“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!”
Bee’s expression was as blank as uncut stone, a smooth face that might conceal any object or emotion beneath if only a carver knew how to release what lay hidden within. “You really don’t understand, do you? That’s why they’re buying the house. To keep me here, in a familiar, comfortable cage. Don’t you see it? By sacrificing Cat, you didn’t save me. All you did was sacrifice everything she thought you and Mama meant to her.”
“I’ve asked for her forgiveness. Cat, do you forgive me?”
I searched for a voice and found one, although I was not sure I recognized it as mine. “Did she ever tell you who sired me?”
He shook his head with a grimace. “She never told anyone anything. To think of all that valuable information she must have had, for she knew Camjiata well, you know. And yet she refused to tell us anything, even though we could have sold that information and made our lives a cursed sight easier. Still.” He broached the words as if they were painful. “I suppose she felt loyalty of a sort, even to a commander she had deserted. There’s something commendable in that.”
I could not bear to look at him. Instead, I spoke to the wall. “I know you did what you thought you had to do. I know you did it out of concern for Bee, and you may even regret the pain it has caused me. But my parents would not have drowned if you hadn’t driven them away. I’m not ready to forgive that yet.”
“How like Daniel you are,” he muttered. “So intransigent.”
“Is she like Uncle Daniel, or not like him, then?” Bee’s gaze had a regal scorn that surprised even me. She looked so calm and spoke so evenly that it was difficult to see how furious she actually was. “You cannot have it both ways. You betrayed not just Cat, not just your brother and my aunt Tara, but also me. You betrayed the Barahal daughters, all of us, and sons, too, the ones you never had. You betrayed the honor of our house. You acted just as the Romans always claimed we Kena’ani did. I’m ashamed.”
“We were forced into a corner. We only did what we thought we had to do. What else would you have had me do, Beatrice?”