For the soldier who called me in was none other than Amadou Barry, the academy student Bee was so currently infatuated with.
27
The officer was the cousin of the Prince of Tarrant. After offering me a soldier's cloak to drape over my shoulders, he sat me down on a bench beside a brick hearth sheltered by a slate roof. There, warming his hands at the fire, he introduced himself as Marius.
' 'Marius' because,' he explained with a chuckle, 'I was destined to be an officer in the Tarrant militia from the day I was born. That's what we younger sons do: train for war, go to war, die in war, or limp home to our hearths to await our next raid. Not that we do any raiding these days. Although my neighbors have some cursed plump cattle that could do with a little exercise.'
Plump cattle made me think of Rory. Was he dead, or had he gotten away? Despite the crackling fire and a mug of mulled wine brought by one of the temple priests, I could not get warm. Negotiations had begun at the ramparts, where Amadou Barry stood in heated conversation with the furious cold mage whose lace, I was glad to see, was stained with dried blood. Twelve crossbowmen stood on the earthworks above, weapons trained on the mage. The angle of the gap and the outer ridge of ramparts hid the House soldiers from my view.
'Amadou will set him right,' said Lord Marius, following my gaze. 'There is not much a magister dares do to us in such cir-cumslances, although I dare say he might try. But we Outnumber his forces. My lads are certainly better trained and more experienced.'
'He's carrying cold steel. He could kill Maester Amadou or any of you by only drawing blood.' As he might already have dispatched Rory.
'I suppose he could. But would he? There's your question. A runaway bride-if that is indeed what you are-is scarcely worth angering the Prince of Tarrant, much less… Well, never mind that. The princes and the Houses have learned to cooperate when they must and leave each other alone the rest of the time. Is that the husband you're running away from?'
'No!' Heat scalded my cheeks; yet for what possible reason need I blush?
'Good fortune for you, then. He looks a singularly unattractive fellow.'
The parlay broke off as the cold mage gestured angrily with a gesture so obscene I covered my mouth with a hand as I gasped. Lord Marius chuckled. Maester Amadou shrugged with a careless ease I admired and turned his back on the magister and his cold-steel blade.
As he walked back toward us, I said in a low voice, 'I thought Maester Amadou was a student at the academy.'
Lord Marius was a laugher. Everything seemed a joke to him. 'Amadou Barry is older than he looks. I very much doubt he is what you may have thought him to be.'
'Then what is he?'
'Och, lass, that's not my tale to tell, is it?'
He rose, and I did likewise, shaking out my rumpled and dirtied skirts. A priest brought another mug of warmed wine, and Amadou poured a few drops on the altar before coming over to join us. He sat. We sat. I stared sidelong at him, seeking signs of age in his face. I had thought him a year or two older than Bee and I, a polite, naive, spoiled, and privileged son of
bankers recently arrived from resettled Eko on the coast of West Africa; I had thought he and his younger twin sisters were attending the academy because it was fashionable for wealthy, well-connected families to send their young people there for an education.
'Was it even true, that story?' I blurted out before I knew I meant to speak. 'About your family fleeing ghouls in Eko, and how you and your sisters were put into the water on a boat while your parents and cousins-'
Shame blooded me as his expression changed.
Of course it was true. No one could mistake that look of fractured grief.
Then he smoothed it over with the ease of practice. 'Yes, it's true, but it was thirteen years ago. I was barely fourteen. My three sisters and I, and our mother's sister, were the only ones to escape that terrible day. We endured a long voyage, with a Phoenician shipmaster and crew, I should note, fine sailors all, and came to family in the north. Poor shy Fadia was shipped off to marry this beast here'-Marius laughed as at an old family joke-'leaving me and the little girls with our father's people.'
'My apologies. I spoke as the alligator bites.' I spoke because of my own grief and fear, I thought, but I did not say that aloud.
He smiled in a conciliating way that irritated me.
'But if you were not a student at the academy, then why were you there?' I snapped.
'If I had some other motive for being there, you will excuse me, maestressa, for not divulging that motive to you now, as it has nothing to do with our present situation. Let me just tell you that your cousin Beatrice told me you were in danger and that you would come riding up to the temple of Taranis Jupiter, Maa Ngala'-Lord of All-'on the fifteenth of December.'
'How could she possibly know? I've not been in communication with her!'
'Have you not? She seemed so very sure that I assumed you had sent her a message. When she described the temple, I recognized it as Cold Fort. Thus we are here.' He drank his wine, and one of the priests hurried over to fill his cup. 'Do you mean to say you sent her no message?'
He had the look of a man trained to coax out secrets by the expert application of casual questions.
'Where is she?' I asked to deflect him. This might be another trap. I could not believe Aunt and Uncle had been so foolish as to remain in Adurnam, knowing Four Moons House would discover the deception.'They had even tried to convince Andevai to come back the next day; Andevai had himself recognized that they hoped to run away with me. And if they wanted to run away with me, then surely they regretted what they had been forced to do.
The sun sank toward the horizon, smearing a rosy glamor across the western sky. The troopers were setting up tents. Nearby, in a kitchen building whose shutters were all open to admit light, priests prepared a meal with the help of a few of the soldiers. Meat sizzled. How Rory would have loved that smell! I wiped a tear from my eye.
'You are aware,' Amadou Barry said in the gentlest tone imaginable, 'that your uncle-your entire clan-has been engaged for years as spies.'
'Where are my aunt and uncle?' I asked, hearing how choked my voice sounded. Yet I was not about to reveal the whole of what I now knew. I had to hold something in reserve, should I need to bargain.
'They left Adurnam on the day after you were sent off with Four Moons House.'
'Then how came Bee to speak to you?'
Lord Marius laughed again. I was beginning to find his laughter annoying, because it was obvious he was a man who
had never suffered defeat or penury or even disappointment in love. The cousin of the Prince of Tarrant must be accustomed to having the world at his feet and Fortuna as his lover. If he had married Amadou's older sister, he was also wealthy even beyond what portion he had received within his own clan.
'She did not leave Adurnam with her parents and sisters and household. She stayed behind.' Maester Amadou was a very handsome young man when he lowered his eyes to give the impression of innocent embarrassment, but really, he was too pretty. It was that prettiness that disguised his years, that made impressionable young women- and others, too, I am sure- underestimate him, assume him to be something other than what he was. And I did not even know what he was; all my expectations were exploded.
For then he added, his color changing, 'When I discovered her situation, I offered her my protection.'
My gaze sharpened. Maybe my claws came out. 'What does that mean? Surely not-'
He would not look at me. 'I would not trifle with her. As for the other, it is impossible.'
'He means,' interposed Marius, 'that his aunt offered the girl shelter. So that's where you will find her, biding securely and unmolested in his aunt's house in Adurnam. As for the other, a man may be smitten, darling, but may otherwise be obliged to marry according to his family's needs and wishes.'
'You need not tell me that! I have become intimately acquainted with the chains of obligation.'
'Yet you fled your husband and the mage House.'
