Cold Magic (Spiritwalker 1)

Then he smoothed it over with the ease of practice. “Yes, it’s true, but it was thirteen years ago. I was barely fourteen. My three sisters and I, and our mother’s sister, were the only ones to escape that terrible day. We endured a long voyage, with a Phoenician shipmaster and crew, I should note, fine sailors all, and came to family in the north. Poor shy Fadia was shipped off to marry this beast here”—Marius laughed as at an old family joke—“leaving me and the little girls with our father’s people.”

“My apologies. I spoke as the alligator bites.” I spoke because of my own grief and fear, I thought, but I did not say that aloud.

He smiled in a conciliating way that irritated me.

“But if you were not a student at the academy, then why were you there?” I snapped.

“If I had some other motive for being there, you will excuse me, maestressa, for not divulging that motive to you now, as it has nothing to do with our present situation. Let me just tell you that your cousin Beatrice told me you were in danger and that you would come riding up to the temple of Taranis Jupiter, Maa Ngala”—Lord of All—“on the fifteenth of December.”

“How could she possibly know? I’ve not been in communication with her!”

“Have you not? She seemed so very sure that I assumed you had sent her a message. When she described the temple, I recognized it as Cold Fort. Thus we are here.” He drank his wine, and one of the priests hurried over to fill his cup. “Do you mean to say you sent her no message?”

He had the look of a man trained to coax out secrets by the expert application of casual questions.

“Where is she?” I asked to deflect him. This might be another trap. I could not believe Aunt and Uncle had been so foolish as to remain in Adurnam, knowing Four Moons House would discover the deception. They had even tried to convince Andevai to come back the next day; Andevai had himself recognized that they hoped to run away with me. And if they wanted to run away with me, then surely they regretted what they had been forced to do.

The sun sank toward the horizon, smearing a rosy glamor across the western sky. The troopers were setting up tents. Nearby, in a kitchen building whose shutters were all open to admit light, priests prepared a meal with the help of a few of the soldiers. Meat sizzled. How Rory would have loved that smell! I wiped a tear from my eye.

“You are aware,” Amadou Barry said in the gentlest tone imaginable, “that your uncle—your entire clan—has been engaged for years as spies.”

“Where are my aunt and uncle?” I asked, hearing how choked my voice sounded. Yet I was not about to reveal the whole of what I now knew. I had to hold something in reserve, should I need to bargain.

“They left Adurnam on the day after you were sent off with Four Moons House.”

“Then how came Bee to speak to you?”

Lord Marius laughed again. I was beginning to find his laughter annoying, because it was obvious he was a man who had never suffered defeat or penury or even disappointment in love. The cousin of the Prince of Tarrant must be accustomed to having the world at his feet and Fortuna as his lover. If he had married Amadou’s older sister, he was also wealthy even beyond what portion he had received within his own clan.

“She did not leave Adurnam with her parents and sisters and household. She stayed behind.” Maester Amadou was a very handsome young man when he lowered his eyes to give the impression of innocent embarrassment, but really, he was too pretty. It was that prettiness that disguised his years, that made impressionable young women—and others, too, I am sure—underestimate him, assume him to be something other than what he was. And I did not even know what he was; all my expectations were exploded.

For then he added, his color changing, “When I discovered her situation, I offered her my protection.”

My gaze sharpened. Maybe my claws came out. “What does that mean? Surely not—”

He would not look at me. “I would not trifle with her. As for the other, it is impossible.”

“He means,” interposed Marius, “that his aunt offered the girl shelter. So that’s where you will find her, biding securely and unmolested in his aunt’s house in Adurnam. As for the other, a man may be smitten, darling, but may otherwise be obliged to marry according to his family’s needs and wishes.”

“You need not tell me that! I have become intimately acquainted with the chains of obligation.”

“Yet you fled your husband and the mage House.”

“The mansa ordered me killed!”

Marius whistled appreciatively. “I couldn’t have made auguries on that!”

Even Amadou looked surprised.

I felt I owed them an explanation in exchange for saving my life. It’s never wise to leave debts unpaid. “Four Moons House wanted Beatrice, not me. My aunt and uncle gave me to the magisters instead, and afterward when the mansa discovered he had been…”

“Cheated?” asked Marius with a hopeful chuckle. “Defrauded?”

“Given the wrong female,” I finished with such a cutting glare that even the bluff military man barked out a surprised laugh and made a conciliatory gesture. “He was angry.”

“Killing you seems an unexpectedly harsh response,” murmured Marius, smoothing the red-gold splendor of his mustache with finger and thumb.

“He was very angry,” I said dully.