I dug my nails into my palms, but pain wasn’t enough to loosen my tongue. And it was a lie. I couldn’t protect her. Only my sire could, and then only for as long as it suited him to do so.
Bee looked at me and blinked twice as a signal. “She’s just exaggerating in her usual way.”
“Ah, I understand now.” He walked back to the sideboard, where he heaped bacon, potatoes, and eggs on a plate. “Helene told me never to ask questions of Tara Bell’s child because she dreamed the child was chained by some manner of magical binding.”
The chains that bound me to my husband? Or the ones that bound me to my sire? He didn’t know everything! I righted the chair and sat with hands clasped in my lap as the general returned to the table with a plate for himself. Drake ventured to the end of the table farthest from me.
“Anyway, Cat,” said Bee, barreling on like a fully laden rail car rolling downhill with no brakes, “you’re the one who will never be free of Four Moons House because you are married to one of its cold mages.”
“I know what I know,” I muttered.
“I can’t argue with that mulish truism! Anyway, the Taino won’t hold me prisoner. The general needs me for the war.” She went charmingly pink, like a rose blooming. “The prince is to travel with us. You see, the heir to the cacique’s duho, the king’s seat of power, is chosen from the cacique’s sister’s sons. This prince was never considered a favorite because there was a brother better suited for the task. But now he seems likely to inherit so it is felt he must gain worldly experience to prove his fitness and worth.”
“What changed to make him worthy?”
She glanced toward the general, and then at Drake. “For one thing, he’s a fire mage.”
I laughed a little hysterically.
Drake raised a cup of tea to his lips, watching me over the rim. The general ate methodically with only a lift of the eyes to show he had noticed my untimely levity.
Bee scooped up an egg in her spoon and levered the spoon backwards, aiming its trajectory at me. “Tell me why you’re laughing, or you’ll get egg all over your face.”
I needed a drink to settle my nerves. I got up and went over to the sideboard. The bottle had sherry in it. I jiggered out the cork, poured the deep red liquid to the brim of the last teacup, and gulped it down in one go. Turning, I saw Drake frown. I stuffed the cork back into the bottle.
“Cat!” said Bee. “It’s still morning!”
The general finished his potatoes.
The liquor’s heat rushed through me, and subsided. “I met Prince Caonabo.” She gasped. “He seemed… pleasant. He was certainly inquisitive. And he’s good-looking, if not nearly as pretty as Legate Amadou Barry. No hardship there.” I wiped my brow, for it was already getting warm. “So, General, what exactly is it you want from me?”
He patted his lips with a linen cloth. “That depends on what you want, Cat. Although your choices are constrained.”
I wanted to be released from my sire’s rule, but I couldn’t say that. I wanted a chance to walk beside a man I was finally getting to know, but I refused to speak of that. Maybe the sherry had shortened my temper. Really, I had nothing left to lose except Bee’s life.
“What I want to know is why I should trust you when you placed my mother under sentence of death and would have killed her if she hadn’t escaped.”
“Why, Cat,” he said, and I could have sworn he was taken aback, “the matter is entirely different. She was a sworn lieutenant in my Amazon Corps and thus subject to the rules and regulations of that corps.”
“Including imprisonment and execution should she become pregnant?”
“The conditions and regulations of service were public knowledge. No woman took the oath of enlistment without fully understanding what was expected of her and where her responsibilities and loyalties lay. Those who serve in my army serve freely, but they are bound once they join to follow the code of conduct. As am I, and any person enlisting. For the Amazon Corps, that code included celibacy. Any woman who had served out her period of enlistment might apply for a discharge if she wished to have children, marry, or make some other change in life. A legal code is worthless if those who enforce it treat persons differently according to consequence, status, kinship, or wealth. All must be equal before the law, or the law is worth nothing.”
“That’s what Daniel Hassi Barahal wrote.”
“In fact, that is what I said when I addressed the committee gathered to write a comprehensive new legal code. Perhaps Daniel recorded my words, and you read them later and thought they were his.” An odd sort of smile animated his face, one I could not read. Anger? Amusement? Calculation? He was masked rather as my sire had been: I simply could not fathom what drove him. Except maybe irritation at remembering my mother had escaped the law.
“Tell me what you meant when you said my path will change the course of the war.”
“Those are not Helene’s precise words, nor did I say them that way.” He did not raise his voice, but I realized that something about the turn the conversation had taken was making him angry. “Find a way to win the cold mage to my side, Cat.”
“I’m sure she’s found a way to prick the man’s interest,” muttered Drake.
I fixed my gaze on Drake and stalked back to the table. He stared me down, gaze almost fevered.
“Be calm,” murmured Bee.
Camjiata said, “Enough!”
Drake leaned back and propped his sandaled feet up on the table. I remained standing.
“Now listen carefully, Cat,” the general went on. “A living cold mage serves me much better than a dead one. I would value the services of a powerful cold mage when I return to Europa.”
“One like your wife?” I asked.
“She was not a powerful cold mage. She had only a minor gift, enough to call a wisp of cold fire, which was ironic considering how poor her vision was. She was as close to a castoff as a child can be who is born into a mage House. Her House, and she, had no idea she walked the path of dreams. Everyone just thought she recited the most execrable poetry to get attention. But when she was about your age she heard her destiny in her own words.”
Despite my irritation, I was drawn into his story. “What was her destiny?”
“Why, I was. Or she was mine. Hard to say. Maybe I should say, we were meant to be together, being each other’s destiny.”
“That’s very romantical,” I said caustically. Bee caught my eye, and I knew she was thinking, Didn’t that cold mage call you the other half of his soul? I narrowed my eyes to let her know that if she spoke one word I would make her life so miserable that dismemberment would seem a mercy.
She ate her egg.
“I meant,” I added, “considering what happened.”
“Perhaps you mean to note that I am alive while she is dead. Quite true. Believe me, Cat, I intend to do everything I can to keep Beatrice alive. It was what Helene would have wanted. For they are all sisters of a kind, the women who walk the path of dreams.”
“Like in one of those quaint cautionary folktales,” remarked Bee, “in which everyone dies.”
“Yes. Which brings me back to the point I have been trying to make. Cat, my dear, I fear you have not heard me, so I will say it again. If you do not bring the cold mage to me, then I will have to kill him. If that is what you want, then by all means, rid yourself of the magister and your marriage by refusing to cooperate with me. But do not make the mistake of underestimating me.”
“Unless he kills you first.”
“He will not kill me because I know who will kill me. And it is not him.”
“How can you know?”
“On the day Helene and I first met, it was the second thing she said to me. That she had seen the instrument of my death.”
“And you married her?” I demanded.
“As soon as I could.” He laughed. “Wouldn’t you?”
Bee stirred. “You’ve lived with that knowledge all this time? That’s remarkable.” She stared at him with none of the sledgehammer intensity that usually characterized her glares and looks. She looked as admiring as an actress in a stage play simpering at the steadfast prince whom she lovingly serves for the duration of the implausible plot.
