Kate Elliott - Cold Fire

I swallowed a lump in my throat. Bad enough that Uncle Jonatan had betrayed me by handing me over to Four Moons House, but for my beloved Aunt Tilly to have gone along with it was a knife in my heart I could never shake loose.

“I can’t expect to be like my mother,” she went on. “She married where the family told her to marry, to a man she does not love and never expected to love. She has never complained, although she does not always approve of what Papa does and says. For the sake of the clan she gave birth to three daughters-”

“She loves you!”

“Yes, she loves me, and Hanan, and Astraea. And despite everything, she loves you, Cat. That’s why it’s so unpardonable that she betrayed you. But she serves as she was brought up to serve. I can’t. The dreams that bind my life have changed everything for me.”

I took her hand in mine. I had nothing to say. There was nothing to say.

“So I ask again. Why should I feel bound to strictures that won’t protect me from being torn to pieces by the Wild Hunt and having my head thrown in a well?”

“Bee, that’s such a horrible thought. Why are you blushing like that?”

The rosy glamour creeping into her cheeks brightened. “In ancient days, Kena’ani girls like us could offer their first night to the goddess, at Her temple.”

“Which, if you recall, is why the Romans called us whores.”

“I don’t care what lies the cursed Romans told! The point is, those girls could give their first night to whomever they wanted. So why shouldn’t I take Amadou Barry as a lover?”

“Bee!”

She skewered me with her gaze. “I might be dead tomorrow!” Her fingers brushed across an infatuated portrait of Amadou Barry: the tight curls of his cropped hair, his pretty eyes, the single gold earring, the gracious smile on his lips. “Don’t you wonder, Cat? I saw you kiss him.”

“I did not kiss Amadou Barry! He’s very pretty, but not what I look for in a man. And after the way he spoke to you, I’m surprised you still think of him-”

“You know who I mean! I saw you kiss the cold mage!”

I hated blushing. “Of course I wonder! But if I were to…bed Andevai, then I’d belong to Four Moons House. I’d be trapped.”

“He seems very loyal to you. Likely to treat you kindly. You would live well.”

“In a gilded cage? Can you even imagine Rory at Four Moons House? Oh, Bee, I had so hoped we would find shelter with the radicals. I was shocked to my heart when Camjiata showed up and said those troubling things. Honestly, Bee, didn’t you find it creepy that his wife had seen you and me in her dreams?”

“Once I would have.” She closed the sketchbook. “Not now. If we can escape from these two, maybe we can track down your sire and he can help us get out of the spirit world.”

“Coming to the spirit world was the worst idea I ever had and I’m grateful to you for not reminding me of how stupid it was! Haven’t you asked yourself yet, who spoke through Bran Cof??’s mouth? Someone who could put me under a compulsion? Someone Bran Cof called ‘ my tormenter ’?”

“Bran Cof is obviously not the best judge of character. He compared me to an axe.”

“So did Camjiata’s wife.” I drew the sketchbook off her lap and opened it to a picturesque drawing of a summer carpentry yard where half-dressed and well-built men worked. “You were magnificent, Bee.”

“I was, wasn’t I? I couldn’t believe he fell for the old ‘I don’t think he knows’ trick.”

I laughed, too. “He was an awful old lecher. I wish we knew what the headmaster wants, and who he is! At least I can imagine Rory will survive a while in Adurnam without us. No doubt he already has women arguing over who gets to feed and pet him.”

She chuckled, then snatched the sketchbook off my lap and stuffed it into the bag. “Oh, la! How thirsty I am!”

The coachman approached, carrying four mugs, a tin basket, and a small white ceramic pot in the shape of a boar with a pair of tusks for spouts. He busied himself measuring tea leaves out of the tin basket and into the pot.

“I suppose it’s difficult to run away from things that fly,” Bee said, looking for the eru.

“I suppose it is,” he agreed as he poured water from the kettle into the pot to steep. “Not to mention the four hyenas awaiting you in the bush, if you proved so unwise as to leave warded ground and strike out on your own.”

Bee said, with cool politeness, “Is hyenas what you call them?”

“There are other names. Like most creatures, they don’t always wear the same clothing, but their souls don’t change.”

“Have they been following us?” I asked. “We saw four wolves. Then four kingfishers.”

He set down the kettle on stone and covered the pot. “It is certainly possible they are the same souls in different clothing, hunting you.”

“Why do the creatures here attack my cousin?” I asked.

His blue eyes had the remote intensity of the winter sky, but his gaze did not seem unfriendly. “She is the servant of the enemy.”

“That’s no answer,” retorted Bee. “It doesn’t really explain anything.”

The lines at his eyes crinkled, although his lips did not smile. “It is an answer, but not the one you wish you had. What you do not understand is that I cannot speak as I might wish to speak, because I belong to the one who breathed life into me.”

“You belong to the gods?” Bee asked.

“I belong to the one who owns my breath.”

I nudged Bee. “The headmaster’s assistant said that, about goblins losing their breath.”

“You’ve seen a goblin!” The coachman’s lips parted in almost comical astonishment.

Bee looked at him, then at me, a question in the lift of her brows.

“What do you know about goblins?” I asked.

“The goblins are my makers. But it is my master who owns my breath.”

“Your makers!” Yet when I thought about the clockwork troll, and the lifelike statues waiting in ranks underground, I wondered if he might be not flesh and blood, even though he looked exactly like a man, but something far stranger.

“Cat, close your mouth.” Bee twisted the strap of the knit bag through her fingers as she addressed him. “The creatures here don’t like dragons because the tides of dragon dreams keep changing this world. They can smell dragons on me because I walk the dreams of dragons in the mortal world. That’s why they call me the servant of the enemy. But I’m not.”

“You cannot escape what you are,” he said.

“What are you?” Bee demanded.

“I am a coachman.”

“You work as a coachman. Surely that is not all you are,” she insisted.

“You may think this part of my body”-he touched his chest-“is the only part, because you are confined in a single body. But this is only one part of me. The horses and the coach are the rest of me. So when you take a knife or a sword to my person, naturally I will defend myself.”

As with one thought, Bee and I looked toward the coach and four horses steaming on the road, and then at each other with raised eyebrows, and then back at him.

“Tea?” He poured out four cups. One he took over to the pillar, where he emptied its steeped contents at the base. Returning to the fire, he handed a mug to Bee and one to me.

Bee found her voice. “Food and drink in the spirit world may pose a risk for us.”

He took the fourth. “This tea will offer no harm to either of you, and may do you some good.”

I cupped hands around the mug’s warmth. “You saved my life once. Can you promise me you will save my cousin’s life, if it comes to that?”

“It is not my intention to see her come to harm. But I cannot promise what I cannot be sure I can deliver. I will do what I can. That is what I promise.”