entered this room. It surely did not look like the study of a scholar with the many diverse interests and formidable intellect of the headmaster. It took no great acumen to suspect that he had been replaced as master of the academy.
The skulls stared hollow-eyed at me in stubborn silence. The head of the poet Bran Cof sat atop the pedestal in a stony slumber, his brow furrowed with deep thoughts and his lips pinched closed over all the poems and legal knowledge he had hoarded throughout his famous life. With his hair sticking up in stiff spikes and his bushy eyebrows a little raised, he looked noble and magnificent and just a trifle startled, but I knew he was a filthy-minded and staggeringly unpleasant old man who tried to bully young women into kissing him. His body was imprisoned by my sire, who could not only command the poet but also see through his eyes and speak through his mouth. If I woke the head, would my sire reach through him and trap me with the chain of his voice, as he had before?
I had to risk it.
And I knew just the way to wake him up.
Emphatically not with a kiss. I shattered one of the wineglasses on the table and pricked my arm enough to draw blood. This bead I smeared on the head’s lips and eyes. The cold grain of his face smeared and smoothed into warm flesh. His eyelids fluttered, then popped open with a look compounded as much of fear as of anger.
“You fool! What do you mean by waking me with blood?”
“I need to ask you some questions.” I took a step back, for the transition from stone to flesh disturbed me.
His gaze sharpened to a leer as he recognized me. “The girl whose eyes are amber. Woken with kisses, I see. You have the look of a woman about you now, shaped by a man’s caresses. Did you escape the marriage, or embrace its carnal pleasures?” His tone had a greasy unctuousness that made me want to wash myself, but fortunately a new thought struck him before he started quoting obscene poetry as I was sure he was about to. Instead, he glanced around with an expression made comical by its wild exaggeration. “Where is the serpent? Where is she hiding?”
“My cousin? I will bring her to torment you if you do not answer my questions. Have you seen my husband? The Master of the Wild Hunt stole him from me.”
A look of cunning creased his features. “I can offer you pleasures the man will surely not have thought of. If you’ll just come a little closer…” His tongue moistened his lips.
I lost my patience and my temper. “Do you really think comments like these make me find you attractive? Or are you deliberately trying to put me off? I love him. If you have the least sliver of a human heart left to you, help me find him. Then you can compose a poem about our travails and triumph!”
His face went so still that for several shaky breaths I thought he had fallen back into sleep.
But he blinked, and spoke in an altered tone, like an impatient teacher scolding a student who is slow to learn. “Best hurry, kitten. You should not have woken me with blood, for the masters crave it and will come seeking it the instant its scent reaches their grasping claws. As it will.”
“I thought my sire was the only master. You serve him, but surely you don’t feed him with your blood.”
“The hunter takes souls, not blood. It amuses him to keep me, because of my knowledge of the law. I was not sacrificed to the courts. Instead I was imprisoned in this terrible state, head separated from body.”
“Yes, I met your body in my sire’s palace.” I shuddered, remembering the way Bran Cof’s headless body had stumbled to serve his master’s bidding. With a gasp, I raised a hand to my mouth. “Blessed Tanit! What terrible thing might my sire do to Vai?”
“You know nothing about the courts and your sire, do you?”
Lowering my hands, I took a threatening step closer. “Tell me what you know!”
His sneer turned mocking as he looked me up and down in a most intrusive way. “For each kiss you give me, kitten, I’ll tell you a secret.”
I lifted the shard of glass. “Tell me what I want to know, or I’ll smear my blood all over your face for the courts to suckle dry!”
His lips pulled back in a horrible grimace, yet he also laughed with a slightly hysterical rasp. “You know not of what you speak, girl. The spirit courts crave mortal blood, for blood gives them protection from the tides and allows them to sustain their power. You cannot challenge them.”
“We shall see about that!”
It wasn’t until the latch clicked down that I realized I heard voices. It was the work of a moment to hide myself in shadow as a servant showed two men into the room.
Lord Marius and Legate Amadou Barry had come looking, just as Bee and I feared. They did not see me, nor did they notice that Bran Cof’s eyes were tracking them, because Amadou Barry walked straight to the tall windows so he could look out over the rose garden, and his brother-in-law followed him without looking around.
“Whenever I enter these halls, I think of her,” Amadou Barry said on a heaving sigh as he tapped the glass with the knuckles of one hand. “I know I saw her on the street, Marius!”
Lord Marius laughed. “Be warned! Your balls will wither if you praise her cherry lips and golden hair in my hearing.”
“She doesn’t have golden hair! It is as black as a crow’s wing. Her glorious hair falls like a riot of curls down her back, for a riot is surely how the thought of her affects my heart.”
The head of the poet Bran Cof rolled his eyes at this stilted speech in a way that made me want to giggle. Fortunately both men were gazing outside and missed it.
“Bald Teutates! You haven’t a Celt’s gift of poetry, that is certain, Amadou. You mistook another woman’s black curls.” Marius wandered over to the table. He picked up several bottles in turn, clearly astounded that they were all empty. “You must give up this unseemly obsession. Your wedding feast will be celebrated the day after tomorrow. Notable men and their retinues have traveled for days to gorge themselves at the table and toast your virility. You will do your duty, as I did mine when I married your sister.”
“You can’t compare your marriage to mine! You and my sister are well matched in every room except the bedroom. Whereas I am to marry a trembling mouse of a fifteen-year-old who has no conversation, little education, and less personality.”
“Her nose twitches, too, have you noticed that? And she has a pointed, rattish chin.”
“Stop, Marius! Have pity on me!” the legate said with what I considered a sad lack of generosity. He did not even defend the poor nameless girl from such an unfortunate comparison.
Marius laughed in the hearty way he had, which, I reflected, could start to grate. “You’ll be happier with a biddable wife.”
“I don’t agree.” Amadou paced. “My chief pleasure when I was pretending to be a student here was my mathematics seminar. Beatrice sat on the women’s side of the room, answering questions with a bold intellect worthy of a man. I could never concentrate. It’s just as well your cousin ended the practice of allowing girls to attend the academy when he became headmaster last year. It was too distracting.”
Marius examined the skulls and, to my horror, fetched up beside the pedestal. Bran Cof stared at the far wall. Neither of the men seemed to notice the flush of life in the poet’s cheeks or the steely glamour of his blue eyes. Their petty self-absorption blinded them to the astonishing magic in the room. “I don’t think you truly love her, Amadou. You’re just not accustomed to being turned down. That’s what has put you in a pique.”
“She was too proud.”
“You adored her pride until she refused your offer to make her your mistress.”
“Too much pride is deadly in a woman. Mine was as good an offer as she will ever get. Yet what can I have expected from a Phoenician woman! They prostitute themselves for their greedy goddess, to gain whatever material wealth and trade advantage they can.”
Perhaps his words angered me a trifle, enough that I let slip a thread or two.
“Did you see something?” Lord Marius stepped forward, hand on his sword, as I tugged the shadows tight. He relaxed. “You’re not the only one whose heart has been broken.”
“That can’t have been your heart. I know you found the magister attractive, but there can never have been any hope for you with him. He was fixed on the other girl. You didn’t actually proposition him, did you?”
Lord Marius appeared more amused than disappointed. “Nothing so crude. I let my interest be known.”
