stove.
“Are you quite through insulting me?” he demanded.
Chartji’s crest was fully raised. I felt she was making ready to act precipitously in case someone lost his temper and brought down the house.
“It’s not meant as an insult!”
“Implying I don’t know my own mind is not an insult?” His jaw was clenched, his eyes had narrowed, and I heard a whispery groan of iron under strain. Yes. He was very angry.
“That’s not how I meant it. You didn’t kill me when you had the chance. You aided me when you could. You defied the mansa by telling him you would stop anyone who tried to kill me. So I thank you for that. But Bee and I have our own problems. A husband is one complication too many.” My hands were squeezed so tightly my shoulders ached. I untangled my fingers and separated my hands. “I’ll make no objection if a way can be found to dissolve the marriage. Let you go your way, and me mine. It’s for the best.”
“So be it.” His gaze flashed up, and if there was a murderous piercing spear in those fine brown eyes I am sure he did not mean it literally. Perhaps he was finally reconsidering the wisdom of believing he had fallen in love at first sight. People could convince themselves of anything.
“Will that be all, then?” Chartji said to me.
“Yes.” I was barely able to croak out the word. Over here, it seemed terribly hot, although the rest of the chamber shivered with cold.
“If you will.” She indicated the door. “The magister and I aren’t finished.”
I let her usher me out, and as I turned back to see if Andevai had watched me go, she closed the door in my face.
5
Let him go his way, and me mine. Our lives led down different paths. I was well rid of him and the way he was contemptuous one moment, a proud cold mage from the top of his well-groomed head to the tips of his gloriously polished boots, and then the next might be mistaken for a staidly polite and provincially traditional-if unusually good-looking-village lad who was trying too hard to fit into a world where he was not welcome but could not be turned away.
Impatient with these niggling thoughts which like bad-mannered visitors simply would not leave, I ran downstairs. That idiot Bee had not left, although she had put on her coat. Seeing me, she opened her mouth, perhaps to comment on the way my eyes were red from unshed tears or that I had been parading around in my unkempt bodice and skirts like an overworked scullery maid. Then she closed her mouth and instead handed me my riding jacket. Rory was lounging by the fire as might a cat sunning itself on a rock.
We were not alone.
Kehinde sat in a chair opposite Bee, holding a parsnip. Brennan leaned against the wall beside the door, so perfectly at ease it took a moment to realize how quickly he could block the door. The contrast between them was striking. He was muscular, blond, and white-skinned, with the look of a man used to waiting until he had to explode into action. Small-framed, she was fidgety, touching each unsliced parsnip as if her hands needed something to do while her mind worked; her skin was black, and she wore her long black hair in locks.
“We need to talk.” She pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose.
“I didn’t say anything to him about the general being here!”
“Sit, please.” Kehinde spoke without force or anger. I sank onto the bench, all energy drained. “Why did you come? To seek our help to return to the Hassi Barahal motherhouse in Gadir?”
“No,” said Bee, with a glance at me. I let her talk. “We’re not returning there.”
“Why not? They are your community. What are we, if we have no community and no family?”
“‘ We ’ are left to fend for ourselves,” said Bee. “Let me just say that our family betrayed us and we no longer trust them. We hoped to find refuge with radicals. We thought you of all people would understand why we don’t want to be bound into clientage, practically legal slavery, to a mage House or a prince’s court…or some patrician household from Rome.” Her voice fell to a whisper, but she recovered. “We can be useful to the cause. We are not without skills.”
“The Hassi Barahal house is known to be employed in the business of selling information,” said Kehinde. “You might be spying on us. After all, after you came, the cold mage arrived.”
I was getting annoyed. “Turn that around! Why would Chartji make an appointment for a cold mage to come to your office at the same time the most wanted man in Europe is to be here?”
Brennan laughed. “An unfortunate case of bad timing, and close calls. Rather exciting, don’t you think?”
“For you it will always be a game, Du,” said Kehinde, measuring him with a frown. “The more you skate onto the thin ice, as you say here in the north, the better you like it.”
He shook his head, watching her closely. “Oh, no, Professora, you know it is not a game to me. Risks must be taken if we mean to get what we want.” He flashed his enchanting smile at Bee, and then at me. “I think the girls are a risk worth taking.”
“Maybe we’re the ones who should be asking if we can trust you,” said Bee. “Like Cat said, you’re the ones meeting with the general. And the cold mage!”
“She’s got us at knife’s point there,” said Brennan, still looking amused.
Bee’s brow furrowed and her gaze darkened as if storm clouds had swept down. We were in for a blow. “It’s easy for you to laugh. You’re a man. Maybe you’re entirely legally free, or maybe your northern village is entangled in some kind of clientage to a mage House. I don’t know. But you, Professora, surely you as a legal scholar will understand our situation. Even though my cousin and I are twenty and legally adults, the Hassi Barahal elders in Gadir can dispose of us however they wish simply because we are female and unmarried.” She flashed me a glance to remind me to keep my mouth closed about the unfortunate fact that I was already married. As if I wanted to brag about it! “So you can see that radicals who speak of overturning an oppressive legal code might interest us.”
“I understand perfectly.” Kehinde glanced at Brennan. To my surprise, he looked away, biting his lower lip. She toyed with the ends of several of her locks. “We dispute the arbitrary distribution of power and wealth, which is claimed as the natural order, but which is in fact not natural at all but rather artificially created and sustained by ancient privileges. Of which marriage is one. Yet we still have a problem. It appears you are being pursued by the same mage Houses and princes who wish to capture the general. Until Camjiata leaves Adurnam, you cannot stay here.”
“You’re turning us away,” said Bee wearily.
“Not at all. I have been formulating an idea that our organization might have a use for two young women trained by the Hassi Barahal clan. Godwik agrees with me. Indeed, Maester Godwik finds you to be of the greatest interest. I consider his judgments to be based on sound reason.”
“Unlike mine,” murmured Brennan.
She did not by so much as a flicker of the eye indicate she had heard this. “It was odd to hear the general say his wife had had a vision that he would meet a Hassi Barahal daughter who, as he declaimed so poetically, will walk the path of dreams. And then of course there was the oracle about Tara Bell’s child. Such oracles being clouded and obscure exactly so that any outcome can be acclaimed as the prophetic one.”
“I wouldn’t discount such words,” said Brennan. “But I am no city-raised sophisticate. I’m just a miner’s son who has seen too much death.”
“When people die in troubling and violent ways, we seek a story to explain it, however far-fetched.” She raised a hand to forestall Brennan’s retort. “That forces exist in the world which we cannot account for is manifestly true. Through observation and experience, scholars seek to describe the natural world and plumb its depths. I have for years been in correspondence with a well-regarded scholar who lives in Adurnam. I have now had the chance to speak with him in person, and I find him every bit as impressive as his letters indicated. He will shelter you until such time as it is safe for you to join us. You must ask to share a shot of whiskey with Bran Cof-”
“Everyone knows the poet Bran Cof is long dead,” said Bee. “If you can call that death, when your head is stuck on a pedestal and everyone is waiting for you to speak.”
