Cold Steel

39

Five gals peeled off from the column to gather beside Luce. They were strapping young women who looked as if they’d gotten bored of working in the factories or out on the farm and fancied adventure over marriage. I dug Rory’s clothes out of my satchel and shook out a pagne as a screen. Behind the cotton cloth he changed and dressed, then stepped into view to the exclamations of the gals. He offered them his most promiscuous smiles.

“Rory, you can’t just smile like that at strangers,” I muttered.

“Why not? I saw you wink at that bell-playing woman!”

With a brilliant grin Luce took hold of his hand. “Here is Cat and Rory, the ones I have spoken so much of. We’s to escort them to headquarters!”

She told us their names. The way the gals enthusiastically greeted us recalled me to the free and easy manners of Expedition gals, and how much I had enjoyed their friendship. We left the dead behind as crows descended to investigate.

Luce set a brisk pace as we walked along the verge, heading south. She had filled out, as tall as me now and with broader shoulders. With her black hair cropped short and a scar across one cheek, she had a piratical look that would have been at home on the airship with Nick Blade and the Hyena Queen. Carrying rifle and kit, she looked every bit the soldier, but I could not shake the girl from my mind. I could not stop myself from scolding her.

“How could you break your family’s heart by running off?”

“Yee reckon yee get to have a heartsome beloved and run off to rescue him while the rest of us shall bide at home waiting? And meanwhile yee tell yee brother not to touch me so he say no to me while he go off with other folk? I’s of age! Free to act as I wish! Especially after yee just left like that, just vanished, telling not a single person goodbye!”

“The opia stole Rory! I had to go after him!”

“’Tis always yee, Cat.” She punched me so hard on the shoulder I staggered sideways as her comrades laughed. I was startled by how strong she was. “Yee punch sharks. Yee escape from Salt Island. Yee have a fine man to court yee despite the two-faced way yee treated him. Yee attract the notice of the commissioner of the wardens and of the infamous general, too! Young men came to drink at the boardinghouse because yee was waiting tables and they all loved to flirt with yee, and women likewise, not that yee ever noticed Diantha’s attentions in that way, did yee? Always, ’tis about yee! What was left for the likes of me? Yee know I love yee, Cat. Yee know I love me family. But I reckon I wasn’ about to spend the rest of me life in me grandma’s boardinghouse! Now I shall not!”

“Is this the sweetheart yee left behind?” asked one of the gals. To my surprise she indicated me.

“I’m Luce’s sweetheart,” cried Rory indignantly. “Aren’t I, Luce?”

Luce sighed as at an old jest. Her comrades laughed.

“Rory,” I said, “I believe that when a woman signs up to join the Amazon Corps, she swears an oath to engage in no sexual congress with a man for the term of her service.”

“Oh!” He favored Luce with a sad smile that made her laugh with her old girlish delight, but a bolder, wiser look creased her smile now. “Well, then, Cat, that means you can’t join the general’s army, can you? For I’m certain you are not willing to give up—”

“Yes, yes, Rory. That’s enough of that.”

“If yee got Vai back, where is he, Cat?”

“He’s being held prisoner by his mage House.” I hated to lie to her, but I could not risk the truth. “That’s why we’ve come. But tell me your story, Luce!”

The chance to tell her tale distracted her from my own. This grand and horrifying narrative beguiled me for several hours as we walked south. Files of infantry passed us in good order, mixed with cannon pulled by horses and the occasional baggage wagon. A column of Expeditioners called out to the gals in a familiar way. A company of Taino soldiers marched in silence. Iberians strode along with a fierce demeanor, armed with rifles and their famous falcatas, the short swords that had driven back the first Roman invasion of Iberia two thousand years ago. Many tipped their caps to Luce and her cadre as a sign of respect.

We passed a lively column of pale Celts with lime-whitened short-spiked hair and their cousins and brothers of mixed and Mande blood wearing their dark hair in the same spiky style. “Here’s to the heroines of Burdigala!” they called. “The drink’s on us next time! And Rufus here wants his balls back!”

“We ate them already!” retorted one of the gals, to general shouts of laughter.

“Cooked or raw?” asked Rory, and they hooted and whistled in approval.

“What happened at Burdigala?” I asked.

“I must tell the tale in the order it happened so yee can comprehend the whole!” Luce said with a laugh, enjoying my rapt attention.

At a humble crossroads we turned east. Luce was finally telling me about the tumultuous siege of Burdigala. She had just related the thrilling episode of how Elephant Barca’s skirmishers had arrived in the dark of night to take the Coalition from the rear—a source of crude joking among the gals that even made Rory blush—when we came into sight of the town of Stampae.

