Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (20 page)

“Every troll?” demanded Bee.

“That’s what was strange,” I murmured. “There are no feathered people anywhere.”

“Every one. And every man in a radical’s cap was arrested and his family threatened.
Hundreds have been transported to the north. There they must labor with their sweat
and their blood in the mines of the Barrens. The salt they haul up in buckets flavors
the prince’s food while his subjects go hungry. The iron they dig out of the rock
forges the swords that kill us.”

His poem of grievances so stunned me that I could not help but think of the promises
General Camjiata had made. The music of revolution had a more urgent melody when heard
in a city where so many voices had been so recently silenced. I wanted to give him
hope. “I heard a rumor that the general is returning to Europa. He’ll proclaim
a legal code that abolishes the ancient privileges of princes and mage Houses.”

“Rumor is like a woman’s promise that she’ll kiss you. Have you a kiss for me, lass?”

“I don’t kiss just any man I see! Only the ones I want to kiss! Did I give you reason
to think otherwise?”

“A brave man must have taken on the taming of you!” he said with a laugh that made
me want to skewer him.

“Our thanks to you for helping us,” Bee said as she slipped the cheese knife out of
my hand. As if I could not control my temper!

He smiled as easily at her as he had at me a moment before. “My trials were made easier
by my knowing such a beautiful young woman was spared thereby.” He glanced up as the
door opened and the woman appeared.

He rose. “Time for you to move on. I saw with my own eyes when the mansa of Four Moons
House came to Fox Close with his djeli to set the mirror in place. An impressive man,
the mansa. Rioters had set a barricade in the road and set it afire. He put out the
bonfire with a blast of hail and cold wind that shattered windows and made every hearth
fire go out. His men will come to see who opened the door. I don’t reckon you want
to be here when they get here.”

“Cat, let’s go now.” Rory’s gaze flickered toward the man, and then toward the woman,
and then back to us.

“Of course,” I agreed, smiling at the woman, who stared dourly back at me. “Have you
any word of where these particular birds might have flown?”

“To another nest east of here by name of Havery.”

“My thanks to you for the information, and the food and drink.”

“May Bright Venus bring fertility to you and your brave man,” he replied. He laughed
as I blushed.

We took our leave and stumped along Enterprise Road in a plaguing rain.

“ ‘Bright Venus’! I thought it very rude to wish a person of Kena’ani heritage luck
in breeding under the auspices of a Roman goddess. Didn’t you, Bee?”

She was chewing over more urgent problems. “The mansa knows you’re here, so he’ll
secure the house.”

“We have to get the chest!”

“Ba’al forbid that you lose Andevai’s fashionable dash jackets! Some other man might
be seen wearing them!”

“If never so well,” I muttered mulishly. I missed Vai. How sweet those weeks seemed
now, when I had seen him every day.

“Are you saying I don’t look well in this fine dash jacket?” Rory straightened his
shoulders as a group of two men and two women passed who were laughing in the way
of folk out about the business of pleasure. His smile made the women loose their holds
on the arms of their beaux as they gave him a closer look over. When the men objected,
Rory smiled more deeply, with a hint of dusky corners in his gaze, and one man took
a startled step back while the other bit his lip.

Bee’s scorching glare drove them off. “Rory! We are skulking and running! We are not
lighting a bonfire and ringing bells so people will notice and remember us.”

“Cat said I didn’t look well in my jacket.”

I rapped him on the arm. “It’s not your jacket.”

“Have we survived the mansa’s wrath, the prince’s fury, the general’s devious plotting,
and the Wild Hunt only to have you two squabble over clothes? You look perfectly handsome,
Rory, and I am sure many a female would love to pet you, and by that look you just
got a few males as well, but none of them will get a chance if I murder you first.
Are we done?”

“Yes, Bee, my apologies,” he said so contritely I was astonished.

“Cat?” she demanded. “Does Rory look well in that fine dash jacket?”

With a look like that, directed at me, I knew how to answer. “He looks very fine.”

“You’re only saying it because she told you to,” said Rory.

