Cold Magics (7 page)

“I don’t have any money,” said Eileen.

“I do,” said Thomas. “I’ll get some out of the Academy bank this afternoon. We’ll find something you can wear all winter.”

“Why? It’s not like I’m going anywhere,” she said, wrapping her arms tighter around herself. “I’m not going to be allowed out of the house.”

Thomas forbore mentioning that it was all her own fault, and led Eileen down a set of winding streets mostly lined with houses. He found the bindery, set in a dead-end residential street near the Academy. Most of the stock was cheap journals and notebooks for students. The shopkeeper was a quiet man who listened to what Thomas wanted, then came out with a thick journal, bound in leather with a brass buckle to hold it closed.

“Perfect,” said Thomas, buying it along with a set of quills and several pots of ink. He thanked the shopkeeper and led Eileen back out. They passed a group of merchants, standing together and talking quietly. Thomas thought it was odd to see merchants in that neighbourhood, but didn’t think any more about it until he and Eileen were out onto the main thoroughfare once more.

“Those men,” said Eileen in a low voice. “They followed us.”

“What?” Thomas looked back over his shoulder. The men were ten yards behind, walking slowly after them.

“The one in the brown cloak was standing across the street from the Residence this morning.”

“I barely noticed them,” said Thomas, looking back again. “Are you sure?”

“They were standing in front of a shop window with a really pretty dress in it.” Eileen sounded slightly embarrassed. “I noticed them because they were in the way.”

Thomas looked over his shoulder again. The men behind them didn’t seem in any hurry to go anywhere. Still…

Thomas took Eileen’s hand, half-expecting her to pull away. Instead, she let him lead her off the main street. Thomas ducked into an alley and started running. Eileen kept pace. Several streets and turns later, they were in the market square. Thomas quickly led them deep into the crowd.

“If anyone is following us, they’ll have a miserable time trying to do it here,” said Thomas.

Eileen looked over her shoulder. “I don’t see them.”

“Good. Now come on. Let’s get lunch. Roast chicken if we can find it, meat pie if we can’t, and a nice bottle of good wine.”

Eileen glared at him. “I’m still mad at you.”

“I know,” said Thomas. “But there’s no sense starving over it.”

Thomas took a moment to buy a basket before they descended on a stall with a glowing stove and turning spits, and came away with a chicken and some potatoes. From another stall they bought a loaf of bread and some dessert pastries, and from a third a bottle of wine to wash it down. Eileen and Thomas made their way across the square, through a pair of side streets, and back to the apartment. Thomas kept an eye over his shoulder but saw no one pursuing them.

There were three very familiar horses tied up on the rail outside Thomas’s building.

“Oh, no,” said Eileen.

“By the Four, they made good time,” said Thomas. Biter, his own horse that he’d left in Elmvale, recognized him and butted its head against him. He rubbed the animal’s nose, then looked at Eileen. “George and your father both, then,” said Thomas.

“Or mother and father,” said Eileen, “and the third one for me.” Tears started down her face. “They are going to be so angry. How long do you think they’ve been here?”

“Could have been any time since last night,” said Thomas, taking one of her trembling hands in his own. Remembering Lionel’s temper, he wasn’t feeling too steady himself. He hoped they hadn’t arrived the night previous. Explaining things was going to be difficult enough without having to explain why they hadn’t come home.

“What do we do?” asked Eileen, her voice small and shaky.

“What else is there to do?” said Thomas. “We go up.”

Eileen was trembling harder, now. “He’ll kill me.”

“He’s ridden too far to kill you,” said Thomas, making himself believe it. “He’s not going to be at all pleasant, but he won’t kill you.”

“He will,” Eileen insisted. “He’ll be so angry.”

“I won’t let him hurt you.” Thomas knew the words were fairly empty. Lionel was larger than George, his son, and strong from years working at the forge. If Lionel wanted Thomas out of the way, all he would have to do was push.

Nothing for it, though.
“Come on. The longer we wait, the worse it gets.”

Thomas gripped her hand tightly and led her up the stairs. The climb to the top floor felt like a walk to the gallows. The door to his apartment was slightly open. Thomas was sure he’d locked it, but given how well the two men worked with metal, he had no doubt that either could have opened it. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to get a new door.