The town crawled with soldiers. What a flood of cannon and rifles and troops! A large encampment was coming down even though it was very late afternoon. Out beyond the camp lay freshly dug graves. Wounded soldiers leaning on crutches or with bandages wrapped around chests or heads waited stoically outside canvas tents marked with a caduceus.

Luce led us past an inn crowded with soldiers taking a drink or a piss, for the smell of urine penetrated everywhere. The town market hall had a marble façade and Roman-style pillars, while a low wall set off a dusty area where an outdoor market could be held. This expanse boiled with young women at exercises conducted with sticks the length of rifles.

Local men loitered at the fence. No one uttered a single teasing word or taunting call, although now and again a comment brushed up between them.

“Look at those shoulders! She must have wrestled bulls back on the farm!”

“Everyone knows women are a cursed sight meaner than men. I heard at Lemovis they plowed down a division of the crack Arverni militia, just crushed ’em. Cut their balls right off.”

“We go around back,” said Luce, rolling her eyes as her cadre hurried ahead. “If I shall have to hear one more idiot babbling about Amazons cutting off men’s balls, I shall cut off his eggs just to prove ’tis no empty tale! I have heard that story a hundred times since I joined up! I wish they would just leave it be.”

“It sounds very painful,” observed Rory.

“’Tis not true!” she cried.

He frowned. “You don’t love me like you used to, Luce. You used to purr at the sight of me.”

She patted his arm. “That was a long time ago, Rory, and don’ think yee kisses weren’t delicious. But I’ve a sweetheart now, and anyway no time for men.”

“How can anyone have no time for men?” he muttered, looking a bit peevish.

“Where is the general?” I asked.

“Why, this is the headquarters. The Amazon Corps is seconded to the command division. We’s not regular army like the rest.”

A woman dressed in the Amazon uniform and armed with sword and pistol emerged from the market hall with a brisk gait I recognized. Captain Tira changed course to intercept us. Luce and her cadre halted to salute.

“Washed up, did yee?” Captain Tira looked me up and down. She was a maku even by Europan standards, with sun-worn skin, hair as black as my own, and eyes that spoke of ancestors in far Cathay where, legend had it, a dragon emperor ruled. Maybe the stories were true! Whatever her origins, she was Camjiata’s loyal soldier through and through. “Is the gal brought as a prisoner, or of she own wish?” she said to Luce.

“Of my own wish,” I said.

“Yee shall come with me, then. Trooper, yee lot shall return to yee company. Dismissed.”

Just like that, we were parted. Under Captain Tira’s stern eye we dared not even embrace.

“Take care, Luce,” I said, hoping my look spoke my heart.

“I shall find yee,” she promised. They loped off, settling into a brisk jog.

The captain led us into the long, lofty market hall. By a tiled stove, the general sat in a chair receiving reports and visitors. Five clerks occupied a table, writing busily without looking up. A striking group they were: a Taino woman, a feathered person, an old Iberian man, a thin Celt, and a curly-haired Kena’ani scribe.

Seeing me, Camjiata rose in surprise. “Catherine Bell Barahal! One account had you eaten by wolves, while another said the opia had stolen you. Yet here you are, looking hale and hearty and in company with your mysterious brother. I am glad of it, for I would be sorry to know you were gone. But I see no cold mage, as I had thought to do. Nor is Beatrice with you.” He examined me with a compassionate gaze that made me want to punch him. “Be sure you will always have a home with me if you are lost or bereaved or abandoned.”

I had never met a man who could speak in such sentimental platitudes and yet have it sound so genuine and unforced. It was one of the most irritating things about him. Indeed, it irritated me so much that all the clever, cunning wiles I’d meant to weave fled straight out of my mind. “Do you have my father’s journals? You stole them, just as you stole Bee’s sketchbook!”

He dropped his gaze to the floor with a smile that made me instantly suspicious, as if he guessed the entirety of my plan. Then he looked up. “Have you come to demand them back? Or were you captured by my soldiers? What scheme have you in mind?”

“My husband has been taken prisoner by his own mage House. Rory and I escaped and have fled in the hope you will take us in and help us rescue him.” As I spoke the words, I felt how false they sounded.

“What of Beatrice?”

“Her honeyed voice is raised on your behalf among the radicals.”

“Raised on my behalf, but not in my presence. You would think she no longer trusts me with her dreams.”

