“Now listen carefully, Cat,” the general went on. “A living cold mage serves me much better than a dead one. I would value the services of a powerful cold mage when I return to Europa.”
“One like your wife?” I asked.
“She was not a powerful cold mage. She had only a minor gift, enough to call a wisp of cold fire, which was ironic considering how poor her vision was. She was as close to a castoff as a child can be who is born into a mage House. Her House, and she, had no idea she walked the path of dreams. Everyone just thought she recited the most execrable poetry to get attention. But when she was about your age she heard her destiny in her own words.”
Despite my irritation, I was drawn into his story. “What was her destiny?”
“Why, I was. Or she was mine. Hard to say. Maybe I should say, we were meant to be together, being each other’s destiny.”
“That’s very romantical,” I said caustically. Bee caught my eye, and I knew she was thinking, Didn’t that cold mage call you the other half of his soul? I narrowed my eyes to let her know that if she spoke one word I would make her life so miserable that dismemberment would seem a mercy.
She ate her egg.
“I meant,” I added, “considering what happened.”
“Perhaps you mean to note that I am alive while she is dead. Quite true. Believe me, Cat, I intend to do everything I can to keep Beatrice alive. It was what Helene would have wanted. For they are all sisters of a kind, the women who walk the path of dreams.”
“Like in one of those quaint cautionary folktales,” remarked Bee, “in which everyone dies.”
“Yes. Which brings me back to the point I have been trying to make. Cat, my dear, I fear you have not heard me, so I will say it again. If you do not bring the cold mage to me, then I will have to kill him. If that is what you want, then by all means, rid yourself of the magister and your marriage by refusing to cooperate with me. But do not make the mistake of underestimating me.”
“Unless he kills you first.”
“He will not kill me because I know who will kill me. And it is not him.”
“How can you know?”
“On the day Helene and I first met, it was the second thing she said to me. That she had seen the instrument of my death.”