“Of course you would!” I agreed. “We’ll find another way. With Tanit’s blessing, we’ll reunite with Rory.”
Andevai glanced at her and then sharply at me. “Who is Rory?”
“A kinsman.”
“Oh. Well. Thus you prove my point. How is anyone to survive without the protection of a powerful patron or the support of your kin?”
“Surely we have laws to which we can appeal,” I said.
I turned as Chartji ambled into view, feet crunching on debris and her head bobbing slightly. Her crest was raised, its plumage startlingly bright in the crisp air, in a season where colors were usually so muted.
“Did someone have a question about the law?” She wrinkled her snout to mimic a human smile, but the expression produced a rather more threatening visage.
Bee recoiled, taking two steps back. “That’s a troll,” declared Bee in passionate tones.
“Bee!” Her rudeness appalled me. “This is Chartji. I won’t trouble you with her full name, which I have been assured we would not understand in any case.”
More of her extraordinarily impressive teeth came into view as her smile sharpened and her crest stiffened.
I went on quickly. “She is a solicitor at the firm of Godwik and Clutch, with offices in Havery, Camlun, and Adurnam, although I’ve been told she is originally from Expedition. This is my… cousin… Beatrice Hassi Barahal.”
Bee had the grace to look embarrassed by her unfortunate reaction. “Salve,” she said awkwardly.
Quickly, to smooth over the chasm of bad manners, I indicated Andevai. “And this is my… my…” My tongue froze. My lips turned to stone.
“I am Andevai Diarisso Haranwy,” he said, coolly enough. “I believe we have encountered each other before. Greetings of the day to you, Chartji. May you find peace.”
“And to you,” said Chartji. She then began speaking in what I guessed was an older dialect, the one I was pretty sure Andevai’s grandmother had spoken.
Andevai’s flaring eyes revealed his startlement. Then he flashed a grin. A grin! Had I ever seen him smile with such delight? The troll and the cold mage ran right down through a series of exchanges whose rhythms sounded very like the usual local greeting but whose tones had an appealing music I could not duplicate. Chartji did not miss a beat, and Andevai looked—
Blessed Tanit! I was like a runaway wagon careening down a hill. His charming smile did not alter our situation one bit. With the day passing and our plight as unsettled as ever, I broke in.
“My apologies, but we ought to move farther away from the gate.”
“I take it you are here illegally, just as we are?” said the troll.
I walked up the alley between two workshops, and the others followed. Both Andevai and Bee pulled up short when we came into sight of the wreckage, the gaunt ribs, the listless folds of torn fabric skin, and the shattered spars and planks of the gondola amid a dusting of ash and shattered tiles and bricks and who knew what else? Maybe the dust of human bones.
Bee intoned a phrase under her breath, an old Kena’ani curse whose hard consonants made me shudder. Ablaze with wrath, she turned the full force of her indignation on Andevai, for it had to be said of Bee that although petite in stature, when roused she seemed as vast as the heavens.
“You did that?” she cried. “It was so beautiful! How could anyone want to destroy something so beautiful?”
I thought for an instant that a blizzard would blast down from above and bury us in ice, but instead, Andevai looked straight at me.
He said, in an odd tone, “Because they were commanded to do so, and thought they must obey.”
If the earth could have swallowed me then, I would have been grateful. Even my ears were burning, and Bee was struck dumb, and Chartji graciously said nothing, so the world was reduced to his intent gaze and my churning, roiling contradictory emotions like the insatiable whirlpool said to drag down ships in the sea-lane that is the only egress to the fortress of Atlantis.
He went on, as sharply as if he were furious. “After all, I have changed my mind. It is best I leave now. I will find the mansa and do my best to lead him away from you on a false trail. I’ll do what I can to protect you. Fare you well, in peace.”
He walked so abruptly away, out of sight, that I had not even time to part my dry lips.
“Cat,” said Bee in the voice she usually used to inform me that she had spotted a spider dangling from a slender silk thread directly above my head, “is there something you are not telling me?”