those predator’s teeth. The crest of yellow feathers raised.
“When I assure people that I offer private meetings, I must be able to fulfill that promise.”
I am sure my face turned as scarlet as if I had been painted. “My apologies.”
Andevai was seated on a settee by the desk. “You may as well let her stay, solicitor. There’s something she needs to hear.”
“I thought you said this appointment had nothing to do with me,” I retorted.
Chartji shut the door. Because I was not about to join Andevai on the settee, I remained standing. Chartji waited beside me. Fox Close lay quiet but for the noise of a coal man shoveling coke into the coal chute and the rumble of a wheelbarrow being pushed along the lane.
“Your chin is bruised,” Andevai said, touching his own chin.
I clasped my hands behind my back. “It was slammed into the floor when you fought that cold magic duel in the factory.” I did not add: against your own master, the mansa, to stop him from killing me.
“Ah.” He seemed stymied and uncomfortable. “My apologies.”
“Since you saved my life, I’m sure you need not apologize.”
With a wince as at a sour taste, he firmly said nothing and looked at me as if daring me to talk. Silence swelled like a bubble expanding to fill the chamber. I looked around. One wall was lined with bookshelves stuffed full of leather-bound volumes shelved in a hodgepodge, some upright and some lying flat. An elaborate map of the world, printed on fabric and tacked up askew, covered part of another wall. The troll’s desk looked like a bird’s nest in the way books, papers, nibs, and a number of odd-looking notched sticks were woven together into a mess that made my hands itch to tidy up. Most strangely, the fire was still burning.
Andevai rose. “Obviously you are wondering why I am here, Catherine. The main reason is business of my own, as I said, none of your concern.”
“ Rei vindicatio is none of my concern? When you arrived at my aunt and uncle’s house two months ago, you invoked rei vindicatio to reclaim ownership of the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter. Four Moons House had forced the Barahals to sign a contract giving that daughter to the mages, but she had been allowed to remain in the possession of her family all the while she was growing up because the mages were worried that the presence in the mage House of a girl who walked the dreams of dragons might be dangerous. Isn’t that correct?”
“Why ask me the question when you already know the answer?”
“Just to hear you say it.” I was shocked at how snide my tone was, but I could not control the surging tide of my emotions: He had thought he had to kill me, yet he had saved my life; I had escaped him and then kissed him. I could not make sense of him.
His lips thinned. I knew some cutting retort was coming. He had a habit of trying to cover his emotions with expressions of scorn. “Yes, I invoked rei vindicatio. But I married the wrong woman, didn’t I? Instead of marrying your cousin, I married you.”
His gaze was too sharp. I decided I would rather look at the ceiling, which was painted blue and flecked with curiously vibrant representations of clouds.
He went on, his voice clipped. “So I have asked Solicitor Chartji if she knows of any legal way to undo the chain of binding which was sealed on our marriage.”
His comment shocked me back to earth. “There is no way to undo a magical chain. No way, short of death.” The word stung like a mouthful of salt.
“So we are told. But that does not mean it has never been undone before. Or cannot be undone by other means.”
“Such a matter lies a very long way out of my field of expertise,” said Chartji. “However, it would be interesting to look into as a legal technicality. I can promise nothing. Nor can I figure in what manner of legal court you could adjudicate such a case. However, I can investigate and report back on what I find, if that is what you want.”
“Do you want to be released from our marriage, Catherine?” His stare challenged me.
“May I speak bluntly?” I asked.
“When did you ever not?”
“You’d be surprised how many times I bit my tongue!”
“If you’d done so, I would think I would have seen more blood.”
“One drop was enough,” I said.
With an intake of breath, he stiffened, looking like a man who has no idea how he came to be standing in a place so far beneath his consequence. “There is no answer to that.”
How was it he kept putting me on the defensive? “You misunderstand me. All I meant was, are you willing to hear what I have to say in front of another person?”
Chartji’s crest rose slightly.
“I do not fear her censure, if that is what you think. Anything said here won’t be repeated.”
“I was trying to be thoughtful,” I said. “I meant only to spare your feelings.”
“Please do not begin concerning yourself about my feelings now.”
“Was there a time before this I would have had some reason to be concerned for your feelings? Perhaps after I was forced to marry you and you treated me with cruelty instead of kindness? Or perhaps when I was running for my life after you were commanded to kill me?”
The troll’s faint whistle shivered the air. I fisted my hands, waiting for Andevai to cut me down to size.
He shut his eyes, then opened them to look right at me, his voice tight and his tone rigidly formal. “I regret the high-handed way I behaved toward you on that journey almost as much as I regret not immediately rejecting the mansa’s command to kill you. But my regrets do not change the past. So say what you must, Catherine. I am not afraid to hear it.”
My heart was hammering so hard I was dizzy. I brushed the back of a hand across my forehead and took a breath to steady myself. “You belong to Four Moons House. Legally, you belong to them. You had to marry me because you were ordered to do it. Once I was forced to marry you, I belonged to them, too, through the djeli’s binding that contracted me to you. You knew that’s what would happen. So in a way I think it was an attempt at kindness for you to think that you and I-that you thought I was-” Heat seared my cheeks. I could not go on.
“Acquit me of kindness, Catherine. I meant what I said.”
I certainly could not forget what he had said: “ When I saw you coming down the stairs that evening, it was as if I were seeing the other half of my soul descending to greet me. ”
I gulped in air and got words past an obstruction. “Even if you believe that now, to Four Moons House I will never be anything except the mistake you made that lost them the person they wanted. The burden of protecting me from their indifference and spite will eventually wear away whatever affection you may currently believe you hold for me.”
“I wish you would speak for yourself, Catherine, and stop telling me what I do and do not believe and how I will and will not act.”
“Then I’ll speak for myself.” Because my hands were shaking, I clasped them together again. “I can’t live in Four Moons House as an unwanted creature whom everyone will scorn. And I know you said I could live in your family’s village, but I wouldn’t know how to live there. I’d be so out of place. Above all else, I know better than to chance what may happen tomorrow on a transitory passion felt today.”
I had to stop.
He said nothing. Yes, he was physically handsome, and attractive in some other intangible way. After those first disastrous days, he had made an effort to help me. His kiss had certainly pleased me in a most startling manner. But I did not love him. How could I? I didn’t even know him. And whatever he might think, he did not truly know me. He only believed he did.
“I am sure it is to your credit that you tried to soften the blow,” I went on.
“ Soften the blow??” His eyes flared.
Had I been wiser, I would have stopped, because the fire in the hearth flickered.
No one had ever accused me of being wise.
“You were commanded to marry a woman against both your own will and hers. So you concocted a honeyed fable in your heart to make an unpleasant duty palatable. Just as you weave illusions out of light, you wove an illusion about us. One soul cleaved into two halves and then like destiny reunited-”
The fire whuffed out with a puff of ash. A glimmer of ice crackled across the heavy iron circulating
