Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (65 page)

“He does not bully me.”

“No, it’s true, he doesn’t. He fondles you with those sultry eyes. You’re quite hopeless,
Cat.”

I took her hands. “Yes, but you do like him, don’t you, Bee?”

“Gracious Melqart! What would you do if I said I did not?”

A quiver of fear made me cold, as if winter had kissed me.

“Oh, dearest!” She embraced me. “For your sake, I already love him. I suppose when
we have a pleasant home with a hypocaust wing, I shall endure him well enough, and
you and I shall have a private parlor with a stove where he is not allowed to enter.”
She laughed. “Cat! Your expression is quite confounded. He and I understand each other.
The important thing is that he knows he has to maintain my good opinion, as he showed
this morning. I respect his intellect and his rare and potent magic, which he has
worked very hard to achieve. I do think he is a good man, and in ten years he may
be bearable and in twenty he may even be likable.”

“I suppose I deserved that for asking!” I said.

We both laughed, and I left her.

Rory, Vai, and I passed through Arras Gate, Vai leading the horse, and made our way
down the boulevard toward the Lady’s Island and the river.

“Nothing like family to keep you on your toes,” remarked Rory.

Vai smiled in the irritating way he had when all his ill temper had dissolved as mist
under the sun because he had gotten what he wanted. “Do you miss your family, Rory?”

“Me? Yes. But it wasn’t to last, you know. Mother was already starting to look around
for another mate. When she chose one, he would have driven me out, and I have no brothers
to go a-roaming with. It’s a lonely life to hunt alone. I like it here just fine.
You’re my brother now, Vai.”

“So I am, Rory.” Vai slipped a hand into the crook of Rory’s elbow so they walked
arm in arm. His easy, affectionate camaraderie with a man he trusted made me fall
in love with him all over again.

They talked for a while of inconsequential things.

“You’re quiet, love,” Vai said at last, releasing Rory’s arm and pulling me over next
to him.

“Andevai, do you like Bee?”

Rory snorted. “That is a question I would tremble to answer were I you! For myself,
I find her annoying, managing, and bossy. But I’m accustomed to such behavior from
females.”

Vai let go of my elbow and took my hand, just as if we were a courting couple in Expedition.
“I love her like a sister. I realize her good opinion matters more to you than that
of anyone else. She accepts that you love me. So she and I understand each other well
enough. Why are you laughing, Catherine?”

I did not explain.

When we reached the forecourt of Two Gourds House, Vai was in a mood to throw his
weight around. He demanded baths, food, horses, and a djeli to accompany us, as befitted
his rank as heir. When I emerged refreshed, I discovered Rory in the entry hall lounging
on a marble bench and surrounded by women. The highborn magisters who had scorned
me in the women’s quarters turned to me with an effusive friendliness that amused
me. Would we return to Two Gourds House soon? Would my brother be staying with me?
Was he married?

Naturally we had to wait for Vai, who appeared at length in fresh clothes. He rode
alongside the djeli to converse on arcane matters of genealogy. Rory and I rode behind,
with two grooms, two attendants, and two troopers.

“I must say, those women looked very bored,” said Rory.

“I suppose they are. That’s probably why they were so sour and unfriendly to me.”

“I’ll bet they would be up for some friskiness. You could let me loose there for a
month and everyone would be much the happier for it.”

I laughed. “I promise you, Rory, if we ever return there, I will certainly let you
loose, just to enjoy the spectacle.”

On the southern side of the river, the fields and pastures that lay beyond the city
wall were crowded with the encampments of the Coalition army. An entire market had
sprung up to serve the soldiers. I was glad to pass quickly through the market’s sprawling,
reeking, noisy clamor into the relative quiet of Lord Marius’s command tent. The djeli
walked in front, announcing our arrival with a song lauding Four Moons House and the
exceptional nobility and formidable power of its mansa and the skilled magic and excellent
cooking of its women. After this preface the djeli changed his tune. Singing with
the very same melody Lucia Kante had drawn out of her fiddle, he detailed a brisk
version of the battle of Lemovis in which Andevai’s quick thinking and astonishing
magic figured prominently.