Never let it be said I could not think on my feet! “Her words prepare the way for you better than dreams!”

“It’s true the Gallic towns and villages have proven more amenable than I had dared hope. I am sure it is due to the efforts of my radical allies agitating among the farmers and craftsmen and householders who will benefit the most once my legal code is proclaimed.”

“To say laws are in place is not the same as having them enforced.”

“Indeed, and thus our current conflict, no?” His Iberian lilt had gotten stronger.

“And another thing,” I added. “Is Prince Haübey with you?”

“I would prefer to continue this conversation in a more private setting before—too late.”

A frown darkened his face so quickly that as it smoothed into a neutral expression I wondered if I had mistaken it. I turned. Rory put a hand on my arm to hold me back as James Drake sauntered up the center of the hall.

“I couldn’t believe what I just heard, and yet it is true. Cat Barahal! Washed up where she’s not wanted.”

He had a lovely woman on his arm. She wore a lemon-yellow gown trimmed with ribbons that looked fabulously well on her voluptuous figure, for she had the same sort of curves as Bee. Six soldiers wearing uniforms marked with the ship’s mast of Armorica attended as an honor guard. Behind them swaggered four youths garbed in red dash jackets meant to look bold; two were girls, wearing skirts, reminding me of the girl who had died in the forest. Behind them shuffled six men weighted with heavy iron cuffs; they were uniformed in ugly jackets tailored out of a ghastly red-and-white fabric so ill cut that they made Drake look like quite the most fashionable man in the hall. Which of course he was, because he was wearing one of Vai’s dash jackets, a gold damask that shone like flame. It was one of the garments Bee had been forced to leave behind when she’d fled the general’s fleet in Sharagua.

I only realized I had taken a step forward when Rory yanked me to a halt.

In a murmur Camjiata said, “Not for that, Cat. Choose your blows wisely.”

“That’s an exceptionally lovely dash jacket, Drake,” I said. “Too bad it doesn’t fit you.”

“This isn’t the last thing that belongs to him I’ll soon be slipping inside.” He released his inamorata without a backward glance and had the gall to pace once around us, looking me over as if I were livestock for sale in the market. “You didn’t appear at the standing inquiry in Expedition. So you were found guilty in absentia of the murder of the honored cacica. The sentence for murderers is life servitude in the cane fields or as a catch-fire.”

A glamour of light pulsed as the unlit lamps along the walls flared. Folk murmured in awe and fear. They would have been even more frightened had they seen what I could see. A mist-like glamour writhed around Drake’s body. Wisps like threads of spun light poured off him and created a lacework pattern through the lofty hall and into the six iron-cuffed men. One flinched, one cowered, one wept, and three stared with dull resentment. They all glowed as they channeled the backlash of his fire magic and poured it out of harm’s way. In truth it was impressive to see how skillfully Drake parted the flood of his magic into six smaller streams, no one of them strong enough to overwhelm any single man.

My skin prickled. My heart beat faster.

“That’s right, Cat,” said Drake. “I now weave multiple fire banes as catch-fires. But I can still use you in the old-fashioned way, burning you up like kindling. No one will stop me because you’re a condemned murderer. It would as easy for me to kill you as to take in my next breath.”

The whisper of their magic stirred my blade. “I’m not unarmed.”

Instead of stepping back prudently, he leaned closer. His unruly hair brushed my cheek as he whispered in my ear. “Neither am I. I’m training up an entire company of fire mages loyal only to me. Think of that before you taunt me. But if you kiss me, I’ll consider allowing you to become my concubine instead of my catch-fire.”

Rory snarled, causing Drake to startle back.

“You are too late, Drake. I have already been tried and acquitted by the Taino court of ancestors, in the spirit world.” I swung the basket around and pulled out the skull.

Drake’s nose wrinkled up. He brushed a finger along his clean-shaven chin, glanced at the pretty blonde, then looked back at me. “There is something very wrong with you, Cat. Put that skull away, if you please, for it does not impress or frighten me. Indeed, you do nothing but poke at people with your impertinent questions and your outrageous tales, and all to no purpose except to annoy.”

He had never figured out that there was something odd about my answering questions with questions, not as Vai had immediately. Blessed Tanit! What an ass!

The thought made me smile mockingly, and of course my smile roused his temper.

“Enough! I am now wed to the daughter of the honored Armorican prince who is overlord of all the Veneti dukedoms. Such an honor is due me as a son of the Ordovici kings of old.”

