Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

“She was too proud.”

“You adored her pride until she refused your offer to make her your mistress.”

“Too much pride is deadly in a woman. Mine was as good an offer as she will ever get. Yet what can I have expected from a Phoenician woman! They prostitute themselves for their greedy goddess, to gain whatever material wealth and trade advantage they can.”

Perhaps his words angered me a trifle, enough that I let slip a thread or two.

“Did you see something?” Lord Marius stepped forward, hand on his sword, as I tugged the shadows tight. He relaxed. “You’re not the only one whose heart has been broken.”

“That can’t have been your heart. I know you found the magister attractive, but there can never have been any hope for you with him. He was fixed on the other girl. You didn’t actually proposition him, did you?”

Lord Marius appeared more amused than disappointed. “Nothing so crude. I let my interest be known.”

Amadou Barry snorted in a coarse way so unlike the staidly respectful student we had believed him to be at the academy that I had to guess I was seeing the legate’s true personality. While I had liked the modest, unassuming student named Amadou Barry, I did not like the Roman legate. “Proud Jupiter! The cold mage had the effrontery to turn down a prince’s cousin? Still, he is certainly one of the most arrogant men I’ve ever met. Did he take offense?”

“Not at all. He fixed me with those beautiful eyes, thanked me for the flattering offer, and told me he didn’t sleep on both sides of the bed.”

“Prettily done, you must grant.”

“Far too prettily done! As polite as if I were an aged uncle asking for another dram of whiskey when he’s already had one too many. Gave me nightmares for weeks!”

He paused as footsteps sounded in the corridor. The door was opened, and the older man with light hair and ruddy cheeks strode in.

“Cousin Marius! Your Excellency! Legate, to what do I owe this honor? I did not expect you, or I would have sent a deputy to shepherd the students to the Mars procession.”

Marius answered. “We have received news that two girls were seen in the city, two fugitives who were students here. They may come to the academy seeking Prince Napata.”

“But girls are no longer admitted as students. I made sure of that! It was never appropriate. I cannot interview two young women without a proper chaperone.”

“The girls left before Prince Napata resigned and you became headmaster. If they come, you must admit them to your study. Delay them with the promise that Prince Napata will return shortly.”

“But the exalted prince left Adurnam over a year ago!”

The head of the poet Bran Cof met my eye, and he glanced at the ceiling as if to share his cutting assessment of this headmaster’s sad lack of intellect.

“Yes,” agreed Marius patiently, “but they won’t know that. Make excuses, have tea brought, and send for us.”

“I’ll have tea brought now. You must explain your purpose more thoroughly, for I am sure that the prince never mentioned that he intended to return to Adurnam.”

I had heard enough, and dared not wait lest my sire discover Bran Cof was awake in the mortal world and talking to me. I escaped when the servants brought the tea service. With a rumble of boys milling outside the children’s classrooms and young men trampling around the lecture halls, I sneaked out through the side entry, past the latrines. The door leading up to the balcony of the main lecture hall, where we young women had been allowed to sit, was chained and locked.

Just inside the gates of Tanit’s temple, Rory met me with a nervous dip of his head, patting my arm and walking all the way around me. “I smelled the soldiers and the horses. Lord Marius is with them. I liked him, but we can’t trust him now, can we?”

“No, we can’t. I don’t think he’s a bad man, I just think he’s not on our side. Where is Bee?”

He led me to the withy gate that separated the women’s precincts from the rest of the temple compound. “She went in there, but they made me wait outside.”

I went in, leaving behind the open ground of the main sanctuary with its monumental stone pillars. The women’s precinct had its own garden. Bee’s voice floated over the evergreen foliage. A path wound through a maze of cypress and myrtle until I came to an altar set among fig trees, screened by a fence woven of sticks. Under a sheltering roof stood a statue of the goddess in her aspect as Queen of the Heavens. She was dressed in a simple robe in the Hellenic style, and her elaborate ringed coiffure was crowned by a crescent moon. Her arms extended to offer blessing, and serpent bracelets twined up her forearms. The altar was surrounded by urns that held the cremated remains of infants who had died in an untimely fashion, because grieving mothers would dedicate the urns to the temple as an offering after which they would pray for the goddess’s blessing and for healthy children to come.

I knelt before the image of the goddess and examined her serene stone face. As Queen of the Heavens she protected sailors and travelers, for so many of the Kena’ani people traveled long distances. As Mother of the Earth she offered comfort to women, and promised fertility to those who desperately desired a child. In Qart Hadast, Tanit was also the lion of war who fought for the city. It was strange to think that General Camjiata’s chosen name also meant “lion of war” even though it came from a union of the names of Sunjiata, the first Malian emperor, and fierce Camulos, a god of war among the Celtic people.

“Give me strength, Blessed One,” I murmured, “for you have already given me my heart, and for that I am grateful. Protect us, your travelers. Let us rescue those who need help. Let us find a place we can call home.”

Adurnam was no longer home. I wasn’t the girl who had run to the academy without her coat that day when everything I thought I knew had fallen apart. Hearing Bee’s distant laughter, I smiled, for having her gave me all the courage I needed. I pressed my right hand to my locket and my left to the cane as I shut my eyes. For a few breaths, or for hours, or for years, I heard only silence. Then, faint as a whisper, the pulse of Vai’s being brushed mine.

He was still alive.

When I opened my eyes the stone statue of Tanit stared at me with the head of a lion, in her aspect as the giver of fierceness and strength. The cat who never gives up.