She shot me a startled glance, and she also looked toward the door, then back at me. 'My dear, no. They are since gone, of course. Lord Owen doesn't like to have House cavalry riding about roads he oversees, does he? But even a lord cannot say no to the magisters for fear they will call in a cold spell just when the fruit trees are budding and the wheat sprouting. As long as the cold mages can hold the threat of famine over the rest of us, the princes have to do what they say, do they not? Now, maestra, if you'll just give me your names so I can record it here.'
My heart stuttered, but I calmed myself. Cautious and watch-ful I must become.
'Catriona,' I said, choosing the local version of my name, 'and Roderic Bara-' I bit my tongue.
'Barr?' she asked, nib poised above the ledger.
'Ban,' I agreed as she carefully wrote the name two lines below, and then went back and filled in a new date: 10 Decemer 1838.
'Not that I can complain about the custom, even from House soldiers,' she went on, 'for you see how little traffic we get in this season. The mines are closed down for winter, although the forges are now lit, but none of them will travel until spring. Crops and cattle are long since taken to market. Folk do not travel this time of year. You were fortunate to escape traveling in that terrible blizzard. Those soldiers came galloping in on its wings and were forced to bide here four entire days, although they were so very well behaved I'd like to meet their mothers. You'd think a cold mage had raised such a storm, wouldn't you?'
December tenth.
Five weeks had passed while I argued with Andevai, told stories to the djeli, and slept in the spirit world. Four Moons House could easily have reached Adurnam and taken Bee. But could they have forced her to marry Andevai without a legal ruling that I was dead? Might they try to force her to marry a different magister with a legal ruling that my marriage was fraudulent? Uncle would fight in court, although it was most likely he and the family had fled the city the night I'd been taken.
Two girls bustled past with heads ducked low, making for the stairs. One held a bundle of clothing in her arms; the other was biting her lower lip and trying not to giggle.
'Where are you going with those?' demanded the innkeeper without rising.
The girls halted, blushing. 'These are for-'
'I know who they are for. And you, missy, are not taking them upstairs.'
'I'll take them up,' I said, for anything would be better than trying to carry on a conversation with the innkeeper while that date pounded in my head. 'If a bath-'
'It will have to be in the kitchen out back,' said the innkeeper, 'which is where we keep our tub, but we've a screen to give you privacy. Nothing fancy,'
I smiled at the girls as well as I could manage and scooped up the clothes. 'My thanks, maestra. Just let me know when all is ready.'
'And what don't fit,' the innkeeper called after me, 'I can tailor to measure.'
The girls giggled.
I took the steps two at a time, rapped once to give him warning before flinging open the door and charging in. The room was exceedingly narrow, more of a long corridor from door to window, with two beds lined along one wall, a side table between them, and two along the other. Decently swaddled in the cloaks, he lounged on the bed to the right of the door. Warmth drifted up from the hearths and stoves below. I dumped the clothing on the bed opposite and began shaking it out. It was quite serviceable, nothing in the height of fashion: loose trousers in the Celtic style, a town jacket with a hint of dash but well made enough to weather many years' wearing. This was not garb for heavy labor but for town work; perhaps the deceased had helped serve drinks at the inn.
I walked to the window. 'We have eleven days to reach Adur-nam before the solstice,' I said, walking back to him. 'If I recall Uncle's maps correctly, it must be about one hundred miles from Lemanis to Adurnam as the crow flies.' I returned to the window to look out over the inn yard. 'We can't afford to hire horses. I'm not sure we can walk so far in ten days.'
'You're pacing,' he said with another yawn.
'What are we to do?'
'I say we eat, for I'm powerfully hungry.' He snagged cloth, hoisted it, and swung out his bare legs to pull on' You can't wear those! Those are women's drawers.'
'They're soft. They feel good.' Without the least idea of modesty, he wiggled out buck naked from under the cloaks and pulled on the drawers over slim hips. 'I like them.'
'You don't wear women's clothing.'
'Why not?'
'You're impossible!' I separated men's garments: drawers, stockings, trousers, shirt, waistcoat, and the jacket in a dreary brown fabric that was nothing a fine blade like Andevai would ever be caught dead in. 'It seems impossible that five entire weeks have passed while I told a few stories!'
He fingered the man's drawers. 'I don't like these. They're not as soft.'
'The ones you have on are meant for me to wear, you disgusting beast. I'm going to turn my back, and you're going to take off my drawers and dress properly. Five weeks! How can it happen?' I walked back to the window. Through the open gates of the inn yard, I could see a slice of the main street and the gate, empty of traffic as dusk strangled the winter day.
How should he know why time flowed differently there from here? He was a saber-toothed cat, by all that was holy! A spirit man, the villagers would have said, walking out of his beast's body and into this one as a man. His mother was a cat, and his father was, evidently, a cat.
I tried to imagine having a saber-toothed cat as a sire, a spirit animal who had walked into this world as a man and had congress with my mother. Did I really believe it, with no evidence except Rory's word and the cats coming to protect me?
Trembling, I leaned my head against the dense whorls of glass, feeling the cold seep through. The eru had called me 'cousin.' She had seen the spirit world knit into my bones when even the mansa, despite his immense power, had not guessed. But the djeliw had known.
What had Daniel Hassi Barahal known? Was my bastard parentage why he had handed me over to the Barahals to sacrifice in Bee's place? I considered the story Bee and I had been told. He had fallen in love with an Amazon from Camjiata's army. They'd fled together to make a new life but had tragically drowned in the Rhenus River, leaving behind an orphaned daughter.
Was any of it true?
'Why are you crying?' Roderic's gentle tone, with a slight scratch like the lick of a cat's tongue, opened the vein of my grief. I began to sob. He came up behind me, suitably dressed at last, rested hands on my shoulders, and stood quietly until the river ran dry.
'You still stink,' he said as I wiped my eyes.
'Let's go down,' I said as I turned to face him. 'And… thank you.'
He touched his nose to my cheek, not quite a kiss, but the gesture heartened me. I had kin. I wasn't alone. And furthermore, the mansa's soldiers and seekers would be looking for a solitary woman, not one traveling with a man.
Good hot soup and thick ale followed by a hot bath, however humble the tub, and the pleasure of clean drawers and shift did much to strengthen my resolve. When I returned to the common room, I discovered Roderic seated on a bench with his long legs outstretched and a mug of ale in one hand as he embellished the tale of our altercation with brigands with the delight of a born liar. No longer was it a half dozen brigands but thirteen or twenty, hard to count in the muddy light of a cloudy dawn. Certainly his audience had swelled from the innkeeper's infatuated daughters to an appreciative crowd, including the very Emilia we had met by the well, a ruddy-faced girl with red-gold hair.
As the tale unfolded, I realized he was retelling in altered form one of the episodes from Daniel Hassi Barahal's journal I'd related to Lucia Kante.
'There's been trouble with roaming bands of young men these last two years,' interposed the cousin of the innkeeper. She wore
a scarf in muted tones wrapped over her gray hair. I wondered if she had come over to see how Roderic filled out her dead son's clothes. Was she, too, grieving for what she had lost? 'Leman-is's council and Lord Owen have sent pleas in plenty to the Cantiacorum prince, but in his proclamation he blames radicals for stirring them up. He