Cold Steel

38

He was gone when I woke in the morning.

I hurriedly dressed and ran down to the courtyard to discover him in his rumpled clothes facing off with Bee across a table. A pot of coffee and her open sketchbook sat between them.

“Broken cups are little enough to go on,” Bee was saying to him, tapping the sketch on the open page. It depicted a porcelain coffeepot and cups shattered into pieces around a tipped-over chair. Fortunately it was not the pot on our table.

I slipped onto the bench beside him, not sure of their mood because his eyebrows were raised and she wore a broody frown. His look acknowledging my arrival shared our night all over again. I smiled in answer.

Bee muttered under her breath, “Blessed Tanit, spare me,” then, in a normal voice, “Do you really know what this is, Andevai?”

He looked at the sketch as his eyes narrowed. “I know exactly what it is. This is Gold Cup House at Lemovis. The Coalition army was retreating north out of Burdigala after we suffered a crushing defeat there. The Iberians were right behind us. The Coalition halted at Lemovis. The mage House called Gold Cup House lies at the edge of the town, on the river. The mansa and I went to them to warn them they should evacuate, because the mage House in Burdigala was burned to the ground during the battle, almost certainly by Drake. Even to that point, the mansa wasn’t quite sure he believed me about fire magic. It’s impossible to make people here in Europa understand, for all such magic has always been strictly contained and controlled by the blacksmiths.”

“But wouldn’t they notice when people died as catch-fires? When the mage House in Burdigala burned?” she asked.

“How do you distinguish a fire lit by a mage from one lit by tinder? In war, it is hard to believe in the deaths of catch-fires when dead people are everywhere. The mansa and I were having coffee with Gold Cup’s mansa when Iberian skirmishers arrived in advance of Camjiata’s main army. Drake specifically meant to strike at the mage House. He did not know the mansa and I were there. He threw his fire into Gold Cup’s mansa, who was entirely unprepared to act as a catch-fire, and meanwhile set the whole cursed compound on fire. Children and elders trapped inside as if they were so much refuse!”

He looked away. Bee extended a hand to touch his arm, but she withdrew it and pressed her palm to her chest instead.

He shook himself. “That was when I discovered that to be a catch-fire is not just a passive thing, when the fire mage throws the backlash into you and you must endure it. In desperation, hoping to save the Gold Cup mansa’s life, I found out it is possible to pull the backlash out of another person and into myself. Any cold mage can do it if they are strong enough. It was too late for the mansa of Gold Cup House, but working together the mansa and I were able to quench the fire. I am certain I almost got that cursed fire mage to burn himself up. Lord Marius had time to deploy his army on the best ground. It was a bloody battle, but against Camjiata, they say a draw is as good as a victory. Anyway, all that expensive porcelain shattered in just this arrangement when the old mansa toppled over. I remember it exactly.”

“That’s when the mansa named you heir, isn’t it?” I said softly.

“Yes. That’s when he finally believed me.” He let out a breath. “Beatrice, I recognize the trust you have shown by sharing these sketches with me. I thank you.”

“Most never mean anything to me. Yet the general could always find their meaning.”

I shrugged. “So he claims. He could easily have guessed I would try to escape on a Phoenician vessel just as the tide turned that morning in Expedition. I suspect the sketches remind him of connections he then sews together. He doesn’t need dreams for that.”

“You’re the last person who should be such a skeptic, Cat.” She displayed a sketch of three hats: a half-crushed tricorn hat pinned by a badge in the shape of a lion’s head, a fashionable shako like mine that was ornamented with peacock feathers, and a humble cloth cap with a shard of glass caught in its crumpled folds. “What can anyone possibly make of this?”

“The shako is what Camjiata’s Amazons wear,” said Vai. Under the table he hooked his foot around my ankle. “I thought the style would look well on Catherine. The lion’s-head badge is the token of the Numantian League of Iberia, where Camjiata was born. The other is a farmer’s cap.”

“Yes, but what does it mean? Besides something to do with the war?” Bee refilled his cup and poured one for me. “Cat, dearest, do stand up and let me see those clothes. This isn’t what you were wearing yesterday.”

When I rose she examined my split skirt, jacket, and jaunty hat as Vai’s somber expression lightened at her exclamation of delight.

