Cold Magic

The elder shook his head again, then turned to receive two mugs of ale from the barkeep. With a smiling nod to seal the end of our conversation, he took himself and his young companion away. I shifted to watch their progress and caught a glimpse through the crowd of a table half hidden by the big brick hearth in the corner of the room closest to the blazing fire. A clean-shaven and rather light-skinned young man sat there, hands on the table and a cap held in slim fingers; he had Avarian eyes, slant-folded, and an oval face with broad cheekbones. After a moment I realized, with a start, that he was a woman, older than I had first thought, with black hair cropped short and an old scar on her left cheek, and in all ways dressed exactly as a man.



The bartender leaned across the bar to follow my gaze with his own. “Foreigners,” he said. “Five of ’em. They’re staying at the Lamb, across the way. Got here yesterday with ten mules and twenty bundles of wool cloth from Camlun. But the warden’s sure they were smuggling rifles. He meant to take them before Lord Owen, but then a lad come in this morning with the cry of sheep stealing and off the warden must go. He told this lot to stay put until he come back or he’d ask Lord Owen to set the militia after them.”



“Rifles!” I thought of the rifles the eru and coachman had claimed to have destroyed in Southbridge. The men pursuing Andevai: It’s time the mages feel the sting of our anger.



“You heard of them? It’s a new kind of musket, like.”



Emilia finished her song to a burst of acclaim and cries for a new song. Someone said he’d go for his fiddle, and another pair left to get drum and lute. Emilia leaned over Roderic, flirting as he sipped ale and imbibed her attentions.



The bartender glanced once around the room as if fearing eavesdroppers, then bent closer. I bent closer as well, his mouth close to my ear and his breath strong with ale as he whispered, “Mages hate rifles, anything like that. And foreigners are usually radicals, aren’t they? Still.” His hand brushed mine. “If there’s no illegal merchandise, there’s no proof, is there?”



“Where would rifles be coming from?” I asked, wondering what he would answer.



“I wouldn’t know about that,” he said with a grin. “Still, she’s a fierce-looking woman, isn’t she? Seems a shame to me for a woman to go cutting her hair all short like a man’s, though. Yours, for instance. You have hair as black and lovely as a raven’s wing.”



Fiery Shemesh! The man was flirting with me. “Uh, my thanks.” I shifted my hand away as surreptitiously as I could and ponderously veered back to the subject. “That woman looks Avar, or something like Avars would look, I would think. I’ve only ever seen one. In Adurnam.” And him an albino, but I was not about to mention the headmaster’s assistant here or my ties to the academy college.



“City girl, eh? Thought I heard it in your speech. They do look strange, I’ll say that. Though they haven’t made trouble since the warden told them to stay put. Very quiet folk. And one’s sick with a flux or some such. Says he’s too sick to travel, anyway, like to die. They’ve set him alone in a room and change off tending him.”



“Who wants to run from the law in the middle of winter? Even radicals can freeze to death. Or get sick and die.”



He offered to top off my mug of ale. “You fancy radicals, there in the city?”



“I don’t fancy anyone,” I said in my most quelling tone. “I am”—hard to imagine I would ever be glad to have an opportunity to say this!—“married. But an emergency called me home, and my brother came to fetch me. Then we had that trouble with brigands, so while I’m sure you’re a fine young man, I’m not in a mood to flirt even if I were unmarried.”



He shrugged, humor flashing in his good-natured face. “A man has to try, when he is smitten. Your gold eyes are a treasure as grand as they are precious. And twice as hard, for the cruel words with which you reject me.”



I laughed.



“Yannic! Get those drinks pulled!” shouted the innkeeper from the other side of the room above the hubbub of the crowd.



One of her daughters sashayed over and shoved a tray onto the bar before the man. “You can flirt when there’s no customers.”



“How can I do that if no customers means no flirts? You can’t be expecting me to take up with Em again, can you? After she threw me over for Daithi, thinking him likely to gain a fine proud position as cavalry man for Falling Star House? Which he did, and more fortune to him, for he’ll need it. Whilst I drown my sorrow as I may. What am I to do when a fine proud gel fetches up at my bar and talks to me with her pretty ways and golden eyes?”