Cold Steel

“They call me Rufus, Maestra, for my red hair.”

“Tell us everything you saw, Rufus!”

“It was all fire, Maestra,” the lad whispered in a hoarse voice. “But the man gave me a message.” His gaze flashed toward me. “He said there would be a woman with black hair and golden eyes come after him. I was to speak to her when I saw her.”

Had Vai managed to get a message to me? Hope surged.

“Go on,” said Bee in her most encouraging tone.

The lad handled the words as cautiously as a knife. “He said, ‘Nothing you can do will save him.’ ”

I recoiled as if struck.

Bee smiled. “Very good! Thank you for remembering. What did he look like, the man who spoke those words? Had he red hair and white skin, like yours?”

He nodded, gulping down a sob. “He did burn the whole compound, Maestra.”

“Had they prisoners?” asked the mansa. “Any they treat differently from the rest?”

Concentration furrowed his brow. “Hard to count, I was that scared. But there was one they did hold away from all the others. Maybe he was sick, for he could barely walk. He was whistling a song, that one, and they did kick him to shut him up.”

“What song?” I asked.

Like any Celt, he could remember a tune after hearing it once. He hummed the melody the djeli had sung when he had led Andevai to the meeting with the Romans, the one I had first heard in the spirit world on the fiddle of Lucia Kante.

The mansa handed the boy a coin. “You have done well.”

We rose at dawn. At breakfast the mansa asked for coffee with a bowl of whipped and sweetened cream but I could not bear to touch it for it made me think of Vai so weak he could barely walk. Was he wounded? Beaten? Assaulted? Or was he simply exhausted to the edge of collapse? It would be just like Vai to believe he had to carry all the burden himself.

A headache throbbed behind my eyes as we set out. I was so sick of being in the coach.

As if catching my mood, the gremlin latch winked to life with a flickering sneer. “I have been very patient,” the latch said in a thin whine that put the lie to the statement, “but all your cousin and that unpleasantly large and frowning cold mage do to pass the time is argue about this thing called politics and law which means nothing to me! Could you not tell me stories instead? Or at the least, let the cold mage draw some of those pictures in the air like the other one used to do. I’ll tell you a secret if you do.”

“Everyone claims to have a secret!” I said.

“Cat?” Bee bent to look at me. “You’re very worn down, dearest, and now you’re babbling. Perhaps you should try to sleep some more.”

“I can’t rest,” I said, “but perhaps the mansa could explain to us how young magisters are taught the basic skill of illusion. It would make the time pass, would it not?”

To my surprise the gaze I fixed on the mansa, meant to be venturesome and coaxing and more likely appearing fractious and sour, softened his bearing. He had begun to treat Bee and me with the grave amusement shown by an exalted and wealthy uncle toward his impoverished but marginally respectable nieces, the ones who with better clothes and improved elocution might hope to make modest marriages to humble clerks. He drew the basic illusions every young magister was expected to master: a candle flame, a glinting gold ring, and a veil of mist that could be shaped into the shadows of living creatures. The slow play of shadow and light eased my mind and let me doze.

The next day we moved into a dense lowland scrub forest as the great valley of the lower Rhenus River opened before us. Now and again we caught glimpses of the wide river glittering to the west. We passed a toll station, which had been burned. Threads of smoke ghosting up from its embers told us that Drake’s troop was not many hours ahead.

As night fell the mansa lit globes of cold fire to light our way. Scraps of cloud lightened the moon-scarred sky. Very late we halted in a lonely meadow amid the creak of insects and a night breeze winnowing the grass. The coachman preferred to water and care for the horses at night, and I was grateful for the chance to lie down on a blanket on the ground. An owl’s white wings fluttered through the trees, and for an instant the weight of ice pressed down on me as if malevolent claws had reached across the worlds to throttle me. Then Bee put an arm around me and, comforted by her presence, I slept.

At dawn I woke to see a big furry flank draped alongside me. The big cat snored softly, until I punched him in the shoulder to wake him up.

“Rory! Where are your clothes? What are you doing?”