“The Ordovici kings of old? Of what are you trying to convince me, Drake?” I asked, for this boasting, defensive mood puzzled me. “That because you are highborn I ought to overlook your boorish behavior? You cannot think I regret the way we parted, or the choice I made.”

He laughed nastily. “You’ll soon be sorry you didn’t take a princely crown when it was offered to you.”

Camjiata stepped into the breach. “My steward has been at pains to signal that our dinner is ready to be served. Let us not delay the repast, for my command staff is waiting. Lord Drake, will you and Lady Angeline join us?”

She answered for Drake in a cultured, formal voice. “We would be pleased to join you, General.”

She smiled soothingly at Drake—rather, I supposed, as Bee might say I sometimes smiled soothingly at Vai when he had climbed up onto his highest horse of intemperate disdain. Only, of course, Vai was no murderer. Was she a smart woman who had learned to manage him, or a frightened one eager to assuage his fits and starts? Her gaze flicked my way as she hooked fingers along his elbow.

“Come along, Cat,” said Camjiata with an unusual hint of asperity. “I think you have made enough of a scene for the moment.”

“Me?”

He steered me commandingly toward an interior door. In a side chamber, a table had been laid with settings. Eight people waited, expressions brightening with interest when they saw me and Rory, and darkening when Drake and his bride—and the six catch-fires and the four young fire mages and the six soldiers—entered. Among the command staff I noted the one-eyed proprietor of the Speckled Iguana in Expedition, the man who had once fought alongside my mother at Alesia.

A woman stepped forward. She wore a sober brown skirt and jacket, fitted with a second cutaway sleeve on her left arm in the same green fabric and silver braid worn by the Amazon Corps. Her black skin was remarkably unlined considering her hair was half gone to silver.

“Proud Diana! You must be Tara Bell’s child. Even with that hair and coloring, I would know you to be hers.”

“Doctor Asante,” Camjiata said, “I would like to introduce to you Catherine Bell Barahal.”

She took my hands between hers and stared for the longest time in a way that made me dreadfully uncomfortable. Her dark eyes shone with unshed tears.

“You knew my mother?”

“I loved your mother very dearly, Catherine Bell Barahal. Besides that, I midwifed you into the world. Tara was weak from her terrible injuries. I trusted no one else to make sure she came through the ordeal alive. It was a frightful day.” Her fingers tightened on mine. “Not that your life was ever at issue, for you came out squalling like so many cats fighting in an alley.”

“You were there when I was born?” I repeated stupidly.

“Quite the noisiest newborn I have ever heard.” She chuckled, then sobered. “I am glad to see you well, little cat, for I never heard of what became of you after Tara and Daniel fled.”

“Yet now is not the time of speak of such things, Doctor,” Camjiata murmured.

“Anyone would think you were trying not to anger Drake,” I said in a low voice.

He casually stepped on my foot to silence me, then smilingly introduced me to his command staff, soldierly men with self-assured expressions. The one-eyed innkeeper was in reality the infamous Marshal Aualos, called by the Romans “the butcher of Zena.” Captain Tira entered with a cadre of Amazons who arrayed themselves along the wall as the command staff took their places. Camjiata sat me at his left hand and Drake to his right. By the number of glances at the red-garbed youths and by Drake’s smirking expression, I could tell the fire mage made everyone uncomfortable.

When wine was poured, Camjiata toasted the gathering.

“Here we have Captain Tara Bell’s child, come to join our cause.”

“And my bed,” said Drake with a laugh. “Where is that cold mage, Cat? The one you claimed was dead, when in fact you spirited him away in order to keep him safe from me? Now you are come to spy for him.”

“I came here to ask for help,” I said. “He’s being held prisoner.”

“Which must explain why we have seen him riding with the Coalition forces. He quite spoiled my efforts to burn down the mage House in Lemovis. Do you think we’re fools, Cat?”

Again, Camjiata’s foot pressed on mine, unseen beneath the table.

It was a good thing he was seated between us.

“I think you are not in possession of all the facts,” I retorted. “His family and indeed his home village is being held hostage for his behavior. He supports the general’s legal code, but if he does not serve the mansa, they will all be put to death.”

Drake’s blue eyes sparked as a tendril of fire laced from him into one of the catch-fires. “If the general would release me to ride west, I would be happy to rid Four Moons House of its chain on Andevai Diarisso by burning the House to the ground. Then he need not be held hostage. Anyway, your excuses stink like lies. You can’t possibly expect me to believe he was born into a rabble of unwashed, illiterate slaves. Or that he would risk his power and rank to help such people.”

