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While it was true that the armies of the Second Alliance had battled Camjiata to a standstill outside the city of Havery thirteen years ago, it was Four Moons House and the seventeen mage Houses allied with them that had actually destroyed Camjiata’s budding empire. Four Moons House could destroy the Barahals as easily as a nest of mice could be crushed beneath a giant’s boot.
o;Everyone knows House magisters use sorcery to create illusions that appear real. And you’ve now appeared to me as a man, as a woman, and as an eru. How can I trust what my eyes see? Even you are not what you at first seemed.”
“We must be what we are,” she said with a laugh. “I have never been anything but what I seem. It is the chief gift of my people.” She tilted back her head and shut her eyes, as if listening.
“What do you hear?” I asked.
“Do you not hear the djeli?”
I looked around but saw no one, nor did I glimpse any figure striding below on the misty edge of the pinewoods with a ball of thread or a kora, a bell, or a fiddle in hand.
She left my side and approached the ruined shrine. I did not follow her. The place made me uneasy, and I did not want to enter sacred ground. These were not my gods. Untying a leather bottle from her belt, she poured a clear liquid over the stones. Maybe she said something; the wind chasing the height tore away her words. Then she walked back, her stride easy and loose and strong. Grass rippled as a cold breeze combed through the clearing. Branches swayed in a silent dance. I felt in my bones the disturbing sensation that maybe there was a djeli or a bard imprisoned within the oak tree, its final burial place.
She walked past me. “Time to return. The magister will be finished.” She laughed again, finding her comment amusing.
Although I walked as fast as I could without breaking into a run, which would make me seem as desperate as I actually was for answers or for sympathetic company, I simply could not catch her as she descended the hill. When I strode up, panting, to the roaring comfort of the fire, two brass mugs placed on the stone wall greeted me. I was gripped by such longing for a drink that no nagging thoughts of mist-shrouded vistas and glittering lakes mattered as much as the chance to raise a cup of hot tea to my lips. It was a pungent brew, redolent of distant shores and saturated colors. There was bread and cheese, too, neatly cut and laid out on a brass platter, and I wept a little, eating it, because I was so very hungry. As I drank and ate, the coachman and the footman inspected the carriage and checked the horses’ hooves, making ready to depart.
I was just licking crumbs off my fingers when my husband appeared on the track, striding down from the top of the hill to the fire circle and the waiting coach. The rumbling strength of the flames weakened to a lick along the logs, rather as a rambunctious dog cowers under the table when its harsh master enters the room.
“That coat is appalling,” he said as he came up. He frowned at the remaining mug and, with evident reluctance, picked it up and sampled the tea.
Food and drink had fortified me. “Appalling it may be, if one considers decently clothed servants appalling, but it is warm. You may have forgotten that my entire stock of traveling clothing and more fashionable warm coats—however lacking in your eyes—had to be abandoned at the inn in Adurnam. Or was I meant to freeze to death before I reached Four Moons House?”
He stopped sipping, his eyes raised to mine with the rim of the cup poised at his lips. He blinked several times, as at light breaking suddenly in a dim room, and lowered the cup. “I am at a loss as to what may have precipitated this outburst.”
No one ever said I was wise. I had meant to keep silence, to be meek, to not extend my claws.
“Torn from my family with no explanation. My lineage and clothing insulted. Left hungry because perfectly good food and wine do not meet your ridiculous standards of taste. Almost killed by an act of sabotage that may have done untold damage to buildings and neighborhoods and for all I know to innocent people as well as precipitating, as far as I can tell, a riot whose mob might well have torn me limb from limb, and you besides, coincidentally. I had to be given coat and gloves by your coachman! Shall I go on?”
As the force of my words sank in, his lips set and his expression stiffened. The fire melted away to embers shuddering among the ashes. “I think that is enough.”
I took a step back from such a cold hammer of anger that I felt it like a blow. He set down the cup so hard that it shattered. Like glass. Liquid splattered. He stared at the remains with an odd expression, as if he’d startled himself. Then, without one further word, he walked away, leaving me trembling. What a fool I knew myself to be, recalling Aunt’s whispered words: For now, you must endure this. Give away nothing that might give them a further hold on the family.
While it was true that the armies of the Second Alliance had battled Camjiata to a standstill outside the city of Havery thirteen years ago, it was Four Moons House and the seventeen mage Houses allied with them that had actually destroyed Camjiata’s budding empire. Four Moons House could destroy the Barahals as easily as a nest of mice could be crushed beneath a giant’s boot.
I collected my breathing. I wiped my brow and then pulled on the gloves, pretending I was dressing myself in armor, a shell of control behind which I could hide.
“Maestra?” The coachman indicated the bread and cheese. “If you wish, you may finish what is left.”
“Don’t you and the… ah… the footman need refreshment?”
“We are already fed, maestra.”
Fear was a dull ache in my belly, as the stories would put it, but I was a Barahal, descendant of a long line of professional soldiers. You sleep when you can. You eat when you can. I ate it up quickly, for it was excellent bread and even more excellent cheese, sharp enough to make my eyes water. The coachman took away the platter and my cup and left the shattered cup beside the dying fire. The handle lay torqued in the dirt, warped by the power of his anger.
With a heavy heart, I trudged to the carriage, mounted the steps, and sat opposite him, next to a thick fur blanket someone had unearthed and tossed onto my seat. Warmth for the journey! I did not want to speak, but I knew I must.
“It is big enough to cover two,” I said, the words sounding thin and forced.
After a hesitation, he said frostily, “My thanks, but I’ve no need.”
He did not look at me as I wrapped the blanket over my lap and tucked it around my shoulders. The journey back to the road seemed even more jolting and jarring than it had coming in, but perhaps that was only the hammer of my heart as I waited for him to say something else.
Which he did not.
The road took a steep slanting descent down the northeastern slope of the chalk escarpment. We rolled into Anderida, the great chace: forest country marked at intervals by villages. In ancient days, the Romans had made charcoal in these uplands for the forges where they smithed their weapons of empire. We passed the rise of Greensand Camp with its old Roman posting station and signposts of a crossroads. The few folk out on the village street halted to watch us pass. Beyond the village, we passed men leading pack mules laden with wood.
We descended to lower ground and waited at the ferry crossing over the River Tarrant, whose name the princes of the Adurni Celts had taken as their title, so my father had written, in honor of the goddess once believed to dwell in the river. A prosperous village—I did not know its name—had sprung up around the ford but at this time of year, folk were busy in the dormant orchards and the withered fields, gathering in the last gleanings, stacking firewood, cleaning the privies, sweeping chimneys, and bringing in mast for the winter ahead. My husband watched this activity as if its rustic simplicity fascinated him, but in truth I could not guess his thoughts.
