by Kate Elliott
“My thanks to you, honored queen,” I said, even if my voice shook. “Have you any other words you wish to say before I release you to your son?”
“Let my dead son know that I understand the tide has already washed this shore. What is done cannot be undone.”
“As I am reminded when I look on you, honored one,” I said politely.
“May the Good Great Spirit walk with you, Niece.”
“Taino-ti’, honored queen. May the Good Great Spirit walk with you.”
I lowered the mirror, tucked the skull into the basket, and offered it to Haübey. He took it gravely, but it was Bee he looked at.
“Come back with me, dreamer. You will live in a better place than this, honored among the Taino as a noblewoman. And if not for my sake, then for my brother’s. I happen to know he feels true affection for you although he is not a man to say so.”
“No.” Her hand clasped mine firmly, even if her voice trembled. “My home is with Cat.”
“We have to go,” I said. And so we did, gathering Rory as we left.
“Where are the cold mages being held prisoner?” I asked an orderly, who directed me to a sergeant, who informed me they were being held in custody at the rear hospital. It was too far away; we didn’t have time; we couldn’t save everyone.
We walked north along the Cena Road to Lutetia. Bee’s honey voice talked us through the barricade because they recognized her from her work with the radicals. How long ago it seemed that I had fled Two Gourds House and Vai had come to the inn looking for me. What if we had separated in anger, and had never spoken again?
“Cat, dearest, let me help you.” Bee steadied me as I stumbled.
“I’m so glad you’re here, Bee.”
“I’ll always be with you, dearest.”
We reached the forecourt gates of Two Gourds House at daybreak. The compound was surrounded by armed citizenry, not hostile but definitely vigilant. In the forecourt mage troops stood guard. Their captain made us wait on the entry steps in the morning sun. The mansa of Four Moons House himself appeared with his djeli at his side and his repugnant nephew dogging his heels as if hoping for a scrap of meat. The mansa had sustained a gash on his chin. His left arm was in a sling. Yet he looked imposing in a formal indigo robe whose sleeves swept the ground as he strode down the forecourt steps and grasped my hand, speaking to me with his own voice.
“Catherine! Explain yourself!”
“I told you the village boy meant all along to betray us,” broke in the nephew, in a sour tone. “He is probably dining with General Camjiata right now.”
“People do not sit down to dinner in the morning,” I snapped.
“Silence, boy!” said the mansa to his nephew before turning to me. “Catherine, please disabuse yourself of any belief that I am angry at Andevai. He saved many lives yesterday. If the tide of fire magic grew too strong for one of the others, Andevai would pull it into himself by the craft he learned from the Taino. He risked more than anyone else.”
The nephew hunkered down as if enduring a rancid smell, his mouth shut for once.
“Was it Andevai’s storm that quenched the fire that would have burned the city?” I asked.
The mansa’s voice was hard, his manner impatient and proud. How like Vai he seemed, although I could not tell what emotions surged beneath the garment of his arrogance. “Andevai is not the only powerful cold mage. That was my storm, in concert with Mansa Viridor. But I must ask, was it all a ruse? Did you plan this victory with General Camjiata? I regret I could not recognize Andevai’s worth until it was too late to bring him to trust me.”
“You still don’t understand him, Mansa. He respects you more than he will ever express to you. He was able to look past the scorn and contempt he endured and admire your strength and consistency in your rule over Four Moons House. Not every mansa would have educated the village boy with the sons of the mage House. You didn’t do what you ought to have done to stop their cruel bullying, but you did not force him to stand at the end of the line when he had earned the right to stand at the head. That is why he fought for the mage House as well as for the sake of his village. And, I admit, for his own pride, which as we both know is as vast as the heavens. Will you help me get him back?”
His gaze no longer frightened me because I understood him better now: He was a man who saw the world purely through the lens of his birth and his House.
“Where do you think he is?”
