With my ghost sword slung tightly over my back, I climbed out and crouched on the wide branch to close the window behind me. Some instinct or training or sound alerted the guards standing out back, and they glanced around and up, but 1 was part of the tree, nothing more than a skeletal winter branch, a little stouter than most, but nothing to notice. Nothing to see.
Bee and I met in the mews. We avoided the gaslit thoroughfares and made our way through the cold winter night, me at the front with my good eyes and my ghost sword to mark the path, Bee following tightly in my footsteps with an ordinary cane of her own to sweep the street for obstacles. We found our
way to the Blessed Tanit's temple near the academy, whose gates remained unlocked in every season and at all times of the day and night. Three bags, Callie had been instructed to give them. One was full with the last of the grain from our larder, given as an offering for the priests. The other two held my father's journals and a few other items crammed in with them: four silver candlesticks, four beeswax candles, and some stockings, shifts, and underthings that had been left by Aunt Tilly when the family had fled. What coin we had, we'd sewn into our bodices. The priests slept soundly in their winter cottage; I had no trouble retrieving the two batgs, except for their weight.
It was a cursed long and struggling walk hauling them across the dark city. Winter's cold deadened the night. Fortunately, no festival debris littered the streets to trip us. The balloon rides, the ice fair with its food booths and games, the processions to the temples, the public banquets at which beggars snatched from the filth of the streets would preside over the only good meal they would eat all year, all had been canceled due to the riots. The prince's curfew kept criminals and rogues at home this night. Militia patrols, however, were out in force. We would hear the clop of hooves and see yellow torchlight gleaming around a corner, giving us time to shrink back into a shadowy alcove or rubbish-strewn alley to hide.
"I feel like someone is following us," Bee said in a low voice as we crouched on the steps of a locked and barred chandler's shop, waiting for a clot of six Tarrant soldiers to decide that they did not want to loiter in the intersection ahead. "Do you really know how to get there? We've never been to that part of town before. Are you sure they'll help us?"
A cold wind chased down the street and kissed my nose and lips like a flirt. Or a cold mage. "I'm not sure of anything," I said, shivering. I was tired and much too chilled, and my arms hurt even though we were swapping off carrying the bags. "But
I know the radicals have no love for cold mages or princes. If anyone can help us now, surely it's lawyers."
"You set your sights too low," said a male voice.
We both started up to our feet, and I had my sword unsheathed in an instant. The blade's faint glow was enough to illuminate a young man leaning insouciantly against the shuttered windows next to us, his shoulders bracing up the wall and his arms crossed over his chest as he watched the mounted patrol down the way confer by the light of their blazing torches.
"Rory!" I said, and although I whispered his name, the swelling in my heart was more like a shout.
"Don't, pet me until you put that thing away," he said just before I meant to fling myself at him for a celebratory embrace.
"Cat," murmured Bee, "I thought you were exaggerating about your cane turning into a sword. Also, the blade gleams."
"It's cold steel," I said, sheathing it with the mysterious twist that sheathed the blade as into a sheath that existed only in the spirit world. Then I hugged him. "Oh, Rory, I was afraid I'd lost you. But I didn't. And you even found clothes!"
"Hush," said Rory. "They're still hunting me."
We waited in silence until the patrol rode on. Then we started to walk, and in truth, I felt much stronger and less cold now that the three of us were reunited.
"How was the pug dog?" asked Bee tartly.
"Too fatty," he said, "and the peahens had all those feathers. That was nasty. It never bothered me before I wore this skin. By the way, Cousin Beatrice, as I promised, I did no lasting harm to either of the fine lords. Or to any humans, really no more than I had to." He touched right hand to left shoulder.
"You're hurt," said Bee. "You need tending."
I could not see him grin, but I knew he grinned; the flavor of the air changed. The night felt brighter and the bags less heavy.
"You want to lick the wound?" he asked.
"You're disgusting!"
"Why is that disgusting? Doesn't everyone do that?" He looked at me. "And don't think for one moment I'm carrying either of those bags. What do you have in them? Stones?"
"Books," said Bee scornfully. "Books, books, books."
"Not a single one I am willing to part with," I retorted.
Even had we trudged without the burden of books, Fox Close was quite a long way south and east across the city, close against the excise office and the customs embankment and near the quays. It was in a district inhabited by people who would not have been welcome to live in the houses around Falle Square: foreigners, radicals, technologists, and solicitors. The cocks had crowed by the time we staggered onto Enterprise Road, although the brilliant gaslamps lining the street-the very latest in design-still burned with a remarkable cheer that lifted my spirits and fed a flare of hope to my weary heart. Bee stared and stared, for there were a lot of trolls-and men, and a few goblins not yet burrowed into their daylight dens-coming and going into offices and coffeehouses and shops, all of which were already open and bustling, as if to make up for lost time after yesterday's festival closings and the riots the day before.
"There is Fox Close," I said, indicating a humble lane tucked away between a tavern and a coffeehouse but equally busy if one judged by the foot traffic pouring in and out of its throat.
As we made our way down the lane, the gaslights began to hiss and fail, but it was day's arrival, not that of a cold mage, that shuttered them as the gas was turned off. Ahead, on the right side of the lane, hung a newly painted sign, visible in dawn's light. The script painted on the sign was pin-perfect, orange letters shining against a feathery brown backdrop: godWIK AND CLUTCH.
"I hope this works," Bee muttered.
We hauled our bags up to the stoop and earned a few curious
looks but no offers of help. I plied the knocker. We waited. Rory sighed, looking ready for a nap. I licked my lips, and then was sorry I had done so, for my lips were so dry and cracked that my tongue released a smear of blood. Bee adjusted the fit of her gloves on her fingers. I untangled my cane where it had gotten caught in a fold in my skirts.
The door opened, and a troll looked at us, cocking his head first to one side and then the other to get a good look with each eye. He wore a drab jacket that set off astonishing scarlet and blue and black plumage and crest, truly spectacular.
I found my voice from the pit where it had crawled in to hide. "May the day find you at peace," I said, a little hoarsely. "My name is Catherine Hassi Barahal. This is my cousin, Beatrice, and my brother, Roderic. We're here to see Chartji. The solicitor."
"You're that one," he said in words so eerily without accent they did not quite sound proper. "Chartji warned me."
"Warned you?" I could not get a full lungful of air in, for my chest had gone numb.
" 'Let her in quickly shall she come standing at the door.'" The troll hopped back and gestured for us to enter, baring his sharp teeth in a manner that made Rory yawn threateningly and caused Bee to take a step back. By which movement, she revealed our luggage.
"Oo!" He bent forward and peered at the two bulging bags with their brass clasps. "Things!"
"Who's at the door, Caith?" Brennan came out from a back room, wiping his hands on a grimy cloth. He saw me and grinned. "Catherine! And your charming cousin, Beatrice. And another companion, I see."