Cold Steel

I had heard enough, and dared not wait lest my sire discover Bran Cof was awake in the mortal world and talking to me. I escaped when the servants brought the tea service. With a rumble of boys milling outside the children’s classrooms and young men trampling around the lecture halls, I sneaked out through the side entry, past the latrines. The door leading up to the balcony of the main lecture hall, where we young women had been allowed to sit, was chained and locked.

Just inside the gates of Tanit’s temple, Rory met me with a nervous dip of his head, patting my arm and walking all the way around me. “I smelled the soldiers and the horses. Lord Marius is with them. I liked him, but we can’t trust him now, can we?”

“No, we can’t. I don’t think he’s a bad man, I just think he’s not on our side. Where is Bee?”

He led me to the withy gate that separated the women’s precincts from the rest of the temple compound. “She went in there, but they made me wait outside.”

I went in, leaving behind the open ground of the main sanctuary with its monumental stone pillars. The women’s precinct had its own garden. Bee’s voice floated over the evergreen foliage. A path wound through a maze of cypress and myrtle until I came to an altar set among fig trees, screened by a fence woven of sticks. Under a sheltering roof stood a statue of the goddess in her aspect as Queen of the Heavens. She was dressed in a simple robe in the Hellenic style, and her elaborate ringed coiffure was crowned by a crescent moon. Her arms extended to offer blessing, and serpent bracelets twined up her forearms. The altar was surrounded by urns that held the cremated remains of infants who had died in an untimely fashion, because grieving mothers would dedicate the urns to the temple as an offering after which they would pray for the goddess’s blessing and for healthy children to come.

I knelt before the image of the goddess and examined her serene stone face. As Queen of the Heavens she protected sailors and travelers, for so many of the Kena’ani people traveled long distances. As Mother of the Earth she offered comfort to women, and promised fertility to those who desperately desired a child. In Qart Hadast, Tanit was also the lion of war who fought for the city. It was strange to think that General Camjiata’s chosen name also meant “lion of war” even though it came from a union of the names of Sunjiata, the first Malian emperor, and fierce Camulos, a god of war among the Celtic people.

“Give me strength, Blessed One,” I murmured, “for you have already given me my heart, and for that I am grateful. Protect us, your travelers. Let us rescue those who need help. Let us find a place we can call home.”

Adurnam was no longer home. I wasn’t the girl who had run to the academy without her coat that day when everything I thought I knew had fallen apart. Hearing Bee’s distant laughter, I smiled, for having her gave me all the courage I needed. I pressed my right hand to my locket and my left to the cane as I shut my eyes. For a few breaths, or for hours, or for years, I heard only silence. Then, faint as a whisper, the pulse of Vai’s being brushed mine.

He was still alive.

When I opened my eyes the stone statue of Tanit stared at me with the head of a lion, in her aspect as the giver of fierceness and strength. The cat who never gives up.

As I never would.

The path led on to the priestess’s quarters. Bee sat on the sleeping-house porch drinking coffee with six humbly garbed priestesses ranging in age from a bent crone to a slight girl seated in a rickety chair with a crutch at her side.

“The cacique is the ruler. The ruler is usually a man, but it may be a woman, like the didos who once ruled in Qart Hadast. The cacique administers the kingdom. But all the women of noble lineage and all the elders have the right to rebuke the cacique if he acts in a way that hurts the kingdom. It is the council of women who approve the choice of heir. And in Expedition, with the new Assembly, women will be allowed both to vote and to serve as representatives, just like men. The trolls insisted on that proviso, because they are citizens of Expedition also.”

The bent crone gave a skeptical snort. “I can’t imagine the prince of Tarrant, or a Roman legate of patrician birth, or even that old bastard of a high priest in the temple here, allowing a woman to stand over them and give them commands. How can it be so elsewhere?”

“There were once queens in Qart Hadast, and there’s no reason there can’t be again,” said Bee. When she realized I was standing there, she set down the steaming mug she had cupped in her hands. “My dear cousin is come to hasten me on my way. My thanks for the coffee, holy ones.”