by Kate Elliott
“Her?” asked Bee quietly.
“She was hideous. A monster.”
I kept eating, because I had to eat to be able to listen without screaming at him.
“Hideous?” asked Bee in a tone both high and strained. “What ever can you mean?”
“She was a soldier, one of Camjiata’s Amazons. A terrible, brawny woman with uncouth manners. She had injuries—terrible injuries. Her left leg was damaged, so she limped everywhere and supported herself on a cane. I suppose it must have bothered her, who was once strong enough to march from the Mediterranean basin to the Baltic Ice Sea. Her left arm ended at the elbow in a stump with a flap of skin sewn together. Blown off by artillery, so she told us. She joked about it! I cannot even bear to repeat the japes she made. The left side of her face was mangled. Her eye was missing, scarred shut. Burn marks and scars down her cheek and jaw. And yet she would stop and stare at herself in every mirror she passed. She had no sense at all of what was appropriate.”
I kept eating, one spoonful at a time. I remembered how strong her arm was, and how I always thought that she smelled as I supposed a soldier would: determined, a little sweaty, and fierce in a way that had always comforted me. That, and her words of warning. That was my mother.
“I could scarcely manage to look at her, and yet Daniel treated her as if she were the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.”
“Maybe because he loved her,” said Bee.
“Oh, I am sure he did. He liked sentiment. He loved nothing more than looking noble.”
I choked on a lump of soggy carrot.
“Did she love him?” Bee asked in a toneless voice.
“A good question! Camjiata’s Amazons were required to be celibate. Absolute fidelity to the general. So when she turned up pregnant, she was arrested and imprisoned. The penalty was that she should remain in prison until the child was born. Then she would be executed and the child raised in an orphanage or, if it was healthy and comely, fostered out.”
Trembling, I set down my spoon.
“Daniel was in Lutetia during the big council called by the general to write that radical civil code he meant to impose on Europa. She must somehow have gotten a message to him, asking for help. She knew him from that cursed ice expedition. And from before as well.”
“From before when?” Bee asked.
“They first met when they were young, before she went into the army, before Camjiata was a general, when he was just Captain Leonnorios Aemilius Keita fighting in a war between feuding princes.”
How was it I had never heard this tale?
“I think that’s why she begged Daniel for help, because of the history they shared. Tilly said Tara adored Daniel. I never saw it myself. Perhaps the bards and jellies would sing of it and call it love, if love is a tragedy.”
“It’s djeli,” I said. “I wish you people would use the word correctly.”
“You just said you could scarcely bear to look at her, Papa,” said Bee, more softly than before. She glanced at me. “So maybe you did not see what you did not want to see.”
“I am not a sentimentalist. Does it matter, anyway? Only to Daniel, who almost destroyed the family by agreeing to help her. He took her to the Hassi Barahal house in Havery first, you know, right after she gave birth to Catherine. They made him bring her to Adurnam, because it was farther from the front lines. Camjiata’s war had by then engulfed Europa. It was dangerous to shelter a deserter. Either Camjiata’s agents would get wind of it and come to fetch her back for trial and hurt some of us in the process, or the authorities would get wind of her presence and accuse the family of spying.”
“But we are spies,” said Bee. “The Hassi Barahals have always been spies.”
“We are not spies. We began as travelers. Like all of our people, we had to make a living, so we became merchants in the field we knew best—that of gathering information and passing it on. To be accused of harboring a spy is very different in the eyes of the authorities. It makes it look as if we have taken sides.”
I picked up the spoon with a trembling hand. I hadn’t finished my soup yet. I had to finish my soup.
“Aren’t we supposed to take sides in such a case,” demanded Bee, “by supporting your family no matter what?”
“Tara Bell was not our kin! The child she gave birth to was not even Daniel’s child! He admitted as much, for you can see Catherine looks nothing like us!”
