Cold Magic (45 page)

“He’s carrying cold steel. He could kill Maester Amadou or any of you by only drawing blood.” As he might already have dispatched Rory.

“I suppose he could. But would he? There’s your question. A runaway bride—if that is indeed what you are—is scarcely worth angering the Prince of Tarrant, much less… Well, never mind that. The princes and the Houses have learned to cooperate when they must and leave each other alone the rest of the time. Is that the husband you’re running away from?”

“No!” Heat scalded my cheeks; yet for what possible reason need I blush?

“Good fortune for you, then. He looks a singularly unattractive fellow.”

The parlay broke off as the cold mage gestured angrily with a gesture so obscene I covered my mouth with a hand as I gasped. Lord Marius chuckled. Maester Amadou shrugged with a careless ease I admired and turned his back on the magister and his cold-steel blade.

As he walked back toward us, I said in a low voice, “I thought Maester Amadou was a student at the academy.”

Lord Marius was a laugher. Everything seemed a joke to him. “Amadou Barry is older than he looks. I very much doubt he is what you may have thought him to be.”

“Then what is he?”

“Och, lass, that’s not my tale to tell, is it?”

He rose, and I did likewise, shaking out my rumpled and dirtied skirts. A priest brought another mug of warmed wine, and Amadou poured a few drops on the altar before coming over to join us. He sat. We sat. I stared sidelong at him, seeking signs of age in his face. I had thought him a year or two older than Bee and I, a polite, naive, spoiled, and privileged son of bankers recently arrived from resettled Eko on the coast of West Africa; I had thought he and his younger twin sisters were attending the academy because it was fashionable for wealthy, well-connected families to send their young people there for an education.

“Was it even true, that story?” I blurted out before I knew I meant to speak. “About your family fleeing ghouls in Eko, and how you and your sisters were put into the water on a boat while your parents and cousins—”

Shame blooded me as his expression changed.

Of course it was true. No one could mistake that look of fractured grief.

Then he smoothed it over with the ease of practice. “Yes, it’s true, but it was thirteen years ago. I was barely fourteen. My three sisters and I, and our mother’s sister, were the only ones to escape that terrible day. We endured a long voyage, with a Phoenician shipmaster and crew, I should note, fine sailors all, and came to family in the north. Poor shy Fadia was shipped off to marry this beast here”—Marius laughed as at an old family joke—”leaving me and the little girls with our father’s people.”

“My apologies. I spoke as the alligator bites.” I spoke because of my own grief and fear, I thought, but I did not say that aloud.

He smiled in a conciliating way that irritated me.

“But if you were not a student at the academy, then why were you there?” I snapped.

“If I had some other motive for being there, you will excuse me, maestressa, for not divulging that motive to you now, as it has nothing to do with our present situation. Let me just tell you that your cousin Beatrice told me you were in danger and that you would come riding up to the temple of Taranis Jupiter, Maa Ngala”—Lord of All—”on the fifteenth of December.”

“How could she possibly know? I’ve not been in communication with her!”

“Have you not? She seemed so very sure that I assumed you had sent her a message. When she described the temple, I recognized it as Cold Fort. Thus we are here.” He drank his wine, and one of the priests hurried over to fill his cup. “Do you mean to say you sent her no message?”

He had the look of a man trained to coax out secrets by the expert application of casual questions.

“Where is she?” I asked to deflect him. This might be another trap. I could not believe Aunt and Uncle had been so foolish as to remain in Adurnam, knowing Four Moons House would discover the deception. They had even tried to convince Andevai to come back the next day; Andevai had himself recognized that they hoped to run away
with me
. And if they wanted to run away with me, then surely they regretted what they had been forced to do.

The sun sank toward the horizon, smearing a rosy glamor across the western sky. The troopers were setting up tents. Nearby, in a kitchen building whose shutters were all open to admit light, priests prepared a meal with the help of a few of the soldiers. Meat sizzled. How Rory would have loved that smell! I wiped a tear from my eye.

“You are aware,” Amadou Barry said in the gentlest tone imaginable, “that your uncle—your entire clan—has been engaged for years as spies.”