“What a splendid outfit! I adore the shako, although I could never wear it. Goodness, Andevai, I shall have to ignore all your roostering about in the hope you will take me to a dressmaker and get me an entire new wardrobe, too. We are sister and brother now, are we not?”

He smiled. She smiled. A spark of connection flashed between them.

A server brought a bowl of porridge and a platter of bread as well as another pot of coffee. Rory plopped down, stifling a yawn, and waited for Bee to pour him coffee.

“Where are the others?” I asked as I dug into the porridge.

Bee said, “They have all left already for a meeting with the underground council of radical leaders. I’ll follow after I have said goodbye to you, dearest.”

Vai touched my hand. “We must go, love. I promised Lord Marius I would bring you to pour the wine at his midday dinner today.”

“Did you?” demanded Bee. “Were all those fine speeches false coin, Andevai, just to make sure she would go back with you like a trophy on a rope?”

He met her gaze with a flicker of annoyance. “No. And you know they weren’t, don’t you? Maybe you just don’t like that she is the center of people’s attention for once, instead of you.”

Rory looked up from his porridge. “I promise you, Cat, I will bite their heads off if they do not behave, for it is a sunny day today and I am in too good a mood to have it ruined by their jealous posturing.”

I laughed and, after a fraught pause, fortunately Bee and Vai did as well.

It was harder than I’d thought to leave Bee. Vai and Rory waited at the gate with the saddled horse and our gear.

“I wish I could come with you, dearest, as Rory can,” she said.

“Camjiata will never let you go if he gets hold of you again, nor will the mansa. I do believe Kehinde and Brennan would let you walk away if you choose to do so.”

“That is why I trust them.” She bent a frown on me. “You must not let Vai bully you.”

“He does not bully me.”

“No, it’s true, he doesn’t. He fondles you with those sultry eyes. You’re quite hopeless, Cat.”

I took her hands. “Yes, but you do like him, don’t you, Bee?”

“Gracious Melqart! What would you do if I said I did not?”

A quiver of fear made me cold, as if winter had kissed me.

“Oh, dearest!” She embraced me. “For your sake, I already love him. I suppose when we have a pleasant home with a hypocaust wing, I shall endure him well enough, and you and I shall have a private parlor with a stove where he is not allowed to enter.” She laughed. “Cat! Your expression is quite confounded. He and I understand each other. The important thing is that he knows he has to maintain my good opinion, as he showed this morning. I respect his intellect and his rare and potent magic, which he has worked very hard to achieve. I do think he is a good man, and in ten years he may be bearable and in twenty he may even be likable.”

“I suppose I deserved that for asking!” I said.

We both laughed, and I left her.

Rory, Vai, and I passed through Arras Gate, Vai leading the horse, and made our way down the boulevard toward the Lady’s Island and the river.

“Nothing like family to keep you on your toes,” remarked Rory.

Vai smiled in the irritating way he had when all his ill temper had dissolved as mist under the sun because he had gotten what he wanted. “Do you miss your family, Rory?”

“Me? Yes. But it wasn’t to last, you know. Mother was already starting to look around for another mate. When she chose one, he would have driven me out, and I have no brothers to go a-roaming with. It’s a lonely life to hunt alone. I like it here just fine. You’re my brother now, Vai.”

“So I am, Rory.” Vai slipped a hand into the crook of Rory’s elbow so they walked arm in arm. His easy, affectionate camaraderie with a man he trusted made me fall in love with him all over again.

They talked for a while of inconsequential things.

“You’re quiet, love,” Vai said at last, releasing Rory’s arm and pulling me over next to him.

“Andevai, do you like Bee?”

Rory snorted. “That is a question I would tremble to answer were I you! For myself, I find her annoying, managing, and bossy. But I’m accustomed to such behavior from females.”

Vai let go of my elbow and took my hand, just as if we were a courting couple in Expedition. “I love her like a sister. I realize her good opinion matters more to you than that of anyone else. She accepts that you love me. So she and I understand each other well enough. Why are you laughing, Catherine?”

I did not explain.

When we reached the forecourt of Two Gourds House, Vai was in a mood to throw his weight around. He demanded baths, food, horses, and a djeli to accompany us, as befitted his rank as heir. When I emerged refreshed, I discovered Rory in the entry hall lounging on a marble bench and surrounded by women. The highborn magisters who had scorned me in the women’s quarters turned to me with an effusive friendliness that amused me. Would we return to Two Gourds House soon? Would my brother be staying with me? Was he married?

