We pressed on. The cursed lane tossed us straight back into the churning chaos of a street as wide as Enterprise Road. Its pavement was lined with the newest gaslight fixtures, although half of the glass shades had been shattered. The sheer mass of people surging along the street brought us up short. Everyone was shouting and cursing, the buzzing of voices like a nest of angry bees.
Rory used the bags to batter a way through the crowd. We plowed in his wake.
“Watch it!” A man threatened me with a cane. My blow broke it in half, and he fell back.
As we reached another intersection locked with wagons and carts, thunder rumbled.
Rory cocked his head. “That’s not horses.”
Bee pointed to a shop whose sign bore a clock-faced owl. “There! We have to go in there.”
We reached the awning. Bee opened the door and went in with Rory. An icy taste ground through the gritty flavor of coal smoke. My ears popped as the air changed. My sword’s hilt burned. I shut the door hard behind us, shop bell jangling.
The man at the counter had silver hair, spectacles, and a shop full of ticking clocks, no two of which showed the same time. He set down calipers.
“Maester,” I said, “begging your pardon for the intrusion, but if you have shutters, I recommend you close your shop now. A storm’s coming.”
“Maester Napata, they’re here,” he called, not to us. “Just as you said they’d be.”
A howl of wind shook the windows. Hail pummeled the streets like the peppershot of muskets. People scattered, seeking shelter anywhere they could. The shop door burst open and a dozen weathered toughs in patched laborers’ coats staggered in. One had a bloody nose, which he was staunching with a crumpled handbill. Another held a hand over his ear. A third brandished a brick, cursing magisters and princes in equal measure. They fell silent as a young man stepped out past a curtain.
The man’s uncanny blanched features might have been those of a ghost called from the miserable gloom of Sheol. Then he saw Bee, and he blushed, easy to see because he was an albino. He was no ghost. He served the headmaster of the academy.
What on Earth was the headmaster’s loyal dog, as we had always called him, doing here?
“If the head of the poet Bran Cof once spoke to you,” said the young man, his words burred by a foreigner’s accent, “please to come with me now. The Thrice-Praised poet spoke to the headmaster at dawn.”
“Blessed Tanit!” muttered Bee, looking at me. She remembered as well as I did the day we had sneaked through the headmaster’s office and heard an uncanny voice say the words “Rei vindicatio” as if to warn us. Mere hours later, Andevai had showed up at her parents’ house to use those same words to claim legal ownership of the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter.
The men huddled by the door murmured to each other at this mention of the famous head of the poet Bran Cof.
“What said the head of the poet?” demanded the man with the brick.
The headmaster’s assistant ignored everyone except Bee. “The head of the poet Bran Cof said he had a message for Tara Bell’s child. He said to meet you here.”
I was glad he was looking at Bee, so he didn’t see me shudder.
“Last time, the headmaster turned me over to the Romans,” said Bee. “How can I know he won’t do so again?”
“That was a mistake.” He gazed at Bee in the way a well-trained but hungry dog stares at a bone out of its reach, for he was yet another young male who had fallen in love with her beauty during our time as students at the academy. “On his honor and dignity, he will not allow it to happen again. If you wish to hear, come with me.” He vanished behind the curtain.
“He smells clean of lies,” said Rory.
The man with the injured nose straightened out the bloody handbill. “You think these two is the ones mentioned for the reward?”
“What’s that?” said the man with a hand on his ear. “The head of the poet Bran Cof speaks at last, did you say? Did he recite a poem to the just cause of our discontent? Or pronounce on the legal principle of men being allowed to vote for a tribune to represent us on the prince’s council?”
The other man scanned the print. “This says the prince of Tarrant offers a reward for the recovery of two Phoenician girls. They belong to one of the mage Houses.”
“Why should we hand girls over to the cursed mages?” said the man with the brick.
“It’s a cursed lot of money, enough to split twelve ways and still make us all rich.”
Outside, the street lay empty except for Roman guardsmen trotting up the streets using their round shields to shelter their heads from the pounding hail. In a moment, Legate Amadou might look in the windows and see us. The man with the bloody nose put his red-stained fingers on the latch and opened the door.
