Kate Elliott - Cold Magic

"Too late to ask her now. If you run while I attacked-"

"With what? Sarcasm?" She took my hand in hers. "We'll face this together."

The mansa was a storm whose strength could not be evaded. He had a breadth of shoulder that made him fill whatever space he stood in, and a bold, striking face whose lineaments were stamped by both his Celtic and Afric forebears. He wore his silver-streaked black hair in many small braids tied off with tiny amulets. He was a man to respect, but also to fear, as we must fear him, because whatever else he might be, however fair a ruler of his House, however wise or capricious, intelligent or heavy-handed, in his command, he had already demanded my death.

He was not, I suppose, a man accustomed to having his will crossed.

I tightened my grip on my cane, yet I could see no means by wh ich I could force a way through for us, not even if it were night and my sword alive in its spirit form.

As chaff parts where a current flows, the laborers shrank away from their stations to huddle against the wall. In such circumstances, what could they hope for except to behave as rabbits caught in the open by a roving hawk: freeze, and pray to the gods to let the predator overlook them.

Bee and I stood alone in the middle of the shed to face him and his attendants: the djeli, Bakary, who looked more weary than victorious; two men in nondescript clothing who might have been House seekers, and a pair of cold mages. The older cold mage I had never seen before, but the young one was the man who had attacked me at Cold Fort. Six soldiers escorted them.

There was one more. There was Andevai, pushing to the front to stand next to his master.

He had betrayed us after all.

A dull, dead emptiness engulfed me. Bee's hand tightened on my fingers, but the pain of her grasp could not rouse me out of this soul-sucking extremity of despair. I had allowed myself to hope, but he, too, had betrayed me

Who had I been, to think I could defy a mage House? Me, whose name was not even a true name, for I was not a Hassi Barahal; I had scant memory of my mother, Tara Bell, and had until a few days ago no knowledge at all of the creature who had evidently sired me, a father who had never acknowledged nor shown the least interest in me. I was nothing more than an afterthought, a piece of refuse to be glancingly tossed to one side. At least as a sacrifice I had some use in the world. I shook off Bee's hand and stepped in front of her.

"Here is the eldest Barahal daughter at last," said the mansa with more gravity than anger, in the tone of a man who regrets the necessity of creating an unpleasant scene but accepts that the situation is one that has been forced upon him. "We are not too late. Andevai, kill the other one."

"No."

I thought a machine had exhaled or that the steam engine in its housing beyond the shed sighed a last protest. Yet in the world beyond these walls, no voice cried, no wheels rumbled, no child Laughed or wept.

The mansa looked at Andevai, and the temperature in the shed dropped precipitously.

"No," said Andevai calmly in answer to whatever command he had seen in his master's gaze.

A voice-impossible to tell who or where among the onlookers-sobbed softly.

"No," Andevai said for a third time.

The mansa looked astounded.

"Andevai," said the djeli, in the tone of a schoolmaster, "consider what words you speak before the mansa."

"I have considered them. If we prosper only through the suffering or death of another, then that is not prosperity. I will not do it."

The mansa's anger crashed over us. Wires snapped; a win-dowpane cracked, although no shards fell. Not yet. And yet, I was no longer afraid.

"What is this defiance?" asked the djeli. "The slave does not command the master."

"It is wrong to kill her. I won't do it, and I won't let you do it, Mansa."

When the mansa spoke, he did not shout. Likely that would be beneath his dignity. "The child of the children of slaves cannot know the taste of wisdom. His kind do not know wisdom, because they gave up their honor long ago."

Andevai said, "I am no longer ashamed of where I come from, although the House made sure to tell me over and over again that I should be grateful to be allowed to enter where I was not wanted. I should never have been ashamed. I just did not see that before. You need me, Mansa."

The young mage sniggered but swallowed his laughter when the mansa raised a hand.

"Do not believe for even one breath, child of slaves, that I

need you more than you need me. I brought you in when you were a ragged, barefoot, ignorant youth."

Suddenly every person in that wide space was slammed to their knees as though felled by a hammer blow. Every one, even the other two cold mages. All, except the mansa, and the djeli. And Andevai.

"Strong," remarked the mansa. "But not strong enough."

I knelt on bruised knees, not sure how I had come from standing to kneeling, for the blow had hit so hard I had no memory of it. Bee gasped for breath beside me.

Andevai and the mansa faced each other like two men embarking on a duel of honor. Magisters wield cold as blacksmiths wield heat; this secret they have held to themselves for generations. Already the temperature in the room was bitter, but now it plunged, and the metal of the machines groaned. The windows shattered with a snapping crash, and their shards rained like edged ice onto the silent looms and the sobbing onlookers, poor trapped souls. Bee's teeth were chattering, and her lips were white. I tried to rise, but a bone-deep numbness pervaded my bones, and I could not move.

Tides of cold magic pulsed and ripped around us. Invisible to the eye, they throbbed in the air like unvoiced thunder until I could only hope for lightning to strike and put me out of this misery.

But it did not. Something else happened instead. In my left hand, the hilt of the sword bloomed.

Cold magic had woken it. Cold steel cuts cold magic. I twisted the hilt and unsheathed the sword. Its glittering edge flared, as bright as snow under the glare of the winter sun, almost blinding. Bee gasped, and then choked, as if she'd been stabbed, but it was only the cold striking so deep it would soon kill.

Neither magister moved. Rigid, they fought in a realm outside ordinary vision.

With cold steel in my hand, I rose and cut my way forward through the currents of magic. Icy swells slapped me, made me stumble, made my mouth ice and my feet lead weights, but my blade sliced a path, and I drove forward into the maelstrom.

How it felt to them I could not know; I was not a cold mage. But the mansa looked up, looked over, looked startled. His hold loosened. There came as in the eye of a violent storm an eddy as his attention shifted briefly away from Andevai.

Andevai glanced toward me. He raised a hand in a gesture copied from the mansa, and he said, in exactly the same pre-emptory tone he'd used in the inn in Adurnam on that long-ago night when we had first met, "Down!"

I dropped to my knees and ducked my head.

The cold hit like an ax blow, flattening me with a single, brutal cut. My chin slammed against the floor, and all breath was punched out of my lungs.

After a moment of stunned incomprehension, I discovered myself lying flat on the cold floor, pain lancing through my chin. Therefore, I was still alive.

A stunned silence muffled all sound except for a vague muzzy humming, half heard as in the distance. I raised my head cautiously as the cold eased. Only two men still stood: the djeli and Andevai.

The mansa had been driven down to his knees.

Andevai's voice was cool, almost conversational. "You brought me in when I was a ragged, barefoot, ignorant youth because you could not ignore what I am, Mansa. I have been reminded every day in Four Moons House of where I came from and exactly who my people are and how my village stands in relationship to the Diarisso lineage. All that is true. But you will be better served by me if 1 am a willing magister than an unwilling