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“Only to be killed? I do not like the sound of that conundrum, my lord. So I will ask you this: Does the she-wolf not hunt the same as her mate?” She spoke the words while staring straight at me, then crossed the room to the hearth where I stood out of the way. Setting her bag on a table, she pretended to look through it while speaking in a whisper. “What creature are you, that carries a spirit blade and waits in the shadows?”
“You’re a fire mage,” I breathed. “Only trolls and fire mages can see my sword when I’m hidden.”
“Sharp Diana! It is you, little cat!”
“Why do you call me that?”
“It is what Daniel called you after I had washed you and placed you yowling in his arms. Know this, Catherine. He loved you the moment he saw you. We all did.”
“What happened? Who are you?” I whispered. “What is your place in all this?”
She smiled affectionately, allowing me to glimpse pieces of a story Camjiata had never known and I had never suspected. “I loved your mother, and she loved me. But under the law you could only be claimed and protected by male guardianship, and we had to get Tara out of the prison quickly, for she was to be executed at dawn. Fortunately she loved Daniel also, and I trusted him. The general has promised me the new code will change the law so that women may stand equally in guardianship to men.”
For the space of several breaths I had no words. But at length I murmured what abruptly seemed clear. “After Camjiata’s defeat and capture, they were coming to find you, weren’t they? When they died.”
Truth is written in the face. Hers had measured suffering, others and her own, and she had kept walking to do the work she felt called to do even though she, too, had lost the ones she loved.
“Yet why are you here, child?” she asked gently. “I sense you are come in some desperation. You may always apply to me for aid, little cat.”
My heart beat so hard. “Some day, Doctor, I pray we will have time to speak at length. But right now I’m looking for my husband.”
She nodded. “The cold mage whom James Drake hates so very much.”
“Doctor! Why do you mumble? What am I seeing there, a sword and a shadow…” In his grievously wounded state, Lord Marius had slipped partway into the threads that bind the worlds. “Camulos’s Balls! It is Cat Barahal! Have you crept in to kill me? Is this what became of Amadou?”
Doctor Asante’s two assistants were busy preparing the table for the surgery. I unwrapped the shadows and crossed to kneel beside the couch. “I told you the truth about Amadou Barry.”
“He was ever a fool about that girl,” he murmured, eyes rolling back at a stab of pain.
The doctor said, “We need to operate.”
Desperate, I grasped Lord Marius’s uninjured hand. “Please. I’m looking for my husband. I heard he was last seen going to aid some cold mages seconded to your battalion.”
“Ah!” Was that a wince of physical agony, or had he seen a sight he dreaded to tell me of?
My heart pinched until I could not breathe and thought I might faint. “Tell me!”
“He never once drew his sword although I know cold steel in the hand of a cold mage need only draw blood to cut life from the body. His one concern was to kill fire, to save as many lives as he could. I think he must have spared twenty cold mages who would otherwise have been burned like torches by the enemy’s fire mages. He could have escaped into Lutetia, but he came after us because there were three young cold mages seconded to my troop, and he knew they would be killed or enslaved.” He winced. “He bore the brunt of magical attacks whose impact I could neither see nor understand. As we were surrounded and made our last stand, the truth is that he collapsed.”
A tear seared my cheek. “Dead?”
“He was never hit by any physical weapon. More like he collapsed from exhaustion.”
“Blessed Tanit!” I murmured. “Too much cold magic for too long with no rest.”
“Then I was wounded,” mumbled Lord Marius in a fevered recollection. “The red-haired fire mage took him. Threw his limp body over a horse and rode off with his company.”
My heart stopped.
“Where?” I cried.
“I did not see…” He passed out.
“If I do not amputate the arm, he will die.” Doctor Asante took my arm, then kissed me on the forehead, as a mother might. Finally she released me and turned to her patient.
In a daze I walked to the door. In the passageway I leaned against the wall. My legs had stopped working. Out of the sitting room issued the grinding scrape of a saw punctuated by the grunts and gasps of a man trying not to scream. Driven on as if lashed by a whip, I staggered back to the north courtyard and there sagged against the well in utter despair and confusion. Despite everything, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep.
Bee tugged me awake. “You can’t believe who I found.”
