grand four-story town house, we closed the wrought-iron gate behind us and climbed the steps to the stoop. The door opened before we reached it. Aunt Tilly ushered us in with kisses and, after dusting the baking flour off her hands, helped us shed our boots and Bee her coat.

“Your cheeks are ice! Cat, how could you be so foolish as to run out without your coat?” She gave me a grave look. “I discovered them in the parlor this morning before anyone else was the wiser. Well, you’re just fortunate you never get sick.”

She herded us past the public rooms, which we rarely used once the cold weather set in, to the small sitting room in the back over the kitchen. The stove shed heat through the floor. The abrupt change in temperature made me sweat. After stepping downstairs into the kitchen to ask Cook to heat milk for chocolate, Aunt returned and sat between us on the threadbare settee. She chafed our stiff hands between her own warm ones.

“You’re looking bright, Beatrice,” she said to her daughter.

“We saw the airship, Mama!”

“Did you? And you, Catherine? You look darkly menacing, as if you are tumbling sharp-edged rocks through that busy mind of yours. Did the airship please you not so well?”

“No, it was spectacular. Bee is going to draw it but call it an airwhale, a mythical creature of the heavens.”

“But that frown is still there. What subject has set you thinking so hard?”

I tucked my schoolbag against my legs, trying desperately to bring back the sharp, excited way I had felt on seeing the airship, but my thoughts were not air-bound but rather moored to the past.

“Lies the Romans told,” I blurted out.

Bee shot me a startled look.

Aunt did not even blink. “The academy directors fought for ten years over the proper syllabus to be used in presenting the history of the wars between the consuls of Rome and the didos of Qart Hadast. To broach so volatile a subject! I wouldn’t have expected that, now the controversy has died down.”

“There is a book written on the theme.”

“Is there?” Her sly grin was far more subtle than Bee’s honey smiles. “I must admit, it would take up at least three lengthy volumes, don’t you think?”

“What is ‘rei vindicatio’?” I asked, and found myself tensing, as if Bran Cof’s head were likely to materialize in the sitting room and chastise me for having disturbed it.

“Oh, dear, are you studying law in your seminar now? It’s a complicated Roman legal action to do with a difference between ownership and possession—”