“I don’t get the impression that it’s common.”
“A little goes a long way.”
“Well,that’strue,” Sophia said. Despite the fatigue of the journey, she’d taken long enough to get to sleep the night after Cathal had told her his story. “But you know there could have been such men in France, and we just never crossed their paths.”
“Oh yes,” said Alice, rolling her eyes, “you’reverycomforting.” She sighed and shook her head. “I did want to see the world, didn’t I?”
“So you said back home.” Sophia chewed a bite of pie and studied the face before her: light where hers was dark, angular where hers was heart-shaped, and more familiar than her own, especially since their months of travel when mirrors had not figured heavily in their lives. “Though I admit you cannot have had this in mind. If you do want to leave—”
“Do not,” said Alice, blue eyes narrowing, “be foolish.”
“I’ll not lose sleep trying to figure out a way then,” Sophia said and smiled.
“Don’t. You kick when you’re restless.” Alice picked up the flask of wine, took a drink, and passed it back to Sophia. “Besides, I’d never find anywhere nearly as pleasant to stay the winter. I’ve just about fit myself into the kitchens, and one of the girls here knows a little French. We’re swapping songs. You know we’ve not heard most of those here.”
“I do,” Sophia said, although in truth, the minstrel’s songs had all blended together into pleasant incomprehensibility for her. Without words, music had never quite caught her attention, but she knew what it meant to Alice. “By spring, we might even speak some of the local language ourselves.”
“Oh, if we can make our throats work with it,” said Alice, shaking her head good-naturedly. “Maybe you can brew a potion for that while you’re up here. Or we could just put small rocks under our tongues. Speaking of which—brewing potions, not rocks—have you had any word about this midwife? The one who knows her herbs?”
“No,” said Sophia, “but she wouldn’t be very useful just now. Everything I’ve been able to find says that the first step with a spell is determining which planetary influence it primarily falls under. Herbs won’t be of any use until I can do that.”
“I’ll believe you,” said Alice, “since I really have very little idea what you’re talking about. Finish your pie.”
Sophia did as she was told. Eating the bread and cheese had reminded her body of its physical nature, and her hunger was greater than she’d thought. Such was often the case; it was why many magicians had apprentices. Alice wasn’t her apprentice, nor did Sophia travel with her for those reasons, and yet Alice filled that place, a role which, Sophia was discovering, was rather essential.
“Thank you,” she said, when the mouthful of pie was gone and she could speak.
“You’d be dead without me, I know,” Alice said. “Or in a horrible mood all the time. Stalking the halls and trying to gnaw on people’s shoulders when you forgot to eat.”
“I think I’d try the kitchens first, even in that state.”
“I’d advise it. Nobody here looks the sort who’d tamely submit to you biting hunks out of their arms. I do, of course, but then I’m not nearly as mild and proper as you might think, so I wouldn’t try that either.” Alice rose from the stool, brushed her skirts into place, and reached for the tray, which now held only crumbs and the empty flask of wine.
Laughing, Sophia waved Alice’s hand away. “Leave it. I’ll bring it back.”
“The aura of cheese won’t contaminate your experiments?”
“I shouldn’t think so.” When Alice still looked dubious, Sophia added, “It truly is the least I can do, since you climbed all this way.”
“And you’ll remember it?”
“I swear”—Sophia put a hand over her heart—“I’ll bring it with me when I come down. Which I also swear to do, and in good time for the evening meal.”
“Do,” Alice said, “or I’ll have one of the men-at-arms come and carry you down. Not in any dignified fashion either, but over one shoulder. Like a sack of grain or a recalcitrant pig.”
“Hark at the lady. You don’t even know their language, and you’d command them to start carrying off strange women?”
Alice shrugged. “Very well… I’ll get Sir Cathal to do it,” she said and was out the door before Sophia could take the last word from her.
No magician, Alice had nonetheless conjured up a very vivid image. Even under tunic and surcoat, the lines of Cathal’s body were clear, and clearly strong. Sophia doubted he would have any trouble throwing her over a shoulder, or in keeping her there.
After another glance at the flasks, she rose quickly and went to the window, pressing her hands against the cold glass. The fires, she thought, were working a littletoowell.
Six
Mornings for Cathal, since he returned from the war, meant a trip to the western tower. He went before the rest of the household was at mass, before anyone had thought to light a fire in the castle, and while his blood let him shrug off the cold easily enough, he often had a harder time with the hunger. In a hall below Sophia’s turret, he opened a door to a square room without windows, lit only by the first rays of the rising sun through the cracks in the stone. He could have taken flint and steel to the torches on the walls—his mother and a few of his siblings could have lit them with a thought or a muttered word—but most days he didn’t bother. He wasn’t human, and dim light offered him no hardship.
At the center of the room was a five-sided table: part of his mother’s dowry, carved from a single block of ash. A map of Loch Arach and its borderlands covered the surface, burned into the wood in deep black lines.
