“Oh!” said Bee, clapping a hand to the top of the sketchbook as if she had meant to theatrically pound fist to bosom. “You frightened me, la! I came to see the maester. He invited me, you know.” She tittered inanely. “We met at Surety Gardens, for you know they say a man is sure to meet an obliging woman—”
The woman closed the book with such a snap that both Bee and I jumped. She gestured imperatively, imperiously, and as if ensorceled, Bee and I meekly followed her to the next door, which was already open and leading into the chamber I had just avoided.
The walls, lined with shelves, were insulated with books.
There was no fire in the hearth, but despite this, the chamber was perfectly warm, its heat the splendid calm of sun-warmed rock. Three dogs lay on a rug, alert but eerily silent as they watched us enter. A pair of lamps set on side tables burned sweet oil, their glow illuminating an upholstered chair in which sat an ancient and very frail man. He wore a light red and gold silk jacket over loose trousers and a pair of black house slippers. His white hair was bound in a braid that trailed over his shoulder. His face was thin, and his hands were as bony as claws. Indeed, he looked far too weak to rise, but when he looked up at the pair of us trembling on the threshold, his gaze stunned us into immobility.
With a sharp inhalation, Bee stiffened, her fingers tensing on mine. “I recognize you,” she said in a low, almost pained tone. “I saw you—I saw this library—in a dream.”
“Of course you did,” he said in a labored hiss, as if gruel had filled his lungs and made it hard to breathe. “I have waited, all these years, as all creatures wait for death to approach them.”
As he spoke these words, he looked away from Bee to me. His blue eyes had the blaze of fire, like echoes of the lamps but far more penetrating, able to pierce the stygian depths. Then he blinked, and I staggered and caught myself as from a fall.
He said to Bee, “I knew you would come.” His words were like a spell. She walked as in a trance across the carpet to his chair.
“Bee!” I said, although I could not move, not even to lift my cane, which suddenly weighed like lead in my hand. My eyes watered as though I were standing too near a bonfire.
To my utter and heart-stopping astonishment, she knelt before his chair. He kissed her forehead as gently as a father kisses the brow of his child when he sends her out into the cruel world, knowing she will meet bitter disappointment and sharp pain before she has any hope of finding happiness and peace.
She looked up, her face aglow in the lamplight, so beautiful that it was as if he said the words out loud—“so beautiful”—only I heard no utterance. He bent farther yet, and for an instant I saw a different face, a younger face so wild and strong and striking, as if years and decades had unwoven from his skin.
He touched his lips to her lips, scarcely more than a butterfly’s kiss. A touch. A breath, given from him to her. He drew back. Bee’s eyes flew wide and she collapsed in a faint.
“Bee!” I cried, but I could not move.
On the floor, Bee took in a hard breath; she rose to her feet, staring at him, but she said nothing, as if he had stolen her voice.
“Now I am released,” he said. “I have given you my heart’s fire to help you walk your dreams in the war to come. Go quickly. Take Montagu Street to Serpens Close. There, at the back past the well, you will find a stair that will lead you under the old guildhall to a path alongside the Duvno Stream. After that, you are on your own, for beyond that I cannot see. When the soldiers and mages come calling, as they will shortly, my servants will have departed, and I will be dead.”
The servant’s candelabra dipped before us, as with a bow, and we stumbled away down the hall to the front door. The woman opened it, and when we passed over onto the threshold, she shut it behind us without a word. Bee and I stood shivering on the steps, his words like knives in our hearts. A clatter of feet and hooves drummed a swift rhythm as, away behind us, the pursuit began in earnest. Blessed Tanit. What had happened to Rory?
I groped for and grasped Bee’s hand. “Who was that?” I whispered.
She drew in a shuddering breath and found her voice.
“I don’t know.”
29
In the confines of Serpens Close, we discovered a stair that led, just as the old man had said, to a path along Duvno Stream, a bricked-in sewer whose stench was leavened only by the steadily dropping night temperature. We hurried for some way along this path and left it to make our way through deserted streets to humbler districts and eventually the festive sprawl of the winter market on the shore of the Solent River. Here we bargained for winter coats, the kind worn by women who must work out of doors through the fierce winter chill, and cloaks to go over them to double as blankets. Bee traded her elegant frock for sturdier garb, and we stood in the cold street and shivered, heads bent together and my hand on the hilt of my ghost sword in case anyone accosted us.
