“Andevai, you are a cold mage of rare and unexpected potency, as you told me often enough. I do understand why you feel you need to return to Four Moons House. You’ve opened the mansa’s eyes to your worth. But I would never be content or welcome there. Nor do we know each other, or owe each other anything except what was forced on us. So why be burdened with me? You didn’t try to kill me. You changed your mind. You did what was right.”
The moment stretched into a while. Cold fire gleamed softly over the threshold of a house no longer spelled to keep out intruders, because the Hassi Barahals had abandoned it. As they had abandoned me. Then he shook his head as if shaking off an irritation.
“To have done what was right must be enough.” His tone was formal, even harsh. “Peace upon you, Catherine, and in all your undertakings.”
“Peace upon you and in all your undertakings,” I echoed stupidly.
He went to the door, and I grasped the railing and retreated two steps up the stairs toward the first-floor landing. Then I turned back.
“Andevai.”
He had the door open already, but he halted at once and turned. To kiss a man, and enjoy it, is not to love him. I did not love him. How could I? I barely knew him. But I was stunned by what I saw in his face: hope; shame; that thrice-cursed pride that, after all, was part of what drew the eye to him; hurt; humility; even, maybe, a measure of peace—a very human and appealing mix of emotions. It was as if I were seeing him for the first time.
“There is one thing that still puzzles me,” I said, but the thought of going on was overwhelming, and I hesitated.
“Do not think that after all this, I am afraid to hear anything you may be afraid to say,” he said, a bit irritably.
I lifted my chin. “All right, then. You are always very precise when it comes to magic. So I’ve observed. And you really, really don’t like to get things wrong. So when you saw there were two young women, that day you came to this house, why did you not even ask about my cousin?”
His crooked smile made my heart turn over. “All right, then. I’ll tell you.” He paused, as if gathering courage, before he forged on. “When I saw you coming down the stairs that evening, it was as if I were seeing the other half of my soul descending to greet me.”
I stared at him, but he was perfectly serious. The words set off an avalanche in my head: memories, flashes of things he had done and not done, said and not said.
“No going back from that, is there?” he added, as if to himself. Somehow he had relaxed, because a certain calm permeated him, like the calm that comes over the sailor when she has cast off from shore and the tide is bearing her out come what may. “So if you tell me now, Catherine, right now, that you never again wish to see me in any capacity, under any circumstances, I will never approach you again.”
Unfortunately, I could not speak. I simply could not say one word. Any word.
“Ah,” he said softly, which was not really a word but a reaction. And the cursed magister smiled coolly in a way I would have told him was very irritating indeed, if I could have talked. “I’ll have to come back, then, when you’ve recovered enough to tell me what you really think.”
He turned and walked out, taking the light with him, and my voice, and all my capacity for thought or movement.
From the shadows of the first-floor landing above me, Bee said, “Blessed Tanit! Spirits cleaved from one whole into two halves! The cold mage has taken a fancy to you, Cat, although I can’t imagine why the way you kept at him with your claws. Still, he struck quite a romantical pose, don’t you think?” I could see in the dusky dimness as, above me, she clasped hands to her heart in the manner of an actress striking a pose in one of the festival tableaux. “Commanded to kill her, he pursued her. Pursuing her, he fell in love with her! Or should that be, falling in love with her, he then pursued her? Yet he defied the heavens and his master to win her. And then, being heartless, she rejected him.”
I no longer found the air cold at all. Indeed, the unheated entryway with the door standing wide open seemed quite steamy. “Have I ever mentioned how tiresome you are?”
“More than once!”
But this time it really was too much. I really was not joking. I walked out of the house, halting on the stoop to watch half of the company ride away, Andevai among them. He glanced back once. That was all. I could watch the course of his progress by the way the gaslights faded and flared.
When his party left Falle Square, there were still soldiers waiting at the house, but I ignored them. I crossed the street, my feet crunching in a dusting of snow. I opened the gate into the park and walked to the stone stele, the votive with her full lips, broad nose, and braided hair. I knelt, although the ground beneath my knees leeched all warmth from me. I raised a hand to touch the sigil the guardian held in her carved right hand: the sigil of Tanit, protector of women. I had nothing to offer except my thanks for our deliverance, but on this night, that was enough.
33
“Cat!”
Uncle’s voice made me stiffen. Without looking at him, I climbed to my feet and took in an unsteady breath as I found that sudden rage blinds more easily than darkness.
“Catherine,” he said, his voice breaking on my name, “I beg you, forgive us.”
I said nothing. I heard Bee’s silence beside him.
“Or if you cannot forgive us, then at least allow me to tell you what happened thirteen years ago. Let me tell you what we felt was best kept secret for all these years.”
I was not sure what I would have done if it had not been so dreadfully cold, if it had not been the dead of night on the longest night of the year, and if I had not been so very, very hungry and thirsty, and filthy on top of all else. If I had not just kissed a man who had told me I was the other half of his soul. But winter, and kinship, binds chains on you. It is not so easy to turn your back on everything you once thought you knew.
He said, “I have his final journal. The one we kept hidden from you.”
Such simple words, to hurt so much. I covered my face with my hands.