Cold Magic

“Do you want to sleep?” she asked. “No one will come in here until dawn.”



“No,” I murmured, thinking of the guardian’s depthless eyes, and yet as the word emerged, a yawn cracked my jaw. “But maybe I could just sit down one moment.”



Weariness chose for me. I slept.



I woke with the taste of smoke on my tongue and the whisper of flames dying within the closed stove. Kayleigh was gone. The girls slumbered peacefully, while the ill woman’s sleep was clearly drugged; a bead of drool caught at the corner of her lips and her eyes rolled beneath closed eyelids as if in her dreams she was seeing horrific sights hidden from the rest of us. I sat up, pulse thundering in my ears as panic stormed through me. But my sword lay on the cot alongside me, my boots sat neatly beside the door, and my cloak had covered me. I was rumpled from sleeping in my clothes but otherwise untouched. I checked behind the screen; the smaller wardrobe remained as I had left it. I touched the other sword, but a hissing spray of sparks burned my fingertips. I licked the smarting skin. Stealing the sword was clearly out of the question.



None of the sleepers stirred. I crept to the door, pulled on my boots, and swung my cloak over my shoulders. For good fortune I kissed the bracelet Bee had given me.



I slipped outside into the shocking cold night. The celebration drummed on, its beat stronger and faster. Clouds covered the sky. I had no idea how late it was or how long I had slept.



Duvai’s house lay silent and dark, exhaling heat from the fine stove within. Surveying the houses with their thatched hats, I recognized that many of them breathed threads of smoke from brick chimneys. Were so many furnished with the comfort of stoves? For a humble rustic village, there was more here than I had realized.



I crept to the festival house, encountering no guardians, and sidled up to one of the doors. When none of the villagers crowded inside paid me any mind, I squeezed in to the very back with a shoulder shoved against a pillar of wood. I raised up on my toes to peer over the assembly, who were clapping and swaying with the drums. Older folk sat on benches at the front. The drummers sat or stood, some straight-faced with concentration or grinning like madmen as they watched and answered the dancers. If a rhythm were like a chain of magic, and maybe it was, then I would have been able to see the threads that linked them to the others, for although they were separate individuals, together they were one conversation in constant movement. The folk dancing in the cleared space were young men, stripped down to their trousers and to light linen undershirts so drenched with sweat that the fabric clung to their torsos.



Naturalists claim that however much the female may be said to love the accoutrements of fashion and furnishings, it is the male who is driven to display himself. Blessed Tanit, it was very hot in here! There are always two or three young men in any group who compete for the highest degree of attention, who want to be the best. Or who are the best, with a subtle flare that touches the essence, until the interaction between what they are doing and what the drummers are doing becomes the thing.



Andevai was a very good dancer, and furthermore he was shamelessly flirting with the attention of the gathering while competing for that attention with several other extremely spectacular young men who were also easy to look at. Who would imagine him as a contrite young man who had buried his head in his hands before his grandmother with so much humility? The dancers egged each other on as the women clapped and whistled and shouted encouragement, and the older men smiled as they shook their heads as if remembering past glories and regretting lost youth.



What woman does not enjoy such a display of male athleticism and grace?



A dead one.



With a flourish, the drums sent the young men to the sidelines, to a chorus of whooping and praise, and beat a new rhythm to call young women into the circle. The young men crowded over to a long table. Andevai broke off a piece of dark country bread he would have scorned, I am sure, if it was offered to him in the dining room of a perfectly respectable inn. He ate with the others with every indication of relish, all of them chattering and jostling as they worked their way down the table of common platters laden with festival food.



A hand brushed my elbow, then took hold firmly as a male voice spoke in my ear. “He who tries to wear two hats will discover he does not have two heads.” Duvai indicated the door. “Dawn rises, and with it the open gate.”



21



I slipped out in his wake, as we sailing folk like to say. He walked with the rangy stride of a man accustomed to treks through trackless countryside. He handed me a wool cloak, its weave coarse and scratchy.



“Put this on over the other. Such fine cloth marks you from a distance.”