I raised my eyes to his face, and he looked away. I stared at his face, so familiar and even in its way beloved; he was the man who had taught me how to read. He was not a particularly affectionate man, but I had always thought him a good one: loyal, hardworking, funny at times, faithfully devoted to the Hassi Barahals.
I was not wrong about him. I was just not a Hassi Barahal.
“What happened then?” I asked hoarsely.
“Then Camjiata’s dreams of empire came crashing down around him. The Houses destroyed his wife’s mage House for turning traitor to their kind. His army was defeated. The allies took him prisoner. They dared not kill him, for that might have further inflamed a discontented populace. So they imprisoned him in a secret place rumored to be an island in the Mediterranean. Then Four Moons House came to us with proof that we had sold information to Camjiata’s army.”
“Had you?” Bee asked.
“There exists no proof that we did anything of the sort,” he said.
“Because you burned it,” I whispered. “Andevai handed over the proof in exchange for me. You burned it right then as he was driving away with me.”
“We had no choice,” he said stiffly, “but to agree to the contract Four Moons House forced upon us, or we would have been ruined. Destroyed, like Camjiata. Why they wanted you, Beatrice, they never explained. When do magisters ever need to explain themselves?”
Andevai had explained himself. But he was not like the others.
“Have you ever heard the phrase,” Bee asked, “ ‘to walk the dreams of dragons’?”
He shook his head. “Is it from an old bardic poem? Or a jelly’s tale?”
I rose from the bench. “Why did Daniel and Tara leave Adurnam with me?”
The lamps hissed. The fire crackled. Callie sat on her stool by the hearth, not even pretending not to listen.
He met my gaze, and I suppose I had to respect his willingness to do so. He looked older than his years, and he looked weary, but I was no longer sure he was sorry about anything.
“Four Moons House came to us and demanded the eldest Barahal daughter. Bee’s freedom and life were at risk. So I went to Daniel. Tara was pregnant again, you know.”
I was frozen, unable to move or speak or even, really, to think at all. Pregnant again, with a child who would have been my younger sibling. A baby brother or sister I would never know.
“I took on the responsibility. The others were too afraid. I went to Daniel. I said, ‘You’ll have another baby, a child to love and raise. Let us take Catherine—she’s a bastard, anyway; she’s not even yours—and give her to the mage House in Bee’s place’. Next I knew, they had packed their things and left.”
My legs gave out. I sat, and fortunately, the humble bench held me as a mother surely holds its child, supporting it when it falters.
“ ‘A bastard, anyway’?” said Bee in a hard, cold voice. “Is that really what you said?”
“Someone had to be willing to tell the truth! Make the hard choices!” He went on, shaking his head as if harried by the buzzing of bees or the anger of the whispering gods. “Next thing, we got word of the ferry accident. You were brought back alive, but they were dead.”
“Did you ever see their bodies?” Bee asked.
He stared at the fire. “Oh, yes,” he murmured, his voice a scrape where memory rasped. “The recovered bodies had been laid out in a warehouse. Daniel had an old scar on his shoulder. And Tara… well… there could be no mistake.”
He began to sob, as if the sight were as fresh as the day it had happened.
After a while, he wiped his eyes and blew his nose in a handkerchief. Then he fished in his coat and brought out a journal, perfectly ordinary, covered in bound leather and tied shut with a green ribbon. He set it on the table in front of me.
I reached for it but drew back my hand before I touched it. “What of the other missing journals? Were you hiding them, too?”
“We don’t know what happened to them. Not even Daniel knew. He did his best to direct them to the Barahals, but you never know what will happen on any journey, do you? Things get lost.” He stood. “I leave at dusk tomorrow. The tide turns at midnight, and we take ship for Gadir to join Tilly and the girls. I’ve been advised to sell this house. It has already been purchased.”
“By whom?” demanded Bee.