As he gloated, hoping to needle me into a burst of rash action, I watched the others. Marshal Aualos wore the blank mask of a man suppressing his feelings. Others—hardened soldiers!—looked nervous, as if they feared the whole chamber might roar into flames. Only Lady Angeline appeared unruffled. I admired the calm way she demolished her leek soup. I wondered if she, like Drake, found it so very unbelievable that a powerful cold mage could be born in a humble village.

Camjiata sighed. “Given that we have a war on, I thought we might discuss our plans. I believe that is the usual business of a command staff.”

“In front of her?” Drake objected. “When she will certainly steal away into the night and spill every word she hears back to the mages?”

“The mages who tried to kill me, do you mean?” I retorted. “Truly, you have no idea of my history, to think I might ever wish to aid them!”

“I know something of your history, Maestra.” Marshal Aualos broke in as if making a flanking movement to turn the tide of a skirmish. He had the breadth of a man gone stout with age but still packed with muscle, well prepared for soldiering. “Your mother was one of the best soldiers I ever served with. She was tall, like you, but heftier, very strong. Absolutely up to the mark in every way. But of course the Amazons always had to be better than the men just to prove they were fit for the task. Most folk in Europa say women ought not be engaged in war.”

“If a war is being fought, surely women are engaged whether they wish to be or not. The only difference is whether they can defend themselves.”

He smiled. “Spoken like your mother.”

His words pleased me. “Thank you. As it happens, I read the words in my father’s journals. The ones he wrote when he was collecting intelligence for his family in the service of the general’s first war.” I pressed my own boot atop Camjiata’s rather harder than I needed to. He did not flinch.

“We may hope the daughter will prove as valuable as the father.” Camjiata slid a glance at me that cut like a surgeon’s scalpel. “As it happens, I left the journals at the Hassi Barahal house, in Gadir, with Daniel’s next of kin. Yet some Hassi Barahals travel with the army, among my clerks and intelligencers. I’m sure my chief of intelligence will have some idea of how to make use of you.”

Frowning, I stared at my plate. The moment of choice was upon me. Did I admire Camjiata’s legal code more than I distrusted him? Did I stand with the radicals? Yes, I did.

I captured his gaze. “The Coalition army is camped outside Lutetia, under the command of Lord Marius of the Tarrant clan. A Roman army is marching north via Senones along the Liyonum Road, three legions in all plus a fourth already with the Coalition. Hard to see how you can defeat such an allied force.”

“It is always hard to see victory if one does not have vision.” His nod made me think he spoke in code, warning me, but he smiled impartially around the table. “My thanks, Cat. Your timely arrival and this intelligence gives us just the advantage we need at this juncture. Let us consider what this means. This army has the discipline and speed to reach Lutetia in two days’ march. Our army is smaller than the combined alliance of Coalition and Romans. But if we reach Lutetia before the Romans do—something they won’t expect we can manage—we can defeat the Coalition and immediately turn to face the Romans as they come up from the south. That gives us the advantage in both battles. Once we win Lutetia, I will proclaim the Declaration of Rights on the very steps of the prince’s palace, where it was first proclaimed twenty-two years ago. My proclamation of a new and more expansive legal code will embolden many a prudent Gallic lord to abandon the Coalition and join our cause, just as it will rally the guilds and laborers and all those trapped by clientage to our side. Justice will be the reward gained by all.”

“Now that I think of it,” Drake said, “I haven’t asked for any prize of war to this date, have I? All I want is the cold mage. I need him alive so he can acknowledge my long-awaited victory.” He sipped at his wine with a musing smile. “People do feel envy when they must admit that another is better than they are. As your husband will soon discover.”

Sadly, I laughed. I shouldn’t have, but I did, nor did I trouble to hide my scorn. “Oh, he already knows he’s better than you.”

A thread of fire spun out of Drake and into me. Its heated touch made me gasp, half in fear and half with the cruel grasp of magic-borne lust. My fingers lost the strength to hold the utensils, which clattered onto the plate.

“Cat?” Rory pushed back his chair.

A second catch-fire shimmered, catching the backlash as one of the girls spun a candle flame above her cupped hand and took a threatening step toward Rory. He drew up short, to the girl’s sarcastic laughter.

The girl hadn’t Drake’s finely honed control. Her catch-fire moaned, “It hurts.”

“Stop it!” I shouted, leaping to my feet. My chair crashed to the floor behind me.

The sliced folds of roasted beef caught fire on my plate as heat scalded through me. I coughed, fumbling at my cane, for by the gods I would crack his head open before he killed me.

