Cold Fire

He said, “Go sit on warded ground. I’ll make tea.”

He indicated a fire pit ringed by a low inner wall of bricks and an outer circle of marble benches. A fire burned. A lofty tree with red bark and white flowers shaded one side of the pit; there was also a granite pillar and a stone bowl from whose center burbled clear water. Bee and I sat side by side on a bench as the coachman brought over a kettle, filled it at the bowl, and set it across an iron grating over the flames. He carried two full buckets to water his horses. The eru flew ahead, scouting. Passed through the storm, we had reached the hills.

“It’s a triangle,” said Bee.

“What is?” I asked, watching the ease with which the eru flew, her smoky wings skimming the air. I had first seen her in the guise of a male human footman, booted and coated for winter, and it was not so easy to shake that image from my mind to see her as female.

“The tree, the spring, and the pillar form an equilateral triangle,” said Bee. “I wonder if the form creates the ward.”

“I think there has to be a tree, a stone, and water,” I said, remembering the djelimuso Lucia Kante’s fire. I had sheltered there, argued with Andevai, and met Rory. I had told her stories from my father’s journals, the price I had to pay so she would tell me how to leave the spirit world.

Bee massaged her left hand with her right. “Did you see that sneering face on the latch?”

“The one that bit me? Of course I did!”

Around us lay open forest, trees spaced apart and grass and bushes grown thickly in the gaps. Four big animals trotted into view and settled onto their haunches to leer at us. They looked something like what a dog and a cat and a pig would look like if smashed together, with coarse short hair and hind legs shorter than their forelegs. They had the teeth of carnivores and the gazes worn by the coldhearted who have nothing better to do than plot the ruin of all they see. When the coachman looked at them, they ambled out of sight, but I had a feeling they were hiding in a tangle of undergrowth, waiting hungrily.

Bee pulled her sketchbook out of her bag and paged through it.

I identified the faces of young men, studies from life, some shaded to fine detail and others a few deft lines that caught an essence. “Maester Lewis. That good-looking Keita lad whose family left for New Jenne. Here’s that laughing bootblack Uncle Jonatan scolded you for flirting with.”

She turned another page without replying.

I went on, unable to bear her silence. “Now we’re at summer solstice, when the Barry family arrived at the academy. My! Isn’t Legate Amadou Barry pretty? To think all those months we thought him a student at the academy, when instead he was a Roman spy. Do you suppose he was spying only on us? Or are there other pupils from disreputable families worth investigating?”

“I’m not the only one who has endured an unpleasant romantic interlude, Cat. I won’t hesitate to remind you of yours if you don’t stop teasing me about mine.”

The unyielding rigidity of her tone convinced me to change the subject. “Here’s Cold Fort. With Amadou Barry standing at the gates—not that I mean anything by mentioning him! Is this from the dream that made you ask him to look for me there?”

“Yes. Last summer I began to realize that sometimes I would dream an ordinary event, like people meeting at a shop or a fruit seller’s wagon overturned at an intersection. Later I would encounter the very thing. Or hear it had happened, like when Banker Pisilco was rude to a troll at the Merchant’s Exchange and the troll had to be restrained from killing him by its companions.”

“I can see that might be disturbing,” I said cautiously. “I wish you had told me.”

She wasn’t really listening. “I don’t think walking the dreams of dragons is divination, seeing into the future.”

“That’s what the mansa thinks it is,” I said.

“I think it’s a way to find things. So the question is, what I am trying to find?” Her expression reminded me of the brooding of clouds before a storm. “Did it ever occur to you, Cat, to wonder why we act the way we do?”

“I often wonder why you act the way you do!”

She rolled her eyes, and I was cheered by her brief smile. “You know what I mean. Why should I obey the strictures we’ve always been told must fence in our lives? We must learn the skills appropriate to Hassi Barahal women. We must marry to oblige the family. We must serve the house by bearing children and by carrying out all orders given by the elders. Travel to a new city and spy on a princely household? Very well. Take a position as a governess or factotum and serve the clan that way? Shiffa and Evved are as deep in the family business as my parents are. My parents threw you away to save me because they were told to do so.”