If I did nothing, then it was the innocent people gathered in the common room listening to the djeli’s tale who would suffer. Probably me, too. But them most of all.
“Peace upon you and all your undertakings,” I said to Chartji in the old Kena’ani way.
In perfect mimicry, she said, “Peace upon you.”
I put out my hand and took her claw in farewell. “I thank you for your hospitality. I will not forget it. Now I have to go.”
I ran to the door and tugged it open, and thanks be to Tanit that Andevai looked up, and while I could not see my own expression, he could. We did not know each other at all, not really. We were strangers. But I looked at him, and he rose and spoke briefly to the old man as he stepped over the bench.
“Maestressa Barahal?” said Brennan, looking startled as I strode past him, as if he hadn’t noticed me go back into the supper room.
“Fare you well,” I said to him over my shoulder. I met Andevai with every gaze in the place sidelong on us, no one wanting to be quite so bold as to stare directly on a cold mage.
He said in an undertone, “What?” and I murmured, “Torches, a big party,” and he said, “This way.”
We walked to the back of the inn as the djeli rolled on with his tale. The innkeeper at his bar set down a pair of mugs as if he’d meant to offer them to us but thought better of it. Andevai pushed open the door into the kitchen, where a lass about my age looked up, red-faced, from the steam of a big kettle of some sickly sweet brew. Her eyebrows flew up as she gaped at us, but we were already through and out the back door into a kitchen yard coated in frost. I grasped my ghost sword, but I had forgotten my coat and gloves, and it was too late to go back because we were already committed. Out here under the cold sky, I could distinctly hear the clatter of hooves, although Andevai did not yet seem aware of the sound. He cast his gaze first toward the wall of the stables and then toward the woven hazel hurdle that fenced off the rest of the kitchen yard.
He spoke under his breath, as to himself. “Where are those plague-ridden wraiths?”
He whistled four low notes.
I twisted the ghost hilt, and to my utter astonishment, the sword drew smoothly free. The naked blade gleamed, its length and weight perfectly balanced in my hand.
Its light cast an odd luster on Andevai’s profile, making him look, for an instant, unsure rather than arrogant. As he stared at the blade, his gaze flared and his chin lifted belligerently. “Where did you get that? That’s cold steel. Only mage Houses forge and possess cold steel.”
There were many things I could and ought to have said, but instead I smirked. I might be dead by midnight’s bell. This might be my only chance to gloat. “It’s my black cane. You never saw what it really was.”
He grabbed my right wrist, and I braced, because I thought he meant to wrest the sword out of my left hand, but instead he tugged me after him to the gate of the kitchen yard.
“Do you know how to use it?” he asked.
“I’m a Barahal.”
He unbound the rope and shoved open the plaited gate. We staggered onto a muddy lane crackling with frost where wheels had left their imprints. The lane led away behind a block of row houses. He looked skyward, hearing clearly now the approaching hooves, the ring of harness, a man’s call: “There’s the Griffin Inn!”
“They might be a party of innocent travelers caught late on the road,” he said as we trotted briskly down the lane toward open ground. The sky was overcast except in the north, where stars glittered.
“No. They’re looking for you. They mean to kill you for destroying the airship.”
“We should never have stopped here. How well can you actually use a sword?”
Gracious Melqart, but the man had a knack for being annoying at the most inconvenient times!
“Barahals begin training at the age of seven. It’s in the family, if you will, rather like cold magic runs in the House lineages.” Yet honesty compelled me, as if the sword’s cold steel spelled my tongue. “But I’ve never fought in anything but the practice hall.”
“Here.” He cut a hard left onto a narrow lane, blocks of houses on either side.
“Where is the carriage?” I said to his back as I followed. What I really meant, I dared not say out loud: Where is the eru, with its wintry gale? “Where are we going?”
“To the turnpike. Quiet.” Bending his head like a man bowed by heavy thoughts, he stared at the ground, lips moving but no sound emerging that I could hear.
And I could hear plenty. Music drifted from the inn falling farther away behind us; the song chased on as the story unfolded, drums a pattern grounding my running feet. A voice called from an upper story, “There! There!” Shouts and cries rose as our pursuers reached the temple square. There was no possible way that we, on foot, could outrun them.