The heat ceased. The girl’s dancing flame vanished. The catch-fire slumped to the floor, and not one person moved to help him. Yet I could not help but notice how Captain Tira had arrayed her soldiers, giving them clear shots at Drake and the four young fire mages. Lady Angeline cast me a look that would have murdered a lesser creature.

“Come now, Cat, don’t make me angry.” Drake brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. “I just want you to watch when your husband begs me not to harm you because he’s not strong enough to kill my fire. Or perhaps, better yet, when he’s brought before me in shackles, and I ask you to choose between me killing him or you becoming my concubine for him to see.”

I cast a disbelieving look at Camjiata, but he was watching Captain Tira in a fixed way that made me think he was ready to blink an order if need be. Melqart’s Balls! Who was in charge here?

With curled lip, I addressed Drake. “Obviously to save his life I would do what I must.”

“That would make you a whore.”

“No, Drake. It would make you a coward. For this is the coward’s way, to boastingly strut when there is no real threat to his own self.” I turned my attention to the chamber at large, in disgust. “Have we played this scene for long enough? James Drake insults me, hoping to degrade me in your eyes, and I defend myself. Is there a hope for an end to this mockery? Or am I merely his latest victim…?”

I trailed off to let my thoughts catch up to my mouth. Fiery Shemesh! Vai had warned me to be prudent. But it was just so hard when Drake sat there lording it over them, him and his deadly fire magic and his young acolytes and their captive catch-fires. All of them could die. Captain Tira’s pistol and sword were fast, but fire outraced steel.

So I smiled and laughed, stepped around Camjiata, and kissed Drake on the cheek as I had kissed my sire to take him off guard. He recoiled as if I had knifed him in the gut.

“You’re so clever, all of you! I see what you’re about. You don’t trust me, me appearing so suddenly and with such a tale, so you have appointed Drake to carry out a cunning interrogation. But I assure you, everything I have told you is true. My husband’s mother and sisters were dangled as hostages before him so he had no choice but to bow his head to the mansa’s yoke. His radical sympathies have not changed.”

I righted the chair, nodded at Rory, and sat down. My fingers trembled only a little as I considered the smoking ash of my beef. The mood in the chamber shifted from a knife’s edge to blunt wariness.

“Bring the maestra a fresh plate,” said Camjiata. “Please be aware, Drake, that Lutetia is the crucial battle of this entire campaign. This is no time to quibble over prizes as if we are boys playing a game of sticks in the river. I have promised you that when the time is right, we will turn our attention to the Ordovici Confederation, but I cannot do so if my army is defeated. Cat?” He examined me. “Are you well? You look pallid.”

“When will the time be right?” muttered Drake under his breath. “How long must I wait to get back the throne and honor that are rightfully mine?”

“Ah, here is a fresh plate. I hope everything on it is to your liking, Cat.”

It was an imperial portion of beef and a full half of roasted chicken. I knew better than to let anger and disgust harm my appetite. I dug in while the command staff discussed the speed with which the army could move, and how far from Lutetia’s walls the hospital camp ought to be set up.

The meal’s ending gladdened me, for escape from Drake’s presence beckoned the way a street filled with the best fabric and tailoring shops calls to a fashionable woman with a limitless purse. Camjiata ushered me out of the room with a speed that took my breath away. Doctor Asante cut off Drake with a question that allowed us to get out the door, and the door shut behind us even before Rory could follow me. The general’s fingers pinched so hard I almost yelped.

“Wait before you speak,” he murmured.

He escorted me swiftly out of the hall and up a set of back stairs to a modestly furnished loft. Four young officers, one an Amazon, studied a table covered with maps. They acknowledged our entrance with salutes. He pressed me past them through an inner door into a long attic storeroom whose boxes and crates had been shoved back to leave room for bedrolls and gear. A window at the far end looked over the front of the market hall and the main square to an old stone castle tower rising above green trees.

Camjiata paused at a closed door that led into another room set in under the eaves. Hand on the latch, he paused. Long golden spears of late-afternoon sunlight lanced in through the window to illuminate his figure as in a portrait. As in a dream. His hair was pulled back and tied with an incongruously bright-green ribbon that matched the old-fashioned bottle-green dash jacket he wore, cuffs trimmed with lace.

He turned to address me with a serious look that quite disarmed me, for who would offer such a direct and confiding gaze to an enemy? His tone had an intimate color, as if despite everything he trusted me enough to speak his true mind.

“I need you to kill him. You’re the only one who can.”