Cold Steel

He paused to drink.

I could not move, nor could I speak. I was frozen, as in ice.

“I met Daniel first, before either Tara or Helene. He was in the city of Sala, at the court of the ghana. He asked if he could travel north with our battalion because he wanted to explore the Barrens. Daniel was terribly entertaining. No man I’ve met before or since could keep a miserably cold and wet huddle of men around a guttering campfire laughing the way he could. He’d heard the Belgae were cannibals. Thought it might be best to investigate from a position of strength, if you will. With an army at his back.”

“Were they cannibals?” I thought of my grandfather, crouching by his cauldron.

He smiled. “He asked in every village we came to if it was true the Belgae were cannibals. And they all said the same thing.”

“What was that?”

“That they themselves weren’t, but the neighboring village, the one they’d been having a feud with for years, was certainly known to eat human flesh.”

I laughed.

He smiled, then sobered. “We fought a skirmish against those cursed Atrebates. Bad, marshy conditions, and low morale. Our cursed colonel turned tail and ran with his entire staff, those who were still alive. So I took over and managed an orderly retreat. We had to escape north because the Atrebates had blocked the road. We couldn’t go overland because the ground was a mire. We ended up in a village next to a mage House, Crescent House.”

I nodded. “Where your wife came from.”

“Yes.” His smile had a bittersweet quality. “And there she was.”

“Helene?”

“Tara. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. I thought she was a boy at first, for she was dressed in men’s clothing. She and her cousin and brother had been out hunting. They had come across remnants of the fighting and run back to warn the village with this mangy dog she kept for years and years—”

“She kept a dog?”

His gaze flashed up. I couldn’t be sure if my outburst had surprised him or if he was gauging the import of my expression before he went on. “As it happened, the village was a client village to Crescent House. The elders insisted I pay my respects to the mansa at Crescent House and explain how I and my troops had come into their territory. Tara accompanied us to give a report on what she had seen. Daniel came, because you could never stop him from doing what he wanted. There we met Helene.”

He poured himself another glass of sack, but I refused a third. The lamp cast gold and shadow over the table. And I thought to myself that maybe, just maybe, General Camjiata was a little lonely, a man who had lost the people he loved best.

He did not drink. He looked at me instead, his elbows braced on the table, his chin resting on his interlaced fingers. “You look so much like Tara.”

I toyed with the glass, turning it around just for something to do. He leaned a little closer.

“Catherine Bell Barahal.” A smile like regret wrinkled the corners of his eyes. “You should have been my daughter.”

I inhaled sharply. There was no reply to that!

He added, “Had she married me instead of Daniel, you could have been my heir. We might still manage it.”

“Your heir?”

“Like the didos of old, the queens of old Qart Hadast. Like Queen Anacaona. Is it so strange a thought? While it is true in these days most people in Europa would scoff at the thought of a woman ruling, that is purely due to local prejudice and current custom. You look surprised, Cat. You can’t believe a woman cannot rule just as well as a man. You met the cacica. You were raised in a Kena’ani household.”

“To rule as emperor is the wrong thing to wish for. We must work for Assemblies like the one in Expedition.”

He chuckled. “Do you believe you can demand Assemblies in every city in Europa and have them established overnight?”

“No, of course one battle will not win the war.” He had trapped me.

“It will take years, decades, more likely generations. Yet all might be accomplished swiftly if a single man could set it in place.”

“And then what? Retire gracefully, leaving the happy subjects to rule themselves?”

He sipped at his glass.

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“You want to believe me.”

“I want to believe a lot of things! I want to believe my parents are alive and soon to be reunited with me. Is this what my mother feared? That you would claim me and pass me off as your own child? I won’t be your heir, and I’m not your daughter.”