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Andevai crossed to the bed and picked up the jacket, holding it high so it swept along my left side. “Now I understand how you were able to get out of Four Moons House without being seen,” he whispered. “What magic conceals you? None I’ve ever heard of.”
“Listen! The mansa told them not to trust you. If you say left, then they’ll go right.”
Anger flashed in the flare of his eyes. “Is that so?”
“They were following you, to try to find us.”
“Were they, now?” His gaze narrowed as he contemplated an object, personage, or situation that annoyed him very much.
“Magister?” Amadou Barry stepped halfway back into the room. “Is something amiss?”
“I just can’t keep my eyes off it,” said Andevai, gaze skating above the collar of the jacket as his eyes met mine. “There’s so much about its tailoring I don’t comprehend. But it doesn’t truly belong to me, so I fear I must leave it behind. Although you never know. I haven’t given up on gaining something so very close to my heart.”
My cheeks were so on fire that I was amazed the legate could not see me.
Amadou Barry appeared startled by Andevai’s passionate words. “It’s a bit…over-complicated for my taste. We’re leaving now, Magister.”
“My thanks for the warning,” Andevai said, his gaze on me.
He tossed the jacket over the other clothes and turned away. At the door, he paused with a hand on the frame. I tensed, waiting for him to glance over his shoulder one last time.
A deep heavy boom shuddered the house.
“By Teutates!” cried one of the men, “they’re firing cannon on the river!”
Without looking back, Andevai walked out.
“Bring the prisoner,” said Lord Marius from the passage.
I heard Andevai. “By the way, Legate, how did you come to seek me out at the law offices?”
They clattered out, taking Amadou’s answer with them, and leaving me with a cold wind rising up through the shattered door and the jangling tinkling off-key chime from the chamber upstairs.
7
The jacket Andevai had held glared at me accusingly through its rose-colored spectacles with their peacock wings. I haven’t given up. I was standing there, as congealed as cold porridge, when Bee appeared in the doorway, radiant with alarm.
“Cat! We heard raised voices. What happened?”
“I don’t know whether to be annoyed or flattered.”
Rory slouched into sight beyond the threshold, hauling the two bags. “I feel like a half-dead antelope my mother has just dragged in for dinner.”
I hastened to his side. “I’m sorry. Let me take one.”
“Never again peahens. I’m off feathers forever.” He dipped his head to touch his cheek to mine. “You’re all right, though. So I’m better already. What happened to our guide?”
I hugged him. “Eurig sacrificed himself for us. We can’t risk going back to the law offices to warn them. We’ve got to find this Fiddler’s Stone at Old Cross Gate.”
“It’s a bad idea,” said Rory.
“Did Andevai betray us?” Bee asked.
“Quite the opposite. He’s the one drawing them off. The mansa is having him followed.”
“He seems strangely loyal to you, in an exceedingly peculiar sort of way.” She paused, examining my stiffening expression. “I won’t tease, Cat. Let’s go.”
In the wake of the militia’s passage, the lanes had emptied. We crept out a maze of back alleys that let onto the crowds of Enterprise Road, east of Fox Close. Women hauled baskets and pots balanced atop their heads. One gray-haired woman staggered along beneath a whole sheep, which was quite dead, all light gone from its eyes. The third person I asked told us to head east. I led with the cane, Rory hauled the bags, and Bee took the rear guard with the knife in her pocket and a small knit bag in which she kept her sketchbook and pencils slung over her back.
