“… and I sickened!” she said, finally releasing his elbows. “I suffered the most grievous fever and cough for a month! ‘Goodness, Beatrice,’ you are to say now. ‘How very glad I am that you survived this dreadful experience and took no lasting harm from these travails!’ ”

“Where is she?” he repeated. “I found the letter from Chartji hidden in the skull.”

I could not bear it any longer. I got up and walked out into the courtyard.

“So,” he said, without the least change of tone. “Gave you a single thought for me and my situation, Catherine? Did it not occur to you that the instant they discovered you gone they would send a messenger after us? Can you imagine how it looked for me in the company of the mansa”—his voice darkened and grew thick—“and his cursed nephew, and our exalted allies to be informed that my wife had absconded like a criminal? I had to turn tail like a dog and come riding back lest I be accused of being a conspirator! With the nephew to supervise my journey, no less! So the damage is done. Are you content now that you have made me look like a fool?”

My cheeks burned with the sting of humiliation.

Bee slapped him.

He took a step back, not in retreat but in surprise. Every troll in the courtyard slewed around to stare. Many shifted their weight forward, ready to lunge. He brushed at the outer corner of his right eye, where perhaps one of her nails had jabbed. A cold eddy of air swirled down over us.

“You will not speak to Cat that way! I don’t care if you are her husband or the emperor of Rome. You will not! If you could think past your monstrous self-regard for one moment, you would pause to ask yourself why a woman who adores you as much as she does—although her devotion to you quite defies explanation—would take flight in such a precipitous way.”

His lips pressed together, his hands clenched, and his chest actually thrust out as he assumed the stance of a belligerent man making ready to respond with every hoarded sharp scrap of anger.

Chartji glided past me and thrust out her taloned hand. “Well met, Andevai,” she said. “I came at your request, as you see.”

In the reflexive manner of a man who has had good manners drilled into him since childhood, he shook hands. Hers tightened over his, holding him so he could not let go. The cold air eased as if cut off.

She said, “Not here. It would be unwise. My brethren are accustomed to rat behavior, but some of these are young and not yet fully in control of their impulses. Rather—I might add in the capacity of your solicitor—like you, Magister.”

His eyes flared. He jerked his hand out of her grip. The watching trolls stiffened, and even Chartji gave an aggressive bob of the head. Rory trotted out into the sun, unbuttoning his jacket, lips curled back.