Aunt snatched the envelope from his hand. “You make it sound as if she’s your slave, but she is your wife. That was the agreement.”
He regarded her with an expression very like contempt. “What difference these hair-splitting words make to the truth of the matter I cannot see.”
Uncle burst into wrenching sobs. “Please forgive us, Cat.”
“Enough! We knew this day might come!” snapped Aunt with such anger that even the personage startled and took a step back, bumping into the railing. If only the railing might give way and he plunge over… but it held fast.
The coachman and the footman sprang up the stairs to grab the trunk between them as Shiffa backed away. They clattered past us, down again to the front door.
“Aunt Tilly?” My voice trembled.
“Yes, dear one.”
Still sobbing, Uncle hugged me.
“Come along!” said the personage.
What was his name? I hadn’t even heard it.
Aunt extricated me from Uncle’s despairing sobs and, clasping my hands, kissed me on the forehead, then on either cheek. She was still not crying, but that was only because—I could see—she refused to release precious tears. Give away nothing that might give them a further hold on us.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked, and my voice was more the wail of a hurt child than that of a young woman accustomed to twisting out of any fall so she landed on her feet. But the world was twisting away under me, and I couldn’t find the ground.
She released my hands, as dying people release their soul when death arrives. She let me go, and the personage took hold of my wrist in an unyielding grip.
“Go with your husband,” she said.
9
Flakes of spinning snow burned my cheeks as I stumbled down the steps, remembering at last to twist Bee’s bracelet onto my right wrist, as though I were daughter to her mother, embraced by her heart and her protection. I had no bracelet of my own.
At the coach, the cold mage offered me an elbow to balance on so I could mount the stairs into the interior like a respectable person, but I grabbed the handles and clambered up gracelessly without touching him. We Cats are particular, don’t you know? I wanted to hiss at him, but I knew I must not. I must not dishonor the Barahal name. I must give him no further hold over me, beyond the fact that I was now the property of his house.
As Bee would say, “Don’t kick unless you can really hurt them.”
I sat next to the far door, facing the back. The coach shifted under his weight as he settled onto the opposite seat by the open door, facing forward. The footman closed the coach’s door. I glanced out the window still open beside him, but the door to the house had been shut and the curtains were all drawn. I bent in order to see the nursery windows on the third floor, and I was sure I saw a face staring out through the misty panes. The cold mage shuttered the window with a snap. Tears stung my eyes. I blinked repeatedly to drive them away.
The coach rocked as the coachman and the footman heaved on my traveling chest and settled themselves. I heard the clink of coin or other objects changing hands as the old man was given a final offering and dismissed to find his own way home through the bitter night. The coachman slapped his whip against wood and then whistled. More smoothly than I imagined possible, the coachman eased into the carriage court and turned the bulky equipage around. Then we rolled out onto the street, wheels rumbling on stone, returning the way they had come.
He opened the window on his side. I looked onto the square. The streetlamps gleamed, fading as we passed them and flaring back into life. Snow swirled over the grass and the familiar trees of the park: the oak tree we called Broken Arm because of the time Bee fell while climbing; the five groomed cypresses all in a row, like children in uniform lined up at school; the drowsing cherry tree, dreaming of next year’s fruit. The stele showed her back to me, plain stone. Maybe I would never see the votive’s serious face again. I shivered.
“Such gaslight will be outlawed soon enough,” he muttered, twitching a shoulder as if in discomfort as we passed yet another streetlight, which flickered. He closed the shutter, leaving us in the dark.
Or him in the dark, anyway. I could use the faint threads of magic that were stitched through the world to enhance my vision in the dark, just as I could listen for the hiss of the streetlight spurting back to life behind us.
He fingered his left cuff and drew out an object from the sharp creases, maybe a key or a scribe’s knife, something formed out of one of the noble metals and small enough to fit lengthwise within the palm of his hand. He fiddled with it, then began tapping it against one thigh to one beat while he drummed lightly with his other hand on his other thigh to a different beat, three against two.