He followed the Amazon into the house.
The man at the bench turned.
The shock of seeing Prince Caonabo made me almost lose hold of the threads that veiled me. He set the stub to his lips. Embers flared as he sucked in air. Even at this distance, the smoke made my eyes water and my nose sting. Bee took in a sharp breath, for the man was staring at her with an air of accusation, young men being annoying in that particular way, thinking you owed them something just because they admired you.
Prince Caonabo tossed the stub to the earth, ground it out with his heel, and with a shake of his shoulders walked toward us. He wore knives strapped across his chest, glimpsed where his dash jacket flashed open. Rising, Bee snapped shut her sketchbook. Still in shadow, I stepped back.
He halted. Bee’s shoulders squared in a way I knew presaged battle.
“Is it the truth, Bee?” he asked in heavily accented Latin. His voice was nothing like as courtly and measured as Prince Caonabo’s. His tone had all the subtlety of a fencer who attacks straight on without feinting. “You are betrothed to my brother? You will marry him?”
“What did you offer me?” she asked coolly.
“What I could! You know how I am situated!”
“I do not have the luxury of joining your exile. You know how I am situated.”
He was the one trembling, not her. “Do you cherish any affection for me at all?”
Heartless Cat had never stared down an overwrought man with as much detachment as Bee did now. “Feelings cannot protect me or feed me. Although I daresay I envy my dear cousin for inadvertently falling in love with a suitable man. Not that it helped her, did it?”
“Yes, we have all heard quite enough about the maku fire bane. Will your wedding areito be held in Sharagua?” He made no attempt to touch her, yet I felt I was eavesdropping inappropriately on a most intimate conversation because of the way his gaze caressed her.
“No. It will be held at the festival ground at the border.”
His lips quirked up mockingly. “The better for the people of Expedition to be bought off with bread and circuses, as the Romans say. What date have the behiques set for the ceremony?”
“The areito will begin on the thirtieth day of October.”
“In the calendar of my father’s people, that is the month of the goddess of birds and butterflies. The beautiful woman who brings fertility and desire. It must be thus, must it not?”
She blushed prettily, accepting the compliment without words.
He went on. “I know Romans and Hellenes have odd notions about a woman’s knowing no man before she is first wed. But I assure you it will not be what my brother expects.”
Bee had gone quite pale although her voice remained steady. “What are you suggesting?”
A grim smile played on his lips. “You know where I sleep.”
Without saying more, he walked away on a path that led him out of sight around the kitchen wing. I examined the leafy foliage, the nearby windows with blinds drawn down against the late afternoon sun, and the guards at their stations along the high boundary wall. We were unobserved.
I sank onto the sofa. “I begin to have some sympathy for the head of the poet Bran Cof?! ‘She is the axe that has laid waste to the proud forest.’ You seem to be leaving a trail of felled trees.”
She set fists on hips. “Besides Legate Amadou Barry, pray inform me what other man I have admired in that way.”
“Where do I begin? Your youthful infatuations at the academy were legion.” I picked up her glass of pulpy juice and drained it thirstily. Then my face was pulled inside out, for she had not sweetened the lime with pineapple juice or, it seemed, any sugar at all.
“Serves you right! Anyway, that seems a hundred years ago.”
“Do you care for this man?” I flipped through the sketchbook but found not a single sketch of the Taino prince. “I see by the blank expression on your face that you are attempting to think. No wonder Prince Caonabo looked familiar. The resemblance is uncanny.”
“They are twins. He was exiled for the crime of refusing to live as his brother’s catch-fire.”
I whistled. “What is his name?”
“Haubey. He fled to Expedition and joined the general’s army in exile. That’s why he was in Adurnam. Everyone here calls him Juba.”
“Juba? Isn’t that the name of an ancient Numidian king from North Africa? What happened between you?”
She sighed. “I was quite overcome by the heat of the moment. I am afraid I have come to discover I am susceptible. I begin to worry that more than anything it is the attention I desire.”
A year ago I would have teased her. Now, I remained silent.
She sank down next to me and took my hand. “I thought I might as well experience everything life has to offer before my blood soaks the ground and my head is cast into a well.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And the truth is, his was the face I saw in the Fiddler’s Stone. In Adurnam. But now I think it must have been Prince Caonabo’s face I saw, not Juba’s.”
“I recall him now, standing in the entryway of the law offices staring at you. I comprehend he conceived an ill considered and violent infatuation for your beautiful face and blunt speaking.”
“Actually, he was quite levelheaded in dealing with my puking on the sea voyage.”
“That would certainly endear a man to an impressionable young female.” But I thought of how solicitously Vai had taken care of me.
She chuckled. “Why, Cat, you’re blushing.”
I turned the page: batey players keeping the ball in the air, faces creased with concentration; the masts of ships in the harbor; baskets of fish on the jetty, pargo and cachicata by the look of them. “I wasn’t puking, if that’s what you’re asking. But after Drake dumped me on the jetty and Vai found me, I got sick. He saw the bite mark. The landlady brought in a behique that very night. The man proclaimed me clean, so they let me stay. Vai took care of me, for nothing in return.”
“Nothing?” Her eyebrows arched.
“He comes from a village where women can be taken against their will by the mages. He refuses to act that way himself. You have no idea how people fawn over that man. I had no idea he could be so charming and thoughtful.”
“Your husband? The cold mage? Thoughtful? Charming??”
“What other husband do I have?”
“Kena’ani women are according to ancient custom able to acquire two husbands if it is for the good of the family trade. Maybe you found a charming, thoughtful one to go with the obnoxious, self-?important one, like a matched set of opposites.”
I trapped her with a smirk. “Like Prince Caonabo and his brother?”
“I shall bury the blade in your skull, just above your right eye.”
“That’s what I love about you. Your precision.” I turned the page, and my heart hammered as if caught in a carpentry yard among busy laborers.
Bee leaned to look. “That’s from one of my dreams. Two trolls walking along. I like how their crests are each raised to a different height, as if one is indifferent and the other amused. See here there are two boots. So there is a man walking with them, only their bodies obscure his. I imagine that the man is the one talking, only we can’t see his face. Trolls are so interesting. They speak perfectly well, but their own language is all whistles and clicks. There is a course at the university here where people try to learn it, but I heard no person can use it properly.”
My mouth parted, as if to receive a kiss. “It’s Vai, with the Jovesday trolls. Kofi said Vai would have to leave Expedition.”
“Who is Kofi?”
I placed my finger on a small portrait of a young man with a mop of locks and jagged scars on his cheeks, pushing a cart heaped with baskets of fruit. “This is Kofi. Vai’s friend.”
“The arrogant cold mage has friends?”
I pinched her arm.
“Ouch! I meant, friends who are common laborers.”
“There’s a great deal the general doesn’t know about Vai. Kofi is going to marry Vai’s sister. Strange to think
