Cold Steel

Page 97

“I missed you.”
“Of course you did, love.” He put an arm around me as we stared south toward an unknown shore. Snow winked where it dissolved into the water. “We need to find a mage House or inn, or we won’t last long in this cold. Even with a fur blanket.”
“I feel like a thief taking the blanket with us. A fine beaver pelt blanket like that costs a year’s wages in Adurnam.”
“I’m taking no chances with you and the cold, love. Now go in. You’re shivering.”
We set out at dawn, glad to be moving. It took all morning to row across the sound. The water was so formidably calm that I was able to take several turns at the oars. By sighting on an unusually tall tree, we came in fairly close to straight across from where we had started, working back against a placid current. There we found a pier and cabin very like the one we had just left, except it had a shed for drying fish.
A path led south through woodland of stunted pine and scrub birch. We stowed the boat and started walking. When a freezing mixture of snow and sleet began to fall on the wings of a stiff east wind, we were forced to turn back and shelter indoors for the rest of the day and night. To be snuggled together with the fur blanket wrapped around us was no hardship, but in winter we could not survive long on love alone.
Thank Tanit, the next morning dawned clear. We walked all morning. I was hungry, and he actually looked tired, although I was not about to tell him so.
Instead I talked. “Kofi said you would be the net that Expedition’s radicals threw across the ocean to Europa.”
“If the charter the Assembly is writing in Expedition can be displayed in towns here, that may encourage people to demand that communities should have a say in ruling themselves.”
“That’s why Kehinde wanted the portable press from Expedition so badly, isn’t it? To escape princely censorship of her pamphlets.”
“Kehinde?”
“Professora Nayo Kuti, the scholar and radical pamphleteer. The prince of Adurnam imposed martial law when the people demanded the right to elect a single tribune to the Adurnam council. If electing a single tribune to represent all the people is too radical for such a prince, imagine what he would say to the idea of an Assembly!”
The trees and ground with their coat of snow sparkled in the sunlight. The sky was so blue it seemed to have no limit, only to fall away forever as into a spirit world where every layer fit inside another layer without ever reaching an end.
“That’s not the only thing I carried away from Expedition,” he said. “In Europa, cold mages have always stood at odds with the blacksmiths who wield dangerous fire. What if cold mages and fire mages could work together, as they do in the Taino kingdom?”
“I thought fire banes were slaves in Taino country.”
He smiled as at a jest I ought to understand. “The situation is more complex than that. In the Antilles those with cold magic are generally so weak and untrained that it’s no wonder they are considered an inferior breed of magister.” He indicated the basket. “Even the cacica was startled and impressed by my magic.”
I opened my mouth to joke about how she had been ogling him on Hallows’ Night, but when I considered the contours of his pride and the respect due to her dignity, I decided against it.
Fortunately he had gone on. “She explained to me how catch-fires work. It is exceptionally dangerous both to the fire mage and to the catch-fire. That is why when a Taino man or woman first blooms with fire magic, a kinsman volunteers to become their catch-fire. To the outside eye it may look like slavery. But it is just the family taking responsibility until the new fire mage learns to properly control the weaving.”
“But I heard of fire banes being sold against their will into the Taino kingdom.”
“I don’t know, love. It may be. People also act wrongly at times. But I can’t help but think about how much more we could do in Europa if cold mages worked in harness with fire mages. Not that the mansa would ever listen to me.”
“Honestly, Vai, the prospect of fire mages and fire banes working together alarms me. We’ve seen what James Drake is capable of.”
“Not every person is like James Drake.” His breath misted the air before its heat faded.
“If cold mages and fire mages worked together, then people would fear them more and hate them worse. What would stop magisters from taking over everything? I mean, besides the Wild Hunt? Any magister who learned how to hide from the Hunt in a troll maze would tell every other magister. If mage House magisters hide, then someone else will die. Someone has to die to feed the courts. As some unknown person did when we were in the spirit world. As Queen Anacaona did.” I tapped the basket.