by Kate Elliott
“Reflect on this, stubborn girl,” the mansa said. “I am a reasonable man. You, and this girl you call cousin, and even this rebellious young mage I have harbored, have convinced me that perhaps it is time to consider a different sort of arrangement. Yet I must always do whatever is necessary to safeguard my kin and my House. As for you, Maestressa Hassi Barahal, you are in more danger than you comprehend. I can protect you. You will not get a better offer than mine.”
Bee’s brow creased as she stared at the mansa. “What does it mean to walk the dreams of dragons?”
With the cold fire illuminating his face, it was possible to see his slight smile, like a man contemplating a sweet, much anticipated and soon to be consumed. “That’s something we will have to discuss privately, you and I.” Then he looked at Andevai, and his lips curved into a frown. “Andevai, you will see they are delivered safely to the house and a guard set under the supervision of Donal.” He indicated the older magister. “After which you will return immediately to me.”
Andevai paused—quite deliberately, I am sure—before he answered. “Yes, Mansa.”
Light sparked, then swelled smoothly from a pinprick into a disembodied, floating lantern as Andevai walked down the hall and, bathed in its light, halted before us. It was an impressive and even flamboyant display of magic, however trivial it might seem to him.
“So, Catherine, I am commanded to escort you and Beatrice home.”
Her home, but no longer mine. Yet I could not say that to Bee. Not now. Not yet.
In fact, I could say nothing at all. Standing so close to him, I was struck dumb.
Fortunately, Bee was not. “Our thanks,” she said grandly.
She walked out of the weaving shed. Outside, she scanned the torchlit ranks of militiamen as if hoping, or fearing, to see Amadou Barry among them. If he was, we did not see him. “How are we to get there, Magister? I cannot ride in these clothes.”
Andevai was a magister of exceptional power, able to call cold fire, weave illusions, raise storms, and wield cold air like a hammer. But he was also a country boy born and bred, and he had not the least idea of how to go about finding a hackney cab in the city on Solstice Night under a curfew. We did, however, and we found a lachrymose fellow with horse and cab lurking by Eastfair Market who took one look at the soldiers and the gold coin offered him and agreed to convey us.
We kept the shutters open as we went. Andevai rode up by the driver. The mage House soldiers surrounded us, with the other magister riding at the rear as if to protect us from attack from behind. The city did not slumber so much as it waited with held breath for the ravening beast to pass. The prince’s troops were out in force everywhere, patrolling the street on horseback and on foot; because of this, no roaming packs of young men sang and clapped songs or importuned harried householders for a swallow of mead. This year, the solstice festival, also known as the Feast of the Unconquered Sun, would pass without merrymaking.
Even with curfew’s heavy hand emptying the streets, fires had been lit in pots and braziers on every corner. In the squares, bonfires blazed with a few huddled attendants keeping watch. The solstice fires had to burn to hold off the long night, to give strength to the beleaguered sun so it could follow these lamps and rise again in the morning. As tiny as candle flames, beacon fires shone at the crests of distant hills; closer to us, fires withered and almost died before flaring up after we passed.
Bee said in a low voice, “There must be something else we can do, Cat.”
“It was a magnanimous offer. It astonished me.”
“It was a condescending offer. Not much different than Legate Amadou Barry’s. The mansa has dropped his net on us already.”
“Maybe,” I said. And then, hearing the soldiers outside speaking of cats, I whispered, “Hush.”
“Nay,” one was saying to his companion in country accents, “they surely said it were a saber-toothed cat. Full grown, it were, that’s what I heard. Black as night, and as fierce as a summer storm.” He laughed. “It got into the prince’s menagerie, ate a peahen and the lady’s prize pug dog before it got out again, and no one to stop it.”
Bee grasped my hand as my heart staggered and stopped and congealed to lead in my chest, and then bolted into a full gallop. I laughed, pressing a hand to my mouth.
“Poor dog,” said Bee. “Although I hate those filthy peahens in the park. But it makes you think, doesn’t it? We are not without resources.”
