Surprised, I took another step back to steady myself. “I want to know if there is any way to unbind a marriage sealed by a magical chain of binding.”
“Yes. Your turn.”
“I mean, besides death!” Why must my voice tremble so?
“Your turn.”
Curse him! “You said, ‘As I am bound, so must those bound to me as kin come to my aid. That is the law. Come to me, Tara Bell’s child. Now.’”
“Bad fortune for you, lass. In pity, I offer this: Only death can unchain a chained marriage. But there is one other way.” He attempted a coaxing smile that made him look grotesque. “I can tell you. But a poet has his price. A kiss from you, the girl whose eyes are amber, whose lips are the red of berries, a promise both succulent and sweet.”
I cringed away.
His smile broadened lasciviously. “I will have the kiss that already softens your mouth. You are waiting for a man to claim its honey.”
I flushed with utter, obliterating embarrassment.
He chuckled, enjoying my consternation. “He must be young and very handsome.”
I choked.
Bee said, “I’ll kiss him for you, Cat. I have experience kissing lecherous old men as well as young and very handsome ones.”
“You will not!” His bushy eyebrows shot up, and the corners of his lips spiked down. “I will have no kiss from you, serpent!”
“How can you stop me, stuck there on your pedestal?” She took a step toward him as I took one back. “I may kiss you however and whenever I please! I’ll suck all the life from you-such as you have life-and keep it for myself?!”
He squinched his eyes and lips shut, and I thought the head would harden back to its slumbering stone state without ever answering my question. Yet still the veins on his neck throbbed as with anger…and how could that happen, since he had no heart?
“I’ll be gentle.” Bee took another step toward him.
To my amazement he laughed with an unexpected flowering of charm. “Alas for the men trapped by her love! Alas for the men set free! She is the axe that has laid waste to the proud forest. Where she treads, desolation follows.”
“Enough!” I cried. “I’ll kiss you, if you’ll just answer my question.”
His eyebrows rose to a peak. “I was not finished declaiming! It is always so. The young lack manners, and the women like crows cannot stopper up their chatter!”
Imagine all this time I had been in awe of the famous head of the poet Bran Cof?!
Bee offered a mocking grimace. “It’s me, or no one. Anyway, Cat, I don’t think he knows. All those stories about how he mastered the Three Paths to Judgment. How his tongue silenced birds and humbled princes. He isn’t really a legal scholar. He’s probably just an old drunk.”
“Shame, girl! I’ll have you know there are three forms of marriage commonly recognized in the courts of the north. How the Romans and Phoenicians do things is a different matter, but I’ll come to that afterward. A flower marriage flourishes while the bloom is still on it and dies when it withers. It may bloom for a month, a season, or a year, depending on the verbal agreement between the two parties involved. A contract marriage is a business arrangement signed in the law court between two houses, clans, or lineages. A chained marriage is a binding marriage sealed by arcane keys known only to the wise, to the drua and the bards, and it draws a chain of binding magic around the couple. When there is a question of possible treachery, or a treaty or other obligation at stake, it binds the couple so there need be no concern among those who arranged the marriage that another party will default or there be trouble later. Thus, the only way out of such a binding marriage is the death of one of the parties involved. But do not forget that without consummation, there is no marriage. Has the young man had sex with you yet?”
The headmaster had politely turned his attention to the monograph. The assistant stared at the motion of pendulum and weights behind the glass door of the longcase clock, a blush curdling his white complexion.
Bee said, “Cat, you look like a fish. Close your mouth.”
“A year and a day. If the marriage is not consummated, and there is no prenuptial agreement for an extension due to a known and forced separation of the two parties, then after a year and a day, it is no marriage. Does no one teach the law these days?”
All blood and breath drained from me. A year and a day. I could be unbound from the marriage. Released from its chain. I sagged back, to find myself at the door.
Bee glanced toward me, then back at the head of the poet Bran Cof. “Who spoke through your mouth?” she demanded.
The head of the poet Bran Cof flinched.
My pulse thudded in my ears. My hands curled to fists, nails biting into my palms. “You know who it is!” I said.
Blessed Tanit! He wasn’t going to answer! But then he did.
“ He is my tormenter. ” An ember of sympathy lit in his face, brief and not bright. “And soon, Tara Bell’s child, he will be yours as well.”
“Answer her!” cried Bee.
“My lips are bound. Of what passes on the other side, I cannot speak-” Then he was gone. Features as rigid as if carved from stone faced us in petrified silence.
“Oh!” said Bee. “What happened?”
The headmaster murmured, “So. That explains her.”
An overwhelming compulsion to get out of the chamber took hold of me.
“My apologies, Maester,” I said as I forced down the latch and pushed open the door. “My heart is so disturbed. I’ll just go pace out the labyrinth. They say it calms people down.”
“Take Beatrice with you,” said the headmaster kindly. “You really mustn’t go alone.”
“That explains her what?” said Bee to him, and turned. “Cat, where are you going?”
“I have to go to the labyrinth. I don’t want to. But I just can’t stop.” I was amazed by how calm my voice sounded as I stepped into the hallway even though I did not want to.
Hoofbeats rumbled on the street. Three shrill whistles pierced the peace of the academy halls. Orders were shouted in a ringing tenor: Lord Marius had arrived. “In here!”
Bee grabbed our coats. I dashed to the stairs and ran down to the glass-roofed central courtyard, Bee behind me. “Cat! Stop!”
“I can’t! It’s like I’m being dragged by the throat.” I wasn’t frightened, just numb. Something horrible was about to happen, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it.
In the courtyard, benches ringed the outermost paving stones of the labyrinth walk. Four fountains anchored the four compass points, each surmounted by one of the beasts who symbolized the four quarters of the year: the bull, the saber-toothed cat, the horse, and the serpent.
“There she is!” Lord Marius’s battle-honed tenor filled the space as he and his soldiers appeared in the arch that led to the entry hall. “Catherine Barahal! Beatrice Barahal! Surrender yourselves. You are under arrest at the order of the prince of Tarrant and the senate of Rome.”
I sprinted for the nearest bench as soldiers ran after us, some circling wide in order to cut off all roads of escape. Patches of snow like lichen mottled the roof. The sky was dark with fresh storm clouds, flaking a lazy trickle of snow.
Lord Marius shouted, “We won’t harm you. I give you my word. It’s for your own good.”
“So reassuring!” yelled Bee from behind me.
A crow landed on the glass roof, and beside it five and then ten more. The din they made caused men to look up. A crack shattered the roof. Shards sprayed; men ducked and retreated. I leaped a stone bench and found my feet on the beginning stone of the labyrinth walk: This was not a maze but a winding walkway built to hone meditation and to help minds focus. When my cane touched the stone, the path blazed with the breath of the ice. My cane flowered into cold steel.
“Halt!” A soldier overtook me.
I thrust. Surprised, he parried, but it was clear he was hesitant to press for fear of hurting me. I drove him back ruthlessly. He slammed into the bench, tripped, and hit his head. Lay still. I whispered a prayer to Blessed Tanit: Let me not have killed him.