“You know a place to go, away from here. I know no place except the village and the estate. I’m a hard worker. I will not burden you, if you will just allow me to walk with you and show me how to go about finding work and a bed wherever it is you mean to go. Even if it means crossing the water, like the stories say you merchant people do on your ships. And two are better than one, aren’t they?” She smiled hopefully.
I sheathed my sword and began walking. “Do you know anything about my people?”
She was as tall as I was, and her stride matched mine. “Yours are the tribe who wore purple, isn’t that right? You fought a war with the Romans. You have queens instead of princes. A girl cannot be married until she spends a night in the temple sleeping with whatever man comes calling—”
“That’s not true!”
“I’ve bitten you,” she said contritely. “I did not know.”
“No, I understand you did not know. You have nothing you need apologize for. It’s one of the lies the Romans told.”
“What are your stories, then?”
What stories belonged to a person whose entire upbringing was a lie?
“There are tears in your eyes,” said Kayleigh. “Is it a sad tale, how you came to be married to my brother? It can’t be because he’s been unkind to you, for he’d never mistreat a woman. Why did your people make such a contract with the mage Houses? Have they mage bloodlines also, hidden away?”
“It’s just the cold wind,” I lied, for she obviously did not know that Andevai had been ordered to kill me. “There is nothing to tell.” Yet to walk in silence seemed awkward. I did not want to ask her to tell the stories of her people, because she might then discuss her brother, and that subject I wished desperately to avoid. “Let me tell you the story of the great general, Hanniba’al. He crossed the mountains with his army and his elephants and took the Romans by surprise.”
Kayleigh knew the art of listening, and I enjoyed telling the tale. From one tale into another, as the old saying goes. The path unrolled beneath our strides and the afternoon passed into dusk earlier than I wished. Hallows Night and Hallows Day were ending, and with the setting sun, the Wild Hunt must fade back into the spirit world. Leaving magisters free to safely ride abroad and begin their own hunt for me.