Vai did not smile, but the man did develop a bit of a cocky swagger as we approached
the waiting dignitaries. Not every man was announced with a song in his praise, although
I wished the djeli did not insist on repeatedly referring to him in the Celtic way
as “Andevai Hardd.”

“Andevai the Handsome!” I murmured. “I shall have my work cut out for me, keeping
your monstrous self-regard from swelling any larger than the bloated whale it already
is.”

He did not deign to look at me. “It’s only conceit if it isn’t true.”

“Here are you, Andevai Hardd,” said Lord Marius with a laugh, “just as you promised
you would be. Apparently, I should not have doubted you, as some claimed I must.”

He glanced into the crowd of men. The mansa of Four Moons House was not there, but
his surly nephew glared, his lips curled in a triumphant sneer as he awaited Vai’s
downfall and humiliation. It was clear by the vulture-like expressions of the Roman
legate and his tribunes that Vai had been the subject of discussion before we arrived.

We made our courtesies to the elders, the princes, the mansas, the Roman legate, and
Lord Marius. Rory grazed down their ranks like a hungry saber-toothed cat through
the succulent flanks of recently deceased cattle, being introduced, admiring their
clothes and military adornments, making them laugh and putting them at their ease.

Vai addressed the company with a cool smile. “We had planned all
along to give a demonstration of how weak the defenses are at Two Gourds House and
how thoroughly unprepared even the most skilled djeliw can be for one such as my wife.
I did not realize she meant to act so soon, for as you must imagine a spirit woman
captured from the bush can at times be a trifle wild and ungovernable.”

The men chuckled, as Vai had meant them to. Their condescension was irritating, but
it put them off the scent of his disgrace.

The mansa’s nephew pushed forward. “You may all be intrigued by his success in holding
on to such a freakish creature, but when a man’s mother was born in a cart, he must
be accustomed to living in the stable with the rest of the animals.”

“Like all honorable men, I show respect to the mother who bore and raised me,” said
Vai with just the right touch of sternness. “As for your own envy, you’d have done
better to apply yourself in the schoolroom instead of drinking, gambling, and whoring.
Anyway, I don’t see that you could have managed to win and keep such a wife even had
you the courage and ambition to attempt the hunt.”

“You were chosen to marry her only because the mansa did not want to waste a real
man on a low marriage to a Phoenician girl who is merely a bastard with peculiar magic.”

“You simply are incapable of comprehending the mansa’s subtle mind.” Vai nodded at
Rory.

To my astonishment Rory stripped right there in front of everyone with an alacrity
that needed no dreams of dragons to predict. When he was stark naked—and never the
least ashamed to be so!—he smiled charmingly around the company and then looked at
Vai. Given another nod, he changed in a smear of darkness from man to cat.

Of course there was a gratifying outcry as Rory prowled the tent’s interior. He did
look so lovely and magnificent, so sleek and powerful. The big cat padded up to the
mansa’s nephew and butted him so hard in the belly that the man tumbled onto his ass.
No one laughed; they were all too cursed nervous.

Then the big cat turned around and sprayed him.

The harsh smell overwhelmed everything except the sudden silence. When Lord Marius
burst out laughing, the rest felt free to join in. The mansa’s nephew boiled up with
knife drawn, full into the force of a roar that shook the air and made every man stop
laughing and cower.
All except Vai, who casually walked up to the cat and rested a hand on the beast’s
shoulder.

I approached Lord Marius. “My lord, I am truly sorry about Amadou Barry. Please remember
that Bee did try to save him. I come before you to offer my services as a scout and
spy.”

He examined me, then nodded curtly. “You may pour the wine, Maestra Barahal.”

Thus was my status restored. They were so enamored of their rank and privilege that
they could not imagine I would reject it.

The men settled to places at the table. The mansa’s nephew had to leave because he
stank. Rory padded behind a screen and returned all dressed and smiling, to be offered
a seat among the younger men, whom he quickly had eating out of his hand.

Lord Marius addressed the table. “Once the three legions out of Rome arrive, our Coalition
will be too large a force for the general to defeat, whatever weaponry he carries
in his arsenal. However, we suffer from a lack of reconnaissance. In the last months
not a single scout has reported in.”

