“It is well known,” Brennan continued, “that before he took the name Camjiata, Captain Leonnorios Aemilius Keita married Helene Condé Vahalis. She was the daughter of a powerful mage House, although she was a cold mage of only negligible power. But it was rumored she walked the future in oracular dreams. People said the young general’s victories were achieved because he knew how to interpret her dreams to his benefit. Camjiata just implied that you, Beatrice, are one of those young women—and they are always young—who has discovered she walks the path of dreams. It seems obvious the general wants you because he thinks your dreams can give him an advantage in war. Meanwhile, obviously the mansa of Four Moons House wants you to keep you away from the general, since it was the mages and the Romans who defeated Camjiata the first time. Yet it seems to me, if you are such a woman, then mage Houses, princes, Romans, and even escaped generals are not the worst threat you face.”
3
Brennan looked out the window again, watching as the red-haired man traversed the length of the yard while kicking up the snow that dusted the paving stones.
“Excuse me.” He flashed one of his spectacular smiles and went out. We heard him go up the back steps and open the back door. Gray light gleamed through the paned windows. The peculiar hut glittered as if polished gems lay hidden in its layers. A crow still perched atop the center pole. Brennan intercepted the stranger with a friendly gesture and a smile.
“At least,” said Bee in a low voice, “the awful news was delivered by the handsomest man I’ve ever met.”
“Bee!”
“How do you suppose he got the appellation Du? Brennan Touré Du. Du means ‘black-haired.’ Yet he’s enchantingly fair-haired.”
I clucked my tongue to show I was not so susceptible, even though I was. “He’s positively ancient. Over thirty, anyway. That’s even older than your handsome admirer Legate Amadou Barry. Or have you forgotten him?”
She fixed me with the smoldering gaze that caused young men to fall catastrophically in love with her, professors to quake, shopkeepers to hasten forward to serve her, and young women our age to wish they could be like her, so proud and queenly. Then she dabbed away a tear. “Please! Amadou Barry offered me an intolerable insult! As if I had asked for it!”
“You’re not to blame for the proposal Amadou Barry made to you, Bee.”
“I know.” She blushed and looked away as if ashamed. “But before that I told him things I shouldn’t have, because I thought he genuinely loved me. I thought I could trust him.”
I frowned as I leaned on the table, pinning her gaze with my own. “Bee, you were alone and frightened and scared. You did nothing wrong. And I’m sure he was very persuasive. Until that unpleasant moment when he offered to make you his mistress.”
“As if it were the best thing I could ever hope for!” She made stabbing motions with the knife. “This! For him!”
“Sadly, men are the least of our problems right now.” I grabbed Rory’s ankle. “What do you know about Hallows’ Night? Murdered victims? The face of the ice? The Wild Hunt?”
His penetrating gold gaze was as opaque as a cat’s. “I know I’m hungry.”
“Do you not know, or are you not telling?”
“Hallows’ Night? Murders? The face of the ice? I don’t know what those things are.”
Because he looked exactly like a young man, it was easy to forget what he truly was and that he didn’t belong here. “Fair enough. I believe you. What do you know about the Wild Hunt?”
“I eat flesh. The Wild Hunt drinks blood. Even my mother trembles, for when the horn sounds, she would make us all hide. But everyone knows no one can truly hide, not if yours is the scent they pursue. I never saw them in all my life, but I have heard the hunt pass by while I cowered.”
Bee weighed the knife in her left hand as she considered the parsnips. “We thought we need only escape the combined forces of the mage Houses and the local prince. Now I’m warned I was born all unknowingly with a terrible gift of dreaming that will result in my being dismembered.”
“That knife is so sharp I can taste its edge.” Rory rolled up to his feet as Bee glared at the hapless parsnips. “Upset people shouldn’t wave knives around.”
“I didn’t ask you!”
He rubbed his eyes with the back of a wrist, the gesture very like that of a big cat, lazy and graceful and a trifle out of sorts. “They never do ask me, although they ought to,” he said with a contemptuous sniff. He stepped out into the passage.
