was reconsidering his estimate of what manner of young females we might be and whether Rory was truly my brother or rather our partner in crime.
Bee’s diminutive stature led people to think her both mild and harmless, until she shifted her feet to a fighting stance. “We expect to be treated with the respect we have shown you,” she said in a voice thick with queenly grandeur. “Do not make me regret I thought you a decent man.”
He relaxed. “I see you two girls is having me on. My thanks, then, and I’ll take the bauble gladly, as a keepsake of your mischievous ways. Now you get on to your sire, lass. Lest he get tired of waiting for you and come hunting you down. Listen, you can hear him coming now!”
In the distance horns tootled and drums and cymbals clashed.
“What festival parade is that?” I asked as we heaved the chest out of the carriage.
“Tomorrow Mars Camulos has his feast. The mask associations have been practicing for weeks for the festival procession. You Phoenician girls won’t be dancing to that Roman horn!”
With a wave and another cackle he drove into the narrow lanes of the market.
“Mars Camulos!” said Bee with a dark frown. “That means tomorrow is the twenty-third day of the month of Martius. The areito to celebrate Caonabo becoming cacique took place on the first of Februarius. Which means we left Sharagua six weeks ago.”
“Six weeks! And yet three months before that!” I cried, thinking of Vai, taken from me on Hallows’ Night.
Looking toward the stalls of fish, Rory eyed the nearest vendor as if gauging whether he could snatch a fish and run. “No wonder I’m so hungry!”
“Rory, don’t do it.” Bee grabbed his arm, and he winced. She turned to me. “You’ve always said that time passes differently in the spirit world. It’s still strange to have it happen to us.”
Rain started up again in a blowsy mist. My teeth began to chatter. “We need to find shelter and decide what to do.”
“I have to speak to the headmaster, Cat. I think we should go there first.”
Rory hunched his shoulders. “He’s a dragon. You can’t trust him. He will eat you.”
“He won’t eat me, Rory.” Bee poked him in the arm. “He might eat you, though, and there are moments when you are so annoying that I must say I expect I would encourage him to do so.”
Rory drew himself straight, lips pulled back. “I shall have you know, Beatrice, that I am never annoying. That you find me so is a reflection on your character, not mine.”
“We need to scout out our ground first,” I temporized, for I sensed Rory trembling at the edge of rebellion. Also, I desperately wanted to dry out and get warm. “Let’s go first to the law offices of Godwik and Clutch. It’s a long walk across the city, I know. But if there’s anyone I trust, it’s the trolls… the feathered people, I mean. The Taino always use the more polite phrase.”
“We need not imitate the Taino in everything just because they believe themselves to be superior to us!” remarked Bee in a frosty tone. “But I suppose it is wisest to go to the law offices first. Wait here.”
She left Rory and me huddled with the chest under the eaves of a decrepit warehouse. Wagons lined up to offload their glistening catch into the baskets and crates of middlemen, merchants, cooks, and men guarding wheelbarrows. No one paid us any mind, for we looked exactly like an impoverished brother and sister who had no home and no means of buying our next meal, but I felt exposed and vulnerable.
“Rory, what did you tell the wagoner about our sire? You ought to have been silent.”
“It was while you were howling. I said our sire was the Master of the Wild Hunt. The benefit of telling the truth is that so few people believe you.”
I laughed. “When did you get to be so wise?”
“There was this woman I petted in the palace of the prince of Tarrant that time I got trapped there after eating the pug dog and the peahen…”
He regaled me with a story that made me laugh more than once, even if there were particulars I had to command him to skip over because I did not want to hear them. Having no shame, he had no idea there were private things a person did not tell other people. Just as he finished, Bee reappeared carrying three leather peddlers’ sacks and a wrapped paper bundle.
Rory took the wrapped paper from her, brushed his cheek against hers, then held the paper to his nose and inhaled. “Fish! You brought me food.”
“How did you manage that?” I demanded.
“A noble bride receives a lot of gold jewelry. If she isn’t bountifully adorned, it’s shameful for her family.”
“You had no family in Taino country.”
An odd expression creased her mouth from a memory I could not share. “Let’s go. We’ll transfer the chest’s contents to these packs when we have a roof over our heads.”
The chest was indeed an unwieldy burden. The coarse rope chafed my fingers as we trudged through the busy streets of Adurnam. The sky was heavy with clouds and gritty with coal smoke from the afternoon cooking. Dreary colors and pinched faces made me feel we walked through a foreign land. To mark the festival of the god who ruled over war, shopkeepers had already adorned their doorways with a red wreath pierced with the short sword known as a gladius or with a wooden mask depicting a ram’s head with massive horns. The drinking would begin at sunset, and tomorrow morning there would be a procession through the streets.
We headed east toward the new districts along Enterprise Road. But our steps strayed toward the hills where the ancient Kena’ani settlement had risen long ago and where sanctuaries sacred to Melqart, Tanit, and Ba’al still stood. By unspoken agreement, Bee and I took a roundabout way that led us to the house where we had grown up.
We halted on the edge of Falle Square at dusk. The small four-story town house was shuttered, its front gate padlocked. No thread of smoke rose from the chimney. No festival wreath marked the door, not that any manner of Roman adornment had ever hung there when we lived in the house. The mansa of Four Moons House had purchased the property from the Hassi Barahal clan after my aunt and uncle had fled Adurnam. He had meant to keep Bee and me prisoner there until he sorted out what to do with us, but we had escaped.
Rain spattered as the wind picked up. Bee and Rory waited in the back alley while I wrapped shadows around myself, climbed over the back gate, and scanned the yard with its laundry room, cistern, and outdoor hearth. The old carriage house had been empty for years, for we could not afford horses or carriage, but the new owners had stocked it with hay and bags of feed. Bee and I had long ago hidden a key beneath a pair of loose boards in the carriage house. It was still there, but when I brought it to the door, the locks had been changed.
I tucked up my skirts, shifted the basket to my back, and climbed the tree to the window of Uncle Jonatan’s study. A chain of magic still protected the window latch. The whisper of its cold magic woke my sword. I unsheathed my blade and severed the threads. Then I turned the latch and swung into a deserted room.
Uncle Jonatan’s desk had been replaced by a table, chairs, and two settees shrouded by heavy covers and the dusty flavor of neglect.
I stepped into the first-floor corridor and listened through the threads that bound the house. Aunt Tilly had spun Kena’ani magic to guard home and property, and its embrace lingered in the walls like a memory of her warm smile. I wiped away a tear, for although I knew she and Uncle had betrayed me to save their own daughter, I still missed the way Aunt Tilly would kiss my forehead at night before we slept. I longed for the plates of sweet biscuits she and Cook had baked when they had extra coin for a treat of honey.
The house lay utterly silent except for the patter of rain. I went down to the ground floor and into the half basement. In the kitchen I opened the shutters and looked around. A new stove with all manner of modern conveniences had been installed in place of the old one where Cook had eked out each last morsel of tough stew meat and mealy turnips to make enough to feed us all. Dust smeared the tabletop, broken by the footprints of mice. Yet the coal bin was full, and the pantry was stocked with sealed pots of oats, barley, and beans.
I found a key hanging beside the back door. By the time the rain really began to pour, we were all safe inside.
I shivered. “No one knows we’re in Adurnam, and no one has lived here for weeks. I say we stay here the night, take a bath, and wash our clothes.”
Bee nodded. “We can haul water while we’re still wet. Now it’s coming on dark, no one will notice our
