“Your Excellency, how do I stop dreaming?”
“Bee!” I whispered, shocked by her words.
He shrugged his shoulders uncaringly. “How do you stop dreaming? In the same way you stop breathing. You die.”
“We must leave now,” said Kemal firmly, waving us out. “I will escort you to the gates.”
We walked out of the grand house in silence.
Once on the drive, Bee spoke. “Maester Napata, how many people know that dragons roam the earth in the guise of human beings?”
“In this part of the world, I should be surprised if anyone knows, for we keep ourselves hidden.”
A coach passed us, driving toward the house. A distinguished man of middle years stared at us from the coach. Was this the fifth claimant? Certainly he was an adult, not a hatchling. What crown was he challenging the headmaster for?
At the massive wrought-iron gates, the two guards cast sneering glances toward Kemal but allowed in an insulting manner that Bee and I might pass through the gatehouse. After a formal courtesy she and I departed.
“The guards must be dragons, too,” said Bee. “They were very rude to Maester Kemal.”
“You are his champion now! I wonder if any of the attractive men at the academy college in Adurnam were secretly dragons. How does it feel to know a dragon is infatuated with you?”
“It’s nothing to joke about,” she snapped. “Imagine being orphaned in such a way, and never even having a single memory of your parentage or what you truly are! You of all people should feel sympathy for the young man’s plight.”
“Blessed Tanit! This is a change of heart! I am sure it was you who first conceived of calling him the headmaster’s dog back in Adurnam.”
“I am sorry I was too selfish to remark on the sorrows and griefs of others. People must do better in being kind to others, for I am come to see that the temperament that looks suspiciously on any person who does not wear the garb they believe is proper, is the temperament most apt to punish the unfamiliar and least apt to see justice done. Do you not think so?”
I caught her hand. “Bee, do you really wish you could stop dreaming?”
“Of course I do! What has it brought me except trouble?”
“Is that why you wanted to see the headmaster?”
“The most pressing reason, yes. But it was a foolish question, wasn’t it? Even if there were a way for me to stop dreaming, no one would ever believe me if I said I had stopped. So I may as well keep my gift and learn to use it for our purposes, not theirs. Why should we be theirs to command? We belong to ourselves!”
At the hostel we shared a supper of thin gruel with a turnip for garnish. I offered a bit of turnip to the skull, then dug in. The appearance of the skull merely made our hosts think us visitors with arcane powers, for severed heads had a peculiar mystery and importance among those of Celtic lineage.
We hadn’t the extra coin to pay for a tallow candle, and without Vai we had no cold fire, so we retired to our tiny room at twilight. Bee and I sat cross-legged on the bed, facing each other with knees touching and heads bent together. Rory stretched out beside us clad in trousers and shirt. Bee wore a practical night shift, and fortunately the women of White Bow House had gifted me with a pretty night shift decorated with lace, although this was the first night I had worn it. I was fretful, worrying about Vai. Did mage Houses have some secret means by which to imprison rebellious sons? Iron shackles and iron bars could not contain the most powerful of their kind. What could?
Bee twined her fingers through mine. “I miss Mama and Hanan and even Papa and wretched little Astraea. I miss the quiet life we had in Falle Square. Can you even believe I’m saying that? When I was there, all I could dream about was having a wealthy and handsome prince rescue me from the dreary poverty of our lives. Now a quiet life doesn’t seem so ill-favored.”
“It wasn’t as quiet as you remember. Aunt and Uncle were always scrambling to make ends meet. Not to mention the constant trouble they were in for buying and selling information. I expect they found the life more wearying and anxious than quiet, whatever it may have seemed to us. They kept us very sheltered, Bee. As I am discovering!”
“I wish I could have spoken to the hatchlings. I feel I am their midwife. All this time dragons have lived among us and yet we have never known.”
“I could have told you,” muttered Rory. “I expect the only reason the dragon didn’t eat you is that you taste sour, not at all to his liking. But who ever listens to me? Besides Vai, I mean.”
“Andevai listens to you?” Bee said with a snorting chuckle.
A board creaked in the passage. Fingers tapped lightly on the door. Rory rolled off the bed with unseemly haste, and slipped out. I heard the husband’s murmur, and they padded away.
“Does he do this everywhere he goes and every place he stays?” I asked.
“Yes, he’s incorrigible. But you know, Cat, he’s right. Andevai does listen to him in a way you and I don’t. Simpering Astarte, they’re actually rather sweet together, just as a man and his wife’s brother should be. Rory makes Andevai likable.”
“Vai’s not likable with me?”
She laughed. “Watching you soothe his ruffled feathers amuses me, considering if it were anyone else you would cut him to pieces with your tongue.”
“I tell him what I think!”
She squeezed my hand. “Yes, dearest, and he adores you for it. Still, I expect Andevai particularly likes Rory because he has discovered Rory can tell when you are fertile and when you are not. A useful sort of person to have around, don’t you think? Given that you don’t want to get pregnant yet but wish to enjoy sexual congress.”
“Blessed Tanit! Now that you mention it, Vai has conversed upon that subject more than once since he and Rory met. I ought to have suspected. Anyway, Rory has the knack of flattering people in exactly the right way, so that it’s true but not condescending.”
“Yes. It’s like he’s hunting for the kill, only the kill in this case is winning people over to like him. He always seems to leave them in better spirits than when he arrived. Don’t you think that is a rare gift, the ability to make people happy?” She sighed.
“Haven’t you been happy as a radical? Sleeping with the infamously handsome Brennan Du?”
She released my hands. “Yes, as for adventure and the admiration of men swept off their feet by my brilliant rhetorical abilities, I would say that the last nine months have been eminently satisfactory.”
“Goodness, Bee! Were there other men?”
A smack of sound against the windowpane startled me; someone was throwing pebbles at our room. I got off the bed and peered down to the street. With clouds overhead, no moon or starlight limned the street, and although the houses on this lane had night lamps burning on their porches, not a single flame now illuminated the dark. I recognized the shadowy form from the drape of his winter coat over his shoulders. Alarm leaped like a deer bolting from the scent of wolves.
“It’s Vai!”
I crept downstairs, unbarred the door, and let him in. In the back of the house the fire in the kitchen stove, sealed for the night, groaned with a resigned huff as the presence of a powerful cold mage sucked all combustion from the flames. We tiptoed upstairs.
“Andevai!” Bee whispered as he shaped a spark of cold fire into the shape of a candle. “Why are you here? What went wrong?”
He shook off the coat. He was wearing a rough workingman’s jacket and trousers we had smuggled into Five Mirrors House as cushioning for the cacica’s head, which he had pulled on over his other garments.
“I told them it wasn’t the first time you had run away from me, which statement has the added benefit of being the truth. I spent all day nagging at them to find you, thinking that would relieve their concerns about me. Then they paraded four women in front of me and asked which one I wanted in my bed.” He sank down on the bed and rubbed his head as if it hurt. “They were so insistent, reminding me of how every magister owed it to the vigor of the Houses to do his part. The only way I could get rid of them was to reduce them all to tears by enumerating their flaws and shortcomings at length.”
