She was old, with a crooked back, and as thin as if she had not had enough to eat for many months. But she held my eyes with the confident gaze of a person who is sure of her authority in the world. Her loose, comfortable boubou, the robe sewn out of strips of gold, red, and black cloth, appeared practical for journeying and easy to wear. Her skin was quite black, unusual in these parts, and a scarf wrapped her head, although it had slipped back to reveal twists of silver hair. She wore gold earrings.
'You're a djeli,' I said. 'A djelimuso.' A female djeli.
She opened a case and placed the fiddle and bow within, then closed it and looked at me. 'What are you?'
'I'm Catherine,' I replied. The horse shied and snorted. I yanked down on the reins just as a pair of saber- toothed cats ambled out of the night and flopped down beside the well.
'Are these also your companions?' asked the djeli with remarkable calm. When she shifted her head to look directly at the big cats, her earrings caught strands of firelight and sent it shooting like arrows into the night, and then I blinked; after all, the earrings were only gleaming slightly, as any polished surface must do.
'Not my companions, but they seem to have followed me.' I did not see the sable male cat; these might be two of the ones I thought had stayed behind to guard… or to eat…
'Andevai!'
How any man could manage to look so haughty and offended while limping I could not say. And yet, infuriatingly, it was indeed Andevai who emerged out of the night, appearing very much the worse for the wear with his clothing rumpled and stained. Resides that, he looked immensely annoyed. Behind
him strolled another three of the big cats, whose demeanors bore the smug satisfaction of a petted house cat that has just deposited a mouse before its surprised human. And I was very surprised.
With not even a polite by-your-leave, and ignoring the huge saber-tooths, he approached the roaring fire.
The djeli rose. 'Peace, traveler. I hope the night finds you at peace.'
He pulled up so sharply that I laughed, for it was as if he'd been reined in.
'I have no trouble thanks to the mother who raised me,' he said politely. 'May this night find you at peace.'
Honestly, they went on in this vein for far longer than I could ever have dragged out a greeting with my inadequate command of village customs. I thought they might wind down through the health of unnamed fathers and uncles and mothers and cousins into the well-being of the cattle, dogs, chickens, wheat, and barley and what troubles the vegetable garden might have seen since the two had last met, which, since these two had evidently never before met, would no doubt take a century to complete.
'Are you finished?' I demanded when there came a pause, rather embarrassed at my rudeness but really beginning to shake now. I could use fear if I turned it to anger. 'Begging your pardon, maestra.' I drew my sword, and the cats rose as if in answer, yawning to display their ferocious teeth, although they stayed by the well. 'I thought you were dead?
He swung around to look at the cats, then back to face me. His own sword remained sheathed. 'A more correct statement would be that you wished! was dead.'
'I wished no such thing. I am sure I hold no animosity toward you at all except for the small detail that you tried to kill me. Indeed, for all I know, you did kill me, and I am wandering
here as in Sheol, with saber-toothed cats stalking my trail and you plaguing me. I suppose you intend to attack me again, perhaps by the light of this lovely-' I broke off.
The fire was burning without stint.
His presence was having no effect on the fire.
'I want my horse back,' he said wearily, paying no attention to this marvel.
'Why are you not extinguishing the fire?' I demanded.
'Because,' said the djeli, 'while magisters draw their power through the spirit world, they have no power in it.'
The look he shot at her should have been a spear of killing ice, but the fire burned regardless and nothing happened to her for violating such precious secrets.
Fiery Shemesh! He wielded no cold magic here!
I snorted, and his gaze flashed to me as his lips curved into the supercilious frown I was becoming familiar with. But I also noticed how stiffly he held his right shoulder; dried blood marred the sliced edges of his coat.
'You're strong and fast, but your technique is sloppy,' I said as I sheathed my sword with a flourish meant to challenge him. I was beginning to see that the angrier he got, the more he climbed the pinnacle of arrogance, but without cold magic to throw around, and unless he decided to physically attack me with his sword arm injured and within the aura of firelight under the gaze of the djeli, he could do nothing but listen. And I had a lot to say, words I had swallowed for too many days. 'My question, though, is why you did not use the weight and height of the horse to your advantage but instead dismounted to attack me. No Barahal would ever make such a mistake.'
'I wasn't aware,' he said cuttingly, 'that you were a Barahal.'
'A weak rejoinder! Not up to your usual standard. Next thing, you'll accuse me of being in on the fraud.'
'You aren't actress enough to have managed that. It was obvious you knew nothing of the scheme.'
I lost my rhythm at this unexpected parry. No cutting retort sprang to my lips.
'Anyway,' he added, speech clipped as if the words were difficult to get out, 'I thought if I was required to kill you, as I had been commanded to do, that I ought to show enough respect to you to do so face-to-face.'
'How decent of you, truly! What courtesy you've shown me! First, you drag me from my home against my will, refuse to let me eat perfectly decent food, are rude to perfectly respectable innkeepers, and then when you're told to kill me because of a mistake you made and through nothing I have ever done, you try to kill me.'
'I didn't try very hard!'
'You tried hard enough! You drew blood!' I touched my fingers to the cut on my chin.
He flinched, then drew himself taut. 'You should be dead,' he agreed coldly, his color very high and his posture very rigid.
'But I'm not!' I cried. 'No thanks to you!'
He shook his head. 'If the Barahals had given me the other girl, then none of this would have happened, would it? She would be married according to the contract, and treated well and living better than you could possibly have been in that rundown and ill-furnished house, while you would remain safe and unmolested in the bosom of your so-called family. It seems to me they're at least as much at fault for handing you over while knowing the mansa would discover the cheat and take out his anger on you. So why aren't you railing at their part in this?'
Tears pricked at my eyes. 'What makes you think I'm not?'
He had the decency to look startled. A foggy notion crept into my head that he might be ashamed, and that his shame
might be fueling his anger. No, that way lay insanity. He was whipping himself because he had not yet fulfilled the mansa's command. He might even conceivably be worried about his village, or his loyal sister, and I was bitterly reminded that he had brought an escort and a spare horse for Kayleigh, which was far more than Aunt and Uncle had arranged for me. They, who had thrown me to the wolves. I hated them all over again. Hated them. Loved them. Choked on despair and anger and sheer exhaustion.
The djeli watched us with a slight smile.
'I ask your pardon for my poor manners,' I said hoarsely to her. 'I've had some trouble on the road.'
'So it appears,' she said.
'Might I rest at your fire?'
She extended a hand, not quite in invitation for me to sit but more like a request for payment.
'That's how it is with djeliw and bards,' muttered Andevai. 'You have to pay them lest they ridicule you.'
'An unexpected complaint coming from a cold mage,' she replied without heat, 'for you magisters might be said to be cousins in some manner to us djeliw and bards.'
'Magisters may be, bred from a long line of sorcerers and intermarried with the druas of the north,' he retorted, 'but I am not cousin to any of you. I was born into a village of farmers and hunters.'
'Your village serves the mansa and the House,' I exclaimed. 'You are servants and slaves.'
He lifted his chin. 'Not in the old country we weren't. My people have always been farmers and hunters. We are proud of that, as we should be.'