“Where are my aunt and uncle?” I asked, hearing how choked my voice sounded. Yet I was not about to reveal the whole of what I now knew. I had to hold something in reserve, should I need to bargain.

“They left Adurnam on the day after you were sent off with Four Moons House.”

“Then how came Bee to speak to you?”

Lord Marius laughed again. I was beginning to find his laughter annoying, because it was obvious he was a man who had never suffered defeat or penury or even disappointment in love. The cousin of the Prince of Tarrant must be accustomed to having the world at his feet and Fortuna as his lover. If he had married Amadou’s older sister, he was also wealthy even beyond what portion he had received within his own clan.

“She did not leave Adurnam with her parents and sisters and household. She stayed behind.” Maester Amadou was a very handsome young man when he lowered his eyes to give the impression of innocent embarrassment, but really, he was too pretty. It was that prettiness that disguised his years, that made impressionable young women—and others, too, I am sure—underestimate him, assume him to be something other than what he was. And I did not even know what he was; all my expectations were exploded.

For then he added, his color changing, “When I discovered her situation, I offered her my protection.”

My gaze sharpened. Maybe my claws came out. “What does
that
mean? Surely not—”

He would not look at me. “I would not trifle with her. As for the other, it is impossible.”

“He means,” interposed Marius, “that his aunt offered the girl shelter. So that’s where you will find her, biding securely and unmolested in his aunt’s house in Adurnam. As for the other, a man may be smitten, darling, but may otherwise be obliged to marry according to his family’s needs and wishes.”

“You need not tell
me
that! I have become intimately acquainted with the chains of obligation.”

“Yet you fled your husband and the mage House.”

“The mansa ordered me
killed
!”

Marius whistled appreciatively. “I couldn’t have made auguries on
that
!”

Even Amadou looked surprised.

I felt I owed them an explanation in exchange for saving my life. It’s never wise to leave debts unpaid. “Four Moons House wanted Beatrice, not me. My aunt and uncle gave me to the magisters instead, and afterward when the mansa discovered he had been…”

“Cheated?” asked Marius with a hopeful chuckle. “Defrauded?”

“Given the wrong female,” I finished with such a cutting glare that even the bluff military man barked out a surprised laugh and made a conciliatory gesture. “He was angry.”

“Killing you seems an unexpectedly harsh response,” murmured Marius, smoothing the red-gold splendor of his mustache with finger and thumb.

“He was very angry,” I said dully.

“Where do you go now?”

“To find and warn my cousin. Four Moons House still wants her.”

Amadou sipped thoughtfully at his cup and set it on the bench. “Why would Four Moons House so desperately want the daughter of an impoverished Phoenician clan, no matter what secrets the Barahals might have to sell and what business they might have done for Camjiata back in the old days?”

I felt a pinch of curiosity, wondering at the true extent of Barahal double-dealing. But I knew better than to reveal more than I already had. “I can say nothing more until I talk to Beatrice. Surely you understand.”

“She’s got you there,” said Marius with an amused snort.

“We’ll escort you to Adurnam and your cousin,” said Maester Amadou.

“My thanks.” Tears welled, and I blinked them back. I said, in a low voice, “Saw you any prisoner among the House soldiers?”

“No. Do you expect there to be?”

“No,” I whispered. “No.”

He waited a moment, to see if I would say more. When I did not, he gestured decisively. “We leave at dawn. We can make it in two days.”

Marius nodded in answer, and the discussion was over, just like that.

At a signal from one of the priests, Marius rose to make the offering of the first cut of roasted meat at the altar, pouring an entire cup of wine over it. Afterward, we retreated to the largest tent, sparely furnished with a pair of campaign cots in the back half, each one neatly made up with blankets. An attendant took our cloaks and hung them from iron hooks. We sat in the front half on unfolded camp chairs, at a small table. Two braziers heated the interior, and three lamps lit our campaign meal of roasted beef, turnip, and apples. I was ravenous, despite everything, and it was easy to eat with their conversation flowing briskly around me. The two men knew each other well and bantered like brothers. Marius was about five years older, the same age, it transpired, as Amadou’s older sister.