“James Drake has deserted General Camjiata’s army and taken Vai prisoner. I believe Drake is going home to the Ordovici Confederation to get revenge on his family. Vai’s cold magic makes Vai a powerful catch-fire. Imagine how powerful he will make Drake’s fire magic.”
Bee took hold of my hand. “Do you really suppose Drake can defeat Andevai? Were I a betting woman, I would put my money on Andevai.”
“So would I, were it a duel between the two of them. But Drake has surely taken the most loyal of his fire mages with him to do his bidding. If I were Drake, I would have fire mages pouring backlash into Vai day and night to keep him incapacitated. Even Vai can’t fight all of them. And he’ll try to protect whatever other catch-fires Drake may have in his keeping.”
The mansa gestured toward his steward. “I am not willing to sit idly by while Four Moons House is insulted in this egregious manner! But we have only a handful of horses left in this compound and they are either wounded or broken down from being overworked yesterday. I am told that General Camjiata has taken every able-bodied horse off the field. And since we magisters are trapped here, the citizens of Lutetia have no doubt rounded up the rest.” He laughed in a manner that annoyed me. “There is your revolution for you. Trapped in our own House and yet not one word of thanks from the local citizens for the death and injury we took on ourselves that spared the city of Lutetia from being burned to the ground and ravaged. Rather, they treat us as if we are the ones who assaulted them and started this war!”
Bee glanced toward the compound gate. “I can negotiate with the citizens’ council…”
A full-length mirror hung opposite the main doors in the entry hall.
“I have a better idea,” I said. “But first, may we change out of these clothes and wash and eat something? Before we depart?”
Though in mourning, the residents of Two Gourds House treated us with every courtesy and were expeditious in bringing wash water and food. I did not inform them that I was the person who had killed their master. I didn’t want Bee to know. I almost wept when a steward brought me the spruce-green skirt and resewn cuirassier’s jacket, cleaned and ironed. I demanded provisions be brought. Back in the entrance hall the mansa and his attendants and soldiers had gotten into their riding clothes and uniforms, for they believed we would be traveling on horseback.
“If you will, Mansa, can you give me a tiny bit of cold magic?”
He raised an eyebrow interrogatively, but he obeyed with alacrity, plucking a spark of cold fire out of the air. My sword woke; I drew the blade into daylight. Folk did gasp and murmur, but the mansa frowned as he glanced toward the mirror and then back at me.
“Can you walk after him through the spirit world? Surely not, Catherine. You might vanish for weeks or months…” He trailed off.
In a silence weighted by every gaze following me, I approached the mirror. With so many cold mages in the entry hall, magic rippled in its depths. Rory’s reflection shifted back and forth from cat to man. Bee stared fixedly, her dreaming eye alight on her forehead. As for me, my own reflection glared back at me. Was this the face Andevai had seen and fallen in love with the day I had walked down the stairs and he up them to where we had first met on the landing? Hard to imagine! I looked as if I meant to bite someone.
I would find him! And I would make James Drake pay!
I nicked my skin to draw blood, its smear bright on the blade. I thrust my sword into the mirror, up to the hilt. The cold steel cut a gateway between the mortal world and the spirit world. I parted the lips of the g
ate as I might part a curtain. A murky night hid the spirit world from my eyes. But I still had my voice.
“Let those who are bound to me as kin come to my aid!”
An icy wind kissed my nose. Like distant thunder my sire’s voice laughed mockingly. A bee sting flamed as an ember on my hand, then faded. Wet noses prodded my arm and a rough tongue licked my face as the breath of cats warmed me. The creatures of the spirit world could not cross into the mortal world except on Hallows’ Night… or in my wake, as Rory had.
“May blessings bring quiet sleep and plump deer to you and yours, Aunt,” I said politely, “and let me assure you that your son is well and behaving himself as much as he can. But I seek my cousin eru and the one she travels with. If they will cross with me.”
An eerie arc of day broke over the land. In its wake rolled a coach and four. The coachman drove right for my outstretched arm, and I grabbed at the harness and flung myself backward to draw them with me.