Bee’s hand tightened on his arm. “Rory, dearest, did you know that in anatomy class
at the academy we learned how the ancient Turanians used to castrate young men so
they could no longer engage in petting? I paid careful attention to that part of class
but unfortunately there was never a practicum in which we were given an opportunity
to see if we could manage the operation ourselves. But I haven’t given up hope.”

If he could have put his ears down, he would have. Then he laughed, and I did, too.

Yet I could not help but notice how women and men mostly moved in separate groups.
Here women never walked anywhere alone, even though in Expedition women had felt free
to come and go as they wished. Nor did people laugh and talk with the same friendly
clamor with which folk had in Expedition. Voices stayed hushed and dampened. Maybe
that was the prince’s newly harsh reign, but perhaps it had always been this way and
we had just never noticed.

It was strange to think we were only passing through the city where we had grown up,
on our way to somewhere else.

“Amadou Barry saw you on the street, and the djeli saw me at the law offices,” I said.
“Nothing to be done about that now. Since the academy is on the way home, we may as
well go there first and hope we find the headmaster before anyone comes looking for
us.”

After a long walk we made our way up Academy Hill past the temple dedicated to the
Blessed Tanit. Her gates always stood open. Bee and Rory ducked into the temple to
stay out of sight while I wrapped the shadows around me and crept into the academy
compound past the servant standing at the gate.

The entry hall lay empty, not a single pupil scurrying late to class under the frieze
with its princely white yam, winter wheat, towering maize, and other carvings of plants.
Another arch led me into the glass-roofed central courtyard. No one was about. Rain
pattered an erratic drumbeat on the glass roof. Although it was early spring, a scent
like summer kissed my lips, the smell of the spirit world sensed through the water
in the ancient sacrificial well at the center of a paved labyrinth. The blood of sacrifices
offered generations ago stung at my nostrils. A year and almost three months ago,
Bee and I had fallen through the well into the spirit world. I paused now in the quiet
courtyard, looking toward the well, which was covered by an iron grate. My blood would
open a path from here into the spirit world, but how would I find Vai in all that
vast and changing landscape?

Bee was right: The headmaster knew more than he had ever let on. We had to talk to
him.

In a rush of clattering footsteps, a crowd of boys and young men swept into the courtyard,
all chattering excitedly. They were dressed in old-fashioned robes cut in the fashion
of boubous, a plain drapery of muted colors designed not to excite the eye. I caught
snippets of words, and it seemed they had been out to watch the festival procession.
Although they had not witnessed the disturbance I had caused,
rumor of its occurrence had spread. When an older man with blond hair and the ruddy
features of a heavy drinker entered the courtyard at the tail end of the procession,
they all hushed so quickly that the voice of the one poor boy who hadn’t noticed rang
out.

“—They heard a voice say, ‘A rising light marks the dawn of a new world.’ ”

As proctors carrying willow wands converged on the hapless speaker to whip his hands,
I looked in vain for a line of girls. I was the only woman in the glass courtyard;
no female proctors or servants flocked at the edge of the shuffling horde of youths.
The overly talkative boy was biting his lip so as not to cry out under the humiliating
punishment as everyone stared.

I could not bear to watch, and anyway, I needed to find the headmaster. A staircase
led up to the long corridor and the closed door of his study. The well-oiled latch
eased down with a soft click. I slipped inside.

For an instant I thought I had accidentally walked through the wrong door into the
wrong room, because nothing in the spacious chamber looked as I remembered it. The
chalkboards and desk had vanished, replaced by gilt-embroidered chairs that looked
as uncomfortable as they were showy. The bookshelves had been cleared of all their
books and scrolls, and they now displayed gold cups, gold bowls, and brass or silver
wine flagons. One bookcase held nothing but a grisly collection of skulls, arranged
from the largest at the top left to the smallest at the lower right, which horribly
seemed to be a baby’s actual skull. On the long table lay not a dinner service for
five but so many empty wine bottles and empty glasses I did not bother to count them.
Only the circulating stove set into the fireplace and the pedestal holding the head
of the poet Bran Cof remained from the last time I had entered this room. It surely
did not look like the study of a scholar with the many diverse interests and formidable
intellect of the headmaster. It took no great acumen to suspect that he had been replaced
as master of the academy.