“How did a young woman newly arrived in Massilia come to marry a Tarrant nobleman far to the north?” I asked Marius.

He cast a look at Amadou, who shook his head. The lord shrugged as he smiled at me. “Do you Phoenicians like music? I’d be a sad son of the Tarrants if I could not entertain my guest with a few songs.”

“After all I have been through these last weeks,” I said, very rudely I am sure, “you will excuse me if I seem burdened by a lack of trust. What if you are in league with Four Moons House, and mean to use me to lure Bee into your clutches?”

“Then we are at an impasse, Maestressa Barahal,” said Maester Amadou in the same polite voice he had used to cow our academy proctor, Maestra Madrahat, by being better mannered and milder than you could ever be. “I have divulged as much as I can. You have revealed as much as you are willing. Either we trust each other, or part ways.”

“That I have little choice but to accept your help must be apparent to all of us.” I did not mean my tone to grate so grudgingly, but it did. “If I seem unappreciative, it is just that I have been running for my life under difficult circumstances, as I am sure you can deduce by my state of disorder and dirt. If you can get me alive to Adurnam, you will have my thanks and my cousin Beatrice’s as well.”

Amadou’s mouth tightened on unspoken thoughts and emotions.

Lord Marius laughed. “What’s this, brother? Have you actually fallen for a woman’s fine eyes and pleasing form?”

“Excuse me, Lord Marius, but I cannot like to hear my cousin spoken of in such a trifling way.”

“Oh, it would not be trifling in Amadou’s case, I shouldn’t think.” Marius rose and fetched a case from beneath the cot on the left. He brought out a small harp, set it on his knee, and began to tune it. His features relaxed into a serious expression as he listened to the vibrations of each string. He seemed suddenly removed from us, following the overtones, and for a moment I thought a door might open into the spirit world and we might fall through.

A burst of male laughter from outside slammed closed the shutters of reality over my dreaming. At a nod from Amadou, the trooper attending the door stepped out. One breath later, he returned with another soldier in tow.

“What news?” Lord Marius asked without looking up from his harp.

The soldier started to laugh, thumped his own chest twice, and coughed to contain himself before addressing the two men. “Lord Marius. Legate.”

Legate?
I stared at Amadou Barry, but he was not looking at me. Only the Romans in their much shrunken imperial republic used the term
legate
for highly placed commanders and ambassadors.

“There’s a… naked… man at the ramparts. He
baldly
requests permission to—”

I stood so fast I banged a knee against the table and had to catch its edge to prevent it from toppling over. My heart had galloped ahead. I could barely string coherent words together. “Let him in. Quickly! Can clothing be found?”

Lord Marius set to laughing in earnest. When he had controlled himself, and wiped his eyes, he managed to speak. “A naked man, come to my camp? Is it your abandoned husband, Catherine Hassi Barahal? Come to display himself for your benefit?”

My flush must have reached my ears as his words forced me to consider the prospect of facing Andevai Diarisso Haranwy in very different circumstances than any we’d previously shared. The two troopers and Lord Marius kept laughing while Legate Amadou Barry, whatever else he might be, had compassion enough to take pity on me.

“If you vouch for him, then certainly we can allow him to join our company. Sergeant, let him enter the camp.”

The second trooper hurried out.

“By all means!” cried Lord Marius, placing the harp carefully back in its case and securing it. “Let me go view this prodigy for myself. Dare I hope—” He broke off and looked at me. Amadou put a hand on his forearm, in the way a man might quell a dog’s yap. Marius chuckled and strode from the tent, leaving Amadou to give the order to fetch clothing.

I grabbed a cloak off the hook and hurried out in Lord Marius’s wake, with Amadou following. The news had spread through camp. The soldiers were calling out jokes, although in no way did they relax their vigilance.

“Best you stay back, maestressa,” called Lord Marius over his shoulder. “The House company has camped beyond the ramparts. They have crossbows.”

So I stood, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, as the officer and five men strode ahead. Amadou remained beside me.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“I think it likely it is my brother.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I did not know you had a brother, maestressa.”