He was gone when I woke in the morning.

I hurriedly dressed and ran down to the courtyard to discover him in his rumpled clothes facing off with Bee across a table. A pot of coffee and her open sketchbook sat between them.

“Broken cups are little enough to go on,” Bee was saying to him, tapping the sketch on the open page. It depicted a porcelain coffeepot and cups shattered into pieces around a tipped-over chair. Fortunately it was not the pot on our table.

I slipped onto the bench beside him, not sure of their mood because his eyebrows were raised and she wore a broody frown. His look acknowledging my arrival shared our night all over again. I smiled in answer.

Bee muttered under her breath, “Blessed Tanit, spare me,” then, in a normal voice, “Do you really know what this is, Andevai?”

He looked at the sketch as his eyes narrowed. “I know exactly what it is. This is Gold Cup House at Lemovis. The Coalition army was retreating north out of Burdigala after we suffered a crushing defeat there. The Iberians were right behind us. The Coalition halted at Lemovis. The mage House called Gold Cup House lies at the edge of the town, on the river. The mansa and I went to them to warn them they should evacuate, because the mage House in Burdigala was burned to the ground during the battle, almost certainly by Drake. Even to that point, the mansa wasn’t quite sure he believed me about fire magic. It’s impossible to make people here in Europa understand, for all such magic has always been strictly contained and controlled by the blacksmiths.”

“But wouldn’t they notice when people died as catch-fires? When the mage House in Burdigala burned?” she asked.

“How do you distinguish a fire lit by a mage from one lit by tinder? In war, it is hard to believe in the deaths of catch-fires when dead people are everywhere. The mansa and I were having coffee with Gold Cup’s mansa when Iberian skirmishers arrived in advance of Camjiata’s main army. Drake specifically meant to strike at the mage House. He did not know the mansa and I were there. He threw his fire into Gold Cup’s mansa, who was entirely unprepared to act as a catch-fire, and meanwhile set the whole cursed compound on fire. Children and elders trapped inside as if they were so much refuse!”

He looked away. Bee extended a hand to touch his arm, but she withdrew it and pressed her palm to her chest instead.