“I do no such thing,” Sophia said, though she was wrapping the cloak around herself while she spoke.
“You…humans. Mortals.”
“Oh. Well.” She looked down at the cloak, which smelled like onions. “Whose is this?”
Another name, this one a bit likeGeorge. “He’ll not leave until long after we’re back. Not with dinner as it is.” They stepped outside, where the world was clear and blue and brittle. After what Cathal had said, Sophia forced herself not to gasp at the chill of it. “The men were vicious.”
It took her a moment to realize he’d stopped talking about the cold or the cloak. “The English?”
“Aye. Past what I’d expect of men, even in war. One or two of them didna’ seem quite like men at all. Their faces…shifted. There were too many shadows to them. I could say no more, not with any certainty. And their leader was a wizard. Is.”
“A wizard?” For a man not entirely human, Cathal spoke very generally.Wizardcould have meant her uncle Gento, gray-bearded and ink-stained, or Merlin Ambrosius, or Sophia herself, though it embarrassed her to even make the comparison. “How do you mean?”
Cathal shrugged. “He threw fire at us. It came from a wand…one that looked to have been a bone once, though I was never close enough to look very well. I took no hurt from it, of course. I changed shape to handle the shadow-men.” He sighed, sending a cloud of steam out into the frigid air. “That impressed him.”
His voice suggested that both wizards and men made of shadow were, if not usual, at least not wholly a shock to him. “Do they have many such forces?” Sophia asked. “The English?”
“Enough magic to hold us off. Nothing quite like this. Not that I’ve seen. A moment.”
A smithy sat at the corner of the courtyard, and Cathal swung into it. Sophia followed, glad to feel the warmth of the forge but carefully keeping both her cloak and skirts out of the way. The smith himself looked up once, spoke to Cathal, and then went on speaking even as he turned back to the horseshoe he was hammering out. His apprentice, crouched before the fire with a pair of bellows, spent more time looking at Sophia—at least until the smith himself directed a growl the boy’s way.
Looking out, Sophia saw that the smithy and stables were just a few of the buildings sheltered behind the castle walls. A covered well was near the smithy itself; opposite that, another low building whose purpose she couldn’t identify; and across the way she caught the gleam of stained glass and guessed that there lay the chapel. Off in a corner, snow-covered hedges marked out a square of barren earth—a garden, when the weather allowed?
It’s like a tiny city, she thought, and the idea was unsettling. She’d known the idea of a keep, of course, but walking through the reality brought it home. If Cathal and his people had so much behind the castle walls, it was probably because they could get it nowhere else so quickly, nor be assured of their safety in the process. Out here, the castle was a lone flame in the darkness.
She shivered, which she could have told herself was the cold, and then swallowed, which she couldn’t, and fortunately Cathal chose that moment to start walking again.
“What did he do? The…magician?”
“Made me an offer.” Cathal’s jaw tightened. “Not a bad one, by his standards. Not…” He shook his head, golden-brown hair shifting in the cold breeze. “He said they could use a creature like me. Pointed out the benefits. Then I cut his arm off.”
“That would be an answer, yes?”
“It was.”
Passing the stables, they headed for a door near the gatehouse. Cathal went a few yards without speaking, and Sophia was nerving herself to ask another question when he began again.
“The arm…crawled. It must have. But the word sounds slow, and it was quick. It’d flown some ways when I struck—they do betimes, aye, if your blow’s strong enough, and I was sore angered—and it wrapped its fingers around Fergus’s leg. The stump of the arm was still bleeding.”
Sophia put a hand over her mouth, stopping the small sound of revolted surprise that she couldn’t suppress any other way.
“The magician said something. I didn’t know the language—and I’ve Latin and Arabic both. Fergus fell down screaming. The magician said he’d melt like the snow in spring, did I not come and join him. His name, he said, was Valerius.”
“I doubt it,” Sophia said without thinking. Cathal turned toward her, eyes sharp, and she shrugged. “At least, I doubt that his mother or her priest would know it. At least it wasn’tMaximus. OrRex, though I suppose Edward the Longshanks would have had a few things to say aboutthat.”
Mirth stole onto Cathal’s face, not softening its lines but warming it from within. His smile was wide, and his teeth surprisingly white for a man in this country, though perhaps not for one of his blood. “I hadna’ considered that view of it.”
“I could be wrong. Hecouldbe a very well-preserved Roman. Or have a very pretentious family,” Sophia said, unable to resist a smile as she spoke.
“Aye, well, they’d have to havesomethingamiss with them,” Cathal said, and then the warmth faded from his expression. “As it may be. I went for his head. One of his shades went for me. Gave me this.” He patted his shoulder, over the bandage. “And by the time I’d dealt with that wee bastard, his leader was gone. Vanished into the shadows, my men said.”
“And since then…” Sophia let the sentence trail off.
Cathal nodded. “As you saw.”
He opened the door and held it so she could go through. Passing him was like walking by a fire. Sophia resisted the urge to hold out her hands. Beyond, a short hall led to a winding stone staircase, just broad enough for one person to climb at a time. She followed Cathal, glad of the chance to think without speaking for a time.
Directing her thoughts required a greater effort than she was accustomed to. With Cathal walking just before her, she spent some time noticing the shift of muscles beneath plaid and tunic while he walked, the straightness of his shoulders, and the lift of his tawny head. In the dimness of the castle stairs, he stood out like a flame.
