“What I want to know is why I should trust you when you placed my mother under sentence of death and would have killed her if she hadn’t escaped.”
“Why, Cat,” he said, and I could have sworn he was taken aback, “the matter is entirely different. She was a sworn lieutenant in my Amazon Corps and thus subject to the rules and regulations of that corps.”
“Including imprisonment and execution should she become pregnant?”
“The conditions and regulations of service were public knowledge. No woman took the oath of enlistment without fully understanding what was expected of her and where her responsibilities and loyalties lay. Those who serve in my army serve freely, but they are bound once they join to follow the code of conduct. As am I, and any person enlisting. For the Amazon Corps, that code included celibacy. Any woman who had served out her period of enlistment might apply for a discharge if she wished to have children, marry, or make some other change in life. A legal code is worthless if those who enforce it treat persons differently according to consequence, status, kinship, or wealth. All must be equal before the law, or the law is worth nothing.”
“That’s what Daniel Hassi Barahal wrote.”
“In fact, that is what I said when I addressed the committee gathered to write a comprehensive new legal code. Perhaps Daniel recorded my words, and you read them later and thought they were his.” An odd sort of smile animated his face, one I could not read. Anger? Amusement? Calculation? He was masked rather as my sire had been: I simply could not fathom what drove him. Except maybe irritation at remembering my mother had escaped the law.
“Tell me what you meant when you said my path will change the course of the war.”
“Those are not Helene’s precise words, nor did I say them that way.” He did not raise his voice, but I realized that something about the turn the conversation had taken was making him angry. “Find a way to win the cold mage to my side, Cat.”
“I’m sure she’s found a way to prick the man’s interest,” muttered Drake.
I fixed my gaze on Drake and stalked back to the table. He stared me down, gaze almost fevered.
“Be calm,” murmured Bee.
Camjiata said, “Enough!”
Drake leaned back and propped his sandaled feet up on the table. I remained standing.
“Now listen carefully, Cat,” the general went on. “A living cold mage serves me much better than a dead one. I would value the services of a powerful cold mage when I return to Europa.”
“One like your wife?” I asked.
“She was not a powerful cold mage. She had only a minor gift, enough to call a wisp of cold fire, which was ironic considering how poor her vision was. She was as close to a castoff as a child can be who is born into a mage House. Her House, and she, had no idea she walked the path of dreams. Everyone just thought she recited the most execrable poetry to get attention. But when she was about your age she heard her destiny in her own words.”
Despite my irritation, I was drawn into his story. “What was her destiny?”
“Why, I was. Or she was mine. Hard to say. Maybe I should say, we were meant to be together, being each other’s destiny.”
“That’s very romantical,” I said caustically. Bee caught my eye, and I knew she was thinking, Didn’t that cold mage call you the other half of his soul? I narrowed my eyes to let her know that if she spoke one word I would make her life so miserable that dismemberment would seem a mercy.
She ate her egg.
“I meant,” I added, “considering what happened.”
“Perhaps you mean to note that I am alive while she is dead. Quite true. Believe me, Cat, I intend to do everything I can to keep Beatrice alive. It was what Helene would have wanted. For they are all sisters of a kind, the women who walk the path of dreams.”
“Like in one of those quaint cautionary folktales,” remarked Bee, “in which everyone dies.”
“Yes. Which brings me back to the point I have been trying to make. Cat, my dear, I fear you have not heard me, so I will say it again. If you do not bring the cold mage to me, then I will have to kill him. If that is what you want, then by all means, rid yourself of the magister and your marriage by refusing to cooperate with me. But do not make the mistake of underestimating me.”
“Unless he kills you first.”
“He will not kill me because I know who will kill me. And it is not him.”
“How can you know?”
“On the day Helene and I first met, it was the second thing she said to me. That she had seen the instrument of my death.”
“And you married her?” I demanded.
“As soon as I could.” He laughed. “Wouldn’t you?”
Bee stirred. “You’ve lived with that knowledge all this time? That’s remarkable.” She stared at him with none of the sledgehammer intensity that usually characterized her glares and looks. She looked as admiring as an actress in a stage play simpering at the steadfast prince whom she lovingly serves for the duration of the implausible plot.
A chill, as the broadsheet poets wrote in their cheaply inked stories, ran down my spine.
He sipped at his tea as if considering Bee’s praise was the weightiest task on his mind, far more than death, war, revolution, love, cold mages, and dream walkers. “Is it? We all live with the knowledge of impending death, do we not?”
“Did she tell you who?” I asked.
He looked at me. But he said nothing.
“Who will be the instrument of your death?” I added, in case he had not understood me.
He poured more tea into his cup, set the ceramic pot back on its trivet, and turned the cup’s handle so it lay parallel with the table’s edge. His gentle smile had such power that I leaned toward him as if he were about to confer on me a great honor or the princely kiss of approval.
“Why, you will, Cat. You will.”
28
I am not a young woman who craves attention. Although people have at times suggested that I talk a great deal, I could maintain silence with the best of them. A stony silence, accompanied by an offended glare, worked wonders on most people when they had insulted me.
Unfortunately, it had no effect at all on Camjiata. He smiled in an accommodating way. “I mean no offense, Cat. Nor do I mean to accuse you or even to suggest that I feel any hostility toward you. I am simply telling you what Helene told me.”
I set fisted hands on the table. “You’re trying to intimidate me. I won’t betray him to you.”
“You already have, or so he must believe.”
Had he slapped me, it would have hurt less.
“Amazing!” Drake’s lips curled into a sneer. “A more pompous, conceited, self-admiring ass I have never before encountered, and yet after all if you add to that a handsome face and expensive tailoring, the gals will crawl at his feet. Really, Cat, I’m disappointed in you.”
I slipped the cane from its loop and set it on the table. He looked suitably startled, and shifted his chair away. “I should be careful if I were you, Drake. Because what you don’t understand is that I can be the instrument of your death. And if you anger me enough, I will. In fact, I’m thinking about it right now.”
Heat stung the air. “Don’t try to duel with me.”
“James!” said the general.
“Why do you always scold me and never her?” he demanded as the spark vanished. “Anyway, what do you expect a man to do when an attractive gal throws herself at him? By the way, that object she carries around so casually is pure cold steel. She’s no doubt in league with that cursed cold mage and means to hand him the sword to do you in the moment he gets close enough.”
I set my hands on the table and leaned toward him. “He’s worth a hundred of you.” I took in a few breaths to calm myself, then looked at Camjiata. “No wonder you wanted my mother to die if you believed she would give birth to a child who would kill you.”
“It does not work that way.” He had the means to hold your gaze even when you wanted to look away. This, too, was a form of sorcery: the ability to command. “Anyway, we do not execute pregnant women. You would have been born regardless.”