“By Four Moons House. The offer came at the Prince of Tarrant’s request, which means it is a command one cannot refuse. Beatrice, you’ll come with me, of course. And you, Cat. If you will come with us, we will ask your forgiveness and you will be part of us.”
I said nothing.
Bee said, “Papa, you seem not to understand something. The mansa and the prince do not intend to allow me to leave Adurnam.”
“How can that be? The contract is void!”
Bee’s expression was as blank as uncut stone, a smooth face that might conceal any object or emotion beneath if only a carver knew how to release what lay hidden within. “You really don’t understand, do you? That’s why they’re buying the house. To keep me here, in a familiar, comfortable cage. Don’t you see it? By sacrificing Cat, you didn’t save me. All you did was sacrifice everything she thought you and Mama meant to her.”
“I’ve asked for her forgiveness. Cat, do you forgive me?”
I searched for a voice and found one, although I was not sure I recognized it as mine. “Did she ever tell you who sired me?”
He shook his head with a grimace. “She never told anyone anything. To think of all that valuable information she must have had, for she knew Camjiata well, you know. And yet she refused to tell us anything, even though we could have sold that information and made our lives a cursed sight easier. Still.” He broached the words as if they were painful. “I suppose she felt loyalty of a sort, even to a commander she had deserted. There’s something commendable in that.”
I could not bear to look at him. Instead, I spoke to the wall. “I know you did what you thought you had to do. I know you did it out of concern for Bee, and you may even regret the pain it has caused me. But my parents would not have drowned if you hadn’t driven them away. I’m not ready to forgive that yet.”
“How like Daniel you are,” he muttered. “So intransigent.”
“Is she like Uncle Daniel, or not like him, then?” Bee’s gaze had a regal scorn that surprised even me. She looked so calm and spoke so evenly that it was difficult to see how furious she actually was. “You cannot have it both ways. You betrayed not just Cat, not just your brother and my aunt Tara, but also me. You betrayed the Barahal daughters, all of us, and sons, too, the ones you never had. You betrayed the honor of our house. You acted just as the Romans always claimed we Kena’ani did. I’m ashamed.”
“We were forced into a corner. We only did what we thought we had to do. What else would you have had me do, Beatrice?”
She shook her head. “It’s done. Now all you can do is go to Gadir. Take better care of Hanan and Astraea than you did of Cat. For Tanit’s sake, Papa, don’t let Astraea get away with being such a little brat. And take Callie, if she’ll go. For she’s alone here.”
“Callie?” he said, so startled at this request he forgot his tears.
“Do you want to go?” Bee asked Callie. “I know you’ve nowhere else to go.”
With her flyaway pale hair pulled back severely but wisps straggling everywhere, and a mended shawl pulled tight around her narrow shoulders, Callie looked fragile, but she was not weak nor was she stupid. “I don’t know what to expect in Gadir, truly, but I’ve been cold and starving on the streets of Adurnam, and I never want to be so again. But if you and Maestressa Catherine must stay, then won’t you be needing me here?”
“There will be other arrangements,” said Bee. “You must go with him. And now, I admit, I am terribly hungry, and I would like to eat.”
With a halting step, Uncle left the kitchen.
Callie took the bowls, ladled more soup in, and set them down with a cup of mead. She checked the lamps and retreated to her stool. I did not ask her to leave. This was her room, not ours, and, anyway, it was warm and removed from the cold mage and the soldiers. I heard them moving about in the front parlor and entry hall, speaking in low voices. Bee picked up her spoon and ate her soup. Then she drank the mead, first her cup and, after a while, mine.
I stared at the journal.
Long I stared. Hope tasted of ashes in my mouth.
I had come too far to give up now.
I untied the ribbon, and I ran a hand down the creamy leather and, with a held breath, opened it. I knew his writing, with its long tails and flowing curves. So easy to read.
I read as the lamps burned, and as Bee watched me, and as Callie waited, for servants must learn to wait, it being their duty to do so whatever their personal wishes might be.
