Kate Elliott - Cold Fire

“We need to talk.” She pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose.

“I didn’t say anything to him about the general being here!”

“Sit, please.” Kehinde spoke without force or anger. I sank onto the bench, all energy drained. “Why did you come? To seek our help to return to the Hassi Barahal motherhouse in Gadir?”

“No,” said Bee, with a glance at me. I let her talk. “We’re not returning there.”

“Why not? They are your community. What are we, if we have no community and no family?”

“‘ We ’ are left to fend for ourselves,” said Bee. “Let me just say that our family betrayed us and we no longer trust them. We hoped to find refuge with radicals. We thought you of all people would understand why we don’t want to be bound into clientage, practically legal slavery, to a mage House or a prince’s court…or some patrician household from Rome.” Her voice fell to a whisper, but she recovered. “We can be useful to the cause. We are not without skills.”

“The Hassi Barahal house is known to be employed in the business of selling information,” said Kehinde. “You might be spying on us. After all, after you came, the cold mage arrived.”

I was getting annoyed. “Turn that around! Why would Chartji make an appointment for a cold mage to come to your office at the same time the most wanted man in Europe is to be here?”

Brennan laughed. “An unfortunate case of bad timing, and close calls. Rather exciting, don’t you think?”

“For you it will always be a game, Du,” said Kehinde, measuring him with a frown. “The more you skate onto the thin ice, as you say here in the north, the better you like it.”

He shook his head, watching her closely. “Oh, no, Professora, you know it is not a game to me. Risks must be taken if we mean to get what we want.” He flashed his enchanting smile at Bee, and then at me. “I think the girls are a risk worth taking.”

“Maybe we’re the ones who should be asking if we can trust you,” said Bee. “Like Cat said, you’re the ones meeting with the general. And the cold mage!”

“She’s got us at knife’s point there,” said Brennan, still looking amused.

Bee’s brow furrowed and her gaze darkened as if storm clouds had swept down. We were in for a blow. “It’s easy for you to laugh. You’re a man. Maybe you’re entirely legally free, or maybe your northern village is entangled in some kind of clientage to a mage House. I don’t know. But you, Professora, surely you as a legal scholar will understand our situation. Even though my cousin and I are twenty and legally adults, the Hassi Barahal elders in Gadir can dispose of us however they wish simply because we are female and unmarried.” She flashed me a glance to remind me to keep my mouth closed about the unfortunate fact that I was already married. As if I wanted to brag about it! “So you can see that radicals who speak of overturning an oppressive legal code might interest us.”

“I understand perfectly.” Kehinde glanced at Brennan. To my surprise, he looked away, biting his lower lip. She toyed with the ends of several of her locks. “We dispute the arbitrary distribution of power and wealth, which is claimed as the natural order, but which is in fact not natural at all but rather artificially created and sustained by ancient privileges. Of which marriage is one. Yet we still have a problem. It appears you are being pursued by the same mage Houses and princes who wish to capture the general. Until Camjiata leaves Adurnam, you cannot stay here.”

“You’re turning us away,” said Bee wearily.

“Not at all. I have been formulating an idea that our organization might have a use for two young women trained by the Hassi Barahal clan. Godwik agrees with me. Indeed, Maester Godwik finds you to be of the greatest interest. I consider his judgments to be based on sound reason.”

“Unlike mine,” murmured Brennan.

She did not by so much as a flicker of the eye indicate she had heard this. “It was odd to hear the general say his wife had had a vision that he would meet a Hassi Barahal daughter who, as he declaimed so poetically, will walk the path of dreams. And then of course there was the oracle about Tara Bell’s child. Such oracles being clouded and obscure exactly so that any outcome can be acclaimed as the prophetic one.”

“I wouldn’t discount such words,” said Brennan. “But I am no city-raised sophisticate. I’m just a miner’s son who has seen too much death.”

“When people die in troubling and violent ways, we seek a story to explain it, however far-fetched.” She raised a hand to forestall Brennan’s retort. “That forces exist in the world which we cannot account for is manifestly true. Through observation and experience, scholars seek to describe the natural world and plumb its depths. I have for years been in correspondence with a well-regarded scholar who lives in Adurnam. I have now had the chance to speak with him in person, and I find him every bit as impressive as his letters indicated. He will shelter you until such time as it is safe for you to join us. You must ask to share a shot of whiskey with Bran Cof-”

“Everyone knows the poet Bran Cof is long dead,” said Bee. “If you can call that death, when your head is stuck on a pedestal and everyone is waiting for you to speak.”

“I like that whiskey stuff?!” said Rory, sitting up.

Kehinde eyed him as if trying to decide whether his insouciance was an act that disguised a razor-sharp mind and will, or if he was exactly as he seemed. “The name is a code to show you are part of our organization.”

“Wait,” I said. “Why Bran Cof?? Where do you mean to send us?”

“There is an academy in Adurnam. Its headmaster will shelter you.”

Bee slanted a glance at me, and I scratched my left ear, and Rory stood to stretch with an exaggerated yawn, because he understood we were speaking with gestures, warning each other and him. Bee and I had attended the academy for over two years. We knew the headmaster well. We had trusted him. When Bee had stayed behind in Adurnam after her parents and family fled on a ship bound for Gadir, she had gone to him for shelter. And he had turned her over to the custody of Amadou Barry, whose home had been a gilded cage that dazzled Bee until the legate made his insulting proposal, offering to make Bee his mistress. But Kehinde and Brennan didn’t need to know any of that.

I took a step back to leave the stage to Bee. With her black curls, rosy lips, and big brown eyes, she looked entirely adorable and innocent and trusting. “It is so generous of you to take an interest in us. But you know the risks we face. The factions hunting us. Why help us?”

Kehinde extended a hand, and to my shock Bee handed her the knife. The professor used the tip to investigate the ranks of sliced parsnips. “It is quite remarkable how evenly they are each sliced, as if each cut were measured beforehand by something other than your eye. Unless you find an isolated barbaric village, perhaps in the wilds of Brigantia”-she glanced at Brennan-“you must see you have entered the conflict whether you wish to or not. If it is true your dreams reflect a cryptic vision of the future-and I assure you I will need evidence-then you will never be let alone. Never. I am no different than anyone. I can think of ways to employ your gift to benefit the cause I cherish. But I will only ever approach you as a partner, and you will be free to leave our association at any time. It is your decision.” She set down the knife.

“What about your alliance with the general?” I asked.

Brennan smiled wryly. “Harsh conditions make for odd bedfellows. Our organization has its own reasons for considering an alliance with the general.”