Naturally we had to wait for Vai, who appeared at length in fresh clothes. He rode alongside the djeli to converse on arcane matters of genealogy. Rory and I rode behind, with two grooms, two attendants, and two troopers.

“I must say, those women looked very bored,” said Rory.

“I suppose they are. That’s probably why they were so sour and unfriendly to me.”

“I’ll bet they would be up for some friskiness. You could let me loose there for a month and everyone would be much the happier for it.”

I laughed. “I promise you, Rory, if we ever return there, I will certainly let you loose, just to enjoy the spectacle.”

On the southern side of the river, the fields and pastures that lay beyond the city wall were crowded with the encampments of the Coalition army. An entire market had sprung up to serve the soldiers. I was glad to pass quickly through the market’s sprawling, reeking, noisy clamor into the relative quiet of Lord Marius’s command tent. The djeli walked in front, announcing our arrival with a song lauding Four Moons House and the exceptional nobility and formidable power of its mansa and the skilled magic and excellent cooking of its women. After this preface the djeli changed his tune. Singing with the very same melody Lucia Kante had drawn out of her fiddle, he detailed a brisk version of the battle of Lemovis in which Andevai’s quick thinking and astonishing magic figured prominently.

Vai did not smile, but the man did develop a bit of a cocky swagger as we approached the waiting dignitaries. Not every man was announced with a song in his praise, although I wished the djeli did not insist on repeatedly referring to him in the Celtic way as “Andevai Hardd.”

“Andevai the Handsome!” I murmured. “I shall have my work cut out for me, keeping your monstrous self-regard from swelling any larger than the bloated whale it already is.”

He did not deign to look at me. “It’s only conceit if it isn’t true.”

“Here are you, Andevai Hardd,” said Lord Marius with a laugh, “just as you promised you would be. Apparently, I should not have doubted you, as some claimed I must.”

He glanced into the crowd of men. The mansa of Four Moons House was not there, but his surly nephew glared, his lips curled in a triumphant sneer as he awaited Vai’s downfall and humiliation. It was clear by the vulture-like expressions of the Roman legate and his tribunes that Vai had been the subject of discussion before we arrived.

We made our courtesies to the elders, the princes, the mansas, the Roman legate, and Lord Marius. Rory grazed down their ranks like a hungry saber-toothed cat through the succulent flanks of recently deceased cattle, being introduced, admiring their clothes and military adornments, making them laugh and putting them at their ease.

Vai addressed the company with a cool smile. “We had planned all along to give a demonstration of how weak the defenses are at Two Gourds House and how thoroughly unprepared even the most skilled djeliw can be for one such as my wife. I did not realize she meant to act so soon, for as you must imagine a spirit woman captured from the bush can at times be a trifle wild and ungovernable.”

The men chuckled, as Vai had meant them to. Their condescension was irritating, but it put them off the scent of his disgrace.

The mansa’s nephew pushed forward. “You may all be intrigued by his success in holding on to such a freakish creature, but when a man’s mother was born in a cart, he must be accustomed to living in the stable with the rest of the animals.”

“Like all honorable men, I show respect to the mother who bore and raised me,” said Vai with just the right touch of sternness. “As for your own envy, you’d have done better to apply yourself in the schoolroom instead of drinking, gambling, and whoring. Anyway, I don’t see that you could have managed to win and keep such a wife even had you the courage and ambition to attempt the hunt.”

“You were chosen to marry her only because the mansa did not want to waste a real man on a low marriage to a Phoenician girl who is merely a bastard with peculiar magic.”

“You simply are incapable of comprehending the mansa’s subtle mind.” Vai nodded at Rory.

To my astonishment Rory stripped right there in front of everyone with an alacrity that needed no dreams of dragons to predict. When he was stark naked—and never the least ashamed to be so!—he smiled charmingly around the company and then looked at Vai. Given another nod, he changed in a smear of darkness from man to cat.

Of course there was a gratifying outcry as Rory prowled the tent’s interior. He did look so lovely and magnificent, so sleek and powerful. The big cat padded up to the mansa’s nephew and butted him so hard in the belly that the man tumbled onto his ass. No one laughed; they were all too cursed nervous.

Then the big cat turned around and sprayed him.

