I turned my face into Camjiata’s shoulder. I wanted to forget the terrible moment when she had given me a precious kiss on the forehead and, with that offering, released me to a fate whose end she could not guess except that the mages would be furious when they discovered the truth.
I wanted to forgive them so I did not have to live with this weight on my heart.
But all I could do was weep.
When I closed my eyes, a vision of my grandfather’s malicious glare was chased by the light of flames as he spoke: Begone. Begone. Begone.
The door opened. I glanced up as Camjiata shook his head. Aunt and Uncle left the room. Aunt Tilly’s face was streaked with tears. Rory stood in the attic looking ruffled and annoyed; behind him hovered a pair of young fire mages bouncing on their toes, as if they expected a fight.
“Why don’t you kill them?” Drake asked, and in the wrinkling of his brow and the softening of his tone I read pity. “It would be fair recompense for what they did to you.”
“Do you believe killing them will ease the pain or change anything,” I cried, “except to orphan the children who depend on them?”
“You’re so naïve, Cat. That they know the one they cast out has returned to destroy them will make the triumph all the more sweet.” He glanced at the general.
“In due time, James,” said Camjiata, “in due time, we will march to your old home. But not today.”
“I have been patient.”
“So you have,” agreed the general so sincerely that I believed the general believed it.
Drake dusted his fingers together, tugging on the gloves that always concealed his hands, then turned and walked out. The general closed the door.
“This is where I sleep. You can rest here.”
He set me on a bed, and I lay down because I hadn’t the strength to stand.
Rory sat beside me and began rubbing my hands. A sort of blindness and deafness smothered me. I was a wounded animal panting in the shadows, too weak to lick my injuries.
Camjiata’s voice rumbled softly. Rory replied. They conversed in a friendly manner as Rory’s thumbs stroked back and forth along my palms until the tension eased from my hands. I surrendered to the waters of sleep, for it was better to drown than to suffer with the bloody scar that had been reopened.
Hungry wolves fed at my entrails. I ran from the Wild Hunt, but it was gaining, gaining, and my sire caught me in his icy claws. My severed head rolled down stone steps, bumping like a rubber ball used in batey. It tumbled off a cliff and plummeted into the Great Smoke. Leviathan purred.
Purred?
I woke in a dark chamber. Rory was stretched out beside me, snoring in that snuffling way he had. We were both still fully clothed. My sword, basket, and satchel rested at the foot of the bed. At the table Camjiata sat reading through a stack of dispatches by the light of an oil lamp. The light shed gold on his face, but his eyes were pools of darkness.
I sat up.
Without looking up from his reading, he spoke in a low voice so as not to disturb Rory. “There is ale and bread on the side table. A basin, if you want to wash.”
I slid off the bed. Rory did not stir, but something in his changed breathing made me think he had woken, as wild animals do at the least movement, but was pretending to be asleep to give us privacy. At the side table I washed my face in the basin, then sat opposite the general.
“Don’t you sleep?” I asked.
“Cursed little. I concentrate best on dispatches at night, when no one disturbs me. A nap or two during the day suffices. How fare you, Cat?”
“Did you expect me to embrace them?”
“I thought it best to get the meeting out of the way. I can’t say I expected your anger. Beatrice did not confide the full particulars to me.”
“So you found a way to discover the full particulars by surprising me with the meeting.”
He looked up with a wry smile. “Is that what you think of me, Cat?”
I could not fathom how I could like him, yet I did. “You want me to kill Drake. But how can I trust you? You betrayed me.”
He glanced toward the door and nudged my foot under the table to signal me that people waited outside. “I did not betray you. You walked into Taino country of your own free will.”