Drake glanced out the window. “Ask him yourself, for here he comes.”
Camjiata and Kehinde crossed the yard to the back door. I did not see Godwik or Brennan. Upstairs a door closed, and footsteps paced the length of the house. I heard the professora speaking to the general as they came down the passage.
“-But the airship was destroyed. It is certain a cold mage devised the sabotage.”
“So I was informed yesterday when I entered the city,” the general replied. “A shame. It would have made for a spectacular departure from Adurnam.”
“To think of destroying such a remarkable and beautiful object, both in design and concept! A new means of crossing the ocean between Europa and the Amerikes! Such antipathy toward invention and technology lies beyond my understanding. Such people ought not to hold power over the lives of others. But without the airship, how will you cross the ocean?”
They came into the kitchen, Kehinde blowing on bare hands to warm them.
“I’ve already set a new plan in motion,” Camjiata said as he walked to the table. He picked up Bee’s sketchbook before she or I realized he meant to so brazenly invade her private things.
“Unexpected,” he said as he flipped through the pages, many of which bore sketches of good-looking young men. “Yet as a way to record hopes and dreams, it’s quite as useful as words.”
Bee looked first as if all blood had drained from her face. Then she flushed in an exceedingly dangerous way that only ever presaged her rare but explosive blasts of volcanic temper. Just before she blew, Rory glided back into the room exactly as if he’d felt a warning rumble. He slipped up next to her and draped an arm over her shoulders in a way that made it look as though he were both soothing her and stopping her from stabbing the general.
Without looking up, Camjiata spoke in a coolly amused voice that made me think he knew exactly the effect his intrusion into her sketchbook was having on her. “Patience, and I’ll explain. The women who walk the dreams of dragons walk the path of dreams each in a unique way. Helene heard words of tangled poetry. I learned to unravel her words to reveal meetings and crossing points yet to come. For you see, she who can read the book of the future can wield her knowledge of the future as a kind of sword, one with an edge sharper even than cold steel.”
“Such a gift is a curse,” I said hoarsely.
He studied the page that contained the sketch of him standing in the entryway. Bee had drawn it days, or weeks, or months ago. “Maybe it is. But the women who walk the path of dreams have no choice about what they are. Do you know how my beloved wife died?” He turned another page. His brows furrowed as he considered lines that seemed to depict nothing more than a bench set against a wall under a flowering vine.
“On Hallows’ Night dismembered?” Bee choked out.
Rory tightened his arm around her.
The general glanced at her, and then at me, and last at James Drake, who had gone back to warming his hands over the stove. He lifted his chin. “Go on, James.”
Drake’s lips curled down. For an instant I thought he was going to refuse a direct order, but instead he left the kitchen and went upstairs.
Camjiata smiled at a charming sketch of fanciful clock-faced owl. He closed the book and straightened, his gaze like a spear piercing Bee. “Helene had gone to visit her family. She was a cold mage out of Crescent House, far in the north. I did not go with her. I had administrative duties that needed my attention, a legal code to shepherd into the world. We were both taken by surprise, I suppose, or perhaps we had begun to think we could not be taken by surprise because she walked the path of dreams. On that Hallows’ Night, a storm demolished Crescent House’s entire estate. All that was left in the morning were splinters, shattered stones, and faceless corpses. The main hall lay untouched but sheathed as in a glove of unmelting ice. As for Helene, her body was left on the steps of the main hall. Her limbs had been torn off. And she was decapitated. Her head was found at the bottom of a well that went dry that very night.”
I shuddered. Outside, blown bits of icy snow pattered against the thick glass in a rising wind.
“What do you want?” whispered Bee.
“What matters,” said Camjiata, “is what you want, Beatrice.”
It wasn’t just fear that was making me feel cold. It was actually getting colder. The cozy glamour of the fire wavered. The red glow began to shrink, and pieces of coal to settle. The fire flickered and all at once gave a weary gasp of defeat. Ash puffed and sank.
Rory sniffed. “That’s magic,” he said.
“Oh, no,” whispered Bee.
Only the presence of a powerful cold mage could suck the life out of a fire from a distance. As on an inhaled breath, the house tensed to silence, as if waiting. The ghostly hilt of my sword stung like nettles against my skin as cold magic whispered down its hidden blade. A preemptory knock rapped so loudly on the front door that the walls vibrated.
Kehinde stepped to the kitchen door and looked into the passageway. “Come with me, General. We have a bolt-hole.”
“Grab your coat and mine, and go out the back with Rory,” I said to Bee, for she was the one the cold mages wanted. “We’ll meet at that inn where we slept before.”
Camjiata paused at the threshold, so unruffled by this emergency I admired his calm. “What do you mean to do against cold mages? For I recognize their touch.”
I pushed past him and headed for the stairs. “I’m Tara Bell’s child, aren’t I? The Amazon’s daughter. I have a sword, so I mean to fight them.”
4
I found James Drake at the front door instead of the nameless young foreigner. Drake’s lips were tilted up in a funny kind of smile, giving him the look of a man who is expecting a gift or a slap. He set a gloved hand on the latch but snatched it back.
“It’s like ice!” he hissed.
My sword’s hilt waxed cold against my palm. Had the cold mages found us missing and already tracked us down? Or had they discovered Camjiata was in Adurnam and come for him?
“Stand back.” Gritting his teeth against the latch’s cold burn, Drake opened the front door.
Seen past him, a man stood on the stoop, cane in hand.
“These are the offices of Godwik and Clutch, lawyers,” said Drake, as though to a simpleton. “Callers are admitted only by appointment.”
“Isn’t it redundant to inform me that these are the offices of Godwik and Clutch, lawyers,” said the man with the cane, “when the sign out front informs me both in word and in picture of that very fact? Naturally I do have an appointment with the solicitor named Chartji. Otherwise you can be sure I would not have ventured into a neighborhood like this one for legal aid.”
Some men have the unfortunate propensity to look exceptionally well in the clothing they wear, and the effect must therefore be amplified when they dress with full attention to the most fashionable styles, the best tailors, and the most expensive fabric. In fact, he wore a greatcoat of an exceedingly fine cut, magnificently adorned by five layered shoulder capes rather than the practical one or the fashionable three. Its wool was dyed with patterned lines and sigils that reminded me of the clothing the hunters of his village wore when out in the bush. Altogether, the coat was one worn to be noticed and admired.
It was also unbuttoned, as if the ferocious cold did not bother him at all. Beneath he wore a dash jacket tailored to flatter a well-built, slender frame and falling in loose cutaway folds from hips to knees. The fabric’s violently bright red-and-gold chain pattern made me blink. How any man could wear cloth that staggeringly vivid and not look ridiculous I could not fathom. Yet there he was, him and his annoyingly handsome face. I should have known.
“My very question,” said Drake with a cutting smile. “What is a cold mage doing in this neighborhood? A mage of your ilk must despise the scalding technology of combustion. He must regard with contempt the clever contraptions and schemes made by trolls and goblins in their busy workshops. Which rise all around you, in all their industrious vigor.”