I lowered my hand. “What are you thinking?”
“Fire is their weapon,” she said.
“Whose weapon? The mob’s?”
“No. The radicals. They mean to burn away the old order. Think how sheltered we’ve been, Cat. How little we know. How many times we walked past the Northgate Poet without the least idea he meant to face down the prince. We’re not beaten yet. How shall we start?”
“I think we should start by getting a hearty supper, a bath, and a good night’s sleep.”
She laughed, and then we cried a little just in sheer relief. After, we sat in mute amity, watching the silent city pass and listening to the clop of horses’ hooves as our driver wielded reins and whip, and our stern escort of soldiers and silent cold mage guided us through the city and at last to Falle Square, the place that had once been my home. Gaslights faded as our company drew alongside and then swelled back to life after we passed.
“Look,” said Bee. “There’s a light in Papa’s office window.”
Seeing the candle, my heart grew dark. We disembarked on the porch. Andevai escorted us to the door. It opened before we could knock to reveal an astonished Callie.
“Maestressa!” she cried, seeing Beatrice. Then she recognized me and took in the magister, and she stood back without another word to let us pass inside.
“Wait here,” said Bee. “Let me go up alone to my father. Callie, can you put together some manner of supper? And heat water for a bath? We’ll just use the copper tub in the kitchen.” She went up the steps. Callie hurried into the back, leaving me with the cold mage in the entry hall.
The first time I had seen him, I had thought him vain, arrogant, and conceited, and far too well aware that he was a powerful magister from a powerful mage House who walked through the world with a handsome face and expensive, well-cut, and flattering clothing. Nothing about him had changed, except maybe he had dug down and discovered the kernel that was his essential self, which was still vain and arrogant and a magister. But that was not all he was. I could see his resemblance to his grandmother in the steady regard of his gaze.
“We are still married, Catherine,” he said. “I will not abandon you. Or sacrifice you, as the Barahals did. Neither will I force you to come with me, as so many selfish magisters have done to the women of my village.”
I wanted to argue with him, to declare that I had escaped him once and could do so again, but after all, Bee and I had not escaped Four Moons House. So I remained silent.
Falteringly, he went on. “It became plain to me that my village helped you escape out from under my nose on Hallows Night. They did it because they chose to honor guest rights above their own safety. I cannot do less than they did. So I have my own offer to make you. If you wish, you can make a home with my kinsmen in the village. They will take you in and treat you as a daughter. Or, if you wish”—here he paused to take in a resolute breath before going on—“you can come with me back to Four Moons House.”
“After what happened in the mill, you’re returning to Four Moons House?”
“Catherine! Of course I have to return. Do I have to list the reasons?” He raised a hand to touch the gold locket he wore at his neck, realized he had done so, and fisted the hand as he lowered it. His next words were delivered in a clipped tone. “But of course you cannot wish to come with me, after everything that has happened.”
When it is very cold, it is easy to feel heat flush your cheeks. “I thank you for your kind offer, Andevai Diarisso Haranwy,” I said in as level a voice as I could muster.
“I am well aware you took great risk on yourself and your blameless village when you decided to help me. What happened before is therefore gone, forgiven, dismissed, and we are quit of it.”
“Does that mean you forgive me for even one breath considering that I might be obliged to kill you?”
If it were possible to blush harder, I am sure I did so, because he stared at me with such a look as made him seem much better-looking even than he likely thought himself, and it is very bad to encourage young men into believing you find them handsome. “Yes. But my answer must be no. To your offer, I mean. I have to find my own way. I have to find out who my kin really are. I remain grateful to the honor with which your kin treated me. As for the other, I do not belong at Four Moons House. But I thank you, for being what are you, which is a man of honor, one who respects me.”
I would never see him again, because we must go our separate ways. There could be no consequences for one impulsive act. And I had to admit the truth, because truth is the kernel of everything: I was curious to know what his lips tasted of. I was hungry.
So I took a step forward, I raised my face to his, and I kissed him.
