Cold Steel

Where the hand of fortune branches, Tara Bell’s child must choose.

I had made the only choice I could, not just once but many times. I had to save the ones I loved, for although I had grabbed for their hands, I hadn’t been able to save my parents that terrible day. Maybe my sire had saved me. Maybe I had accidentally saved myself. All I remembered was how I had struggled to reach them.

It wasn’t drowning I was truly afraid of. It was the moment my mother’s hand had slipped away from mine as the current pulled her into the murky depths where my father had already sunk.

No more! I would not lose them! I would not!

So I had made the bargain with my sire. I wouldn’t lose them, but they would lose me.

Bee’s laughter floated like the memory of summer past and the promise of summer to come. She and Andevai appeared, arguing with the intensity of two people who agree on the fundamentals and are now clashing about what color the curtains should be. Rory trailed after them, distracted by the puppy racing around his heels and barking in excitement as it demanded he play.

“There you are, dearest!” Bee called. “Cat, you can’t just run off like that. For one thing, it looks very disrespectful to the elders both of the village and of the mage House. Furthermore, something is bothering you, and I am going to bully you until you tell us what it is.”

The puppy gnawed on my ankle while wriggling its hindquarters in ecstatic excitement.

“I know what you are thinking,” said Vai.

“I don’t believe you do,” I said in my coolest voice, although in fact it was difficult to be morose when a puppy was chewing on my leg.

“I understand your concerns, Catherine.” He flipped out the length of his dash jacket and sat beside me, shoving me with his hip to make room. “Beatrice and I already have a plan, although I agree we should have made it more clear to you. But you’ve been so distracted and tired and hard to talk to, love. You’ve not spoken a word about what happened to Drake, or why Four Moons House is now encased in ice just as if the Wild Hunt had devoured it. Just like Crescent House.”

“It is an odd resemblance, is it not?” I agreed. “But the Master of the Wild Hunt can only enter the mortal world on Hallows’ Night. Everyone knows that!”

He rubbed a finger along the trimmed magnificence of his beard. “That’s true. Still, I did not know an eru had such power.”

“Neither did I!” agreed Bee, with a suspicious look, but it was evident she had not the slightest memory of my sire’s passage through the coach or what he had done.

“I did not know it either, but it appears to be an eru’s work.” It was no lie. The one who gave him birth had had an eru’s form when he was disgorged. Rory looked a question at me, and I shook my head. He pulled his lips back as if to snarl at me, and I opened my eyes very aggressively, head jutted forward, until he backed off. Glimpsing his movement, the puppy gamboled after him.

“Is that all you have to say on the matter?” Vai demanded. “Because it seems no one witnessed every part of what happened except for you.”

“I asked for their aid, for that is my right. I cut a path for them through the mirror. But they had no obligation to stay once Drake was dead.”

At that moment I knew I would not tell them. They could not stop the Wild Hunt, nor could I allow them to follow me into the spirit world. If they knew what bargain I had made, the next two months would swamp them in misery and fear. It would be cruel to tell them. So I would keep silence and tell no one.

He took my hands in his. Bee set her arms akimbo and fixed him with an axe-blow glare. A wind teased through her curls, making them dance, like happiness. His breath brushed my ear.

“No kissing, Andevai!” said Bee. “You promised! You must present your argument in a reasoned and sensible manner.”

He released my hands and stood. I had washed and mended his clothes while he was bedridden, but despite the skillful job I had done, they looked like clothes bought in the secondhand market, not like costly garments appropriate to a powerful magister whose status was every bit the equal of a prince’s. Yet he looked so very fine. It wasn’t the clothes that made him beautiful.

“Catherine, I know you have told me that you cannot live in Four Moons House. And you heard me promise the mansa on my mother’s honor that I will rebuild Four Moons House. I am a cold mage, and I have to do it.”

“I know, my love.”

“Besides the promise to my mother, I have a responsibility to the House that educated me and to the mansa who raised me up. To every fledgling magister who may never get proper training, like the fire banes in Expedition. To my own family, to the village that birthed me, and also to the other villages chained by clientage to Four Moons House. To all villages so chained. All communities have a right to liberty, a right to the dignity and security of their own persons.”