They were with me still, but it wasn’t the same as if they were sitting across from me at a table in an attic room in a market town in the midst of a war.

“What happened on the ice?” he asked. “There is no journal for the crucial months, the ones during which you must have been conceived. It’s missing, leaving only the mystery of you.”

“The secret belongs to those who remain silent.”

“A phrase I have heard before, from the lips of your husband. Think of this, Cat. If your aunt and uncle had not handed you over to the cold mages, you would never have married him. Destiny is a sharp goad. Never think otherwise.”

“You think it destiny, and not just accident?”

“ ‘Where the hand of fortune branches, Tara Bell’s child must choose.’ We stand on the road washed by the tides of war, you and I. Is it accident that has brought us here? I believe it is not. I believe our fortunes are sealed before we are born.”

He poured himself a second glass and topped up mine.

“Destiny and fortune are just words. I think you are ambitious, General. Ambition is not the same as destiny. You only want to say it is.”

He chuckled. “I like how you speak your mind, Cat. So few manage to be both honest and likable. That is one of your charms. Daniel had the same gift of speaking truth while making his listeners laugh. Do you want to know how I met them? Tara and Daniel, and Helene?”

A jolt like a blow from an axe split through my body. I managed to nod.

“I was a young captain in the army of the Numantian League. One of the princes who ruled the League had made a marriage alliance with a princely clan out of the city of Sala, one of the cities of the Wagadou Federation. The Wagadou Federation grew out of mostly Mande communities who had recently moved into the uninhabited lands northeast of the Rhenus River.”

“Those lands weren’t uninhabited. People lived there already.”

He waved a hand with a casual dismissal. “Herders and trappers, living in the most appalling conditions. Best of all, the new territory was fertile ground for cold mages.”

“Because of its proximity to the ice.”

“Yes, so I understand, although naturally I know little of cold magic. The prince sent me to Sala to escort the noblewoman he was to marry back to Numantia. Instead we found ourselves embroiled in a war against the Atrebates and their allies. The war exploded all across the far north, into the boreal forest and the Barrens. The Celts who live right up against the Barrens are called the Belgae, a barbaric people. A few mage Houses had moved into that area fifty years earlier and civilized them. So we marched north and crossed the Boreal River.”

He paused to drink.