Bee glanced toward the compound gate. “I can negotiate with the citizens’ council…”
A full-length mirror hung opposite the main doors in the entry hall.
“I have a better idea,” I said. “But first, may we change out of these clothes and wash and eat something? Before we depart?”
Though in mourning, the residents of Two Gourds House treated us with every courtesy and were expeditious in bringing wash water and food. I did not inform them that I was the person who had killed their master. I didn’t want Bee to know. I almost wept when a steward brought me the spruce-green skirt and resewn cuirassier’s jacket, cleaned and ironed. I demanded provisions be brought. Back in the entrance hall the mansa and his attendants and soldiers had gotten into their riding clothes and uniforms, for they believed we would be traveling on horseback.
“If you will, Mansa, can you give me a tiny bit of cold magic?”
He raised an eyebrow interrogatively, but he obeyed with alacrity, plucking a spark of cold fire out of the air. My sword woke; I drew the blade into daylight. Folk did gasp and murmur, but the mansa frowned as he glanced toward the mirror and then back at me.
“Can you walk after him through the spirit world? Surely not, Catherine. You might vanish for weeks or months…” He trailed off.
In a silence weighted by every gaze following me, I approached the mirror. With so many cold mages in the entry hall, magic rippled in its depths. Rory’s reflection shifted back and forth from cat to man. Bee stared fixedly, her dreaming eye alight on her forehead. As for me, my own reflection glared back at me. Was this the face Andevai had seen and fallen in love with the day I had walked down the stairs and he up them to where we had first met on the landing? Hard to imagine! I looked as if I meant to bite someone.
I would find him! And I would make James Drake pay!
I nicked my skin to draw blood, its smear bright on the blade. I thrust my sword into the mirror, up to the hilt. The cold steel cut a gateway between the mortal world and the spirit world. I parted the lips of the gate as I might part a curtain. A murky night hid the spirit world from my eyes. But I still had my voice.
“Let those who are bound to me as kin come to my aid!”
An icy wind kissed my nose. Like distant thunder my sire’s voice laughed mockingly. A bee sting flamed as an ember on my hand, then faded. Wet noses prodded my arm and a rough tongue licked my face as the breath of cats warmed me. The creatures of the spirit world could not cross into the mortal world except on Hallows’ Night… or in my wake, as Rory had.
“May blessings bring quiet sleep and plump deer to you and yours, Aunt,” I said politely, “and let me assure you that your son is well and behaving himself as much as he can. But I seek my cousin eru and the one she travels with. If they will cross with me.”
An eerie arc of day broke over the land. In its wake rolled a coach and four. The coachman drove right for my outstretched arm, and I grabbed at the harness and flung myself backward to draw them with me.
The coach rolled into the entry hall as people shouted and scattered. It kept on through the open front doors and glided a hand’s span above the steps before settling to earth on the graveled forecourt. The horses stamped, a mist steaming off their pearlescent skin. The coachman tipped his hat to me. His blue eyes tightened with a smile that did not touch his lips. The footman jumped as lightly down from the back as if she had hidden wings. She flipped down the stairs and opened the door.
“What is your wish, Cousin?” the eru asked. In the eyes of everyone else she appeared as a man. Perhaps I just found her more comfortable to talk to as a woman.
“If you will convey us, I would be glad of it. Bee, Rory, get in.”
The eru swung the bags of provisions up onto the roof.
“What means this, that those who served us now serve you?” The mansa looked ready to ignite.
“They do not serve me, nor did they ever serve you,” I retorted. “But if you wish, Mansa, you can come with us. We could use a powerful cold mage.”
“So it has come to this,” he muttered. “I am being led by two girls.”
His irritation brought a smile to my lips for the first time in days. I made an elegant courtesy. “Yet you must admit, Mansa, that my dearest cousin Bee and I are two exceedingly fine young women, with quite unexpected depths.”
Only a man of his stature and birth could manage an expression that so purely combined a censorious frown shaded by a wrinkle of amusement at his eyes, for as much as he disapproved of my bold way of speaking, it was equally obvious a part of him found it appealing.
“That is one way to describe it, Catherine. We have not the leisure for me to explain the other. My predecessor could not have imagined that the bargain Four Moons House forced onto the Hassi Barahal clan sixteen years ago would lead to this peculiar end.”
But he wanted Vai back as much as I did, so he dismissed his djeli and gave orders to his nephew to follow with the surviving Four Moons soldiers and mages as soon as they could get horses. Then he got in.
The door was shut. The squinty gremlin eyes of the latch stared at me in what I thought might be surprise to find me back again. The coach jostled as the footman swung up onto the riding board in back. On the whip’s snap we rolled, on our way at last.
44
Drake’s trail led north in fire and ashes.
The first staging post lay in smoking ruins. Locals poking cautiously through the remains of a cottage, kitchen-house, and stable yard told us of fire and confusion none of them had been close enough to observe. The staging-post attendants were missing and the horses had all been stolen.
“A clever move on his part,” remarked the mansa as he paced the scorched grounds of a third staging post, later that afternoon. “All the local militias are in disarray from the campaign. Had we not this magical conveyance, his actions would have slowed down our pursuit so greatly there would have been no chance we could catch him.”
Seeing my distress, Bee ushered us back into the coach. As we headed into the gathering dusk, she talked to fill the silence. “Can the blacksmiths’ guild not be recruited to help us?”
“What can they do?” he retorted. “They have devised their own means to control and channel the destructive chain of fire magic, but they cannot combat this. I am come to appreciate General Camjiata’s devious mind. He raises a fire mage who can win his battles and discards him when he becomes too powerful, yet does so at no risk to himself. From what you’ve explained, Catherine, it seems to me the general pushed the man into embracing the worst of his anger without the man realizing he had been manipulated.”
“Yes, it does seem that way.”
I stared out the window at a rabbit racing across a meadow in fright for its life. A hawk stooped. With a gasp, I leaned to watch. In a flash of feathers the hawk thumped. Then we rocked around a corner and I never saw whether the hawk had caught its prey or the rabbit had escaped.
“Of course you would recognize such a stratagem, since you possess the same sort of devious mind,” said Bee. “For example, now we are thrown together as kinsfolk, allow me to commend you on your strikingly cunning ploy to elevate Andevai as your heir and thus bind him more tightly to the mage House. Considering everything I was told you said about him before, I would never have guessed you would do that.”
He brushed a finger along the unscarred side of his chin as if deciding whether to dignify her barbed teasing with a reply. “It was no ploy. The young man is the most rare and potent cold mage of his generation in Four Moons House and possibly in all of Europa, although I must request you never repeat to him that I said so.”