“You must forgive me if I don’t seem very trusting right now. For the last two months, I’ve been running from people who want to kill me. My cousin and I just escaped from house arrest. So I don’t see how I can really trust you.”
“If we are both being hunted, doesn’t it make sense for us to become allies?”
“Allies in what?” I demanded. “Isn’t your war over? Didn’t you lose? Weren’t your armies dispersed, and your allies punished? Didn’t your enemies in the Second Alliance march home satisfied with their victory and your imprisonment?”
I wasn’t sure how a man of his infamy would parry such a reckless attack, but he merely smiled drily. “A worthy salvo. It reminds me of the prickly unanswerable questions I would hear from your father Daniel when we were young. The struggle for liberation is never over as long as the old order crushes those who seek freedom. I intend to reform the laws of Europa and free the population from the oppressive rule of princes and cold mages. You could do worse than to join my army, as your mother did.”
“We’re not your soldiers,” I said as I glanced at the woman who stood beside him.
A black-haired foreigner, she wore a man’s jacket and trousers. A falcata, a short sword in the Iberian style, rode low on a belt loop at her left hip. Her eyes had the epicanthic fold of a person whose birth or ancestry rested in the mysterious lands of the Far East, but the most striking thing about her was the ragged two-tined white scar that forked across her right cheek. Was she one of his famous Amazon Corps, as my mother had been?
“Just because my mother was an officer in your army doesn’t mean I am under any obligation to you,” I added.
“You are mistaken if you believe nothing binds me to you.”
Snow poured down my back could not have made me more cold. A horrible premonition seized me, together with a throat-clawing curiosity. I had to know. “What do you mean? You’re not going to claim to be…”
“Oh, la!” Bee pressed the back of a hand to her forehead in a gesture worthy of the cheap sort of theater. “I am overcome by these confrontations and alarums! All these revelations and unexpected meetings are simply too much. If I do not sit down this instant, I shall collapse.” She had perfected a throbbing quaver with which to soften the listening heart, but her voice retained an edge of determination that suggested her collapse would be accompanied by a tantrum no sane person wished to endure. When she grasped my elbow, her grip was like the clamp of a trap. From the cutting look she gave me, I could tell she wanted to have words with me.