'It's just the cold wind,' I lied, for she obviously did not know that Andevai had been ordered to kill me. 'There is nothing to tell.' Yet to walk in silence seemed awkward. I did not want to ask her to tell the stories of her people, because she might then discuss her brother, and that subject I wished desperately to avoid. 'Let me tell you the story of the great general, Hanniba'al. He crossed the mountains with his army and his elephants and took the Romans by surprise.'
Kayleigh knew the art of listening, and I enjoyed telling the tale. From one tale into another, as the old saying goes. The path unrolled beneath our strides and the afternoon passed into dusk earlier than I wished. Hallows Night and Hallows Day were ending, and with the setting sun, the Wild Hunt must hide back into the spirit world. Leaving magisters free to safely ride abroad and begin their own hunt for me.
We reached a standing stone that marked a crossroads where a well-worn path headed east through the hills. Several distant
smears marked villages amid clearings. The countryside hid the river.
Kayleigh approached the stone and let precious drops of ale from her leather bottle moisten the stone's base. She scanned the landscape. 'It's almost night. There will be a shelter on the leeside of the hill. There always is, at a crossroads stone. Should we rest while it is dark?'
'No. We'll stop and take something to eat. The moon will rise soon. We'll have light enough for walking. Best we go as far as we can while the weather holds.' I glanced back the way we had come, and she did, too, but we saw no sign of pursuit.
We climbed a side path down to a wattle-and-daub hut. After relieving ourselves in a solidly built latrine off to one side, we retired to the hut to eat a scant meal of bread and cheese, grateful for roof and walls. We did not light a fire although it grew dark. As soon as the moon rose, we set off again.
Kayleigh's nerves were not, it seemed, as steady as mine. She glanced back frequently. The chalk of the path ran before and behind like a beam of moonlight, part of the scaffolding of the sky drawn here on earth.
'Did you not pass Duvai, coming after us? Did he not see you?' I asked.
She turned her head away and spat on the path. Our footsteps thudded on the path in a steady rhythm, hers falling in the gaps between mine.
'While Fa yet lives, Duvai is not head of the house, but he will be. His mother is not my mother, even if we share a father. So he does not-yet-have the right to command me to do as he wishes. No more than he has the right to command Vai now that Vai is gone to the magisters.'
'So Duvai did see you and let you pass?'
Her face was hard to read in the moonlight, but her lips
pressed tight. 'He did not let me pass. I did what I must. He never saw me.'
'What will happen when he returns to find you have fled?' I pressed. 'Will he be blamed?'
'Why should I care if he is blamed? I won't go back for Duvai's sake!'
'I don't expect you to return. But if men from your village come after and find you, they'll find me. And if Andevai comes after and finds me, then he will find you.'
'They won't come after me. But don't you expect Vai to search along the toll road? Isn't that why Duvai set you on this path instead?'
'So I hope. So Duvai told me, that the magisters would expect me to flee along the toll road or the river. It seems,' I added cautiously, 'that Duvai and Andevai do not get along.'
I was not sure she would answer me. We walked some distance in silence with the wind shushing through the trees below and bending the grass and bushes that grew along slopes still visible under the moon's light. The air tasted of winter and made my eyes hurt. My fingers, even in gloves, ached with cold.
'They did not share a mother's womb, as Vai and I did. So there is no peace between them. That's often how it is with people, haven't you found?'
'I would trust my cousin with anything.'
'Would you?'
I touched the bracelet Bee had given me. 'Yes. Anything.'
'Would she do the same for you?'
'Yes, she would.'
'Then you understand me. Also, you know what is said: Two bulls don't bide quietly in the same pasture. Both Duvai and Andevai are ambitious. That makes trouble for everyone.'
'You are not ambitious? What did you hope for? I mean,
before you heard about what the mansa wanted. Is there someone your elders expect you to marry?'
'There is always talk. No one in our village, but maybe some men in villages not so far away if it pleases my family and theirs. If we get permission from the mansa.'
'Do you need the mansa's permission to marry?'
'Of course we do. The mansa's deputies oversee the villages. There must be work for those sons and daughters of the magis-ters whose sorcery is too weak to harness. The seneschal and her deputies measure our third in labor and crops. Every year the newborns are brought tip to be sealed into the House. Certain lads are taken away to work as grooms for the soldiers of the House. And girls…' She glanced over her shoulder, as if fearing the mansa's soldiers might be coming up behind us on the path to take her away.
'Tell me if you get tired,' I said quietly.
'Never!'
We both laughed. This country girl was not so strange after all. We traded stories of lads and young men we had fancied. She had spoken to a soldier from the House cavalry one time, a handsome fellow with blue-black skin and a charming accent, the magicless son of a mage House based in Massilia.
'Where is that, Catherine? You seem to know such things.'
I told her it was a port city on the northern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, the sea that separated Europa and Africa. I told her how the Kena'ani had plied those coasts for centuries despite the interference of the Romans.
'But the Romans built the roads and brought civilization to the north,' said Kayleigh.
'To the barbaric Celts. The refugees from the empire of Mali were already a civilized people, of course. What happened to the soldier?'
She shrugged. A village girl had to be cautious in speaking to soldiers. Bad things could happen. There was also a young man from the same village as Duvai's mother, a day's walk east, who was a charming fellow, one of the tawny Trinobantic Celts, a very fine fiddler with a hunter's lineage. 'He is someone I could marry,' she said, 'for a young soldier in the House is usually not allowed to keep a wife, only a concubine. But Duvai's mother resents our village because of what happened, so she will speak against any marriage between me and him.'
'What happened?'
'She left because of my father marrying my mother, as he had every right to do!'
'I might suppose a woman would be uncomfortable seeing a second wife brought in-'
'She was herself the second wife! Everyone says she was proud of her youth and beauty, and treated her elder wife with no respect at all until the poor woman lost her wits from crying so much and died. Even sweetest butter will sour when stirred by a blttet hand, When my father grew tired of her boasting and complaints, he found a more amiable wife. She took her bride price and went home. He could have stopped her, but no one wished him to, for the entire village was happy to be rid of her.'
'She left Duvai behind.'
'Boys belong with their fathers. Now she has poisoned her village against ours with her gossip and whispering.'
'Surely your hopeful suitor no longer matters, anyway, if you have left all that behind.'
She looked startled, almost missing a step; the enormity of the choice she had made was staggering. 'I am rid of such troubles.'
She spat again on the path before plucking an errant strand of hair that had escaped her scarf and releasing it to the wind as if it were her past, blowing away behind us. I licked my coldchapped lips and felt the strain of a long walk weighing down my legs. The moon had reached zenith. We had been walking at least four night hours. All told, I supposed I had been walking fourteen or more hours since dawn, although of course the daytime hours in winter were of shorter duratiorfand the nighttime hours longer. Tiredness was making me clumsy and dull.
'Do you think we might rest?' asked Kayleigh.
