"Come back to warded ground," said Andevai. I had not even noticed him walk up beside me. When I glanced back, the tree I had thought was an oak looked entirely different, with a huge trunk and stubby branches more like roots, covered with clusters of white flowers.
"It's the same tree," he said, noticing my startled gaze. "If you stay out here, you may be caught in another tide. Now perhaps you do not wonder why it is dangerous to hunt in the spirit world. Besides the beasts and monsters, I mean."
"What happens to those who are caught in the tide?" I asked as I stared at the fluttering, rippling landscape of birds and river and dawn sky drenched with rosy gold but without a sun.
"They never come back."
"Why didn't you leave me out there, then?"
An icy, contemptuous look was the only answer he gave me. He turned and walked away, under the shadow of the tree.
24
Dazed, I followed him under the canopy. I kept walking, out to the open brick hearth, and I sat down on the stone bench as heavily as if I'd been kicked. The tree, the dun, and the well- not to mention the seven big cats-looked exactly as they had before, untouched by the tide that had altered the world beyond. The fire burned steadily, and as I stared at it, aware of Andevai moving about under the oak tree engaged in what activity I could not guess and did not want to know, the observation belatedly occurred to me that the fire was not consuming the wood along whose lengths the flames licked.
I understood nothing: not this place, not my companions, not my life.
I hate tears.
Tears had not brought back my parents, not the tears I had wept when I was six nor the ones shed occasionally as I grew up an orphan reading my father's journals and so desperately missing him and what he could have given me had he only been there in person, he and my voiceless mother, the Amazon warrior who no one ever spoke of.
Tears flowed unbidden now. I pressed a fist into my belly just below the curve of my ribs to stop myself from sobbing out loud. The djeli put her fiddle to her chin and tuned the strings. Was she indifferent to my crying or simply polite enough to give me what privacy she could by pretending not to notice me?
"Catherine? Are you weeping?" He strode out from under the tree.
The sable cat leaped up on the rock beside me and sat on sleek haunches as it yawned widely. This display of fearsome teeth and muscular bulk brought Andevai up short. He muttered a crisp, ferocious curse.
Gracious Melqart! The man had bothered to change his clothes out of the practical but rustic country garb he had previously been wearing and back into the fashionable clothing worn by men born to wealth and style. Wrinkles marred the perfection of dash jacket and sleek trousers, and his boots were wiped clean but still smudged. Seeing him revert to the form in which I had first beheld him dried my tears better than any sympathetic words could have. How on earth had he managed to change clothes with that injured arm? The man was clearly insanely devoted to looking fashionable.
The cat leaned against me. Much the same size and height as me, it possessed the warmth of a living soul. Its presence gave me comfort, not least because I knew perfectly well, as did Andevai, that it could rip him open. I scratched the back of its neck, and it rumbled a purr.
"That beast is wild, not domesticated," he said in a choked voice. "It could turn on you at any moment, however much it seems sympathetic to your situation just now."
"It rather reminds me of you, then," I retorted without wiping my tear-streaked face. "It was kind of you to forebear to murder me just now, when I was unprepared to defend myself I appreciate it. But I can't know when you will change your mind. When you will hear the mansa's command echoing in your thoughts. When you will think of your village, for which I am sure I do not blame you for wanting to spare them whatever punishment you can. I would do so myself, had I kinfolk who care for me as yours clearly do for you."
"You are mocking me."
"Am I? Why do you think so?" The tears were drying. I withdrew my hand from the big cat's nape. "Or is it only that you expect mockery, having become accustomed to it in Four Moons House, where, I am given to understand, they despise you for being the son of slaves and yet envy you for the rare and unexpected potency you carry in your person. I think that when small-minded people envy and despise, then they will mock, thinking it their only weapon. I am not, I hope, a small-minded person. I will not mock you. I'll tell you straight to your face that I don't trust you and can't trust you, and that despite my concern for the generous and upright people in the village who decided it was better to aid me and keep their faces clean before the ancestors than to betray me and truckle favor with the mansa, I intend to stay alive. I intend you shall never have"- wasn't it better never to use her name, especially in the spirit world?-"the other one. After the winter solstice passes, the other one makes her majority and can no longer be coerced into marriage. Perhaps then I might be allowed to live, since there will be no particular reason to benefit from my death. Do you think that is remotely possible?"
His gaze seemed likely to freeze me where I sat, only he had no mage power here. He had only a sword that, in the spirit world, seemed just an ordinary sword. But I also had a sword, and I had a friendly pride of saber-toothed cats to guard me. Also, I had wounded his right shoulder.
"I think it not likely," he said as slowly as if each word were being scraped from him by gnawing teeth, "that you can escape the mansa's anger once he has set it on you."
By rising, I silenced him. "I'll do what I must to survive. Can you possibly expect me to do otherwise?"
He crossed to the third stone bench and awkwardly drew on
his greatcoat. "The mansa will spread his net wide in looking for you. He will call in favors owed him by the local princes and dukes. His net will be difficult to evade."
"I am used to evading those who seek me."
A man with such cursed remarkable eye's ought not to be allowed to stare so provocatively at women. He seemed about to speak, then did not.
"What does it mean," I asked, "to walk the dreams of drag-onsr
He smiled with an edge of triumph, as young men would do when they know they're about to win a victory over a rival. "Ask the scholars of Adurnam. I can't tell you."
"Can't, or won't?"
"In this matter, there is no difference."
"You're leaving."
"I must be seen to be hunting."
"Seem to be? Is this some new scheme to trap me?"
"I could tell you that I've changed my mind. That I won't kill you. But you'd be foolish to believe anything I told you."
I laughed, and his cheeks darkened. "Why this fine speech, Andevai?"
A bored and superior expression transformed his face, reminding me forcibly of our first meeting when he had appeared scornful and distant. But other emotions besides arrogance and disdain might trigger such a mask as he tried to conceal what surged in his heart.
He spoke in a throttled voice I could barely hear. "By their actions, by hiding you and aiding you when they know perfectly well what my situation is, the elders of my village have shamed me into considering what constitutes right behavior. They made a decision to risk themselves rather than offend the ancestors. To hand over a guest is to spit in the face of the elders.
To murder someone who is innocent just because she stands in the way of grasping at a treasure is wrong. I must act in the manner my people have shown me is right."
"He who tries to wear two hats will discover he does not have two heads. Are you a magister or a village man?"
"That's what Duvai has always taunted me with. Maybe it's true, but even Duvai can't see a bird in the air and know whether it harbors an egg in its nest."