Cold Steel

Yet fourteen days passed, the weather warmed up, and still there was no sign of Bee. I busied myself earning a little money by writing pamphlets for a troll-owned printer. Vai took for granted that the mage House would provide for all our needs, but I wanted funds of my own in my purse.



On a cloudy afternoon I trudged through sleet along Printers Lane with a sheaf of papers tucked in a satchel. Magister Vinda accompanied me together with two male attendants as guards and two young women to hold umbrellas over our heads. I was sure the four servants were slaves in all but name, clientage-born as Vai had been. But since they were country-born youth who could not speak anything but the garbled rural dialect, I had been unable to hold extended conversations with them.



“I must admit, Magister,” I said to Vinda, “you are the last person I thought would embrace so enthusiastically such radical principles as an elected Assembly and the right of women within a community to stand for Assembly just like men.”



“Why should that surprise you?” she asked. “I see no reason women should not act in the same capacity as men. Is the mage craft within a woman’s body worth less than that in a man’s? Has the Lord of All not given both women and men voices with which to speak and to sing?” She paused. “You look surprised.”



“I thought the mage Houses objected to anything new, like the combustion engine or airships or any sort of radical philosophy. In Adurnam, it’s only been in the last fifteen years that girls were even allowed to attend the academy college. Of course we sat upstairs in the women’s balcony, or at separate tables on the other side of the room from the boys. I thought mages must therefore also object to educating women.”



“Where do you think the fashion of educating girls alongside boys comes from, if not from mage Houses? We have always trained our girls as well as our boys.”



As we arrived at that moment at the establishment Pinfeather & Quill, I had no opportunity to reply that my own people had done the same. A bell tinkled as we entered the front room. Its counter was covered with printed pamphlets, and a press thumped in the back. The smell of ink and dust pervaded the air. A drably feathered troll pushed through the curtain separating the two rooms.



“Magister Vinda. Maestra Bell Barahal.” Tewi had the facility of all trolls to mimic human accents exactly and had quickly adapted her speech to mine, so she was much easier for me to understand than were most of the residents of Sala. “How is it with you this day?”



We shook hands. She had a bitter scent, like aniseed, not unpleasant but not attractive. Her head swiveled almost back-to-front to mark the entrance of a second troll, a shorter, brightly plumaged male. He gave a bobbing courtesy, but his gaze tracked us in a most alarming way. With ink-stained talons he poured out tea and uncovered bowls to reveal nuts and dried fruit, then stood by the door measuring the four nervous servants as for dinner. Tewi paced through the formalities in a rote way different from Chartji’s or Keer’s, as if she had taught herself rules for how to deal with humans rather than having grown up among them.



After the preliminaries Tewi indicated the papers. “You are finished with the third article? The pamphlets describing the Taino kingdom have sold well so far.”



“This is my description of how Expedition’s radicals overthrew the Council and instituted an Assembly and charter. General Camjiata figures prominently in the tale.”



“Timely!” Tewi paged through the text. I liked watching her taloned fingers shift each sheet with a flick that stubby human fingers could not match. “We have just received news from Iberia.”



“You have news of General Camjiata?” This was the first I had heard of the general since the mansa’s declaration—almost a year ago, in Adurnam—that Camjiata had made landfall at Gadir.



Tewi went on. “A coalition of southern Gallic princes marched into northern Iberia. They hoped to take the general by surprise before he could consolidate his allies and raise an army. However, the general defeated the coalition in a battle near the city of Tarraco. We’re printing a broadsheet with the sensational news now.”



Vinda leaned to look at the broadsheet with its screaming headline “Iberian Monster Devours His Enemy!” Her sudden motion caused the male troll to take an assertive step forward with feathers fluffed out. I grasped at my cane just as Tewi whistled. The male checked himself and flattened his crest.



Vinda was so intent on the broadsheet that she did not notice. “I thought Camjiata was killed fifteen years ago when the Second Coalition defeated him at the Battle of Havery.”