Cold Magic

“Magisters and princes are notoriously intolerant of folk who defy them,” he said. “The law firm has remained beneath their notice. So far.”



“Why did you say that about Camjiata’s legal code?” I asked. “He was a monster.”



“He was a radical, in his own way,” said Brennan. “A selfishly ambitious man, so we’re taught, but if you look at his legal code, you’ll see he understood he could succeed only if he offered rights and privileges to the common people that their masters had long denied them. Do not be sure the stories you hear about the war are all true.”



“I’m not,” I said, too quickly, and then I said, “I’m not so sure any longer of what I know.”



His approving nod made me smile and look down.



A whistle, high and strong and shrill, pierced the air like a flung javelin.



“That’s my nephew,” said Chartji. “Cover your ears.”



We did so. A swift exchange of whistling took place between Chartji and the unseen nephew. She was not whistling through lips, as humans would do; did her nostrils flare? Where was the sound coming from? With a last liquid phrase, she signaled and we lowered our hands.



“Mage troops coming,” she said. “Time to go. Do you come with us?”



“Not yet,” I said as Bee nodded. “We’ll put you in too much danger.”



They gathered sacks and tools and made hurried farewells.



Chartji turned to me a final time. “You’ll find the Adurnam offices of Godwik and Clutch in Fox Close.” She added, in the language of the Kena’ani, gesturing to include Bee, “Peace upon you and in all your undertakings.”



Then they were gone. Bee and I were left staring at each other in the shadow of the shattered airship’s ribs.



“I’ve never before exchanged words with a troll,” she said in a choked voice. “Yet the creature seemed quite unexceptionable.”



“No doubt because she is a personage of sensibility and intellect. About you, I admit, I retain a great deal of doubt. Don’t you think we’d best get moving, before we’re discovered by whatever that whistle warned against?”



We hurried down the alley, pausing to overlook the gate with its loosely wrapped chain. I caught a glimpse of our companions crossing the rail lines before they cut behind a distant brick warehouse. Where was the nephew? Just how far had the whistle carried?



Bee used her shoulder to shift the gates. She squeezed through the gap and under the loose chains. I heard a steady thunder of hooves, and I grasped Bee’s wrist and pulled her to the right along the high wall.



“We can’t go back the way we came,” I said. “If I do not mistake my ears, a host of mounted troops approaches.”



She shook her arm out of my grasp, but only so she could trot alongside me more easily. “Do you think it’s really possible we can find a place to hide overnight in one of the mills?”



“In that racket? I should be surprised if we could not. Who, after all, is likely to be sneaking into the factories?”



“Radicals meaning to inflame the workers.”



That her lips were set grimly did not surprise me; we were, after all, in a desperate situation. “Is there something wrong with radicals?”



“Don’t you think so?”



“Considering the Hassi Barahals have been accused of spying for Camjiata—”



“Really, Cat. Who supposes Camjiata to be a radical? He was a general!”



We fled around a corner just as the first rank of a troop of horsemen arrayed in the splendid turbans and knee-length jackets of a mage House appeared before the Rail Yard. I doubted they had seen us, but fear lent wings to our feet. We held our skirts away from our legs and ran into an overgrown field of dead grass and abandoned waste. Where a few scrawny trees gave shelter, folk had used the cover for their commode, so besides the cinders and smoke and clatter and hum, there was also a stink rising so strong it seemed we plunged straight into Sheol, if Sheol looked like a factory district whose chimneys thrust as spears into a cloudy sky smeared with cinders and ash. A rickety wood bridge crossed a stream whose water oozed sludge. A dead rat was caught in the weeds, rigid with indignation, no doubt, at having drowned. Since rats could swim as easily as they could scuttle, I wondered if it was the poisonous water that had killed it. Its corpse made me think of Rory, and my steps faltered.



“Hurry!” Bee picked her way across the bridge. A horn cried behind us. Farther off, a series of shrill whistles chased into the distance, but as we hurried up a stony path between heaps of discarded brick and wood so in pieces it wasn’t even worth scavenging, the troll signals became drowned beneath the pulsing hum of the three mills.