Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (21 page)

Lord Marius and Legate Amadou Barry had come looking, just as Bee and I feared. They
did not see me, nor did they notice that Bran Cof’s eyes were tracking them, because
Amadou Barry walked straight to the tall windows so he could look out over the rose
garden, and his brother-in-law followed him without looking around.

“Whenever I enter these halls, I think of her,” Amadou Barry said on a heaving sigh
as he tapped the glass with the knuckles of one hand. “I know I saw her on the street,
Marius!”

Lord Marius laughed. “Be warned! Your balls will wither if you praise her cherry lips
and golden hair in my hearing.”

“She doesn’t have golden hair! It is as black as a crow’s wing. Her glorious hair
falls like a riot of curls down her back, for a riot is surely how the thought of
her affects my heart.”

The head of the poet Bran Cof rolled his eyes at this stilted speech in a way that
made me want to giggle. Fortunately both men were gazing outside and missed it.

“Bald Teutates! You haven’t a Celt’s gift of poetry, that is certain, Amadou. You
mistook another woman’s black curls.” Marius wandered over to the table. He picked
up several bottles in turn, clearly astounded that they were all empty. “You must
give up this unseemly obsession. Your wedding feast will be celebrated the day after
tomorrow. Notable men and their retinues have traveled for days to gorge themselves
at the table and toast your virility. You will do your duty, as I did mine when I
married your sister.”

“You can’t compare your marriage to mine! You and my sister are well matched in every
room except the bedroom. Whereas I am to marry a trembling mouse of a fifteen-year-old
who has no conversation, little education, and less personality.”

“Her nose twitches, too, have you noticed that? And she has a pointed, rattish chin.”

“Stop, Marius! Have pity on me!” the legate said with what I considered a sad lack
of generosity. He did not even defend the poor nameless girl from such an unfortunate
comparison.

Marius laughed in the hearty way he had, which, I reflected, could start to grate.
“You’ll be happier with a biddable wife.”

“I don’t agree.” Amadou paced. “My chief pleasure when I was pretending to be a student
here was my mathematics seminar. Beatrice sat on the women’s side of the room, answering
questions with a bold intellect worthy of a man. I could never concentrate. It’s just
as well your cousin ended the practice of allowing girls to attend the academy when
he became headmaster last year. It was too distracting.”

Marius examined the skulls and, to my horror, fetched up beside the
pedestal. Bran Cof stared at the far wall. Neither of the men seemed to notice the
flush of life in the poet’s cheeks or the steely glamour of his blue eyes. Their petty
self-absorption blinded them to the astonishing magic in the room. “I don’t think
you truly love her, Amadou. You’re just not accustomed to being turned down. That’s
what has put you in a pique.”

“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.

As I never would.

The path led on to the priestess’s quarters. Bee sat on the sleeping-house porch drinking
coffee with six humbly garbed priestesses ranging in age from a bent crone to a slight
girl seated in a rickety chair with a crutch at her side.

“The cacique is the ruler. The ruler is usually a man, but it may be a woman, like
the didos who once ruled in Qart Hadast. The cacique administers the kingdom. But
all the women of noble lineage and all the elders have the right to rebuke the cacique
if he acts in a way that hurts the kingdom. It is the council of women who approve
the choice of heir. And in Expedition, with the new Assembly, women will be allowed
both to vote and to serve as representatives, just like men. The trolls insisted on
that proviso, because they are citizens of Expedition also.”

The bent crone gave a skeptical snort. “I can’t imagine the prince of Tarrant, or
a Roman legate of patrician birth, or even that old bastard of a high priest in the
temple here, allowing a woman to stand over them and give them commands. How can it
be so elsewhere?”

“There were once queens in Qart Hadast, and there’s no reason there can’t be again,”
said Bee. When she realized I was standing there, she set down the steaming mug she
had cupped in her hands. “My dear cousin is come to hasten me on my way. My thanks
for the coffee, holy ones.”

“You didn’t tell us about the architecture,” said the chair-bound girl with a yearning
sigh.

She kissed them all around, and whispered something in the ear of the girl that made
the child blush with the pleasure of having been given a secret treasure to cherish
at her frail breast.

The bent crone escorted us to the withy gate.

I faced her. “Holy one, do you know where the headmaster went? Prince Napata?”

“Strange it is that I do. He came here the day he left and he mentioned in particular
that should two young Kena’ani women happen
by to ask for his direction, I should tell them he is gone to Treverni Noviomagus,
where the Rhenus River splits into two channels.”

Once we got outside the gate, Bee turned to me and frowned. “Our experiment did not
go so well, did it?”

“I did not find Prince Napata in his study on the Feast of Mars Camulos, that is for
certain. But if he left a message for us here, that means he wants us to track him
down. Perhaps that is what the dream meant, that we would discover where he had gone.”

Rory was waiting by the gate, his figure half concealed behind one of the entry pillars.
“I saw the other man lurking here, the one called Eurig who fed us.”

I chewed on my lower lip. “He must be spying, but for whom? Probably everyone now
knows we were at the law offices. Let’s see if we can recover our gear before we go.”

After making sure no soldiers or spies loitered in sight, we hastened down Academy
Hill under glowering clouds. The rain held off until we reached Falle Square. We left
Rory in the alley to stand guard. A wind swept in with waves of freezing sleet that
drove Bee and me through the back gate with more haste and less caution than we ought
to have used. I ran across the courtyard to kneel by the basement window, peering
into the dim kitchen to make sure there was no fire and that no skulking visitors
were awaiting us. The chamber was empty, just as we had left it. The driving sleet
stirred up fallen leaves as it drummed on the cobblestones. Shuddering, I raced back
to the carriage house.

Bee had already pried up the boards and opened the chest. “Help me!”

The double doors were cracked open just enough to give light to work. Sleet pattered
on the roof and wind rattled the shutters. We set the dash jackets aside, for they
would have to go on top, and split the tools and practical clothing into the three
packs.

“I had hoped the headmaster might help us get to Haranwy,” I said, shivering. “Don’t
you think it’s strange that he quit his post and left Adurnam right after we fell
down the well?”

Bee gave me an indignant look. “Of course it’s strange. Why bide in Adurnam for so
many years and suddenly leave? What do we do, Cat?
I can sell several of my gold bracelets for money for passage on a coach to Noviomagus.
It’s a long way. It will be so expensive.”

“It will take weeks of travel even if the weather improves. I don’t dare wait so long.
We don’t even know if the headmaster can help me. I have to go to Haranwy to ask Vai’s
brother for help. His people know how to hunt in the spirit world. Once we get to
Haranwy, you and Rory can go on to Noviomagus. Anyway, it’s better to go to Haranwy
first now that the mansa and the legate know we’re here. They’ll be watching the roads.
But we can walk by back lanes and footpaths, where it’s easier to hide. We’ll need
only food, for we can beg shelter in haymows and stables. I remember the route well
enough, past Cold Fort and through Lemanis…” I trailed off, remembering Cold Fort.