The harsh smell overwhelmed everything except the sudden silence. When Lord Marius burst out laughing, the rest felt free to join in. The mansa’s nephew boiled up with knife drawn, full into the force of a roar that shook the air and made every man stop laughing and cower. All except Vai, who casually walked up to the cat and rested a hand on the beast’s shoulder.

I approached Lord Marius. “My lord, I am truly sorry about Amadou Barry. Please remember that Bee did try to save him. I come before you to offer my services as a scout and spy.”

He examined me, then nodded curtly. “You may pour the wine, Maestra Barahal.”

Thus was my status restored. They were so enamored of their rank and privilege that they could not imagine I would reject it.

The men settled to places at the table. The mansa’s nephew had to leave because he stank. Rory padded behind a screen and returned all dressed and smiling, to be offered a seat among the younger men, whom he quickly had eating out of his hand.

Lord Marius addressed the table. “Once the three legions out of Rome arrive, our Coalition will be too large a force for the general to defeat, whatever weaponry he carries in his arsenal. However, we suffer from a lack of reconnaissance. In the last months not a single scout has reported in.”

The Roman legate gestured with his empty cup. “You cannot believe a woman spy can succeed where men have failed?”

“What have we to lose by trying?” asked Lord Marius. “It was a shepherd’s wife who brought us news that Iberian skirmishers had been sighted near Cena.”

The legate shook his head. “Camjiata’s outriders can’t have reached Cena so quickly. Such an ignorant woman most likely mistook our own skirmishers for Iberians. Women are not fit for war. More wine, Maestra.”

As I poured, I smiled. “Do you think not, Your Excellency? I can easily sneak into the Iberian camp and out again without being seen.”

He saluted me with his full cup. “A pretty young woman like you must always be seen and admired. The Iberians have stymied every attempt by the Coalition and our own imperial troops to spy. I cannot recommend you dress as an Amazon to infiltrate their camp because everyone knows the general merely entertains his troops with that battalion of prostitutes. No chaste, modest woman like yourself would wish to be associated with such unnatural creatures.”

Vai tensed, surely preparing to defend my mother’s honor. I shook my head to warn him off replying, for I did not care one fig about the legate’s opinion.

To my surprise Lord Marius retorted in a sharp tone, “You would not speak so if you had seen the Amazons smash the gate at the siege of Burdigala. One man will certainly out-grapple one woman, but train a battalion of women with soldierly discipline and superior rifles, and you will find them hard to break. I will never again speak slightingly of the Amazon Corps, let me assure you.”

But just as I was feeling in charity with him, he turned to me, proffering a smile tinted with the prick of petty revenge. “I have a troop of skirmishers departing just now to scout south on the Cena Road. You can leave at once, Maestra. We will provide a kit for you.”

Since I had brought my basket and cane, I could scarcely refuse. Maybe it was better to make the parting swift and sudden, for the pain of leaving first Bee and then Vai cut regardless.

We took a moment’s privacy behind the screen. Vai clasped arms with Rory and released him. I thought he would kiss me, but instead he held my face in his hands as he whispered, “Return safely to me, my sweet Catherine.”

I could not speak, for a throat-choking fear deadened my heart. Blind Fortune had us in her claws. Any terrible thing might happen.

We had to press on.

Rory and I left the tent at once to be given over into the care of a competent cavalry commander named Lord Gwyn, who was as white in complexion and hair as his name suggested.

Two main roads led south from Lutetia. To the east the Liyonum Road ran via Senones to the old city of Liyonum. The mansa had gone that way to meet the Roman army. Lord Gwyn and his troop rode down the central Cena Road past a fortified estate they called Red Mount, which overlooked the road and the prospect of the city walls a mile away. On golden fields, laborers were cutting hay. They measured our passing in silence.

We made camp for the night in a grove of trees.

I crept away to do my business in privacy, for the split skirt made riding easy but peeing difficult. As I was making my way back, I stumbled onto a footpath. Soft footfalls alerted me to the presence of someone else. A rushlight appeared, revealing a girl of perhaps sixteen years hurrying along with a sack slung over her back and her head down as she marked each fearful step.

I drew my shadows around me. That was why the soldiers did not see me when they stepped onto the path. “Here, now, lass, running away to meet a lover, are you?”

She bolted back, but a man stepped out on the path behind her as well. “What a pretty treat this is on a dark night!” he said in a tone I could not like.