The coach rolled into the entry hall as people shouted and scattered. It kept on through the open front doors and glided a hand’s span above the steps before settling to earth on the graveled forecourt. The horses stamped, a mist steaming off their pearlescent skin. The coachman tipped his hat to me. His blue eyes tightened with a smile that did not touch his lips. The footman jumped as lightly down from the back as if she had hidden wings. She flipped down the stairs and opened the door.
“What is your wish, Cousin?” the eru asked. In the eyes of everyone else she appeared as a man. Perhaps I just found her more comfortable to talk to as a woman.
“If you will convey us, I would be glad of it. Bee, Rory, get in.”
The eru swung the bags of provisions up onto the roof.
“What means this, that those who served us now serve you?” The mansa looked ready to ignite.
“They do not serve me, nor did they ever serve you,” I retorted. “But if you wish, Mansa, you can come with us. We could use a powerful cold mage.”
“So it has come to this,” he muttered. “I am being led by two girls.”
His irritation brought a smile to my lips for the first time in days. I made an elegant courtesy. “Yet you must admit, Mansa, that my dearest cousin Bee and I are two exceedingly fine young women, with quite unexpected depths.”
Only a man of his stature and birth could manage an expression that so purely combined a censorious frown shaded by a wrinkle of amusement at his eyes, for as much as he disapproved of my bold way of speaking, it was equally obvious a part of him found it appealing.
“That is one way to describe it, Catherine. We have not the leisure for me to explain the other. My predecessor could not have imagined that the bargain Four Moons House forced onto the Hassi Barahal clan sixteen years ago would lead to this peculiar end.”
But he wanted Vai back as much as I did, so he dismissed his djeli and gave orders to his nephew to follow with the surviving Four Moons soldiers and mages as soon as they could get horses. Then he got in.
The door was shut. The squinty gremlin eyes of the latch stared at me in what I thought might be surprise to find me back again. The coach jostled as the footman swung up onto the riding board in back. On the whip’s snap we rolled, on our way at last.
44
Drake’s trail led north in fire and ashes.
The first staging post lay in smoking ruins. Locals poking cautiously through the remains of a cottage, kitchen-house, and stable yard told us of fire and confusion none of them had been close enough to observe. The staging-post attendants were missing and the horses had all been stolen.
“A clever move on his part,” remarked the mansa as he paced the scorched grounds of a third staging post, later that afternoon. “All the local militias are in disarray from the campaign. Had we not this magical conveyance, his actions would have slowed down our pursuit so greatly there would have been no chance we could catch him.”
Seeing my distress, Bee ushered us back into the coach. As we headed into the gathering dusk, she talked to fill the silence. “Can the blacksmiths’ guild not be recruited to help us?”
“What can they do?” he retorted. “They have devised their own means to control and channel the destructive chain of fire magic, but they cannot combat this. I am come to appreciate General Camjiata’s devious mind. He raises a fire mage who can win his battles and discards him when he becomes too powerful, yet does so at no risk to himself. From what you’ve explained, Catherine, it seems to me the general pushed the man into embracing the worst of his anger without the man realizing he had been manipulated.”
“Yes, it does seem that way.”
I stared out the window at a rabbit racing across a meadow in fright for its life. A hawk stooped. With a gasp, I leaned to watch. In a flash of feathers the hawk thumped. Then we rocked around a corner and I never saw whether the hawk had caught its prey or the rabbit had escaped.
“Of course you would recognize such a stratagem, since you possess the same sort of devious mind,” said Bee. “For example, now we are thrown together as kinsfolk, allow me to commend you on your strikingly cunning ploy to elevate Andevai as your heir and thus bind him more tightly to the mage House. Considering everything I was told you said about him before, I would never have guessed you would do that.”
He brushed a finger along the unscarred side of his chin as if deciding whether to dignify her barbed teasing with a reply. “It was no ploy. The young man is the most rare and potent cold mage of his generation in Four Moons House and possibly in all of Europa, although I must request you never repeat to him that I said so.”
