Cold Magic

To my horror, I began to cry hot, silent tears.

“Excuse me, maester,” said the throaty voice. A personage loomed behind the innkeeper at the door of the supper room, its bright crest startling in the drab surroundings.

Andevai looked over, no doubt surprised to hear himself again improperly addressed by a stranger, and then doubly surprised to see a troll who was, after all, not speaking to him but to the innkeeper. I sucked back my tears as the prickling anticipation of destruction abruptly eased: He was too startled to be angry.

“You are quite run off your feet, maester—we can see that—but we have run out of wine, I am sorry to say, which comes about only because you offered us such an excellent vintage.” From a distance, trolls’ smooth, small feathers were easy to mistake for strangely textured skin, but this close, the drab brown feathers of this troll’s face stood in contrast to a crested mane of yellow feathers flaring over its head and down its neck. “If we might get more when you are able to fetch it. Our thanks.”

“I’ll bring it at once.” The innkeeper bolted across the common room to an opening hung with a curtain.

“And plates for the new guests,” called the troll as the curtain slashed down behind the innkeeper. The creature turned an eye toward me. It wrinkled its muzzle to expose teeth, a gesture perhaps meant to be a grin recognizable by humans as a friendly smile, but overall the effect was of a big, sleek, feathered lizard displaying its incisors as a threat. “We’d be honored to guest you. If you wish to sit with us, of course. My companions are good company, so they assure me. Witty, well read, and willing to put up with me, so that may be a point in their favor. Or it may not be. You will have to determine that for yourselves. I’m Chartji. I won’t trouble you with my full name, which you would not understand in any case. I’m a solicitor currently employed by the firm of Godwik and Clutch, which has offices in Havery and Camlun, although I’m originally from Expedition. I’ve been employed in Havery for the past four years, but we’re setting up new offices in Adurnam.”

It thrust out a hand, if one could call it a hand, what with its shiny claws curving from the ends of what might be fingers or talons, offering to shake in the style of the radicals and laboring classes. Andevai actually took a step back, and the troll’s head tilted, marking the movement.

“So it’s true what they say about trolls,” he said.

Fiery Shemesh! Could he never stop offending people?

“It is,” said the troll as its toothy grin sharpened, “but only we females.”

I stuck out my hand a little too jerkily. “Well met, Chartji. I’m called Catherine Hassi Barahal.” The name fell easily from my tongue; too late I recalled I was someone else now, although I did not know who.

The featherless skin of its—her!—palms was a little grainy, like touching a sun-warmed rock. For an instant I felt the scent of summer in my nostrils, a whisper like falling water, the breath of cut grass and the juice of crushed berries. Then she let go.

“Interesting,” she said as she looked me up and down, as if she saw something surprising in my height, my hair, my eyes, or my features. “Can it be you are a child of the Hassi Barahal house, originally established in Gadir? The old histories call your people ‘the messengers,’ known to bring messages across long distances in a short time. There’s a branch residing in Havery, founded by Anatta Hassi Barahal. The left-handed Barahals, they call them. I see you hold your… ah”—she seemed about to say one word but changed her mind—“your cane in your left hand.”

“Why, yes!” I laughed out of sheer surprise. Even in the cold common room, bereft of fire, the air felt abruptly balmier. “Almost no one knows the ancient origin of our House. I’m from Adurnam. The Havery Barahals are cousins. My aunt’s great-grandmother’s descendants, in fact.”

“They are acquaintances of ours. Come sit, come join our clutch.”

I followed her into the supper room, eager to stay within the orbit of one who linked me, however tenuously, to my family. She was tall, as trolls were, a hand taller than Andevai, graceful on her feet, although her gait hitched strangely. She seemed unaware of the glances fired her way from the other two tables of diners, well-to-do merchants or artisans by the look of their fashionable clothing, gold and silver necklaces and bracelets, and tiny leather charm cases sewn to their sleeves. Respectable people not happy to be sharing a supper room with a pair of trolls, even if the trolls were dining with people.

“I hope he did not insult you,” I murmured, feeling a flush creep up my cheeks.