"Whatever that means! Strange of you to speak so highly of your village elders, only after your sword drew my blood and I did not collapse dead at your feet. Had I died, then your touching and heartfelt protestations would not sound so sweet to my ears, would they? For, indeed, in that case, I would not be around to hear them at all!"
If a man could look more imperious and contemptuous than he did at this moment, I would have been surprised to hear it. "Maybe I did not realize what I was capable of. Maybe, afterward, I was sorry to have found out!"
I was trembling! my hands in fists and my eyes stinging. "Are you saying you regret trying to kill me?"
He looked away. "1 make no excuses. It's done."
The male cat nudged my back with his head, the smooth, hard curve of one of his incisors sliding against my shoulder. I leaned back, feeling peculiarly safe.
Andevai looked back at me, at the big cat, at the rest of the saber-tooths over by the well. He coughed slightly, clearing his throat as before a speech. "If I can draw the chase to the toll roads and rivers, I'll do so. If I can draw the net away from Anderida, I'll do so. In that case, a person fleeing in the direction of Adurnam might do well to travel one of Anderida's quiet old roads. Once the eldest Barahal daughter reaches her majority, we have no hold over her, by the terms of the contract."
The djeli drew a long, pure melody out of her fiddle, but
paused before it came to a cadence, holding the bow from the strings as if not sure what came next.
Visibly startled, Andevai turned to her. "What is that?" he demanded.
"It's the payment you have made to me," she said with a considering look first at the fiddle, as if it were hiding something from her, and then at him. "By telling me your story. It's not quite ready yet, but this song will be yours when it is earned." A tone lingered on the breeze, more felt than heard.
He hesitated, as might a hound suddenly realizing it faces a wolf. "Then you have received a fair payment, for the shelter I've received here?"
"I have received what is fair," she agreed. "Where are you going?"
"Back to the mortal world. And you?"
"I stay where I am bound, as I must. Later, perhaps, we will meet."
"Perhaps we will meet another day. Until then, let your day be well."
"And your day, likewise."
Leave-takings could take as long as greetings, but in the end he walked to the oak, ducked under its canopy, and returned leading the mare. I realized at that moment that I was not going to set the cats on him.
Walking past me, he spoke. "I left what is yours under the oak. Do what you must, Catherine. I will do as I must."
"Wait," I said. "I don't know how to get back-"
But without looking back, he trudged up a dusty track that wound away into the higher country. The sable male padded after him and halted on the track, tail lashing, to watch until he vanished beyond stands of wide-canopied trees bearing colorless thorns and white flowers.
What an idiot I was, standing here while he walked away! I
had absolutely no idea how to return to the mortal world. I dashed over to the oak and found my bundle on the ground. As I grabbed it, the cloth flapped open and a heavy leather pouch thudded to earth beside my gloves. Inside lay silver denarii and five gold aurei. Yet the coins weighed heavy in my hands. What message had he meant to send me by leaving them with my things? That he was sorry? That he wanted me to live? Was the coin meant in payment for the cut? Had he, in that last moment when we grappled, actually changed his mind and only cut me purely by accident as he broke away? For so it seemed to me now, looking back on it.
Or perhaps he was far more clever than he looked. Perhaps he had deliberately trapped me here; perhaps I was actually dead and could never return.
I strode to the fire and faced the djeli, who lowered her fiddle. How had I first mistaken her for an aged, frail, starving woman? She was not young, certainly old enough to be my mother if I had a mother, but with a healthy shine in her face and a robust, healthy build.
"I low do I return to the mortal world? Must I run after him and hope to catch him so he will show me the way?"
"The cat and the horse do not eat the same dish." She raised the fiddle. "A dry mouth cannot sing."
I laughed. "It is the way of djeliw to speak in riddles, is it not?"
"You mistake me for a Celt. It is I, Lucia Kante, who cups knowledge in my heart. I await the ones who will learn from me, but you are not that one."
The big male sashayed up and thrust his head against my hip to be petted. After I had rubbed his ears and nape, I drew up a bucket of water, carried it over, and set it down beside the djeli, and then retreated to sit beside my cloaks and coin. Maybe I wasn't a Barahal, but I had been raised among a people for whom bargaining was the same as breathing.
"Is this water your offering?" she asked.
"A dry mouth cannot sing," I answered, "but perhaps water will not quench your thirst. Are you a mortal woman or a creature of the spirit world?"
"I am the person I am, a multitude held in one flesh."
"Most tales say that time runs differently in the spirit world than in the mortal world. I would not want to stay here too long. I need to go back. Will you show me the way back?"
She held out a hand, palm up. "For a payment. The same as he made."
"Let me tell you a story," I said. "Since it seems that's the coin you seek. In the beginning, the people who call themselves Kena'ani founded the city of Tyre. There presided the gods and goddesses, the kings and the high men of the temple, the queens and the priestesses. Their ships explored the great sea. In time, the children of Tyre founded trading towns and ports like Gadir all along the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and farther afield south along the coast of Africa and north along the coast of Europa. In time, there was born to the king of Tyre a daughter named Elissa. When she grew to be a woman, she understood that the king, her own father, hated her and wished to sacrifice her. So she fled Tyre with her people. The blessed Tank raised winds, and on these wings brought her to a distant shore. Elissa bargained with the tribe that lived in that region. She said, 'Let me have for my people only as much land as one ox hide will encompass, and we will settle there and be content.' Thinking her simple-minded, the tribe agreed, but she trimmed the ox hide into a leather cord and extended that cord to encompass a mighty swathe of land. Her people called the city founded there Qart Hadast, the new city, and she became its dido, its queen."
Perhaps the air of the spirit world breathes a fragrance that intoxicates. How else could I possibly have looked upon Andevai and not despised him, merely because of the way he had looked
sidelong at me and the way his hand had felt, holding mine? Intoxication leaps from mind to tongue. A dizzy compulsion overtook me as I kept talking, and talking, and talking. I was the vessel full of wine and she the one drinking. As long as she listened, I could not stop. I told the tales the Kena'ani tell their children, of the trials and struggles of the gods in ancient days, of the long war against the Romans, of the Persian invasion and the arrival of refugees from the empire of Mali. Of mercenaries and merchants, spies and historians. How Daniel Hassi Barahal had ridden into the world at the same age I was now and traveled across Europa and the north of Africa in the service of his family, seeking secrets to sell for profit, and in the service of his own desire to comprehend the way of the world.
No cat, he, but curious just the same. He had midwifed babies into the world, escaped brigands, climbed mountains, and sat through the interminable sessions during which Camji-ata's law code was argued into fruition. He had traveled south to Rome and Qart Hadast, cast to Galatia and the very border of the Pale, He had ventured north into the ice with a party of determined explorers, and west to Land's End beyond which the ocean crashed against a desolate shoreline.