Tara has risked much and never faltered in her duty. She has seen awful things. She has blood on her hands. She is scarred by the wars.
He did not mean only physical scars.
I will protect Tara always, however I can. What happened on the ice does not matter. The child will be my child. I will protect her no matter the cost. I have promised Tara that, and even if I had not, it would make no difference, for my little cat is my sweet daughter, the delight of my life. How I wish I had known far earlier how one can lose one’s heart to something so precious.
My tears fell on ink long since dry. He had written this so many years ago.
Tara lost one arm to cannon fire, and the other is crippled such that she cannot really care for the baby. She makes light of it in front of others—soldiers’ humor—but I am the one who holds her at night when she screams, reliving the battles in her dreams. I am the one who reassures her that the child will love her for the courageous and beautiful woman she is, not for her two arms or her two eyes.
Blessed Tanit, do not let my heart break.
That ass Jonatan came to me with a disgusting proposition, which I absolutely will not countenance. Giving up my girl for his, as if mine were worth nothing, which I am sure she is to him. I protested. I offered ways to bargain with the magisters. I even offered to steal the cursed documents back. He threatened me in that unctuous way he has. Said the family would turn us out if I don’t cooperate. “Is some other man’s bastard worth this to you?” he asked me. So despite Tara’s condition, despite the health and vigor she has regained simply by remaining in one stable place for so long, we must leave. It is a mercy that Camjiata has been captured and his army dissolved. I am not sure where exactly we can find refuge, but at least we can hope to travel there safely.
Only they had not traveled safely. He and my mother had died. It’s just they hadn’t meant to. They had been running away to go make a life elsewhere. With me.
How many times must I repeat myself, I wonder, trying to explain it to people who do not want to hear? She is my daughter even if not of my breeding. What is breeding, after all, except a moment’s release? Isn’t the raising more important? I will cherish my little cat always.
But my heart broke anyway, and Bee put her arms around me, and I wept.
34
And so dawn comes, and it is bitter, and it is sweet. I had a father after all, even if he was dead. I had a mother whose courage was greater than I had ever imagined. They had loved me enough to try to make a life for me, even if it had not worked out, because Lady Fortune is more powerful than frail human plans.
But that didn’t mean Bee and I were ready to surrender.
Solstice day passed quietly inside the house. We heated water and bathed in t
he scullery, Callie standing watch. The magister walked a circuit of the upper floors. The cawl protecting the house had faded with Aunt Tilly’s departure, but the magister spun some manner of cold magic to seal the window latches shut. The soldiers kept to the ground floor, guarding the front and back doors. Uncle readied his single bag, weeping all the while. Callie we asked for a favor. At dusk, a hackney cab rattled up, the horse stamping in its traces.
“It’s here,” I said, for I had been watching for it.
A young soldier opened the door, trying to be polite or perhaps to impress Bee.
Uncle was entirely deflated, a balloon unable to stir as the wind rose.
“Beatrice,” he said despairingly.
“I’ll write every month so you know I am well. That’s all I can promise. Give my love to Hanna and Astraea. Best you hurry, so you don’t miss the tide.”
“Uncle,” I said, choking back tears, “give my love to the girls. Tell Aunt—” I could not go on. I had loved Aunt Tilly so.
I did kiss him then, after all, not in forgiveness but in regret for what we had lost. Bee offered a formal kiss to his unshaven cheek, like a dido showing distant favor to an unloved but hardworking courtier. With bowed shoulders and bent head, Uncle crossed the threshold with his bag. Callie followed him, carrying one light carpetbag and three heavy ones. We made our farewells, and she nodded at us to show that she understood her part in this: Once they had left the house, she would insist on stopping at Tanit’s temple to make an offering of grain to the priests, so they might pray for Tanit’s blessing and a safe journey. Not even Uncle Jonatan would refuse that.
The cab rolled away. The soldier shut the door, glanced at Bee, and then away.