“Have no fear,” Bee reassured him. “I, too, would prefer to avoid any chance his already bloated conceit might yet expand, difficult as it is to imagine it could get any vaster.”
The mansa’s smile flashed so unexpectedly that for an instant I wondered if a different person had fallen into the coach with us. “The confluence of such powerful cold magic with the sort of unusually good looks that bring so much consequential attention to his person has certainly fed a temperament already prone to vanity and pride.”
Bee patted my hand, trying to get me to smile. “You see, Cat, this is where Andevai gets his pedantic way of speaking.”
I sighed.
The mansa glanced from her to me and back to her. “Yet for all his faults, he displays a profound sense of responsibility, as well as a willingness to labor tirelessly for the benefit of the House. He has also the intelligence and discipline to look beyond his own desires to what may be best for the House. I am not blind. The world is changing, even if I cannot approve. Sadly, there are many who no longer seek my approval.”
Bee offered him her most refulgent smile, an expression of considerable genius which she had worked for hours in front of a mirror to perfect. “As long as you respect and support my beloved cousin, and don’t make her husband too miserable, I shall approve of you, Your Excellency.”
He had the grace to laugh. “There is a great deal I thought I knew that I now discover I had not the least understanding of.” He reached for the shutter on the door that opened into the spirit world. “Why this is never opened, for instance.”
“Don’t touch that!” Bee and I said at the same time.
Startled, he withdrew his hand. “What secret lies behind this closed door? For some years Four Moons House employed this very coachman and footman as servants. Then they vanished with you, Catherine, only to reappear again at your call.”
A razor-toothed imp of mischief sank its fangs into my tongue. “The Master of the Wild Hunt has been spying on the mage Houses all along, seeking the most powerful among you to kill each year.”
“Do you mean to explain to me how you know all this, Catherine? That Beatrice walks the dreams of dragons I know. Andevai has explained how troll mazes protect against the Wild Hunt. But I am still puzzled by what exactly you are, a secret my heir has not seen fit to share with me.”
I no longer saw a reason to hide the truth. “What would yo
u say if I told you my mother was a human woman and my sire the Master of the Wild Hunt?”
He sat back with a chuckle. “No wonder the boy can scarcely contain his vainglory when he speaks of you. I must say, Catherine, that gives me considerable relief, for it has been a goad on my pride that you escaped me three times.”
I did not know what to say to that. I had not even shocked him!
We rocked along, wheels rumbling a steady rhythm. Bee made me eat cooked chicken and rolls and cheese. For half the night we rolled through forest, and eventually I slept, head resting on Bee’s shoulder. I woke at dawn to the sight of Bee paging through her sketchbook under the thin light of a cloudy day. Both Rory and the mansa dozed, Rory with his hands curled up by his face and the mansa bolt upright, his big frame filling half the opposite bench and pressing Rory’s slighter figure into the corner.
“Have you found anything new?” I asked, as if I could pull hope from her dreams.
“No.” She handed the book to me. “For the last month, all I have dreamed of is fire, and I couldn’t bear to draw all those flames for I swear to you I heard screams in them.” She pinched a length of skirt between her finger and thumb. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”
Yet for all that I stared at every sketch, I could discern nothing to tell me how to save Vai. What if he and I weren’t meant to meet ever again?
Mid-morning on the following day we stopped at a burned-out staging post to allow the coachman to tend his coach and horses. The mansa studied the coachman as the man watered the horses from a bucket whose lip never touched stream or well.
“No living horse can travel at such a steady pace without cease and not die,” said the mansa. “What manner of creature are they?”
The coachman acknowledged the mansa’s attention by flicking a forefinger against the rim of his cap, but did not deign to respond.
“The man mocks me,” said the mansa, as if it were my fault.
I glanced up at him from under half-lowered eyelids, although I did not mean to be coy. “I would be cautious in assuming that he is man.”