He had never figured out that there was something odd about my answering questions with questions, not as Vai had immediately. Blessed Tanit! What an ass!
The thought made me smile mockingly, and of course my smile roused his temper.
“Enough! I am now wed to the daughter of the honored Armorican prince who is overlord of all the Veneti dukedoms. Such an honor is due me as a son of the Ordovici kings of old.”
“The Ordovici kings of old? Of what are you trying to convince me, Drake?” I asked, for this boasting, defensive mood puzzled me. “That because you are highborn I ought to overlook your boorish behavior? You cannot think I regret the way we parted, or the choice I made.”
He laughed nastily. “You’ll soon be sorry you didn’t take a princely crown when it was offered to you.”
Camjiata stepped into the breach. “My steward has been at pains to signal that our dinner is ready to be served. Let us not delay the repast, for my command staff is waiting. Lord Drake, will you and Lady Angeline join us?”
She answered for Drake in a cultured, formal voice. “We would be pleased to join you, General.”
She smiled soothingly at Drake—rather, I supposed, as Bee might say I sometimes smiled soothingly at Vai when he had climbed up onto his highest horse of intemperate disdain. Only, of course, Vai was no murderer. Was she a smart woman who had learned to manage him, or a frightened one eager to assuage his fits and starts? Her gaze flicked my way as she hooked fingers along his elbow.
“Come along, Cat,” said Camjiata with an unusual hint of asperity. “I think you have made enough of a scene for the moment.”
“Me?”
He steered me commandingly toward an interior door. In a side chamber, a table had been laid with settings. Eight people waited, expressions brightening with interest when they saw me and Rory, and darkening when Drake and his bride—and the six catch-fires and the four young fire mages and the six soldiers—entered. Among the command staff I noted the one-eyed proprietor of the Speckled Iguana in Expedition, the man who had once fought alongside my mother at Alesia.
A woman stepped forward. She wore a sober brown skirt and jacket, fitted with a second cutaway sleeve on her left arm in the same green fabric and silver braid worn by the Amazon Corps. Her black skin was remarkably unlined considering her hair was half gone to silver.