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“Oh, Bee,” I whispered.
Roderic whistled softly.
“There. I’ve said it, and I did not die.” She choked on the words, wept gustily, and finally began to laugh in the way crying people do, who cannot help but find their own sobbing ridiculous. “Oh, Cat. Then the worst thing was that the next night, I dreamed about you and Cold Fort. I had informed Legate Amadou Barry that I certainly would never again speak one single word to him beyond what was absolutely necessary to the customary pleasantries of greeting and departing. I had to eat my words and go to him and ask him for such a tremendous favor, to ride off on what he must have imagined was a pointless chase after a cloud-headed girl’s stupid dreams.”
“And he said?”
“How I hate men! He said yes instantly and asked if there was anything else he could do to serve me if only to make up for the insult he had not meant to offer me. But now you are here, and that is all that matters. So, I’m done. Do you have a plan yet? What happened to you?”
I nodded at Roderic. Like a soldier taking an order, he rose and went to lean against the door so no one could barge in to interrupt our cabal.
“The mansa’s troops are after me; it’s true. I think the best thing to do is let the Barry family shelter us until the solstice. Once you gain your majority, Four Moons House has no contractual hold on you.”
“If they want me that badly, they’ll find a way to get me, don’t you think?”
“Yes, and we’ll need a plan for that, too. But maybe after the solstice, the mansa won’t feel obliged to kill me, which prospect I selfishly admit pleases me no end. If the Barry family will shelter Rory and me with you, then we have two days to rest—”
Roderic raised a hand, beckoning silence. His lips curled back and his shoulders tensed, as if he were about to hiss. “Cat, this doesn’t smell good,” he murmured.
I looked at Bee, who was still at the window. Her brows twitched down. I slid over to the door beside Roderic. We had entered the house through the front door onto a long entryway similar to the design of the house in which I had grown up. Indeed, we’d left our coats and cloaks there. I pressed my cheek against the door and heard the front door shut and an exchange of surprised greetings in the entryway.
“I expected you sooner than this, Marius!”
“So I would have come, had my cousin not detained me. I don’t like it, Amadou. My cousin says we are required to give Four Moons House what they want in this matter.”
My blood ran cold in my veins.
“We must hand both young women over to the magisters?” asked Amadou.
“There’s terrible news. Camjiata has escaped his island prison.”
Bad news can strike with the deadly precision of a knife stabbing up under the ribs. In the entryway, Amadou Barry gasped aloud.
“The story goes that the girl may be crucial to efforts to track him down before he calls together a new army,” continued Marius.
“Catherine Hassi Barahal?”
“No. The other one.”
“But Four Moons House is trying to kill Catherine Barahal.”
“Do you know what my cousin, the prince, said to me? For you can be sure I said those exact words to him. He said”—here Lord Marius’s voice changed, as an actor’s does when playing a different role; in this case, he spoke in a reedy, nasal tenor meant as a satire—“ ‘one death cannot count against the tens of thousands who will come to grief if Camjiata rises again.’ And do you know what I said to him, Amadou?”
“You said,” interrupted Amadou, “that someone else could marry Beatrice who could keep her safe and secure.”
“I certainly did not! The sooner you purge yourself of this infatuation, the easier you’ll sleep at night. I said, that accepting the need for a mage House to secure the lass through magical binding, don’t they have other cold mages in their house who can marry her without having to kill the first one?”
I grabbed Roderic’s wrist and tugged him over to Bee as I spoke. “I’m coming to think this business of marriage is tremendously dangerous for young women. We have to get out of here.”
“Oh, good,” said Roderic. “I was getting bored. I can cause a distraction.”
Bee set her hand on the latch. “What manner of distraction?”
“You won’t believe it,” I said.
“You’d be surprised what I would believe,” she retorted. “I have actually read your father’s journals, you know.”
“He’s not my father.” I did not mean the words to come out so defiantly.
