Cold Steel

“Pull your scarf over your head and keep out of sight,” I said, wrenching Bee around as I indicated the nearest alley with my chin. “That way. Meet me in Fox Close. Go!”

I wrapped myself in shadow and dodged into the procession. The pounding of drums and blaring of horns washed over me. The masked dancers in their ram costumes spun as if I were a wind blowing through them. The men under the masks were blind except to the drums, but the ram spirits who flowed within the masks saw me. Their eyes were mist and ice, gleaming with power. They scraped the ground in a mocking greeting, and folk clapped and whistled as if the sweep of bows were part of the dance.

Their rumbling spirit voices whispered in the air. “Cousin! What do you hunt here? Why have you come?”

They could cut my concealing threads with their sharp spirit horns, but they let me pass unmolested. I sidled up alongside the horses in time to hear Lord Marius shouting to be heard above the drums.

“You need to give her up, Amadou! It’s been over a year since you saw her. You’re seeing the ghost of what you wish you’d had, now that you’re betrothed. If you’d wanted her that much you should have offered her marriage.”

“Against my aunt’s wishes and every sensible consideration? To an impoverished Phoenician of disreputable birth? Who turned out to be an agent of General Camjiata all along? I think not!”

“Then be sensible and let it go. You just saw someone who looks like her.”

“I’m sure it was her! We know the general means to return to Europa someday. Why not now? Look! There she is! Bring her to me!”

As he pointed toward the alley, I darted to the head of Legate Amadou Barry’s fine steed. Two slices ruined the bridle. His grip on the reins went slack. I ducked under his mount’s neck to deal the same damage to Lord Marius’s tack, although the animal rolled its eyes and pranced away from my scent. I cut my way through the troop, leaving a trail of sheared girths and tack. The drumming beat a pulsing rhythm around us as the dancing line moved on down the street while the beleaguered troop bottled up the road. Soldiers had to dismount to steady their horses.

Lord Marius scanned the trail of my invisible passage through the troops and into the crowd as a man follows the swirl of leaves. With gestures I could see and commands I could not hear, he sent soldiers scrambling after me.

Still wreathed in shadow, I clambered up onto a barrel and shouted, “Have you let yourselves be beaten down by fear? Shame! Shame! Have you already forgotten the words of the Northgate poet? Was it for nothing that he starved himself on the steps of the prince’s palace to demand new laws for the common people? A rising light marks the dawn of a new world!”

A gun went off. I escaped along a side street. A clamor of rocks being thrown and glass breaking serenaded me, but the sounds faded as I fled. I was winded by the time I fetched up on Enterprise Road, panting loudly enough that passersby looked around to see who was breathing like a steam engine. I leaned in the stoop of a closed shop until I caught my breath, then made my way to Fox Close. There was something odd about the neighborhood, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.

The lane was lined with modern gas lamps, although naturally they were not lit during the day despite the overcast gloom and smoky pallor. The lane lay deserted except for a man loitering at the corner with a hat pulled low over his brow. I did not see Bee and Rory.

I walked right past the law offices. When I retraced my path, no business sign met my eye, only a boarded-up house where the sign of orange letters against a feathery brown backdrop had once proclaimed GODWIK AND CLUTCH. The sign was missing; it had been taken down.

I mounted the steps. The door had been staved in with what appeared to be axe blows, then repaired with planks hammered over the rents. I jiggled the latch and found it unlocked. Cautiously I pressed it down, but remembered before I opened it that it would look awfully strange if anyone caught sight of the door opening by itself. It was quiet along the street, every window shut.

The man at the end of the lane vanished, stepping out of sight onto Enterprise Road. I opened the door and slipped inside. A muted light filtered from streaked mullioned windows above the door, illuminating the stairs that led up to the shadows of the first floor above. A tall mirror had been set on the stairs to catch any movement into or out of the house.

Trolls used mirrors in the complicated mazes they drew around their nests. I could not walk in a troll maze, nor could the Wild Hunt enter one because the confusing tangle of shards and glints woven into a troll maze cut the threads of shadow from the spirit world. I had saved Bee by sending her to troll town in Expedition, where the Wild Hunt could not reach her.