The skulls stared hollow-eyed at me in stubborn silence. The head of the poet Bran
Cof sat atop the pedestal in a stony slumber, his brow furrowed with deep thoughts
and his lips pinched closed over all the poems and legal knowledge he had hoarded
throughout his famous life. With his hair sticking up in stiff spikes and his bushy
eyebrows a
little raised, he looked noble and magnificent and just a trifle startled, but I knew
he was a filthy-minded and staggeringly unpleasant old man who tried to bully young
women into kissing him. His body was imprisoned by my sire, who could not only command
the poet but also see through his eyes and speak through his mouth. If I woke the
head, would my sire reach through him and trap me with the chain of his voice, as
he had before?

I had to risk it.

And I knew just the way to wake him up.

Emphatically not with a kiss. I shattered one of the wineglasses on the table and
pricked my arm enough to draw blood. This bead I smeared on the head’s lips and eyes.
The cold grain of his face smeared and smoothed into warm flesh. His eyelids fluttered,
then popped open with a look compounded as much of fear as of anger.

“You fool! What do you mean by waking me with blood?”

“I need to ask you some questions.” I took a step back, for the transition from stone
to flesh disturbed me.

His gaze sharpened to a leer as he recognized me. “The girl whose eyes are amber.
Woken with kisses, I see. You have the look of a woman about you now, shaped by a
man’s caresses. Did you escape the marriage, or embrace its carnal pleasures?” His
tone had a greasy unctuousness that made me want to wash myself, but fortunately a
new thought struck him before he started quoting obscene poetry as I was sure he was
about to. Instead, he glanced around with an expression made comical by its wild exaggeration.
“Where is the serpent? Where is she hiding?”

“My cousin? I will bring her to torment you if you do not answer my questions. Have
you seen my husband? The Master of the Wild Hunt stole him from me.”

A look of cunning creased his features. “I can offer you pleasures the man will surely
not have thought of. If you’ll just come a little closer…” His tongue moistened his
lips.

I lost my patience and my temper. “Do you really think comments like these make me
find you attractive? Or are you deliberately trying to put me off? I love him. If
you have the least sliver of a human heart left to you, help me find him. Then you
can compose a poem about our travails and triumph!”

His face went so still that for several shaky breaths I thought he had fallen back
into sleep.

But he blinked, and spoke in an altered tone, like an impatient teacher scolding a
student who is slow to learn. “Best hurry, kitten. You should not have woken me with
blood, for the masters crave it and will come seeking it the instant its scent reaches
their grasping claws. As it will.”

“I thought my sire was the only master. You serve him, but surely you don’t feed him
with your blood.”

“The hunter takes souls, not blood. It amuses him to keep me, because of my knowledge
of the law. I was not sacrificed to the courts. Instead I was imprisoned in this terrible
state, head separated from body.”

“Yes, I met your body in my sire’s palace.” I shuddered, remembering the way Bran
Cof’s headless body had stumbled to serve his master’s bidding. With a gasp, I raised
a hand to my mouth. “Blessed Tanit! What terrible thing might my sire do to Vai?”

“You know nothing about the courts and your sire, do you?”

Lowering my hands, I took a threatening step closer. “Tell me what you know!”

His sneer turned mocking as he looked me up and down in a most intrusive way. “For
each kiss you give me, kitten, I’ll tell you a secret.”

I lifted the shard of glass. “Tell me what I want to know, or I’ll smear my blood
all over your face for the courts to suckle dry!”

His lips pulled back in a horrible grimace, yet he also laughed with a slightly hysterical
rasp. “You know not of what you speak, girl. The spirit courts crave mortal blood,
for blood gives them protection from the tides and allows them to sustain their power.
You cannot challenge them.”

“We shall see about that!”

It wasn’t until the latch clicked down that I realized I heard voices. It was the
work of a moment to hide myself in shadow as a servant showed two men into the room.