I ran to the door and tugged it open, and thanks be to Tank 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 calclass="underline" "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.
A horn's cry rose shrill and clear, and a great shout as from a host of soldiers shattered the night on the turnpike ahead. Horses whinnied, hooves pounded, and a whistle pierced the air.
"Move," said Andevai in a hoarse whisper. "I can't hold this
long,
He lurched on Up the rutted lane at an awkward lope, as if his limbs were not truly tinder the command of his mind. I followed a step behind, and once I had to grab his elbow to stop him from tumbling headlong when he stumbled over a rut. As I steadied him, I saw, on the road ahead where it crossed in front of our dark lane, a company of stern soldiers armed in the House style: The soldiers carried crossbows and spears and wore quilted coats; their horses were caparisoned in the bold designs favored by the Houses, manes braided and stiffened, legs ornamented with bracelets woven of falling threads of fabric that shimmered as the horses paced forward in a stately measure. A House standard hung with amulets stabbed the air within the ranks.
Andevai stumbled again, and I caught him as he winced. "Blacksmith… fire's mage… powerful. Fighting me."
The soldiers shouted in unison and pushed forward.
"Aren't those House soldiers?" I demanded. "Shouldn't we call to them?"
"Illusion," he hissed. "Must move, get to the inn ruins. Hold them off there until the carriage reaches us."
Two figures darted into the lane behind us. By the way they moved, I knew at once that they carried weapons. Yet it seemed they had not yet seen us within the darkness; they were, perhaps, looking beyond us toward the turnpike where the House soldiers still rode past in a seamless illusion.
"Stay here," I said to Andevai. I broke into a run, grateful for the excellent cut of my riding clothes, which did not impede my strides or my reach.
Too late they registered my approach. I parried a clumsy thrust from the closer one, then shifted sideways to strike a blow upward with the hilt alongside his head that dropped him to his knees. I spun with a backhand sweep that caught low on my blade a staff blow aimed at my head by the other man. Grappling, I kicked him as hard as I could in the knee. He shrieked and collapsed backward. I bolted back the way I had come. Andevai had staggered to a halt; the cursed fool was pulling a useless knife from under his jacket.
"Move!" I barely forced out the word. Sweat broke over my body, and I heaved once but nothing came up.
Andevai moved. He ran down the lane and I pelted after, glancing back once, but I'd laid them down well enough; obviously they were not trained soldiers but rather crude, angry men without much more experience than fistfights outside an inn after an evening's wallow in ale. We reached the junction of lane and wide turnpike. To our left, red fire burned in the square where the doors of the smithy were laid open, white sparks blazing as they showered out of the door and spat onto the vanguard of the House soldiers, but amazingly the illusion held under this rain of sparks. I ran after Andevai toward the ruins.
Men shouted in confusion, their shattered cries of disorder and fear like a counter-rhythm to the patter of drums that
fluttered at the edge of my hearing. Was the djeli still singing? Music is its own spell. Who knows what power it wields?
We dashed along the road, the confrontation falling away behind us. Andevai fell onto his knees in the char and ashes of the burned inn, hacking as he bent double. I halted between the stone pillars that had once marked the gate into the inn yard. The lintel slashed a black line above my head. The gates had been smashed and hauled into the courtyard. A harsh light glowed above the temple square; I had an awful premonition that the smithy had caught fire.