Cold Fire

“That sounds promising!” said Rory with a cocky grin that made me think he’d already forgotten his frightening words and our bad idea.



I fastened my cane to its loop and buttoned my coat as Rory picked up the bags. A saber-toothed cat, cold steel, and dreams that revealed the future. That would have to be enough. As we headed up the stairs, Bee began to hum under her breath the famous aria “When He Is Laid in Earth” from the recently staged opera The Dido and Aeneas, in which the queen of Qart Hadast, after defeating the Roman prince who sought to subdue her rule through marriage, presides over his funeral procession.



The Amazon waited in the entryway, shoulders against the door and arms crossed. “So here yee is,” she remarked in an odd accent. “Already, the general know yee lot shall leave.”



But instead of blocking our path, she opened the door. A blast of wintry air swirled in, numbing my face and chilling my heart. The history of the world begins in ice, and it will end in ice. So sing the Celtic bards and Mande djeliw of the north whose words tell us where we came from and what ties and obligations bind us. Here, we dare not forget the vast ice sheets and massive glaciers that cover the northern reaches of Europe. In the old tales, the ice is called the abode of the ancestors. Brennan hadn’t mentioned the phrase in his story of gruesome death, but Daniel Hassi Barahal had written it in his journals. I steeled myself, for wasn’t I seeking my ancestors?



The winter wind stirred the hem of the Amazon’s knee-length jacket. She wore a soldier’s boots, kept polished not to a fashionable mirror gleam but with an attention to cleanliness and wear, so they would last longer and support her when she hit rough ground.



“If yee wait with the door open, then the cold air come in. Make up yee mind. Go, or stay.”



“You’re not going to try to stop us?” Bee asked.



“They who fight with the general, fight of they own will. One thing I shall tell yee before yee walk. If ever any of yeen wish to contact the general, go to the tavern called Buffalo and Lion, in the district called Old Temple. Yee shall say the words ‘Helene sent me.’ We shall see yee again.”



“Our thanks.” Bee touched gloved fingers to her chest like a great lady of the theater about to make an exit. “And yet, farewell.”



She swept out the door and down the steps. Rory took in a breath as if scenting for danger, then followed, swinging the bags as if they weighed nothing. I could not stop myself from looking toward the closed door of Chartji’s office. Whatever went on there between the lawyer and Andevai was no longer my business. I had to leave that part of my life behind.



Yet I hesitated on the threshold. The clamor of the city assaulted me with the noise of rattling carts, ringing handbells, market-folk calling out their wares, and men crying the morning’s news: The Northgate poet begins fourth day of hunger strike on the prince’s steps! For a moment, I reveled in the sweet familiar sounds, the ones I had grown up with.



Then, out of nowhere and with no warning, a clangor shook me down to my boots. The sister bells, Brigantia and Faro by the river, rang to life with their alarm: Fire! Fire! Call the watch!



Doors opened all along Fox Close and people crowded onto their front steps, their breath like white mist in the air as they looked into the sky for the origin of the trouble.



“The war begin,” said the Amazon. “But the princes and the mages don’ know. Not yet. So, gal. Go, or stay?”



“Cat?” Bee’s plaintive voice called from the street. In the house, I heard footsteps, people moving toward doors that were about to be opened.



“I’m going,” I said. And I went.



6



“A good morning to you, Maestressas and Maester.” A young man with dusty blond hair and a freckled white face stood beside an empty coal cart. “Is all well with you?”



“I have no trouble, thanks to my power as a woman,” I replied in the traditional way, and received a scathing look from Bee for my pains. “And you, Maester? Is all well with your family?”



“We have peace, thanks to my mother who raised me,” he said with a grin. “Though I wonder at the bells. I hope the fire’s not around here.”



He looked down Fox Close toward Enterprise Road. With the bells tolling the alarm, the streets of Adurnam had turned, like the snowmelt-fed streams of late spring, into foaming rivers full with a raging flow of people hurrying to get somewhere else. I didn’t relish making our way halfway across Adurnam in this tumult.



“Are you from this district?” I asked.



He made a flourish with his cap. “That I am. And my ancestors before me. Eurig is my name. Brennan Du asked me to get you across the city.”