Cold Magic

I was not wrong about him. I was just not a Hassi Barahal.

“What happened then?” I asked hoarsely.

“Then Camjiata’s dreams of empire came crashing down around him. The Houses destroyed his wife’s mage House for turning traitor to their kind. His army was defeated. The allies took him prisoner. They dared not kill him, for that might have further inflamed a discontented populace. So they imprisoned him in a secret place rumored to be an island in the Mediterranean. Then Four Moons House came to us with proof that we had sold information to Camjiata’s army.”

“Had you?” Bee asked.

“There exists no proof that we did anything of the sort,” he said.

“Because you burned it,” I whispered. “Andevai handed over the proof in exchange for me. You burned it right then as he was driving away with me.”

“We had no choice,” he said stiffly, “but to agree to the contract Four Moons House forced upon us, or we would have been ruined. Destroyed, like Camjiata. Why they wanted you, Beatrice, they never explained. When do magisters ever need to explain themselves?”

Andevai had explained himself. But he was not like the others.

“Have you ever heard the phrase,” Bee asked, “ ‘to walk the dreams of dragons’?”

He shook his head. “Is it from an old bardic poem? Or a jelly’s tale?”

I rose from the bench. “Why did Daniel and Tara leave Adurnam with me?”

The lamps hissed. The fire crackled. Callie sat on her stool by the hearth, not even pretending not to listen.

He met my gaze, and I suppose I had to respect his willingness to do so. He looked older than his years, and he looked weary, but I was no longer sure he was sorry about anything.

“Four Moons House came to us and demanded the eldest Barahal daughter. Bee’s freedom and life were at risk. So I went to Daniel. Tara was pregnant again, you know.”

I was frozen, unable to move or speak or even, really, to think at all. Pregnant again, with a child who would have been my younger sibling. A baby brother or sister I would never know.

“I took on the responsibility. The others were too afraid. I went to Daniel. I said, ‘You’ll have another baby, a child to love and raise. Let us take Catherine—she’s a bastard, anyway; she’s not even yours—and give her to the mage House in Bee’s place’. Next I knew, they had packed their things and left.”

My legs gave out. I sat, and fortunately, the humble bench held me as a mother surely holds its child, supporting it when it falters.

“ ‘A bastard, anyway’?” said Bee in a hard, cold voice. “Is that really what you said?”

“Someone had to be willing to tell the truth! Make the hard choices!” He went on, shaking his head as if harried by the buzzing of bees or the anger of the whispering gods. “Next thing, we got word of the ferry accident. You were brought back alive, but they were dead.”

“Did you ever see their bodies?” Bee asked.

He stared at the fire. “Oh, yes,” he murmured, his voice a scrape where memory rasped. “The recovered bodies had been laid out in a warehouse. Daniel had an old scar on his shoulder. And Tara… well… there could be no mistake.”

He began to sob, as if the sight were as fresh as the day it had happened.

After a while, he wiped his eyes and blew his nose in a handkerchief. Then he fished in his coat and brought out a journal, perfectly ordinary, covered in bound leather and tied shut with a green ribbon. He set it on the table in front of me.

I reached for it but drew back my hand before I touched it. “What of the other missing journals? Were you hiding them, too?”

“We don’t know what happened to them. Not even Daniel knew. He did his best to direct them to the Barahals, but you never know what will happen on any journey, do you? Things get lost.” He stood. “I leave at dusk tomorrow. The tide turns at midnight, and we take ship for Gadir to join Tilly and the girls. I’ve been advised to sell this house. It has already been purchased.”

“By whom?” demanded Bee.

“By Four Moons House. The offer came at the Prince of Tarrant’s request, which means it is a command one cannot refuse. Beatrice, you’ll come with me, of course. And you, Cat. If you will come with us, we will ask your forgiveness and you will be part of us.”

I said nothing.

Bee said, “Papa, you seem not to understand something. The mansa and the prince do not intend to allow me to leave Adurnam.”

“How can that be? The contract is void!”