She raised the feeble rushlight. “Don’t come any closer! I’ll burn you if you do!”

“With that little flame?” The threat brought gales of laughter.

“I’m a fire mage,” she said stoutly, but her hand shook.

“Yes, we’ve all heard the rumor that the fire-stained can run to the general’s army and make a new life there. You should have stayed home, lass, for we can’t let you pass.” They moved in on her.

I unwound the shadows. “Let her go on her way unmolested,” I said.

Yet my appearance so startled her that she broke for the trees, and her mad dash so startled the soldiers that they jumped to attack. One grabbed her arm. She screamed and shoved the rushlight into his face. It blazed with a bright gout of fire that caught up into the leaves of the nearest tree. He shouted with pain and stumbled back.

Blessed Tanit! I knew I was too late even as I ran for her. She spun tumbling into the underbrush, keening and moaning and then abruptly silent. The rushlight guttered out. The flames in the branches died, but the smoky taste of her death lingered, for she was quite dead, killed by the backlash of her own untrained magic.

“Lord Gwyn sent us after you, Maestra,” said one of the soldiers, grasping my arm. “You’re not to leave camp ever, on Lord Marius’s orders, unless the commander says so. Cursed little witch got what was coming to her, didn’t she? Ragno’s got a burn on his chin now.”

“Let me go!”

He hesitated, grasp tightening, then looked past me. A black shape stalked the trees. It yawned to display saber teeth. The soldiers retreated hastily, and so did I, for there was nothing I could do for the dead girl.

She was dead because she had no catch-fire, no training, no chance of a normal life. No wonder she had hoped to run away to the general’s army.

Rory stayed in cat form all that night. At dawn he gifted me with a dead rabbit. In its own small way, the gesture was rather sweet, and seared over the campfire the meat was tasty.

Our troop moved south with skirmishers’ haste, changing out horses, stopping at a village to commandeer sacks of grain from unhappy villagers before riding on. The soldiers treated me with propriety but their stares made me uncomfortable and Rory was in a constant state of half-leashed snarl. Lord Gwyn frequently halted to interview the locals. More than once he called a file of laborers out of the field and cracked questions over them as they stood with heads bowed, their surly anger like a cloud. They never had anything to say.

Another few miles south an old woman appeared, trudging with a bundle of reeds atop her head. She stopped stock-still, seeing the thirty soldiers and their horses. Then she saw the big cat.

“Salve, domine,” she said with remarkable aplomb. “Lord of cats, what brings you here to this lonely community, riding with the prince’s men?” With a wise smile she dropped her voice to a murmur. “Forty years too late if you chanced to wish to seduce me in your human body. For if you are as beautiful in your other form as in this one, I think I just might have let you.”

Purring, Rory approached her cautiously and licked her hands. She smiled, then sobered as she eyed the soldiers and, with a frown, considered me alone among them.

“Do not fear us, old aunt,” said Lord Gwyn. “Be on your way.”

Rory escorted her past the troop and waited until she was out of sight before he loped after us as we rode on.

The blissful scent of summer lay everywhere. Ahead a tower and roofs marked the town of Castra. We clattered into town past well-tended buildings. People hurried inside and closed their doors. A small river ran through the middle of the town. After we crossed the bridge the soldiers led the horses to water. I walked downstream along the grassy bank, whacking at leaves. Birds warbled. An object spinning past on the silty green water caught my eye. I fished out a tricornered hat. One peak had been crushed. A badge in the shape of a lion’s head was pinned on the felt.

With a shiver of misgiving I scanned the river. A white tassel flowed past, too far away to reach. A little farther downstream something had gotten caught in a bush that hung over the river: a sleeve trimmed with gold braid. I walked down and prodded at it.

An arm was still inside, although the hand had been blasted off, ragged bone shining. A dead man was caught in the branches. His face was bloated, his left eye was a gaping hole, and half his teeth were missing. Tendrils of black hair streamed out from his head, and he wore a white sash embroidered with the twin lions of Numantia.

I reeled back, gasping. Noble Ba’al! Death lay at hand, ugly and violent.

Yet my mind grasped the whole: Camjiata’s army was somewhere upstream.

Lord Gwyn’s shout carried from the bridge. “Can you cursed men not keep your eye on the girl?”

