cold steel. Where did your people get it?'
I kept my mouth closed tight as a burst of voices shouting in frustrated outrage rose from the town behind us. The carriage gained speed along the road, our ride so smooth I began to wonder if we were actually running along on the surface of the turnpike or if we had risen above it on a tide of magic. My head swam dizzily. My teeth began to chatter.
He swept the thick fur blanket off the seat beside him and thrust it onto my lap. 'You look like you need this. You may as well rest, as it's obvious from that mulish expression you're not going to tell me anything.' He stared at his hands as if staring at death, his brows drawn down and his expression resolving again into his habitual scornful anger.
I scooted into the corner farthest from him and bundled myself into the blanket, wrapping it tightly around me because I was shuddering. Maybe most of my convulsive shivering was from the bitter cold and maybe it was just exhaustion that had drained all warmth from me. I rested my head against the padded side and closed my eyes.
Perhaps I dozed.
At some indeterminate point, I opened my eyes to see him, wedged in the opposite corner in his smudged and disheveled traveling clothes, with no coat or blanket, staring at his hands as he wove light into helrriets and horses, let them dissolve, and pulled new illusions into miniature form.
'The light and shadow must reflect and darken consistent with the conditions of light at the time of the illusion,' he muttered to himself as he manipulated the patterns of light lifting and shadow falling.
Tiny soldiers faded, and a face appeared: lips, nose, eyes, and a shadow's skein of long black hair. My face. He was weaving my face in light.
Before he could glance up to study me and see me looking, I shut my eyes.
The carriage rocked, jostling me, then steadied.
With my eyes closed, I could not fight off exhaustion. Thought faded.
When I woke again, he was asleep, propped as uncomfortably upright in his corner as I was in mine. It was the first time I had seen him asleep, his face in repose. Bee would have proclaimed his lineaments handsome: his lean face set off by the beard trimmed very, very short around a well-shaped jawline, his long black eyelashes, his skin the brown of raw umber seen in painters' studios.
Bur Bee had not been forced to marry him. It is easy to admire
what you must not endure, as my father had written years ago during the Iberian war.
My husband had killed two men in front of my eyes, and how many more in Adurnam's Rail Yard I would likely never know. I fixed the ghost sword in its sheath between my body and the carriage and shut my eyes, but could not find rest.
14
Yet in the end I did sleep as we traveled east through the night, into dawn, and across the morning and came to a town on whose outskirts rose a House inn. I now understood these inns must be wrapped around with protections able to fend off assaults from whatever enemies the Houses had accumulated over the centuries since their founding. Should be able, although they had failed in Adurnam and in Southbridge Londun behind us.
We pulled into the inn court as hostlers hurried out. I staggered in Andevai's wake into a parlor furnished with a sideboard, two couches, and a polished table with four chairs. While Andevai exchanged formal greetings with the steward in charge of the inn, I collapsed on the blessedly comfortable and unmov-ing daybed with my cane tucked against me. I fell asleep at once, waking when the door opened and servants carried in food on trays and set the covered dishes on the sideboard with platters and utensils and cups gracefully laid on one of the tables.
'We'll serve ourselves,' said Andevai. He was standing at the window, as far away from me as was possible in the chamber. The servants shot nervous glances at him and hurried out, shut-ting the door behind them.
I staggered up onto unsteady legs and stumbled over to the sideboard, thinking I might expire just from the glorious smell. After washing, I uncovered every dish and heaped up a platter
with so much food that my eyes hurt even as my mouth watered. I sat down and started eating.
After a while, having devoured about half the bounty, I paused.
He was still staring out the window into the gauzy light of an overcast day, the light beginning a subtle shift that heralded the arrival of one of the cross-quarter days that divide the year. The festival of Samhain was observed throughout much of the north, marking the end of the light half of the year and the beginning of the dark half. As day follows night, so light follows dark, and thereby Samhain, also called Hallows Night and Hallows Day, was celebrated by some as the end of the old year and the beginning of the new.
'Why don't you ever eat?' I asked.
Without looking toward me, he spoke softly. 'Every time I work magic, I am fed.'
I set down my knife and spoon, the path of destruction I had cut across the platter looking suddenly ominous. 'What do you mean?'
His gaze flashed my way before he turned back to survey the out of doors. 'The secret belongs to those who know how to keep silent.'
'The mage Houses would have to say so, wouldn't they? Secrecy is the key to power.'
He left the window and walked to the table, standing with a hand on the back of a chair. 'What do you mean?'
Was that anger that creased his eyes? We were both exhausted, and he looked considerably worse for the troubles we had encountered: His right sleeve was torn, his jacket rumpled, and his trousers stained black at the knees where he had knelt in the ashes.
'It's what my father always said.'
'Why would he say that?'
'That should be obvious, if you know the history of my lineage.'
He shifted the chair back and sat opposite me. 'The Barahals are a clan of hired soldiers, of Kena'ani stock, what others call Phoenicians. Their mother house is based in the city of Gadir on the coast of southern Iberian near the Straits of Hercules. I was informed one evening that I was required to travel to Adur-nam to marry the eldest daughter of the Adurnam Hassi Bara-hal house. Haste was required, so I left the next morning. Beyond that, I was told nothing, and I've had no time to learn anything else.'
'You were warned the Barahals would have little conversation and fewer manners.'
He crossed his arms and leaned back.
I knew I should not bait him, so I shoveled in more food. Yet, having chewed and swallowed, I was gnawed to bursting by my swelling grievances. I opened my mouth to eat more and instead words poured out. 'It's true the Barahals have served as mercenaries for hundreds of years. But we began as messengers. Couriers. We were not always uncouth soldiers, brutes paid to kill.'
He did not flinch. No doubt he had forgotten about the two men he had so recently slain.
I backtracked, anyway, lest he think I was criticizing him. 'You must know that the Kena'ani built a sea- trading empire three thousand years ago.'
'Yes, yes, even I must know that. Everyone educated knows that the Romans and the Phoenicians fought to a standstill in the Mediterranean wars two thousand years ago.'
'Well, after that, we maintained our ports and markets and ships against the might of their land empire. In Europa, meanwhile, the Celtic tribes and nations shifted allegiances and quarreled and built their cities and armies with the grain and metals we Kena'ani brought them.'
'I'm not sure from this tale how sea traders came to be mercenaries and spies.'
'You have to know of the salt plague in western Africa that released the ghouls from the depths of the salt mines.'
'Of course. The Koumbi Mande people-my ancestors- were the first ones attacked.'
'It happens that about the same time as the diaspora, the nation known as Persia rode out of the eastern Levant and conquered the great Kena'ani city of Qart Hadast, which you may know as Carthage. So my people also
