Free Cold Fire by Kate Elliott

empty coal cart. “Is all well with you?”
    “I have no trouble, thanks to my power as a woman,” I replied in the traditional way, and received a scathing look from Bee for my pains. “And you, Maester? Is all well with your family?”
    “We have peace, thanks to my mother who raised me,” he said with a grin. “Though I wonder at the bells. I hope the fire’s not around here.”
    He looked down Fox Close toward Enterprise Road. With the bells tolling the alarm, the streets of Adurnam had turned, like the snowmelt-fed streams of late spring, into foaming rivers full with a raging flow of people hurrying to get somewhere else. I didn’t relish making our way halfway across Adurnam in this tumult.
    “Are you from this district?” I asked.
    He made a flourish with his cap. “That I am. And my ancestors before me. Eurig is my name. Brennan Du asked me to get you across the city.”
    I exchanged a glance with Bee. We would have to lose him, but not too soon. A shame, for he seemed nice enough. “Our thanks. We can’t give our names. My apologies.”
    “I understand. This way.”
    He picked up the handles of the cart and began pushing not toward Enterprise Road but deeper into the narrow lane of Fox Close. We walked alongside as he talked. “We’ll take Ticking Lane through the Lower Warrens. They’re perfectly safe despite the name. Most of the old buildings here have been knocked down and rebuilt. And there’s gaslight everywhere in this district. We used to be nothing more than a fishing village. Now we’re quite the most modern district in Adurnam, thanks to the trolls and the radicals.”
    “How did you become a radical?” Bee asked.
    “As the Northgate poet says, it’s no crime to think men have natural rights that ought not to be trampled on by ancient privileges.”
    “Just men? Or women, too?” asked Bee with her most dangerously pretty smile.
    He blinked, taken aback by this thrust. “Nature has suited women for a different role than that given to men.”
    “Like Professora Kuti?” Bee demanded.
    “Cat!” Rory nudged me with a bag. “I smell a lot of horses nearby.”
    Angry shouts of protest rang from Enterprise Road: “The dogs are come to bite us with their teeth of steel.” “We need step aside for no man!” “Which will it be, lads? Freedom or fetters?”
    A whip cracked. A man screamed. A column of mounted soldiers swept into sight around the corner where Fox Close met Enterprise Road. About half wore tabards marked with the four moons of full, half, crescent, and new: turbaned mage House troops, leading a spare horse. The rest wore the uniforms of the Tarrant militia except for a half dozen in red-and-gold hip-length capes, the mark of Rome’s ambassadorial cavalry. Pedestrians stumbled back to the stoops and railings.
    “Keep walking,” said Eurig. “Don’t look back.”
    “Eurig,” I said, “did the ancient village here have a crossroads?”
    “What? The Fiddler’s Stone down by Old Cross Gate? The fishermen would bring their catch up from the shore and trade it to the folk who came over from the Roman camp. That was a long time ago.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Let’s move faster. Just don’t run.”
    I looked back. The soldiers pulled up in front of the law offices of Godwik and Clutch. A man wearing a Roman cape dismounted just as the door opened and Andevai appeared on the steps. The rigid set of his shoulders betrayed his annoyance, and made me think he really had come to consult with Chartji on a matter so private he hadn’t told the mansa. From the steps, as if drawn by my foolish stare, Andevai looked our way down Fox Close. I saw him see me.
    Quite deliberately, he strode down the steps, mounted, and turned toward Enterprise Road.
    “He’s leading them away from us!” I said.
    “Just keep walking,” said Eurig.
    “Cat!” Bee was breathless. “Didn’t you recognize him?”
    “Andevai? Of course I recognized—”
    “It was Amadou Barry,