Cold Steel

Page 120

“What happened?” I demanded.
“We believe the mage House in Lutetia pushed the Parisi prince to take the step,” said Brennan with a crooked smile meant to remind me of why he had to be careful with mages. “However, her husband is a man of considerable status in Massilia. Through his efforts she was released and sent back to Massilia.”
“Professora Nayo Kuti is married?” I said. “I thought Kehinde was an independent woman.”
Bee’s gloved hand slipped from mine and she leaned over to rest a hand on Brennan’s knee in a gesture so intimate and familiar that I looked sharply away lest I blurt out an inappropriate question that would embarrass us all. My thoughts whirled dizzily.
“I am sorry regardless to hear she was arrested,” I lumbered on, “but I am glad to hear she was released in a timely manner to a safe place. I hope she is still writing.”
“She is still writing and her pamphlets travel across Europa.” Brennan nodded at Bee.
She withdrew her hand and tucked it into the bend of my elbow. “I pray your escape was not too much of an ordeal, dearest. Is Andevai unharmed? I hope we will have time to prepare him before he sees Rory wearing his ruined dash jacket.”
Brennan chuckled.
I sighed. “He is much the same as ever, as you will see. Bee, where is your sketchbook?”
She had it with her, for her sketchbook was like my cane: We never went anywhere without them. I paged through to the sketch of the tailor’s shop.
“When Maester Godwik recognized the eggs atop the towers as the architecture of Sala’s palace, I knew I had to come to Sala,” she said. “I hoped you would remember. And you did!”
I flipped to the sketch of the false dream.
“Cat!” she whispered, with a glance toward Brennan, who had closed his eyes in a kindly attempt to give us a little privacy. “Why do I need to look at this? I try to forget I ever drew it.”
For the longest time I examined the fabric of the dash jacket worn by a man seen only from the back. Shading and hatching became petaled flowers, while dots and lines evoked the spray of fireworks exploding joyfully out of the flowers’ blooming splendor.
I said in a low voice, “Quite by chance and not by my doing, he is getting a dash jacket made in this fabric. Can you bring about the future by drawing it?”
She snatched the sketchbook out of my hands and snapped it shut as if to close off the drift of my thoughts. Brennan opened his eyes, looking startled.
“I have no power to bring about the future. I only have the curse of sometimes glimpsing the future in visions that usually make no sense.”
She looked at Brennan in a way that made me realize she and he had discussed the subject at length. I caught my breath, waiting for some confession, but she only turned back to me with hands pressed together, palm to palm, as she spoke.
“I have done a lot of thinking about what you and I have seen, and what Queen Anacaona told me. The women who walk the dreams of dragons walk unscathed through the Great Smoke, which we might also call the ocean of dreams. People have long gone to augurs and priestesses to have their dreams interpreted, because they believe dreams are windows into the gods’ intentions. Yet surely most dreams are merely a jumble of thoughts and images and fears and hopes. Or nothing more than indigestion.”
“Or brought on by too much whiskey,” murmured Brennan with a smile that brought a rose’s bloom to Bee’s cheeks.
She went on as if he had not spoken. “I think the Great Smoke is very like the ocean. It has shallows, and depths, and a shoreline. I believe it also has currents just as mariners tell us our own oceans do. I now believe all strands of past, present, and future commingle in the Great Smoke. Dragon dreamers walk the currents of the future, even if we do not know what we are seeing.” She paused to brush her cheeks. “Why are you staring, Cat? Is there something on my face?”
“No.” I struggled for a jest but could not find one. She looked so grave and scholarly, quite unlike my bombastic and passionate Bee but exactly like a woman I could love and admire just as much. “Was the leviathan that conveyed us across the Great Smoke truly a dragon?”
“Dragon is a word we use to describe something we don’t understand. But to truly answer your question, we must speak to the headmaster. To speak to the headmaster, we must travel to Treverni Noviomagus.”
“Are you sure that’s where he is?”
Brennan nodded. “We have learned through our network of intelligencers that a man answering to the description of the headmaster and bearing the name Napata is headmaster of the New Academy in Noviomagus. The New Academy was founded two years ago.”