Cold Fire

He squinched his eyes and lips shut, and I thought the head would harden back to its slumbering stone state without ever answering my question. Yet still the veins on his neck throbbed as with anger…and how could that happen, since he had no heart?

“I’ll be gentle.” Bee took another step toward him.

To my amazement he laughed with an unexpected flowering of charm. “Alas for the men trapped by her love! Alas for the men set free! She is the axe that has laid waste to the proud forest. Where she treads, desolation follows.”

“Enough!” I cried. “I’ll kiss you, if you’ll just answer my question.”

His eyebrows rose to a peak. “I was not finished declaiming! It is always so. The young lack manners, and the women like crows cannot stopper up their chatter!”

Imagine all this time I had been in awe of the famous head of the poet Bran Cof?!

Bee offered a mocking grimace. “It’s me, or no one. Anyway, Cat, I don’t think he knows. All those stories about how he mastered the Three Paths to Judgment. How his tongue silenced birds and humbled princes. He isn’t really a legal scholar. He’s probably just an old drunk.”

“Shame, girl! I’ll have you know there are three forms of marriage commonly recognized in the courts of the north. How the Romans and Phoenicians do things is a different matter, but I’ll come to that afterward. A flower marriage flourishes while the bloom is still on it and dies when it withers. It may bloom for a month, a season, or a year, depending on the verbal agreement between the two parties involved. A contract marriage is a business arrangement signed in the law court between two houses, clans, or lineages. A chained marriage is a binding marriage sealed by arcane keys known only to the wise, to the drua and the bards, and it draws a chain of binding magic around the couple. When there is a question of possible treachery, or a treaty or other obligation at stake, it binds the couple so there need be no concern among those who arranged the marriage that another party will default or there be trouble later. Thus, the only way out of such a binding marriage is the death of one of the parties involved. But do not forget that without consummation, there is no marriage. Has the young man had sex with you yet?”

The headmaster had politely turned his attention to the monograph. The assistant stared at the motion of pendulum and weights behind the glass door of the longcase clock, a blush curdling his white complexion.

Bee said, “Cat, you look like a fish. Close your mouth.”

“A year and a day. If the marriage is not consummated, and there is no prenuptial agreement for an extension due to a known and forced separation of the two parties, then after a year and a day, it is no marriage. Does no one teach the law these days?”

All blood and breath drained from me. A year and a day. I could be unbound from the marriage. Released from its chain. I sagged back, to find myself at the door.

Bee glanced toward me, then back at the head of the poet Bran Cof. “Who spoke through your mouth?” she demanded.

The head of the poet Bran Cof flinched.

My pulse thudded in my ears. My hands curled to fists, nails biting into my palms. “You know who it is!” I said.

Blessed Tanit! He wasn’t going to answer! But then he did.

“He is my tormenter.” An ember of sympathy lit in his face, brief and not bright. “And soon, Tara Bell’s child, he will be yours as well.”

“Answer her!” cried Bee.

“My lips are bound. Of what passes on the other side, I cannot speak—” Then he was gone. Features as rigid as if carved from stone faced us in petrified silence.

“Oh!” said Bee. “What happened?”

The headmaster murmured, “So. That explains her.”

An overwhelming compulsion to get out of the chamber took hold of me.

“My apologies, Maester,” I said as I forced down the latch and pushed open the door. “My heart is so disturbed. I’ll just go pace out the labyrinth. They say it calms people down.”

“Take Beatrice with you,” said the headmaster kindly. “You really mustn’t go alone.”

“That explains her what?” said Bee to him, and turned. “Cat, where are you going?”

“I have to go to the labyrinth. I don’t want to. But I just can’t stop.” I was amazed by how calm my voice sounded as I stepped into the hallway even though I did not want to.

Hoofbeats rumbled on the street. Three shrill whistles pierced the peace of the academy halls. Orders were shouted in a ringing tenor: Lord Marius had arrived. “In here!”