The Roman legate gestured with his empty cup. “You cannot believe a woman spy can
succeed where men have failed?”

“What have we to lose by trying?” asked Lord Marius. “It was a shepherd’s wife who
brought us news that Iberian skirmishers had been sighted near Cena.”

The legate shook his head. “Camjiata’s outriders can’t have reached Cena so quickly.
Such an ignorant woman most likely mistook our own skirmishers for Iberians. Women
are not fit for war. More wine, Maestra.”

As I poured, I smiled. “Do you think not, Your Excellency? I can easily sneak into
the Iberian camp and out again without being seen.”

He saluted me with his full cup. “A pretty young woman like you must always be seen
and admired. The Iberians have stymied every attempt by the Coalition and our own
imperial troops to spy. I cannot recommend you dress as an Amazon to infiltrate their
camp because everyone knows the general merely entertains his troops with that battalion
of prostitutes. No chaste, modest woman like yourself would wish to be associated
with such unnatural creatures.”

Vai tensed, surely preparing to defend my mother’s honor. I shook
my head to warn him off replying, for I did not care one fig about the legate’s opinion.

To my surprise Lord Marius retorted in a sharp tone, “You would not speak so if you
had seen the Amazons smash the gate at the siege of Burdigala. One man will certainly
out-grapple one woman, but train a battalion of women with soldierly discipline and
superior rifles, and you will find them hard to break. I will never again speak slightingly
of the Amazon Corps, let me assure you.”

But just as I was feeling in charity with him, he turned to me, proffering a smile
tinted with the prick of petty revenge. “I have a troop of skirmishers departing just
now to scout south on the Cena Road. You can leave at once, Maestra. We will provide
a kit for you.”

Since I had brought my basket and cane, I could scarcely refuse. Maybe it was better
to make the parting swift and sudden, for the pain of leaving first Bee and then Vai
cut regardless.

We took a moment’s privacy behind the screen. Vai clasped arms with Rory and released
him. I thought he would kiss me, but instead he held my face in his hands as he whispered,
“Return safely to me, my sweet Catherine.”

I could not speak, for a throat-choking fear deadened my heart. Blind Fortune had
us in her claws. Any terrible thing might happen.

We had to press on.

Rory and I left the tent at once to be given over into the care of a competent cavalry
commander named Lord Gwyn, who was as white in complexion and hair as his name suggested.

Two main roads led south from Lutetia. To the east the Liyonum Road ran via Senones
to the old city of Liyonum. The mansa had gone that way to meet the Roman army. Lord
Gwyn and his troop rode down the central Cena Road past a fortified estate they called
Red Mount, which overlooked the road and the prospect of the city walls a mile away.
On golden fields, laborers were cutting hay. They measured our passing in silence.

We made camp for the night in a grove of trees.

I crept away to do my business in privacy, for the split skirt made riding easy but
peeing difficult. As I was making my way back, I stumbled onto a footpath. Soft footfalls
alerted me to the presence of someone else. A rushlight appeared, revealing a girl
of perhaps sixteen
years hurrying along with a sack slung over her back and her head down as she marked
each fearful step.

I drew my shadows around me. That was why the soldiers did not see me when they stepped
onto the path. “Here, now, lass, running away to meet a lover, are you?”

She bolted back, but a man stepped out on the path behind her as well. “What a pretty
treat this is on a dark night!” he said in a tone I could not like.

She raised the feeble rushlight. “Don’t come any closer! I’ll burn you if you do!”

“With that little flame?” The threat brought gales of laughter.

“I’m a fire mage,” she said stoutly, but her hand shook.

“Yes, we’ve all heard the rumor that the fire-stained can run to the general’s army
and make a new life there. You should have stayed home, lass, for we can’t let you
pass.” They moved in on her.

I unwound the shadows. “Let her go on her way unmolested,” I said.

Yet my appearance so startled her that she broke for the trees, and her mad dash so
startled the soldiers that they jumped to attack. One grabbed her arm. She screamed
and shoved the rushlight into his face. It blazed with a bright gout of fire that
caught up into the leaves of the nearest tree. He shouted with pain and stumbled back.