“Have they been following us?” I asked. “We saw four wolves. Then four kingfishers.”
He set down the kettle on stone and covered the pot. “It is certainly possible they are the same souls in different clothing, hunting you.”
“Why do the creatures here attack my cousin?” I asked.
His blue eyes had the remote intensity of the winter sky, but his gaze did not seem unfriendly. “She is the servant of the enemy.”
“That’s no answer,” retorted Bee. “It doesn’t really explain anything.”
The lines at his eyes crinkled, although his lips did not smile. “It is an answer, but not the one you wish you had. What you do not understand is that I cannot speak as I might wish to speak, because I belong to the one who breathed life into me.”
“You belong to the gods?” Bee asked.
“I belong to the one who owns my breath.”
I nudged Bee. “The headmaster’s assistant said that, about goblins losing their breath.”
“You’ve seen a goblin!” The coachman’s lips parted in almost comical astonishment.
Bee looked at him, then at me, a question in the lift of her brows.
“What do you know about goblins?” I asked.
“The goblins are my makers. But it is my master who owns my breath.”
“Your makers!” Yet when I thought about the clockwork troll, and the lifelike statues waiting in ranks underground, I wondered if he might be not flesh and blood, even though he looked exactly like a man, but something far stranger.
“Cat, close your mouth.” Bee twisted the strap of the knit bag through her fingers as she addressed him. “The creatures here don’t like dragons because the tides of dragon dreams keep changing this world. They can smell dragons on me because I walk the dreams of dragons in the mortal world. That’s why they call me the servant of the enemy. But I’m not.”
“You cannot escape what you are,” he said.
“What are you?” Bee demanded.
“I am a coachman.”
“You work as a coachman. Surely that is not all you are,” she insisted.
“You may think this part of my body”—he touched his chest—“is the only part, because you are confined in a single body. But this is only one part of me. The horses and the coach are the rest of me. So when you take a knife or a sword to my person, naturally I will defend myself.”
As with one thought, Bee and I looked toward the coach and four horses steaming on the road, and then at each other with raised eyebrows, and then back at him.
“Tea?” He poured out four cups. One he took over to the pillar, where he emptied its steeped contents at the base. Returning to the fire, he handed a mug to Bee and one to me.
Bee found her voice. “Food and drink in the spirit world may pose a risk for us.”
He took the fourth. “This tea will offer no harm to either of you, and may do you some good.”
I cupped hands around the mug’s warmth. “You saved my life once. Can you promise me you will save my cousin’s life, if it comes to that?”
“It is not my intention to see her come to harm. But I cannot promise what I cannot be sure I can deliver. I will do what I can. That is what I promise.”
“Why would you alone of the creatures of the spirit world not wish me to come to harm?” asked Bee in a low voice.
“I was not created in the spirit world.” He sipped from his mug as he glanced toward the road. What hands had built that road? “But you may call it kindness, if you wish.”
I crossed to the pillar, spilled a few drops as an offering, and drank the rest. The brew tasted of drowsy summer afternoons adrift in a field of flowers. How tired I was! I lay down on the bench, and as soon as I pillowed my head on my hands, my eyes closed. Bee sighed, trying to say my name.
The world faded as the drugged tea took hold. We had been betrayed.