I had to walk, because I was so very cold, and as I paced, I watched my husband vanish over the hill’s horizon. It was as if the sky had swallowed him. Not an unpleasant thought, now that I reflected on it. Yet what would become of me then? How far did our chained marriage actually bind me?
The coachman finished rubbing down the horses and went to the circle, stacking wood and kindling and, with flint and steel, sparked a fire. The flames caught. The wood burned.
No cold mage, he! Nor creature of the breathing ice, like the eru. Fire did not come to their hands, and their presence killed it.
I crept close to the blessed warmth. “Heat is a glorious thing, is it not?” I said. “When winters run long and cold, as winters do, a fire is the best thing of all.”
“Maestra,” he said, unsmiling but not unfriendly.
He wore his short hair in the lime-whitened spikes traditional to Celtic warriors in ancient days, according to the records of Kena’ani traders and Roman generals. The style had come back into fashion a generation ago among the soldiers fighting for Camjiata and his Arverni-Iberian army during Camjiata’s attempt to unite—or, as others said, conquer—Europa. In recent years, the fashion had spread throughout the north among laborers and the poor, even into the territories of the western Celts who had fought hardest to halt the Iberian Monster’s advance. After all, now that the threat of war was past, humble laborers who toiled for harsh masters might recall that Camjiata’s revolutionary legal code had offered hope for a measure of emancipation.
After a moment, the coachman walked back to our vehicle and dug into a storage space under the driver’s box. Seen from this angle, in the pearlescent light of a cloudy day, the damage the carriage had taken in the night showed vividly: The box was scarred with pits and gouges and was spittled with mud and debris flung by angry hands. Just who the mob hated most I could not be sure: the princely clans that had ruled and feuded, and feuded and ruled, in the eight hundred years since the collapse of the Roman Empire, or the powerful mage Houses that had brought down the Iberian Monster and exiled him to an island prison thirteen years ago.
The coachman walked back to me with a heavy wool coat draped over one arm. “You might wish for this, maestra,” he said, offering it politely. “He’ll not like its look, but it’ll keep you warm.”
If the coachman had not already been wearing an outdoor coat, I’d not have accepted it, but he was, so I did, and spoke grateful thanks as I pulled it on over my riding clothes and buttoned it up to my chin.
He stripped the gloves off his own hands. “These, too, maestra. Your hands look like they’re turning to ice.”
“I can’t take those!”
He paused in the act of offering, and I knew the shame of having insulted another person who was trying to give me a gift.
“I meant, I can’t take the gloves off your hands when you’re out of doors driving. Thanks to your kindness, I at least can now curl my hands up inside these sleeves.”
He wasn’t a smiler, but the skin around his eyes wrinkled. “Best you do take them, maestra. The weather’s turning. I’m accustomed to the cold.”
I had to take them or compound the insult. The gloves fit tolerably well. At first my fingers smarted, and then they tingled, and then I began to feel my digits might survive the journey intact.
“You might want to stretch your legs,” he added. “We’ll not reach the next inn until nightfall.”
“Won’t you need to change horses?”
He glanced their way. “They’ll endure.”
Because maybe they weren’t mortal horses, but I didn’t say that aloud. “Why did we stop here at all, if it’s so far to the next inn?”
He looked toward the hilltop. “The magister must pay his respects.”
“Pay his respects to, ah, what?”
“His ancestors.” With a lift of his square chin, he indicated the fire. “I’ll brew tea.”
“I’ll walk, then.”
He was a man who could stand uncannily still and yet seem to be aware of everything around him. His gaze caught mine. He had the blue eyes known in the north as the mark of the ice. “I am obliged to inform you that a powerful spirit inhabits the hilltop.”
I looked at him and he looked at me. It was then I realized I had not seen the footman since I had emerged from the carriage.
“Who are you?” I asked.
His expression did not change. “I am a coachman.” With a nod, he turned away to his work.
We must be what we are. And right now, I was intensely curious. I strode up the chalk track, whacking at stalks of grass with my cane. The view from the top was astonishing. The crisp autumn air made the sprawl of hills seem as sharply delineated as the tips of cold-whitened grass brushing at my skirts. On the lowland plain to the south rose a faintly seen tower, likely Newfield’s famous Round Tower, beyond which the lowland plain fell steadily away toward the marshy Sieve. Just ahead, a steep escarpment marked the east-west line of the chalk ridge; far to the north, many miles onward, rose another high beacon hill. The line of the road speared between my feet and that distant landmark. Only where the pinewoods spread dense below me did a mist climbing through the branches obscure the view.