Cold Magic

“You know a place to go, away from here. I know no place except the village and the estate. I’m a hard worker. I will not burden you, if you will just allow me to walk with you and show me how to go about finding work and a bed wherever it is you mean to go. Even if it means crossing the water, like the stories say you merchant people do on your ships. And two are better than one, aren’t they?” She smiled hopefully.



I sheathed my sword and began walking. “Do you know anything about my people?”



She was as tall as I was, and her stride matched mine. “Yours are the tribe who wore purple, isn’t that right? You fought a war with the Romans. You have queens instead of princes. A girl cannot be married until she spends a night in the temple sleeping with whatever man comes calling—”



“That’s not true!”



“I’ve bitten you,” she said contritely. “I did not know.”



“No, I understand you did not know. You have nothing you need apologize for. It’s one of the lies the Romans told.”



“What are your stories, then?”



What stories belonged to a person whose entire upbringing was a lie?



“There are tears in your eyes,” said Kayleigh. “Is it a sad tale, how you came to be married to my brother? It can’t be because he’s been unkind to you, for he’d never mistreat a woman. Why did your people make such a contract with the mage Houses? Have they mage bloodlines also, hidden away?”



“It’s just the cold wind,” I lied, for she obviously did not know that Andevai had been ordered to kill me. “There is nothing to tell.” Yet to walk in silence seemed awkward. I did not want to ask her to tell the stories of her people, because she might then discuss her brother, and that subject I wished desperately to avoid. “Let me tell you the story of the great general, Hanniba’al. He crossed the mountains with his army and his elephants and took the Romans by surprise.”



Kayleigh knew the art of listening, and I enjoyed telling the tale. From one tale into another, as the old saying goes. The path unrolled beneath our strides and the afternoon passed into dusk earlier than I wished. Hallows Night and Hallows Day were ending, and with the setting sun, the Wild Hunt must fade back into the spirit world. Leaving magisters free to safely ride abroad and begin their own hunt for me.



We reached a standing stone that marked a crossroads where a well-worn path headed east through the hills. Several distant smears marked villages amid clearings. The countryside hid the river.



Kayleigh approached the stone and let precious drops of ale from her leather bottle moisten the stone’s base. She scanned the landscape. “It’s almost night. There will be a shelter on the leeside of the hill. There always is, at a crossroads stone. Should we rest while it is dark?”



“No. We’ll stop and take something to eat. The moon will rise soon. We’ll have light enough for walking. Best we go as far as we can while the weather holds.” I glanced back the way we had come, and she did, too, but we saw no sign of pursuit.



We climbed a side path down to a wattle-and-daub hut. After relieving ourselves in a solidly built latrine off to one side, we retired to the hut to eat a scant meal of bread and cheese, grateful for roof and walls. We did not light a fire although it grew dark. As soon as the moon rose, we set off again.



Kayleigh’s nerves were not, it seemed, as steady as mine. She glanced back frequently. The chalk of the path ran before and behind like a beam of moonlight, part of the scaffolding of the sky drawn here on earth.



“Did you not pass Duvai, coming after us? Did he not see you?” I asked.



She turned her head away and spat on the path. Our footsteps thudded on the path in a steady rhythm, hers falling in the gaps between mine.



“While Fa yet lives, Duvai is not head of the house, but he will be. His mother is not my mother, even if we share a father. So he does not—yet—have the right to command me to do as he wishes. No more than he has the right to command Vai now that Vai is gone to the magisters.”



“So Duvai did see you and let you pass?”



Her face was hard to read in the moonlight, but her lips pressed tight. “He did not let me pass. I did what I must. He never saw me.”



“What will happen when he returns to find you have fled?” I pressed. “Will he be blamed?”



“Why should I care if he is blamed? I won’t go back for Duvai’s sake!”



“I don’t expect you to return. But if men from your village come after and find you, they’ll find me. And if Andevai comes after and finds me, then he will find you.”