It is hard to imagine that cold mages might have heat. In the instant of my lips touching his, he was ice, and in that instant I thought he was offended or aghast and in the next I realized he had simply been startled. Because he grasped my left arm with his right hand and cast his left arm around my back and drew me against him. And he kissed me back.
A kiss can be like the world turning over. It can be like the tide of a dragon’s dream washing through the unseen world that is hidden to mortal eyes but that nevertheless permeates our being. It can be hot and cold together, as vast as the heavens and yet specific to the pressure of hands and the parting of lips. It raised more intense feelings than I had expected, like being engulfed in a storm of lightning. And in being more, I felt lessened when clumsily we broke apart and each stepped back in confusion. My face was in flames. He looked so rigidly and overbearingly imperious that I knew he must have been powerfully affected.
“Catherine!” he said. “Surely you see—”
“Andevai, you are a cold mage of rare and unexpected potency, as you told me often enough. I do understand why you feel you need to return to Four Moons House. You’ve opened the mansa’s eyes to your worth. But I would never be content or welcome there. Nor do we know each other, or owe each other anything except what was forced on us. So why be burdened with me? You didn’t try to kill me. You changed your mind. You did what was right.”
The moment stretched into a while. Cold fire gleamed softly over the threshold of a house no longer spelled to keep out intruders, because the Hassi Barahals had abandoned it. As they had abandoned me. Then he shook his head as if shaking off an irritation.
“To have done what was right must be enough.” His tone was formal, even harsh. “Peace upon you, Catherine, and in all your undertakings.”
“Peace upon you and in all your undertakings,” I echoed stupidly.
He went to the door, and I grasped the railing and retreated two steps up the stairs toward the first-floor landing. Then I turned back.
“Andevai.”
He had the door open already, but he halted at once and turned. To kiss a man, and enjoy it, is not to love him. I did not love him. How could I? I barely knew him. But I was stunned by what I saw in his face: hope; shame; that thrice-cursed pride that, after all, was part of what drew the eye to him; hurt; humility; even, maybe, a measure of peace—a very human and appealing mix of emotions. It was as if I were seeing him for the first time.
“There is one thing that still puzzles me,” I said, but the thought of going on was overwhelming, and I hesitated.
“Do not think that after all this, I am afraid to hear anything you may be afraid to say,” he said, a bit irritably.
I lifted my chin. “All right, then. You are always very precise when it comes to magic. So I’ve observed. And you really, really don’t like to get things wrong. So when you saw there were two young women, that day you came to this house, why did you not even ask about my cousin?”
His crooked smile made my heart turn over. “All right, then. I’ll tell you.” He paused, as if gathering courage, before he forged on. “When I saw you coming down the stairs that evening, it was as if I were seeing the other half of my soul descending to greet me.”
I stared at him, but he was perfectly serious. The words set off an avalanche in my head: memories, flashes of things he had done and not done, said and not said.
“No going back from that, is there?” he added, as if to himself. Somehow he had relaxed, because a certain calm permeated him, like the calm that comes over the sailor when she has cast off from shore and the tide is bearing her out come what may. “So if you tell me now, Catherine, right now, that you never again wish to see me in any capacity, under any circumstances, I will never approach you again.”
Unfortunately, I could not speak. I simply could not say one word. Any word.
“Ah,” he said softly, which was not really a word but a reaction. And the cursed magister smiled coolly in a way I would have told him was very irritating indeed, if I could have talked. “I’ll have to come back, then, when you’ve recovered enough to tell me what you really think.”
He turned and walked out, taking the light with him, and my voice, and all my capacity for thought or movement.
From the shadows of the first-floor landing above me, Bee said, “Blessed Tanit! Spirits cleaved from one whole into two halves! The cold mage has taken a fancy to you, Cat, although I can’t imagine why the way you kept at him with your claws. Still, he struck quite a romantical pose, don’t you think?” I could see in the dusky dimness as, above me, she clasped hands to her heart in the manner of an actress striking a pose in one of the festival tableaux. “Commanded to kill her, he pursued her. Pursuing her, he fell in love with her! Or should that be, falling in love with her, he then pursued her? Yet he defied the heavens and his master to win her. And then, being heartless, she rejected him.”
