The djeli watched us with a slight smile.
“I ask your pardon for my poor manners,” I said hoarsely to her. “I’ve had some trouble on the road.”
“So it appears,” she said.
“Might I rest at your fire?”
She extended a hand, not quite in invitation for me to sit but more like a request for payment.
“That’s how it is with djeliw and bards,” muttered Andevai. “You have to pay them lest they ridicule you.”
“An unexpected complaint coming from a cold mage,” she replied without heat, “for you magisters might be said to be cousins in some manner to us djeliw and bards.”
“Magisters may be, bred from a long line of sorcerers and intermarried with the druas of the north,” he retorted, “but I am not cousin to any of you. I was born into a village of farmers and hunters.”
“Your village serves the mansa and the House,” I exclaimed. “You are servants and slaves.”
He lifted his chin. “Not in the old country we weren’t. My people have always been farmers and hunters. We are proud of that, as we should be.”
The djeli swept her extended arm in a gesture she might have made if she were singing, to emphasize a phrase. Our company agreed with her; her smile made her face rounder and lent a glow to her cheeks. “Yet a farmer’s son has been taken into a blacksmith’s house and taught his secrets. There’s a story.”
“Not one I can tell.” He dragged his left hand over his closely cropped hair, encountered chaff, and flicked the dry grass off before surveying his village garments with a fastidious grimace. How it must annoy him to stand so disheveled, and in such humble attire! He glanced sidelong at me. For some reason, the way he was looking at me made me abruptly wonder what it would be like to draw my fingers along the pleasing line of his jaw.
Blessed Tanit, the man had tried to kill me!
“I could tell you the sordid tale of how we met, journeyed together, and parted at odds,” I said in a tone I hoped might scathe him and purge myself, although I addressed my words to the djeli. “But alas, its immediacy, and lack of a tidy end, pains me far too much to reflect on.”
“Then tell me the stories,” she said, licking her lips, “that your father told you.”
“He wasn’t my father!”
“Wasn’t he?”
“He wasn’t my father! They lied to me. He did not sire me.”
“He gave you his stories.”
“He wrote them down for the family, and I was allowed to read his journals and to believe he was my father.”
“What is a father?” asked the djeli. “Do you have an answer?”
Curiosity and the cat: You know the story.
I led the horse around and away from the hearth and tethered her from a low-hanging branch of the oak. Then I walked to the well, but not so quickly as to startle the big cats. The biggest female thrust her shoulder against my hip. I staggered, steadying myself with a hand on her huge head. Her coat was coarse but also oddly comforting. A noise rumbled through her body, like a purr. Tentatively, I scratched at her head, and she rumbled yet more.
“Catherine,” said Andevai hoarsely, hand on his sword’s hilt, “if you move off slowly—”
“If they wanted to eat me, they could have done so already. I’m the one they’re guarding.” Flung with bravado, the words fell like truth as soon as they left my lips. I spoke to the cat as I kneaded it behind the ears. “Let me get to the water and I’ll fill the trough for you.”
The beast withdrew her weight. I eased past her and slung the bucket over the hook, winched it down, and hauled it up. First, I filled the stone trough with water for the cats. Then I carried a full bucket to the horse, who was eager to drink. I unsaddled her, freed her mouth from the bit, gave her an apple, and paid out enough line so she could graze. I returned with bucket and saddlebags and set the bags on one of the stone benches and myself beside them. Andevai frowned as I pulled out a leather bottle and held it out to the djeli.
“My thanks,” she said, with a gesture meant to decline the offer, “but just as stones cannot ease hunger, your mead cannot ease me. Only stories can feed me.”
I tossed it to Andevai, who caught it one-handed. Then I took out the second bottle for myself, draining the last of the sweet mead. The djeli released her fiddle from its case and set the instrument across her thighs.
I said to the djeli, “I never mentioned a father to you or that he had stories.”
“Everyone has stories,” she replied, “and every creature has a sire.”