With no warning, volleys of rifle fire shook the air. Gouts of smoke rose all about the bridge as Lord Gwyn’s skirmishers were attacked so suddenly that I stood in gaping confusion. Had the day not been peaceful just one breath ago, even the quiet corpse in its watery grave?

The battle raged in plumes of smoke, in the ragged cries of men hit and fallen, in the rumble of horses’ hooves as survivors tried to escape the ambush. Rory raced up still in cat shape and shoved me with his head. Several men appeared on the other side of the river with rifles pointed right at me. They wore the same uniform as the dead man: Iberians! I pulled the shadows around me. Shot peppering behind us, Rory and I bolted through the dirt paths and fenced gardens of the outskirts of town. A cart track lay empty but for a solitary bird hunting for bugs. The shooting ceased. Crows flocked overhead, heading for the battleground.

We broke onto an empty pasture recently mown. Drying grass lay in raked strips along the uneven ground. A bird whistled in a lovely waterfall of song. Another bird chirruped four discordant notes. The skin of my neck prickled. Rory halted, ears forward. I slipped my cane from its loop.

We trotted across the pasture toward a towering shrub riddled with orange flowers. All was peaceful until a brightly plumaged body burst out of its branches, as tall as me, talons gleaming.

I leaped forward to whack the creature on the head. With a clicking stutter, it fell back as I fell back. We panted, at a momentary standstill, staring at each other.

A dancing spin of tiny mirrors and shards of polished metal flashed in my eyes. The feathered person stood clothed in a mimicry of a soldier’s uniform weighted with shards of all the shiny things its kind loved. It flashed a bold yellow-and-red crest as it opened its muzzle to grin with predator’s teeth, like a shark giving you a moment to accept that you’ve been honored by being chosen for its next meal.

Blessed Tanit protect me! Gracious Melqart give me strength! Noble Ba’al grant me wisdom!

It lunged for me.

Rory leaped. He smashed right into the troll, and they rolled, crashing through the brush. Orange petals spun in a cloud of color. I pulled shadows around me and ran after them. The troll snapped at Rory, who dodged aside to rake at the troll’s flanks with his wicked claws. It stumbled. Its fluid whistle pierced the air, answered by a click and whistle. Blessed Tanit! Of course they never went anywhere alone.

As the troll whipped around to slash at Rory, I smacked it right over the eyes. Staggering back, it retreated with nostrils flaring, momentarily blinded.

A stab of reflected light cut across my face. Rory faded into the brush as two feathered people crept out of the trees about twenty paces apart, in hunting formation. The way they had of bobbing their heads as they swept the scene crawled a shiver down my skin. The blinded one whistled and clicked to them, blinking as it recovered. I held steady. Even in daylight and entirely exposed, my shadows hid me from them, and right now the wind was behind them so they could not smell me either.

They raised mirrors. Where these glances of light lanced across the field, they cut the threads of magic that bind the worlds. My shadows shredded into fraying ribbons whose ends I could not furl about myself. Whistling, the hunters stripped me of my concealment as they fanned out. One lashed its paddle of a tail as in a prelude to attack.

Yet the mirrors also cut right through the binding that made my sword appear as a cane in daylight. Freed from its net of shadow, the ghost hilt flowered into solidity. I grasped the hilt and drew my cold steel blade out of the spirit world and into the mortal world.

All three stopped dead in their tracks. Judging by their feathering and size, two were female and one male. They looked me over first with one eye, then the other, and then full on. My throat tingled, anticipating their bite.

“It’s very shiny,” I said, raising the blade as in salute. Their heads swayed as their gazes raptly followed the movement of the sword. “But don’t think you can take me easily. The spirit of my mother is bound into this sword.”

I turned and raced into the trees, thrashing through undergrowth in a rattle of noise, then stumbling unexpectedly onto a bushy verge along a major road. I was pretty sure we had found our way back to the main road to Cena, but I could not be sure. Rory nudged up beside me. He had a shallow graze on his right flank but nothing serious.

We crept forward through the grounds of a little roadside temple dedicated to the patron of travelers, Mercury Cissonius with his rooster and goat. Not a single priest attended the altar. The basin for ablutions had been overturned. Six corpses sprawled on the road, buzzing with flies. Their pockets had been turned out and their weapons and kit ransacked. I found Lord Gwyn, quite dead. Worst, one man’s face was half ripped off as by the slashing bite of a big predator. A humble farmer’s cloth cap lay on the ground, pierced by a shard of glass.

