Cold Steel

“No. Only if you are a cold mage. But no weapon will shatter this one.”



She tested its balance, then both she and Rory hurried off.



With shadows drawn tight around me, I crept into the stone house to see if I could find Lord Marius. He was still alive, lying on a couch in a sitting room with eight wounded officers. To my surprise Marshal Aualos was seated in a chair beside the couch, joking with Lord Marius as they shared a bottle of whiskey. Lord Marius’s color was sallow, and his eyes glazed with pain, but he could still laugh as the Iberian officer told a lewd story about a man who had mistaken his wife for a sheep. Lord Marius’s left arm had been mangled into a pulp.



Doctor Asante and her attendants entered. She spared only a glance for Marius’s arm before she examined the other wounded officers. “Your arm will have to come off, Lord Marius. Marshal, please leave. I prefer to do my work without an audience.” As the marshal and his aides left, she examined each man. “This one is dead. Take him out. Those two I cannot help and this one…”



Lord Marius had not the strength to heave himself up on his good arm but he watched her with a keen gaze. “Doctor, is there nothing you can do for my aide, young Butu? He’s not sixteen. My cousin’s son.”



“My apologies, Lord Marius, but his belly has been opened. I have no way to heal such an injury. However, with some luck and a little cooperation, you may recover.”



“But never fight again.”



“Men battle with their minds far more than with swords. Do you mean to retreat to your country estate and never again involve yourself in politics?”



“Are you an Amazon, Doctor? Why else would a woman walk the battlefield?”



“I was an Amazon for many years, but now I am chief of the general’s medical corps.”



“He has placed a woman in charge?”



“I am a woman,” she agreed with the raised eyebrows of a person who has heard the comment once too often to be amused by the necessity of explaining one more time. “I also am a doctor. If you have some objection to my expertise, I can send another person to tend to you.”



“No, no.” He chuckled although it hurt him. “I am sure you will treat me as tenderly as would my mother, were she still with us. The folk in our villages would come to her for lotions and compresses and such healing craft. I do not fear your touch. I am just surprised by the presence of women in the army. Women give life. It is not their place in the world to kill.”



“Only to be killed? I do not like the sound of that conundrum, my lord. So I will ask you this: Does the she-wolf not hunt the same as her mate?” She spoke the words while staring straight at me, then crossed the room to the hearth where I stood out of the way. Setting her bag on a table, she pretended to look through it while speaking in a whisper. “What creature are you, that carries a spirit blade and waits in the shadows?”



“You’re a fire mage,” I breathed. “Only trolls and fire mages can see my sword when I’m hidden.”



“Sharp Diana! It is you, little cat!”



“Why do you call me that?”



“It is what Daniel called you after I had washed you and placed you yowling in his arms. Know this, Catherine. He loved you the moment he saw you. We all did.”



“What happened? Who are you?” I whispered. “What is your place in all this?”



She smiled affectionately, allowing me to glimpse pieces of a story Camjiata had never known and I had never suspected. “I loved your mother, and she loved me. But under the law you could only be claimed and protected by male guardianship, and we had to get Tara out of the prison quickly, for she was to be executed at dawn. Fortunately she loved Daniel also, and I trusted him. The general has promised me the new code will change the law so that women may stand equally in guardianship to men.”



For the space of several breaths I had no words. But at length I murmured what abruptly seemed clear. “After Camjiata’s defeat and capture, they were coming to find you, weren’t they? When they died.”



Truth is written in the face. Hers had measured suffering, others and her own, and she had kept walking to do the work she felt called to do even though she, too, had lost the ones she loved.



“Yet why are you here, child?” she asked gently. “I sense you are come in some desperation. You may always apply to me for aid, little cat.”



My heart beat so hard. “Some day, Doctor, I pray we will have time to speak at length. But right now I’m looking for my husband.”



She nodded. “The cold mage whom James Drake hates so very much.”