“Right,” said Thomas, letting go of Eileen’s hand and putting their lunch down on the balcony. “Stay outside until I call.” Eileen nodded, pale and trembling, and stepped out of sight of the door. Thomas took a deep breath and stepped into the apartment.

Inside, George and Lionel sat at the table, dwarfing the chairs with their bulk. Lionel looked even bigger than Thomas remembered, and both men looked rough, their clothes dirty, their faces unshaven, as if they’d ridden the whole way without stopping. Both turned their heads when the door opened, and rose the moment they saw Thomas.

“Where is she?” demanded Lionel, his voice hoarse with worry and anger. “Her clothes are here. Where is she?”

“On the other side of the door,” said Thomas, stepping into the room.

“The other side of the…” Lionel spoke through clenched teeth, his face growing redder with every word. “And why is she not coming in?”

“She’s frightened,” said Thomas, feeling fairly scared himself.

“Frightened?” George roared, making Thomas jump. “She can ask her mother what it is to be frightened! Twelve days with no word! Twelve days wondering if she’s alive or dead!”

“She knows—” began Thomas.

“She does not!” George was raging, now. “I knew she’d come here! She’s stubborn and stupid and…” He turned to the door and shouted, “What in the name of the Banished were you thinking?!”

“I don’t know,” said Eileen from the doorway. She held onto the frame with one hand and the handle of her rapier with the other, gripping it as if it were a talisman rather than a weapon. For the first time, she looked awkward in her boys’ clothes.

“Oh, thank the Four,” breathed Lionel. He collapsed to the table and put his head in his hands. “Oh, Gods…”

George took one look at his father’s shaking shoulders, then turned on Eileen. Thomas could see the force of will it took George not to grab his sister and shake her senseless.

“You…” George let out an explosive stream of invective loud enough to be heard at the Academy gates, and long enough that Thomas found himself admiring George’s creativity.

Eileen didn’t move or offer a single word of argument. Her eyes were on her father, still sitting at the table with his head in his hands. George, finally running out of words, shook his head in disgust and snapped, “Go to Da,” before shoving himself past Thomas and Eileen and out to the balcony.

Eileen went to her father, each step hesitant, and knelt slowly at his feet, her rapier touching the ground behind her. For a long time, neither one moved.

Eileen convulsed forward, arms wrapping around her father’s boots, face buried against his leg. “Oh, Da,” the word was sobbed out. “Please stop crying, Da. I’m all right. I’m sorry. Please, stop crying.”

Thomas felt his own eyes burning. He swiped at them with a sleeve, then turned away and went out to the balcony to face her brother.

6

George was leaning against the balcony rail and shaking with anger. Thomas found his own place on the rail further down. It was a long time before George straightened up, longer still before he turned around. There was still no noise from inside the apartment, and Thomas guessed that neither father nor daughter had moved.

“What in the name of the Four was she thinking?” said George at last. “And what were you thinking taking her in?”

“What else could I do?” asked Thomas.

“Send her back! On the first boat heading up the river!”

“She only arrived two evenings ago,” said Thomas.

“And stayed here, did she?” snarled George. “You must have enjoyed that!”

Thomas straightened, willing down his own anger. “She stayed in Benjamin’s old room,” he said, keeping his voice even. “You know me better than that.”

“Do I?” demanded George. “You’re the reason she came here!”

“I am not!” snapped Thomas. “She came here because she wanted to go to the Academy!”

“Well, she can’t!”

“And that’s the problem!” Thomas forced himself to take a deep breath and lower his voice. “She wants to learn, George. And she can’t do it in Elmvale. So she came here.”

“Well, that was stupid of her!”

“Aye, it was! But it wasn’t my idea, so stop shouting at me!”

George growled at that but didn’t say anything else. He gripped the rail, staring down into the courtyard below. “I should go in there and—”

“Not yet,” said Thomas. “Let them have a moment.”

George fumed in silence and Thomas let him, moving down the balcony and wishing Eileen didn’t have his cloak. George, he noticed, was dressed for the weather. Thomas sighed.

A loud crash came from inside the apartment, followed immediately by a shriek from Eileen and a shout from Lionel. Thomas charged the door as Lionel shouted again. Another crash shook the room.