A thundering rumble rose and faded. A bird whistled in a waterfall of notes. Four trolls pushed out of the woods and onto the road. A fifth and sixth appeared on either side of the god’s statue in the temple. We were surrounded.

No wonder no scouts or spies ever returned. Camjiata was using the feathered people as skirmishers to protect his lines and hide his army’s movements. I braced myself for their attack as Rory hissed beside me.

A gust of wind rattled the branches. A drum rhythm paced through the woods. On its beat I heard a woman’s voice call out a verse, answered by a chorus of women singing the response.

Man try to give yee money, what can he get?

He can’t get nothing. Especially no kiss!

“Wait!” I said, brandishing my sword. “Look!”

They slewed their heads around. We all looked south to a bend in the road.

A column of soldiers marched into view, although they were almost dancing, so proud and mighty were they, and every single one a woman.

Four drummers led them while a fifth struck a bell, the drummers prancing and stepping on their way with every bit of flash and grin that any young man could muster. Their shakos were as jaunty as my own. All wore uniform jackets of dark green cloth piped with silver braid. Some wore trousers, while others preferred petticoat-less skirts tailored for striding. Most wore stout marching sandals laced along the length of the calf, brown legs and black legs and white legs flashing beneath skirts tied up to the knee. Four lancers walked in the first rank, tasseled spears held high, while the rest carried rifles and swords. A banner streamed on the wind: It depicted an antlered woman drawing a bow.

Amazons.

I took a step toward them before I knew I meant to. The rhythm beat right down into my heart. Was this not my inheritance as Tara Bell’s daughter?

One of the djembe drums sang out a command. The other drums dropped to a waiting rhythm as the column halted in perfect precision. The woman holding the hand-bell caught sight of me, and she winked just as if she were flirting. Her smile had such a saucy cheer that I winked back.

A sergeant strode out to confer in a perfectly natural way with the trolls. She was short and stocky, Taino in looks but an Expeditioner in speech. After a discussion, the trolls gave a last and perhaps regretful look at my sword and bounded away into the trees.

The sergeant approached me, keeping her pistol leveled at the big cat. “What manner of traveler is yee, gal, for that shako give yee a bit of the look of an Amazon. Where came yee from? Yee cannot be local folk, for I never saw such a cat in these parts before this day.”

“General Camjiata will give you a reward for bringing us to him.”

She smiled. “Will he, now? Do yee mean to walk into headquarters carrying naked steel?”

Reluctantly I sheathed my sword.

“Cat! Rory!” A tall gal streaked out of the column and slammed into Rory so hard that he staggered. She turned from him to embrace me. Tears glistened in her eyes. “What happened to yee? Did yee find Vai? I thought sure we should never see yee again!”

I gaped at her. “Luce? What are you doing here?”

Her joyful expression turned wary as she drew herself up defiantly. “Yee’s not the only gal who can go adventuring. I enlisted with the general’s army. I’s an Amazon now.”

“Trooper! Return to your place!”

“Wait, I beg you, Sergeant,” I said. “This soldier can vouch for me and my… pet. She knew me in Expedition. I worked waiting tables at her grandmother’s boardinghouse. Then I had to leave Expedition in order to rescue my husband. Which I did,” I added with a glance at Luce.

“Yee don’ say,” said the sergeant with a narrowing of the eyes. “Is yee by any chance that maku what punched a shark?”

Luce laughed.

It isn’t conceit if it’s true.

“Why, yes. I am.”

“Peradventure yee’s come to join the Amazons, is yee?” She nodded at my cane. “Which yee cannot do if yee has a husband. Tch! No call to go wasting yee own self on a man, if yee ask me. Trooper, commandeer a cadre and escort her to headquarters, if yee reckon the cat is tame.”

“Don’ worry about the cat, Sergeant,” said Luce, rubbing Rory’s head as he purred most shamelessly. “He’s easy to please.”

The sergeant considered this display. With a shrug she whistled sharply. The drums rolled back into marching mode. We stepped off the road to allow the Amazons to pass. How they strutted with us for an audience, or maybe because they always did. I might have marched with them! But a different life had burst like an exploding cannon in my face, with its shrapnel of complications. Their life was not meant for me, and as they marched north out of my sight, a part of me regretted it.