Cold Fire

“One may have other reasons for sitting at this table or sleeping in this house,” I said. “I do not serve the general nor have I ever.”



Yet her frank assessment embarrassed me. “You retain some skepticism about the general’s motives?”



“Can there be any skepticism where the general is concerned? Is he not exactly what he claims to be?”



“A worthwhile question. If I may change the subject, I am told you are the daughter of Daniel Hassi Barahal. I met him once.”



I leaned in too swiftly, drawing notice for my lurch. “Please, tell me about him! For you know, he and my mother died when I was six.”



Before she could answer, the general asked her opinion about the efficacy of cold magic in the Antilles. “For I am surprised,” he said, “to find there is a general belief here in Expedition that fire banes are weak creatures of little utility.”



“So they are,” proclaimed the young merchant. “Good for parlor tricks, lighting a path at night in the countryside, and acting as auxiliaries to the municipal firefighting force. These stories of how they call down storms and shatter iron are the credulous fantasies of the gullible natives of Europa, who have been treated for so long to such tales that they have come to believe them.”



“In fact, that is wrong,” said the professora. “I have studied this question at some length. Many of the properties of cold magic can be explicated using the principles of the sciences. In fact, I suspect testimony from the mages would serve only to confuse precisely because they deliberately conceal what they know. For example, the first question we must ask is, What is the source of the vast energies available to cold mages? Does it lie in that plane of existence often called ‘the spirit world’? Or does it lie in the ice itself??”



“Is the spirit world a physical place, Professora,” asked the young merchant with a laugh, “or a metaphorical one?”



“Let me complete my thought,” she said with the sort of graciousness that cut him off at the throat. “I believe both may be necessary.”



“You know this for certain, Professora Alhamrai?” asked the general.



She inclined her head. “I am an inquirer, General. In the Chibcha kingdom of southern Amerike, in the mountains, rests an ice shelf. I have traveled there to ascertain this for myself. Likewise, my colleagues among the”—here she whistled four notes, denoting trolls—“have a map of the great ice wall whose southern cliff stretches across most of North Amerike. This wall I have seen for myself, although not its entire extent. I think it likely that the cold mages of the Antilles exist too far from these sources to use them with as much efficacy as cold mages can do in Europa, where the ice lies closer to human habitation.”



I said, “So a cold mage would have power here, but it would be weaker because the ice is farther away? I mean, is the ice actually farther away?”



Bee looked at me, lifting one eyebrow in an unspoken question.



The professora nodded. “The extent and mass of the nearest ice may also matter. In addition, it is likely that, over the generations, the mage Houses in Europa have developed a particularly skilled and nuanced method of drawing from the source of these energies. Without such specific knowledge, and living in a place where it is illegal for them to form associations to better themselves, the fire banes here in the Antilles would be at an additional disadvantage. In a geography with a number of active volcanoes, it is no wonder fire mages are treasured and ennobled. While, in a tropical climate, the seemingly weaker cold magic is ignored and belittled.”



“Are there quite a lot of powerful fire mages here?” I asked. “Where are they all?”



Talk at the table died as quickly as if I had stripped naked.



The general rose. “I believe it is time to move to the salon.”



As was typical in Expedition, the company moved with no separation of women from men into a parlor made comfortable with sofas and chairs. Along one wall stood a pianoforte beside two djembes placed atop a wooden chest.



Because I wanted to hear about my father, I tried to slide into the circle that had gathered around the professora by the glass doors that opened onto the patio, but the young merchant had taken her earlier words on friction as an inducement to monopolize her. He began droning on about his theories of the unfitness of most people for governance and the need for the Council to remain a select group chosen by and from those with the virtue, birth, and education to properly shepherd society through difficult times. Bee had been cornered by a pair of young officers in the Expedition militia, specialists, so they were telling her at length, in the new science of artillery. The general sat at the pianoforte to play a complicated fugue, one melodic voice following the next, as two women wearing the rich clothing to be found along Avenue Kolonkan engaged him in simultaneous conversations, one about transatlantic sailing routes and the other about the manufacture of rifles. I faded back to the sideboard. Unlike the general, I could not separate so many voices.