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“Do not discount the power of words and ideas,” she said with a smile I dearly wished I could trust. “Their touch seems soft at first, but you’ll find it can be lasting.”
“Well, then,” said Bee. “We’ll take you up on your offer. We’ll leave right away.”
Rory collected the two bags as I pulled on my riding jacket, coat, and gloves.
“I’ll arrange for someone to escort you across the city who knows the backstreets to keep you out of sight of the militia,” said Brennan. “And may I ask, what is in the bags?”
My father’s journals, our sewing baskets, some clothes and diverse small necessities. What coin we had was sewn into Bee’s gown, with a few coins tucked into my sleeve. He had such a charming smile, but I hardened my heart against confiding even such innocuous information.
“Our things,” I said.
Kehinde rose. “I’ll come to the academy when it is safe for you to return. It would be best to go out the front so it looks as if you came for an appointment and left. If you’ll excuse me, I must prepare for my negotiations with the general.” She shook hands with Bee and me.
“Rory,” I said.
He stared at me with those golden, innocent eyes. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Shake hands. It’s the custom, among radicals.”
He set down the bags and shook hands with Kehinde. She left.
With a lazy grin, Rory gripped Brennan’s hand a bit too hard and a bit too long. I felt a shift in the temper of the air as Brennan took his measure, like coiling up rope in readiness to snap it out.
Bee said, “Rory, stop that.”
With a put-upon sigh, he let go, leaving Brennan to shake our hands.
He leaned toward me—too close, for I flushed—and murmured, “Is he really your brother?”
After all, I just could not resist. I daringly drifted close enough for my lips to brush the tips of his hair as I whispered, “What confuses you is he’s really a saber-toothed cat who followed me home from the spirit world.”
I expected him to laugh, but instead he pulled back and gave first a very searching look at Rory and then, less comfortably, a long and intent look at me.
“Well,” he said, ambivalently, and with his forehead creased thoughtfully, he went out.
“That was naughty.” Bee shut the door so we could have privacy. “Are you smitten?”
“Men like that don’t look at girls like me.”
“I think he likes the professora. It’s almost tempting, isn’t it, to join the cause just to fight near him. Or it would be, if we didn’t now know they are in league with the headmaster! Who handed me over to Amadou Barry. Who is a Roman legate. And the Romans are allied with the mage Houses against Camjiata. Who has come to this house to negotiate with the radicals. It doesn’t even make sense!”
Rory circled back to the stove. “Are we going back out into that awful cold? I’m starving.”
“So am I,” I said, “but we’ve got to go.”
“Camjiata knows something about walking the dreams of dragons,” mused Bee. “Maybe we should ally ourselves with him.”
“An alliance with him comes with a price.”
“I think he says what he means,” said Rory, “and means what he says.”
“Yes, and so does any lunatic.” Bee stirred the parsnip slices with the knife. “Alas, all I see right now in my future is dismemberment.”
I crossed to embrace her. “I’ll never let the Wild Hunt take you, Bee. Never!”
She sniffled, and put down the knife to hug me. “I love you, too, Cat.”
I released her. “There is another choice. I don’t know where my mother came from, so there’s no use seeking her kin. But Rory and I have a common sire. Someone Tara and Daniel encountered when they were part of the First Baltic Ice Expedition. The expedition was lost, and the survivors were only found months later. It’s certain that’s when she got pregnant. My sire must be a creature of the spirit world. How else could he impregnate both a human woman from this world and a saber-toothed cat from the spirit world?”