Inside, Lionel stood in front of Eileen, a table leg in his hand and dagger sticking out of his shoulder. Eileen, behind him, was bleeding from a cut on her arm and another on her breast. She had her rapier and dagger out and was trying to get around her father, who kept shoving her back. Four other men were crowding into the room from Thomas’s bedroom, swords drawn, looking for a way past the big smith and the table leg he wielded like a club. Another man lay half on the ground, half against the wall, his neck at an unnatural angle.

There was barely room for sword-work, but Thomas drew his blades anyway and charged, yelling as he went. Behind him, George let out a bellow that shook the room. Thomas took the first man on and drove him back, forcing his accomplices to move or be run over. Two more of the men turned their blades toward Thomas. For a brief moment Thomas faced the three at once, then a chair came hurling through the air from behind him, crashing into one of the men with enough force to send him staggering backwards. Lionel was on the man in an instant, smashing the table leg down on his skull hard enough that both broke. Eileen took the moment to step out and thrust her blade into the leg of another of Thomas’s opponents. The man shouted and cut at her with his own blade. She jumped back and Thomas ended the fight with a quick thrust at the man’s exposed side. He fell, dying, to the ground. The other two turned and ran, fighting each other to get back to Thomas’s room and the window that would lead them to the roof.

“George, go see!” said Thomas, kicking the weapons away from the man on the ground in front of him.

George wrenched another leg off the upturned table and looked into Thomas’s room. “No one here. The window is broke open, though.”

“Da!” Eileen’s voice was high and fearful. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said, looking at his daughter. His eyes widened the moment he did. “You’re bleeding!”

“Me?” Eileen’s eyes were wide. “You have a dagger sticking out of you! Let me look at it!”

“It’s nothing you need to see. They’ve cut your…” Lionel stopped and looked away, red rising on his face. He shook his head. “We’ll need something for a bandage.”

Thomas looked. Eileen’s left arm was bleeding just above the elbow, and the cut on her chest had opened up her shirt, exposing the bloodied flesh of one breast. She was going to be scarred, Thomas realized.

“They’re scratches,” said Eileen, which wasn’t quite true. She sheathed her weapons and pressed on hand to the wound on her breast. “I’ll be fine. Your shoulder—”

“Is fine!”

“Neither of you is fine!” shouted Thomas. “George!”

George came back in. “I didn’t see anyone on the roof. They must have run off.”

“Good,” said Thomas. “Get the robes from Henry’s room. We’ll use them for bandages.”

On the floor in front of him, the man he’d stabbed groaned and coughed, bringing up blood. Thomas knelt down. It was one of the men who had followed them earlier. His merchant clothes were gone and he looked like a street thug. The man’s eyes were open, but barely focused. He coughed again.

“Who are you?” asked Thomas. “Why did you attack her?”

The man’s face worked, then he spat, blood and spittle hitting Thomas’s shirt. He coughed again, a quick convulsion rolled through his body, and his head lolled loosely on his shoulders. Thomas stared at him a moment longer, then turned his attention back to Lionel and Eileen, neither of whom had moved. “Lionel, Eileen. Sit down.”

“I’m fine,” said Lionel, his tone leaving no doubt in Thomas’s mind that the opposite was true. “What’s going on, Thomas?”

“I don’t know. They might be part of the same group that attacked Henry last night.”

“Henry?” said George, coming back in with one of Henry’s robes. “I thought he was up north.”

“He came back yesterday.”

“And already you’re in trouble?” asked Lionel.

“We were attacked,” corrected Thomas. “Last night, on the way to the theatre.”

Lionel frowned, then grimaced at the pain. “Is this to do with the mess this spring?”

“I don’t know,” said Thomas.
I think it’s part of a new mess.
Lionel was swaying where he stood. “You aren’t doing yourself any good with that knife in you. Sit down. Please.”

Lionel ignored Thomas, but Eileen put her hand on his arm and something in his daughter’s expression changed his mind. He picked up the chair George had thrown, groaning as he did, and sat on it. The large man took a deep breath and winced. “By the Four, I haven’t done that in twenty years,” he said, shaking his head. “Not since the last time bandits came to Elmvale. Didn’t know I still had it in me.”