But words are only one road to change. The sword, which is not fighting but any form of action, is the other. Some cut a path that others may follow into the wilderness of possibility. The general saw not limits but unchained opportunity. I did not trust him, but I believed that, as Rory had once said, he said what he meant, and he meant what he said. At least in the moment he said it.
“What exactly is it you need me for, Cat?”
“Your legal code will release villages and clans from clientage. That’s what I need.” I offered him the plate. “Do you ever worry about your safety? Since I’m to be the instrument of your death.”
“Will I die because of a deliberate action on your part against me? Might you be the tool someone else will use to destroy me? Or is your refusal to be my heir the death of my hopes to set in place a successor whose ideals will match my own and thus improve the destiny of humanity?”
I laughed. “Oh, that was well played, General. But the answer is still no.”
He took several slices of bread off the plate. “You can’t possibly believe that I believe you came to me because you have been seized by an overwhelming desire to join my army.”
“We have a common enemy,” I said in a low voice.
He glanced again toward the door, then smiled with a confiding look that drew an answering smile from me. Was I so starved for affection that I would rub up against any hand that offered a friendly pat?
“So we do. It is the only reason you are not weighted in chains and thrown into the river to drown. I mean that in the poetic sense, you understand.”
“When you offered to make me your heir, did you mean that in the poetic sense as well?”
“Oh, no, Cat. I mean that with all seriousness.”
“Even though you distrust my motives for coming here?”
“Were I to truly gain your loyalty, I would know it to be sincere and unshakable. Do not dismiss my offer out of hand.”
Unlike with Vai and the mansa, nothing in the offer tempted me. “Should you gain your empire, it should then die with you. I will not be the means to prolong it. I stand with the radicals, General. Each day we add to our numbers. You are strong, but in the end, we will be stronger.”
He lifted his glass as if in toast to my speech, then drank.
I drank with him, not in his honor but in honor of all those who fought. I could not help but see Bee and myself caught between the mansa and the general—just as, in another way, we were caught between courts and dragons. Vast forces battled, sweeping us up in their conflict. At first we had been ignorant pawns, able to run but never to stand. Alone we did not have the means or the strength to effect change.
But in the midst of the monstrous assembly that is slave to fortune, each solitary small figure who linked her hand to another built a chain of loyalty and trust.
We make ourselves into the net that we throw across the ocean.
41
Rory gave a copiously false yawn and rose to open the shutters. Roosters crowed. The creak of wheels and trample of feet and hooves drifted from the encampment as the army moved out.
“Where are we going today?” Rory asked as he plundered the remaining bread and cheese.
Aides and attendants clattered into the room to pack away the gear with impressive speed. The general personally escorted me to the latrines. Youths wearing the red jackets of fire mages hovered close all the while, like hawks waiting to dive on cautious rabbits. The truth was, I did fear their fire. Rory did not even try to flirt with them.
Faster than I had thought possible, the headquarters staff was on the road in a column of horses, carriages, and dust. We were led by a company of Amazons under the command of Captain Tira. A battalion of Iberian infantry marched behind. The baggage and hospital train would follow at the rear.
Rory chatted companionably with the young staff officers, but I stuck next to the general. I did not like the look of James Drake, wearing yet another of Vai’s purloined dash jackets to spite me. What I least liked the look of was his squadron of thirty young fire mages. How many catch-fires he controlled I was not sure, for one of the carriages was locked, with caged persons inside, while a file of shackled catch-fires marched under guard of soldiers wearing Lady Angeline’s badge.
We traveled hard all day on the main road, passing sections of the slow-moving baggage train. Columns of infantry marched away to either side, across fields, the army like locusts on the move. Messengers galloped up on spent horses with reports from the vanguard. In the town of Castra, where Lord Gwyn had died, we were met by cheering locals lining the road.
North of town we stopped to water and feed the horses. Soldiers ate stale bread and took naps. I walked upstream to wash my dusty face and hands.
Rory lay down on the grass and slid into a doze. I smiled to see his peaceful face lit by the sun. As for me, I was terribly hungry. The roofs of a farmstead rose nearby. I would have gone to beg food from them, but I had no money to pay for it and probably they had already had their granary emptied by a quartermaster.
“I wonder,” I said to dozing Rory, “how a general who comes to liberate makes sure he isn’t just seen as a thief.”
He snorted awake, rising up on an elbow. I turned. Lady Angeline approached along the bank. Downstream, horses muddied the waters.
I made a pretty courtesy, for although as wife to the heir of Four Moons House I now ranked as her equal, I did not want anyone here to know of Vai’s new status. “Your Highness.”
Her gaze grazed along the length of Rory’s body, and to my amusement she flushed when he winked at her. Unlike Drake, he did look good in Vai’s clothes, even when they were rumpled from travel. She turned to me. “What am I to call you?”
“Maestra Barahal, as you wish, Your Highness. May I ask if you have been married long?”
“Let me make myself understood to you, Maestra. Do not make an enemy of me. I am the only child of the prince of Armorica, he who stands as overlord above the Veneti dukes.”
“Ah.” I surveyed her proud posture and confident stance. Her riding clothes suited her. Clearly she was a woman of taste, in most regards. “Yet if I am correct, by Gallic law you cannot rule in your own right because you are a woman. You must marry a man who will become son to your father and then prince in his place.”
“You comprehend my situation astutely, Maestra. Unlike every other prince’s son, James has no interest in ruling Armorica and will leave to me the inheritance I have earned.”
I knew how to dig for information. “I suppose his ambitions are set on recovering his ancestral crown in the Ordovici Confederation.”
“You think he is volatile and angry, but that is because you do not know the circumstances under which he was driven from his rightful place. In fact, he has a philosophical temperament, one that prefers to gaze at the stars and plumb the mysteries of the universe. When the time comes, he will be perfectly happy to leave the administration of both principalities to me.”
“Goodness! I can understand that the chance to rule two principalities would be an inducement for a woman of your princely birth and ambition. Yet if the law were changed to allow the daughter to inherit equally to the son, such a dynastic marriage would not be necessary for you.”
I had misunderstood her.
“The marriage suits me marvelously well.”
“Ah. Well, then, a word of advice.”
“Cat,” said Rory, warningly.
I poked anyway. “Besides the bad fit, for the dash jackets are too loose and too tight in all the wrong places, the colors really do not benefit his complexion. Your attire is so exquisite in all ways that I cannot believe you have urged him to wear another man’s clothes.”
Her right eye half winked shut in a flicker of irritation. “He has promised to burn them all when the cold mage is dead.” With that she returned to the main group. Drake came to meet her.
Rory got to his feet. “Cat, will you ever learn to keep your mouth shut?”
