“Really, Bee,” I said in a hoarse voice, “I was quite impressed by that diatribe until you described yourself as gentle and mild.” I eyed the evidence of the broken branches.
The headmaster got to his feet. Bee and I jumped back. I raised my cane defensively.
“Maestressas, might we retire into the house for a cup of tea? The warm fire would be welcome to my old bones.”
Bee squeezed my hand. “Surely you can understand that we may be reluctant to enter a den within whose walls we may be devoured at your leisure.”
“I fear you have read too many lurid tales, Maestressa,” he said in so kindly a manner that I began to think he must have reached the little grove of trees just in time to banish the monster, for this harmless old man could surely not have been the monster himself. “You will be safe within the house. I do not eat human flesh.”
“I heard half of your manservants have died,” Bee said rudely. “Did you eat them?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
Bee opened her mouth and then, after all, could grapple no words onto her tongue.
I pushed her behind me and swashed with my cane. “Back away slowly and we’ll make a break for it,” I muttered.
“Yes, I ate them,” he repeated, “but they were not men.”
“What were they, then?” she asked. “Trolls? And why did you try to eat Cat?”
“I did not try to eat her. I hoped she might see a memory in the tides of the Great Smoke.”
I had always respected the headmaster because his easy demeanor and impressive erudition stood in such contrast to my Uncle Jonatan’s short temper and small-mindedness. I didn’t truly know what sort of older man my father Daniel would have become, had he lived, but I had liked to believe he would have been something like the man who had patiently satisfied all factions whose children attended Adurnam’s academy college, without giving way to any one.
Only evidently he was no man.
“How can we trust you?” I asked.
“A reasonable question, Maestressa. I apologize for our unfortunate way of meeting just now. You surprised me at a vulnerable moment.”
“Are you a dragon?” I asked.
“I find I am rather weary. Will you take tea on this cold day?”
Bee said, “You choose, Cat. I’ll do as you say.”
I had seen what I had been too young to understand at the time, that I had survived because I had accidentally fallen into and out of the spirit world.
“I think it is safe to go,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Strangely, I am sure.” I could forgive a lot for having been given the chance to see the loving way my parents had smiled at me and at each other, the way I had looked at them with such wholehearted trust. The way my mother had tried to hold on to me.
The house was a stately lord’s home with two wings and three stories plus tiny attic windows. It was set near the river’s edge flanked by a second band of trees. The gravel drive led to the imposing front entry but we walked around to the side, where a man took charge of the dogs and chivvied them away to a kennel.
We made our way through the house to a pleasant library. Bay windows overlooked a field of sheep-mown grass that sloped to the bank of the Rhenus River. A door opened onto a garden alcove. In the little garden, rosemary surrounded a flat granite rock where a sun-loving creature might bask in summer.
The walls were lined with bookshelves and enough mirrors that every part of the room could be seen within a reflection. There were two hearths instead of one, both fitted with the most modern circulating stoves; the room was too warm for my liking. Worktables were heaped with scrolls, books, and ridges of stacked letters, the usual detritus of a scholar. The chamber looked nothing like the study in Adurnam.
The headmaster sat in a chair situated by the windows and gestured toward a couch placed opposite. He shifted restlessly, as if he wanted to leap up again. Cautiously we sat. I saw no point in pleasantries, given everything that had happened. I asked what I needed to know.
“How did you drive off the Wild Hunt and save Kemal?” I asked.
He lifted a hand to indicate the nearest mirror. “In mirrors we can see the threads of magic woven through the worlds. Because of this, mirrors can be used to confuse and conceal.”
My hope crashed. He could not save me any more than a troll maze could.
“Ever since the day you and your cousin arrived at the academy, I saw that the threads of both worlds run through you,” he added. “I have always known what your cousin is, but I long wondered why your blood and bone are mixed of both mortal and spirit kind. The day the head of the poet Bran Cof spoke, I realized your sire must be a powerful spirit lord.”
“You had no idea before?” I asked.
His mouth parted as if he were about to hiss, but he coughed instead. “I know less than you might think about the spirit world. I cannot walk there.”
“But you hatched there,” said Bee.
“I hatched there, although I have no memory of the event. We have no thinking mind until we swim through the Great Smoke and come to land in this world. The creatures of the spirit world live in their place, and we live in ours. The two are not meant to mix.” He examined me as he might a curiosity. “Before I met you, Maestressa, I would have said someone like you could not exist. Everything you are and can do rises out of the mingling of two worlds in your flesh.”
“Not everything, Your Excellency,” I said. “I was given love and strength by the actions and example of the mother and father who meant to raise me and were killed because of me. I know affection and constancy because of the loyalty of my dear cousin Bee. My aunt and uncle fed and clothed me in the same manner they fed and clothed their own girls, so I learned fairness from them. We girls were taught deportment, fencing, dancing, and sewing, as well as how to read and write and do accounts and to use herbs to make the last of winter’s store of turnips and parsnips taste palatable. So I learned both a trade, and how to make do. I refuse to agree that everything I am is due to my sire breeding me on my mother. I am not a horse or a dog, to be described in such a way. Even horses and dogs can be raised poorly, or well.”
Perhaps, becoming heated, I had raised my voice.
“Passionately argued.” A faint smile calmed his face. “Very well. Your actions and your loyalty to your cousin have convinced me you are not a servant of the spirit courts, they who are our implacable enemies. I believe you have earned the right to have a few of your questions answered.”
Bee touched clasped hands to her lips, then lowered them. “From everything I have learned, it seems your people somehow bred or created the women who walk the paths of dreams. Your people infested us, if you will, with the curse of walking the Great Smoke in our dreams. You did so because you want us to walk into the spirit world and unearth a nest and guide its hatchlings into the mortal world.”
“That is correct.”
“But we can also glimpse meeting places in the future.”
“Your visions allow you to find a nest. All the rest is coincidental, not of importance to us.”
Bee’s expression sharpened to her axe-blow glare, and I was sure she was about to say something cutting, but instead she sat back. “Surely nests hatch without our help.”
“They do. And they have across the passing of many generations. Understand that we are far older than your kind. It is the way of my people that our mothers live in the Great Smoke. They lay their eggs on the shore of the spirit world. The eggs hatch in the spirit world, and hatchlings seek water, through which they fall into the Great Smoke. After a time swimming there, those who survive surface into this world, for it is here we must grow to maturity. Thus the cycle starts over. But in recent ages, our ancestors began to notice that fewer and fewer were reaching this world. We came to believe that the creatures of the spirit world were deliberately devouring the hatchlings in the hope of eating them all and thus causing us to die out completely.”