The fire was burning without stint.
His presence was having no effect on the fire.
"I want my horse back," he said wearily, paying no attention to this marvel.
"Why are you not extinguishing the fire?" I demanded.
"Because," said the djeli, "while magisters draw their power through the spirit world, they have no power in it."
The look he shot at her should have been a spear of killing ice, but the fire burned regardless and nothing happened to her for violating such precious secrets.
Fiery Shemesh! He wielded no cold magic here!
I snorted, and his gaze flashed to me as his lips curved into the supercilious frown I was becoming familiar with. But I also noticed how stiffly he held his right shoulder; dried blood marred the sliced edges of his coat.
"You're strong and fast, but your technique is sloppy," I said as I sheathed my sword with a flourish meant to challenge him. I was beginning to see that the angrier he got, the more he climbed the pinnacle of arrogance, but without cold magic to throw around, and unless he decided to physically attack me with his sword arm injured and within the aura of firelight under the gaze of the djeli, he could do nothing but listen. And I had a lot to say, words I had swallowed for too many days. "My question, though, is why you did not use the weight and height of the horse to your advantage but instead dismounted to attack me. No Barahal would ever make such a mistake."
"I wasn't aware," he said cuttingly, "that you were a Barahal."
"A weak rejoinder! Not up to your usual standard. Next thing, you'll accuse me of being in on the fraud."
"You aren't actress enough to have managed that. It was obvious you knew nothing of the scheme."
I lost my rhythm at this unexpected parry. No cutting retort sprang to my lips.
"Anyway," he added, speech clipped as if the words were difficult to get out, "I thought if I was required to kill you, as I had been commanded to do, that I ought to show enough respect to you to do so face-to-face."
"How decent of you, truly! What courtesy you've shown me! First, you drag me from my home against my will, refuse to let me eat perfectly decent food, are rude to perfectly respectable innkeepers, and then when you're told to kill me because of a mistake you made and through nothing I have ever done, you try to kill me."
"I didn't try very hard!"
"You tried hard enough! You drew blood!" I touched my fingers to the cut on my chin.
He flinched, then drew himself taut. "You should be dead," he agreed coldly, his color very high and his posture very rigid.
"But I'm not!" I cried. "No thanks to you!"
He shook his head. "If the Barahals had given me the other girl, then none of this would have happened, would it? She would be married according to the contract, and treated well and living better than you could possibly have been in that rundown and ill-furnished house, while you would remain safe and unmolested in the bosom of your so-called family. It seems to me they're at least as much at fault for handing you over while knowing the mansa would discover the cheat and take out his anger on you. So why aren't you railing at their part in this?"
Tears pricked at my eyes. "What makes you think I'm not?"
He had the decency to look startled. A foggy notion crept into my head that he might be ashamed, and that his shame
might be fueling his anger. No, that way lay insanity. He was whipping himself because he had not yet fulfilled the mansa's command. He might even conceivably be worried about his village, or his loyal sister, and I was bitterly reminded that he had brought an escort and a spare horse for Kayleigh, which was far more than Aunt and Uncle had arranged for me. They, who had thrown me to the wolves. I hated them all over again. Hated them. Loved them. Choked on despair and anger and sheer exhaustion.
The djeli watched us with a slight smile.
"I ask your pardon for my poor manners," I said hoarsely to her. "I've had some trouble on the road."
"So it appears," she said.
"Might I rest at your fire?"
She extended a hand, not quite in invitation for me to sit but more like a request for payment.
"That's how it is with djeliw and bards," muttered Andevai. "You have to pay them lest they ridicule you."
"An unexpected complaint coming from a cold mage," she replied without heat, "for you magisters might be said to be cousins in some manner to us djeliw and bards."
"Magisters may be, bred from a long line of sorcerers and intermarried with the druas of the north," he retorted, "but I am not cousin to any of you. I was born into a village of farmers and hunters."
"Your village serves the mansa and the House," I exclaimed. "You are servants and slaves."
He lifted his chin. "Not in the old country we weren't. My people have always been farmers and hunters. We are proud of that, as we should be."
The djeli swept her extended arm in a gesture she might have made if she were singing, to emphasize a phrase. Our company agreed with her; her smile made her face rounder and lent a glow
to her cheeks. "Yet a farmer's son has been taken into a blacksmith's house and taught his secrets. There's a story."
"Not one I can tell." He dragged his left hand over his closely cropped hair, encountered chaff, and flicked the dry grass off before surveying his village garments with a fastidious grimace. How it must annoy him to stand so disheveled, and in such humble attire! He glanced sidelong at me. For some reason, the way he was looking at me made me abruptly wonder what it would be like to draw my fingers along the pleasing line of his jaw.
Blessed Tank, the ma'n had tried to kill me!
"I could tell you the sordid tale of how we met, journeyed together, and parted at odds," I said in a tone I hoped might scathe him and purge myself, although I addressed my words to the djeli. "But alas, its immediacy, and lack of a tidy end, pains me far too much to reflect on."
"Then tell me the stories," she said, licking her lips, "that your father told you."
"He wasn't my father!"
"Wasn't he?"
"He wasn't my father! They lied to me. He did not sire me."
"He gave you his stories."
"He wrote them down for the family, and I was allowed to read his journals and to believe he was my father."
"What is a father?" asked the djeli. "Do you have an answer?"
Curiosity and the cat: You know the story.
I led the horse around and away from the hearth and tethered her from a low-hanging branch of the oak. Then I walked to the well, but not so quickly as to startle the big cats. The biggest female thrust her shoulder against my hip. I staggered, steadying myself with a hand on her huge head. Her coat was coarse but also oddly comforting. A noise rumbled through her body,
like a purr. Tentatively, I scratched at her head, and she rumbled yet more.
"Catherine," said Andevai hoarsely, hand on his sword's hilt, "if you move off slowly-"
"If they wanted to eat me, they could have done so already. I'm the one they're guarding." Flung with bravado, the words fell like truth as soon as they left my lips. I spoke to the cat as I kneaded it behind the ears. "Let me get to the water and I'll fill the trough for you."
The beast withdrew her weight. I eased past her and slung the bucket over the hook, winched it down, and hauled it up. First, I filled the stone trough with water for the cats. Then I carried a full bucket to the horse, who was eager to drink. I unsaddled her, freed her mouth from the bit, gave her an apple, and paid out enough line so she could graze. I returned with bucket and saddlebags and set the bags on one of the stone benches and myself beside them. Andevai frowned as I pulled out.1 leather bottle and held it out to the djeli.
"My thanks," she said, with a gesture meant to decline the old'!, "but just as stones cannot case hunger, your mead cannot case me.Only stories can feed me."
I tossed it to Andevai, who caught it one-handed. Then I took out the second bottle for myself, draining the last of the sweet mead. The djeli released her fiddle from its case and set the instrument across her thighs.