Read Without a Summer for Free Online

down the street. After making certain the ruffian was gone, Vincent stood over Jane, wanting only a flaming sword to be a modern interpretation of the angel Gabriel.
    He knelt to help her sit. “Are you all right?”
    Jane nodded, not entirely trusting her voice. Her breath sounded too loud in her own ears, but she stoutly pretended that she was fine and that her ribs did not ache where the man had landed on her. With Vincent’s help, she clambered back to her feet. The crowd had vanished and even the usual foot traffic had thinned due to the fracas. They stood, nearly alone, on the street.
    “Where is the lad?”
    “I wove a Sphère Obscurcie .” She had become so turned around that she was not entirely certain where she had woven it. The benefit—and trouble—of this particular fold was that the glamour was stretched to such thinness as to be almost impossible to discern even with second sight, unless one peered so deeply into the ether as to obliterate all view of the mundane world. Vincent steadied her as she looked for the Sphère and marked the spot when she pointed to it. They walked forward to the seemingly empty patch of pavement. The lad appeared suddenly as they passed within the Sphère ’s influence.
    With some of the urgency gone, Jane had time to examine him more closely. That the coldmonger was a young man of colour came as no surprise given that they were in London. In the country, it was more common to see coldmongers of British stock, but in the City all those coldmongers who had come to London as slaves had stayed and settled. They intermarried among this community, and now a London coldmonger was as likely to have some touch of the tawny as not.
    What did surprise her was how young he was—likely no more than fourteen. Blood flowed from a cut over his eye, but he appeared otherwise free from injury.
    “They have gone,” Jane said, though the boy could surely see that on his own.
    “I know. I wasn’t sure how far I could move.” His vowels marked him as being a Londoner born and bred. “This is a clever thing you’ve done. Thank you.”
    Vincent nodded absently, still watching the street. “I will bring the carriage over. Jane, will you unstitch the Sphère ?”
    She agreed, and they were shortly in the carriage with the young coldmonger only visible for a brief moment. Once settled, with Jane and Vincent on one bench and the young man on the other, the carriage pulled away from the greengrocer.
    “Before we go too far, I have two questions.” Jane offered him a handkerchief to wipe the blood from his temple. “First, do you have a safe place to go? Second, what happened?”
    “Thank you ma’am, I do: the Worshipful Company of Coldmongers.” He dabbed at his temple. His hands had the characteristic rough, chapped skin of a coldmonger and his knuckles looked as though they had cracked many times over, leaving pink scars on his fawn-brown skin. “I oughtn’t to have left, but I saw the snow and I was hoping for work.”
    Vincent opened the window and leaned out to direct the carriage driver. He had a shouted conversation and was very red in the face when he pulled his head back in. Jane raised her eyebrows in question. He compressed his lips and shook his head slightly, which she took to mean that the carriage driver had objected to the destination but that Vincent had convinced him otherwise.
    She patted his knee in thanks, then turned back to the coldmonger. “I confess some confusion: I thought snow would mean less work?”
    “Oh, it does and all. Most of what I do is keep food cool or help get groceries home without them wilting in the heat. Days like this, though, are the only time I can make things freeze. Can’t drop the temperature far enough otherwise.” He shrugged and looked bewildered. His lower lip trembled a little. “I ain’t never seen nothing like it. Not in all my days.”—which, as he continued to speak, Jane considered amending to about twelve years old.