I no longer found the air cold at all. Indeed, the unheated entryway with the door standing wide open seemed quite steamy. “Have I ever mentioned how tiresome you are?”
“More than once!”
But this time it really was too much. I really was not joking. I walked out of the house, halting on the stoop to watch half of the company ride away, Andevai among them. He glanced back once. That was all. I could watch the course of his progress by the way the gaslights faded and flared.
When his party left Falle Square, there were still soldiers waiting at the house, but I ignored them. I crossed the street, my feet crunching in a dusting of snow. I opened the gate into the park and walked to the stone stele, the votive with her full lips, broad nose, and braided hair. I knelt, although the ground beneath my knees leeched all warmth from me. I raised a hand to touch the sigil the guardian held in her carved right hand: the sigil of Tanit, protector of women. I had nothing to offer except my thanks for our deliverance, but on this night, that was enough.
33
“Cat!”
Uncle’s voice made me stiffen. Without looking at him, I climbed to my feet and took in an unsteady breath as I found that sudden rage blinds more easily than darkness.
“Catherine,” he said, his voice breaking on my name, “I beg you, forgive us.”
I said nothing. I heard Bee’s silence beside him.
“Or if you cannot forgive us, then at least allow me to tell you what happened thirteen years ago. Let me tell you what we felt was best kept secret for all these years.”
I was not sure what I would have done if it had not been so dreadfully cold, if it had not been the dead of night on the longest night of the year, and if I had not been so very, very hungry and thirsty, and filthy on top of all else. If I had not just kissed a man who had told me I was the other half of his soul. But winter, and kinship, binds chains on you. It is not so easy to turn your back on everything you
once thought you knew.
He said, “I have his final journal. The one we kept hidden from you.”
Such simple words, to hurt so much. I covered my face with my hands.
Bee said, “Come inside, Cat. Just to get some hot soup and a change of clothes at least. Those really stink. A heavier coat, and your good gloves. A bath, which you need. A fire and mulled wine. A warm bed just for tonight. Please. I’m sorry I said those stupid things.”
I had done it all for her. Who else did I have to do anything for?
But weren’t these very thoughts a lie? A saber-toothed cat roamed the city. An eru had called me “cousin.” I still had my ghostly companions: Daniel Hassi Barahal, Tara Bell, and child.
I walked past my uncle and accompanied Bee back into the house, back into the magnificently warm kitchen where Callie greeted me shyly. I heard the soldiers enter to take possession of the ground-floor parlor and the front and back entry. The magister announced his intention of taking an upstairs bed so they could light fires in the chambers below. Fortunately, they stayed out of the kitchen. They left us alone.
We sat down at the heavy wooden table where we had often helped Callie and Cook prepare food. I took a spoon in my hand and began to eat the comforting soup, broth of chicken flavored with leeks, parsley, turnip, carrot, and precious chunks of meat. My uncle sat down on the bench on the other side of the table. I could not know what he saw in my face. His was drawn gray with anguish. His black hair was uncombed and undressed, an untidy mop of tight curls. I had never had curls. My long black hair was as straight as if it had been ironed. Just like Rory’s.
In the end, as if reluctantly, he began to speak.
“We were never close, Daniel and I. He was only two years younger, but we could not have been less alike. He was always quarreling with everyone, challenging them, questioning every remark and all the proper ways we had of doing things. He was restless, difficult, nothing like me. It made sense for him to travel, gathering information. I just wanted to make the family prosperous and secure again, and to be secure myself. I married Tilly at the family’s urging, in order to consolidate lines of connection between the Adurnam branch and the Havery branch of the Hassi Barahals. She and I have always worked hard. We get on well together. I did my duty to the Barahals, and so I waited in expectation for Daniel to do his duty, as all of us are meant to do. Then he came home with her.”