“Bee?” It was my own voice mumbling. I opened my eyes.
For an instant, utterly disoriented, I thought myself back in the bedchamber Bee and I had shared in the house on Falle Square. If the bed were as cold as stone and twice as hard.
No, I no longer had a home. No place was safe.
Bee slumbered on the next bench, the rise and fall of her chest as steady as a clock’s pendulum. Above, the sky remained a leaden blue-gray color. It might have been an hour or a day we had slept there, and by the creased state of my skirts and the rumpled mess of Bee’s hair, I would have called it closer to a day than an hour.
We hadn’t been drugged; we had just been exhausted. I felt rested, and absolutely gut-gnawingly starving. I heard murmuring over by the stone bowl, so I let my hearing take wing.
“I think we should help them,” the coachman was saying in a low voice. “The master expects us to bring the little cat. I see no reason we should bring him the other one, too.”
The eru hissed, as at hearing an ill-mannered insult. “The other girl belongs to the enemy.”
“Maybe she has no more choice than we have, beloved. Even so, are we simply to hand her over when we weren’t specifically commanded to? He will plant her in his garden.”
“So he should! You can stand there and know you will not be changed when the tide washes through. She’s no threat to you.”
“That’s not fair! I may not be changed, but my master owns my breath. My master can unmake me with a word.”
“True enough. I spoke in anger, and I apologize. I cannot be unmade. You cannot be changed. But the master will smell her out sooner or later. He will be angry if he knows she was here and escaped. Even if I agreed, how could it be done so we aren’t punished?”
“Isn’t servitude a form of punishment? Why should we do one more thing for the masters except what is required and commanded?” Passion trembled in the coachman’s voice. “Listen. Water is the gate for her kind. We can say she swam away. The little cat will keep silence. She will not fear the master’s anger.”
Water is the gate! Was that how Bee had crossed? The crawling play of the flames coalesced into sinuous bodies twisting and slithering until I was sure I saw fiery salamanders alive within the flames, whispering Fear the master. Was the fire taunting me, or warning me?
“Of course she will fear him,” hissed the eru. “I fear him and even you fear him. It is impossible not to fear him. The little cat is vulnerable. He will exploit that. How can we trust her to play her part in such a scheme?”
“To give trust is to gain trust. To withhold it until there is no doubt, is not trust. She will defy him, even if she fears him. She’ll do it for the sake of the other one.”
“Maybe it is possible,” said the eru, in a tone of great reluctance. “We could travel by the road that leads past the river. We need do nothing, as long as the girls act.”
“I knew you would say so, beloved. I knew you would risk it, if only to defy him.”
One cannot really hear a kiss, but a texture in the air can change, like the charge of a lightning strike. Could the creatures of the spirit world love? Could a personage who had just told us he was part coach-and-four feel desire and affection? I shivered from the top of my head to the tips of my toes, remembering the kiss I had shared with Andevai. I had disliked and even feared him at first, but as I had slowly come to see a different side of him, I’d become curious and perhaps confused, not sure of my feelings for a man who was so handsome and so obviously interested in me.
A flap and flutter of wings disturbed the silence. A black crow settled on top of the pillar. I made a business of waking, and touched Bee’s head.
She stirred, yawned copiously, and sat bolt upright. “Cat! The villains! They drugged us!”
I indicated the crow with a lift of my eyes. “Of course they drugged us. They fear you will escape, so they hope to keep us docile. But we’re awake now. We must plot our next plan of action.” Keeping my face concealed from the crow, I waggled my eyebrows.
Without moving her head, she slanted a glance toward the crow. Then she exaggeratedly glanced toward the coachman and eru and spoke in a loud staged whisper. “I would never have drunk that poisoned brew had I known! And yet, what can we poor young females do?”
“Here comes the villain!” I declaimed.
The coachman approached carrying a leather bag. By no sign or blush or hint of perturbation in his face could I detect that he suspected I had overheard his conversation. He pulled out a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese.