“So you didn’t know? Your parents never told you what she risked for you?”
“Don’t you know my parents died when I was six? Was that why they were so afraid of Tara being recaptured by your army? Not because she was a deserter, but because of your wife’s dream about me? Were they just trying to keep me safe? Because they feared what you might do to me?”
“As the djeli said, destiny is a straight path. We are meant for what we are meant for.”
“I can’t argue with that mulish truism!”
“Indeed, you can’t. Here’s something you don’t know. Your mother betrayed me.”
“How did she do that?”
“She chose Daniel over my cause, her heart over my army, the duty she felt for him and for the baby over the duty she owed to me. She might have waited until her term of service was up, only another five years. But at some point on the lost expedition to the Baltic Ice Shelf, she had sexual congress with Daniel Barahal, and by doing so, broke her oath to me.”
The old city’s night revelry danced in the excitable rhythm of drums and lutes and laughter, heard from beyond the garden walls. I stared. He didn’t know Daniel wasn’t my father. Yet why should Tara or Daniel have told him? “You can’t know what circumstances were like on that expedition,” I said. “Many people died.”
He set a foot on the bench beside me, braced as if to remind me that he was bigger than I was in every way possible. “Certainly we may do in extreme conditions what we might not do elsewise. But you see, she never claimed so. You can of course understand that when the women in my Amazon Corps swear an oath to remain celibate, it is understood that women may be vulnerable to rape. They less than other women, because of their training and comrades, but it happens.”
“Would that have made a difference to her sentence?”
“Of course it would. A soldier made pregnant by rape can serve out her enlistment if she gives up the child to anonymous fosterage. Tara could have claimed rape, given you up, served out her enlistment, married Daniel after, and had other children with him.”
“Why couldn’t a raped woman give the baby to her family?”
“It would be too easy to circumvent the law. An army must have discipline. No one forced Tara to sign the enlistment papers. She knew the terms. Instead, she hid her pregnancy until she was wounded in battle and her condition revealed. Then we had no choice but to arrest her for insubordination. Yet with my own ears I heard her swear in court that Daniel was the father and she his willing partner, and so he had therefore the right to claim and raise the child after her execution. Yet no pregnant woman can know if a baby will be healthy or even survive birth. So I had to wonder, why she was willing to sacrifice her life for the chance of keeping you with Daniel?”
I knew the answer: because she had hoped Daniel could somehow keep me away from the Master of the Wild Hunt. It hadn’t been about Camjiata at all, even though he thought it was.
“Do not defy me as your mother did, Cat. I cannot be merciful. Bring me the cold mage.”
I bowed my head to give myself space to calm my thundering heart. Rising, I smoothed down my pagne. “Are we finished, General?”
“No. We are not finished. But this night I am going to have a drink and thence to my bed.”
I made him a pretty courtesy in the Adurnam manner, but the heat of my anger had forged my heart into cold steel.
30
In the morning, I went to the law offices and after a protracted duel negotiated new terms: I would write Keer a thrilling monograph detailing the lurid superstitions believed in the primitive villages of Europa, and in payment she would take me to see Chartji’s aunt.
For two weeks I followed a strict routine. Early in the morning when it was cool, Bee and I attended the fencing academy. I then accompanied Bee to her morning lessons in Taino, for it seemed useful to learn something of the language most people in the Antilles spoke. She then was carried off by a pair of Taino women, haughty nobles, and their prodigious retinue of companions, servants, allies, hangers-on, and guards. The rest of the day was mine. While I did indulge myself playing batey with off-duty soldiers in the courtyard, mostly I thumbed through my father’s journals. I chose tales I could string together to give Vai a glimpse of the truth of what had happened to me in the spirit world. My first two attempts Keer rejected. The third she accepted.
Every evening the general entertained notables, but I was no longer invited. I discovered narrow corridors between the rooms, once used by servants and now convenient for eavesdropping. But at every gathering Gaius Sanogo or another warden was stationed in such a way that even wreathed in shadow I could not squeeze by undetected. I had to rely on Bee’s reports.
The general was visibly displeased when broadsheets trumpeted the unexpected news that a young woman of Phoenician lineage and Europan upbringing had at the general’s behest and the cacica’s request been betrothed to a Taino prince. Everyone knew the Taino considered the Europans to be uncouth barbarians, nor had any Taino nobles deigned to ally themselves even with the most distinguished of Expedition’s noble lineages, so the news was a nine days’ wonder.
On the first day of October, I held a printed copy of my monograph in my hands. I showed it to Bee in the privacy of the garden, in the shade of a star-apple tree.
Bee leafed through the pamphlet. “I like this typeface. It’s very even.”
“All the dialogue is rewritten. I object to having Celtic villagers talk like Expedition locals, with their yee s and shall s.”
She ignored me. “It is tremendously exciting and lurid. ‘His kiss was lightning, a storm that engulfed her.’ So romantical! I am quite overwhelmed, or I would be if a disturbing image of that terrible dream of you kissing Andevai did not rise into my mind like a dreadful moist and tentacled beast out of the briny deeps. Here. ‘He was beautiful and she was young and not immune to the power of beauty.’ It would be better as ‘He was a beauty and she was a-’”
“Give me that, you beast!” I snatched at the pamphlet.
She skipped out from beneath the tree into the morning sun that was baking into the patio brick, and paused there with her gaze lifted to the east. Her black curls fell-as the poets said-in a riot down her back, which I had always assumed meant they had some experience in untangling a mop of hair that was both thick and excessively curly. I waited. The face Bee showed to the world was only a part of her; despite her dramatic demeanor, she was far more reticent than I would ever be.
She walked back. “Oh, Cat. I’m feeling hopeful. It’s very painful.” She handed me the pamphlet. “By the way, Professora Alhamrai was a guest again last night. She asked about you. I made sure to let her know the general suspects you of nefarious treachery.”
“You used the word nefarious? You don’t think that was a bit overdone?”
“Now that you mention it, she laughed. As if I were joking!”
I sighed. “Do you think anyone will ever believe I wasn’t involved in the raid on Nance’s? Besides Jasmeen, that is. As a businesswoman, she’ll profit handsomely by the war. I would think people would be suspicious of her since she shares the general’s bed.”
Bee’s gaze narrowed, for the subject of Jasmeen irritated her. “They’re very discreet. You need to go meet the troll.” She kissed me on either cheek. “May Tanit bless you with good fortune in your hunt, dearest.”
At the law offices, Keer offered me a platter of fruits and nuts from which I took one and ate it, and I offered her a pouch of nuts I had purchased on the street, from which she took one and, cracking its shell between her teeth, swallowed it quickly.
“I cannot talk you out of wishing to become acquainted with them?” she asked. “This one whom you would call Chartji’s aunt, and her brother, are what you rats would describe as being insane. It comes of being only two in a clutch. I warn you because I like you.”
“I have to try. There is one other thing. From here to troll town, you may be startled to not be able to see me. I have to hide myself in case I’m being followed. I can’t really explain.”
Keer gave a pair of clicks which I was coming to understand in troll speech meant a match of wits in which the players stood at the same level as when they started. “Thus the words of Maester Godwik. ‘You will know her
