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But then I opened journal 46 to the end, to the conversation between the young natural historian and the lieutenant while the aurora borealis played its changes across an arctic sky. Knowing now what I knew, the words fell entirely differently. How could I have missed the hints in their chance comments and asides? They had known each other before this; it was so clear from their joking manner, the quick rejoinders, the shared knowledge of things they shouldn’t have known so easily about each other. A new perspective gives a person new eyes. Knowing what I now knew about Andevai—
ars fell on ink long since dry. He had written this so many years ago.
Tara lost one arm to cannon fire, and the other is crippled such that she cannot really care for the baby. She makes light of it in front of others—soldiers’ humor—but I am the one who holds her at night when she screams, reliving the battles in her dreams. I am the one who reassures her that the child will love her for the courageous and beautiful woman she is, not for her two arms or her two eyes.
Blessed Tanit, do not let my heart break.
That ass Jonatan came to me with a disgusting proposition, which I absolutely will not countenance. Giving up my girl for his, as if mine were worth nothing, which I am sure she is to him. I protested. I offered ways to bargain with the magisters. I even offered to steal the cursed documents back. He threatened me in that unctuous way he has. Said the family would turn us out if I don’t cooperate. “Is some other man’s bastard worth this to you?” he asked me. So despite Tara’s condition, despite the health and vigor she has regained simply by remaining in one stable place for so long, we must leave. It is a mercy that Camjiata has been captured and his army dissolved. I am not sure where exactly we can find refuge, but at least we can hope to travel there safely.
Only they had not traveled safely. He and my mother had died. It’s just they hadn’t meant to. They had been running away to go make a life elsewhere. With me.
How many times must I repeat myself, I wonder, trying to explain it to people who do not want to hear? She is my daughter even if not of my breeding. What is breeding, after all, except a moment’s release? Isn’t the raising more important? I will cherish my little cat always.
But my heart broke anyway, and Bee put her arms around me, and I wept.
34
And so dawn comes, and it is bitter, and it is sweet. I had a father after all, even if he was dead. I had a mother whose courage was greater than I had ever imagined. They had loved me enough to try to make a life for me, even if it had not worked out, because Lady Fortune is more powerful than frail human plans.
But that didn’t mean Bee and I were ready to surrender.
Solstice day passed quietly inside the house. We heated water and bathed in the scullery, Callie standing watch. The magister walked a circuit of the upper floors. The cawl protecting the house had faded with Aunt Tilly’s departure, but the magister spun some manner of cold magic to seal the window latches shut. The soldiers kept to the ground floor, guarding the front and back doors. Uncle readied his single bag, weeping all the while. Callie we asked for a favor. At dusk, a hackney cab rattled up, the horse stamping in its traces.
“It’s here,” I said, for I had been watching for it.
A young soldier opened the door, trying to be polite or perhaps to impress Bee.
Uncle was entirely deflated, a balloon unable to stir as the wind rose.
“Beatrice,” he said despairingly.
“I’ll write every month so you know I am well. That’s all I can promise. Give my love to Hanna and Astraea. Best you hurry, so you don’t miss the tide.”
“Uncle,” I said, choking back tears, “give my love to the girls. Tell Aunt—” I could not go on. I had loved Aunt Tilly so.
I did kiss him then, after all, not in forgiveness but in regret for what we had lost. Bee offered a formal kiss to his unshaven cheek, like a dido showing distant favor to an unloved but hardworking courtier. With bowed shoulders and bent head, Uncle crossed the threshold with his bag. Callie followed him, carrying one light carpetbag and three heavy ones. We made our farewells, and she nodded at us to show that she understood her part in this: Once they had left the house, she would insist on stopping at Tanit’s temple to make an offering of grain to the priests, so they might pray for Tanit’s blessing and a safe journey. Not even Uncle Jonatan would refuse that.
The cab rolled away. The soldier shut the door, glanced at Bee, and then away.
We went upstairs to the first-floor parlor, where we had profligately lit the stove with the last of the coal and the chamber with our last two beeswax candles. We settled in the window seat, she with her arms hooked around her bent knees, tucking them close to her chest, and me with my father’s journal, number 46, on my lap. The knit bag, now our only possession, sat on the cushion, its bulge enveloping her sketchbook, the singed copy of Lies the Romans Told, and the journal Uncle had given me last night.
“I was thinking,” she said.
“Dangerous at all times, and with a tendency to cause pain in those who are unaccustomed to such exercise,” I remarked.
But then I opened journal 46 to the end, to the conversation between the young natural historian and the lieutenant while the aurora borealis played its changes across an arctic sky. Knowing now what I knew, the words fell entirely differently. How could I have missed the hints in their chance comments and asides? They had known each other before this; it was so clear from their joking manner, the quick rejoinders, the shared knowledge of things they shouldn’t have known so easily about each other. A new perspective gives a person new eyes. Knowing what I now knew about Andevai—
“Cat! Are you paying attention? You look a little flushed. I said, perhaps we’d be better off to go to the academy and throw ourselves on the mercy of the headmaster.”
Startled, I retreated behind a glower. “The one who handed you over to Legate Amadou Barry? I think not.”
She sighed. “No, I suppose not. I’m just exhausted by thinking of having to haul Uncle Daniel’s journals across Adurnam.” Abruptly, she sucked in breath so hard I looked up and followed her gaze out the window and over Falle Square. “Fiery Shemesh! What’s this?”
A black coach rumbled down the west side of the square, pulled by four horses as pale as milk. My heart leaped in my chest, or it would have, if I’d had a heart, which Bee so often accused me of lacking. But after all, it was not the coach I thought it was: This vehicle bore a crest of four moons—crescent, half, full, and new—and its coachman was a heavyset man with black skin and its paired footmen a matching set of blond Celts. The horses were ordinary horses with brown specks flecking their gray coats. Their hooves fell solidly on stone. I wondered if I would ever see the eru and the coachman again.
Four Moons House had come to claim its new property the moment the festival was over. The coach drew up before the house, and the footmen hopped gracefully down to open the door and pull down two steps. The man and woman who climbed out were not cold mages but wore the serious garb and tidy demeanor of accountants and housekeepers, stewards come to take possession and take inventory. Seeing them emerge, I felt a dull ache in my heart. Was it sadness at losing the only home I remembered? Selfish disappointment that Andevai had not come himself? Relief that I did not yet have to figure out what to say to him?
We rose as the stewards were shown in. They were reserved and polite.
