Cold Steel

16

An old man in one of the voluminous robes called a boubou appeared at the open door. The gold earrings he wore marked him as a djeli, a poet who spoke the tales of history and also a person who could handle and chain the energies we called magic. In his right hand he held a mirror, angling it to catch my image. Within the mirror he could see the threads of magic, so he could see me.

“There you are, Catherine Barahal,” he said.

I spun, ready to bolt, only to see Bee being marched through the back gate from the alley. Soldiers emerged from the carriage house carrying the three packs and the chest.

“We met before, as you may recall,” continued the djeli, in kindly tones.

“Bring them inside, Bakary,” repeated the other man, the one I still did not see.

As they brought Bee up, I let the threads of shadow drop. The soldiers exclaimed, swinging their crossbows around. I was relieved when the djeli led us into the house.

The mansa of Four Moons House sat in a chair in the kitchen. The wide sleeves of his indigo robe swept over the arms of his chair. He had concealed himself within a perfect illusion of an empty kitchen. I had thought Vai a master of weaving cold magic into illusions, but obviously I had not properly understood why the mansa ruled the mage House.

He was a physically imposing man of middle age, old enough to be my father but not old. He had the girth of a person who eats well and remains active. His Mande heritage showed in his black complexion, while his tightly curled dark red hair spoke of his Celtic ancestors. His presence made the kitchen seem shabby. We stood before him like supplicants. He examined us, then glanced at our gear, which his soldiers had set on the floor by the unlit stove. Finally he gestured to the djeli.

“Where is Andevai?” asked the djeli.

“He is not in Adurnam, Mansa,” I replied, for the djeli was speaking for the mansa, not on his own behalf.

“Yet here are three packs, for three people to carry,” said the djeli.

“He is not in Europa, Mansa. You yourself sent him to the Antilles to spy for you.”

With the tip of his ebony cane, the mansa fished one of the dash jackets out of the chest. The intricately tailored garment was sewn out of a bold blue-red-and-gold fabric printed with an elaboration of Celtic knots so complex it hurt my eyes. His gaze on me fell as cold as the sleet he had called down. He spoke with his own mouth instead of through the djeli’s words.

“Do you think I do not recognize these clothes? Andevai’s penchant for fashion started as mockery, so we observed in the House. He wore more and more outrageous clothes to belittle the other young men and their pretentious styles. But of course he always looked good in them.”

“We came to enjoy the anticipation of what he would appear in next,” added Bakary, amusement making his tone light.

The mansa tossed the expensive dash jacket carelessly over a chair, where it rested in folds and wrinkles. His resonant voice deepened, steeped in disgust. “Do not lie to me regarding his whereabouts. You belong to me because of the marriage chained between you and Andevai. By law, I have power over your life and your death.”

“Cat is many things,” interposed Bee in a tart voice, “but one thing she is not is a liar. If you wish to know where your spy is, then you must answer to yourself.”

“I am puzzled by your impertinence. You are but two girls from an impoverished family of mercenaries. One of you is a bastard. Both of you serve your clan’s business by acting as spies for the Iberian Monster. Those cursed Hassi Barahals cheated us twice over. Not only did they give us the wrong girl, but they had already placed her in the service of the general so she could spy on us once she was inside the house. A cunning and unscrupulous plan.”

“I am puzzled that you speak of unscrupulous spies as if you are innocent in this regard, since we have already established that you sent the cold mage to spy in Expedition,” retorted Bee. I could tell by her flushed cheeks and brilliant gaze that she was just getting warmed up. “Or do you mean to advance the argument that what is wrong for us to do is right for you to do? If we even were spies for General Camjiata, which we are not. I do not know what arrangements the Hassi Barahal clan made in the past with the general, but I assure you, Magister, that the day my parents handed Cat over to Four Moons House to spare me from being married off to a cold mage against my will, was the day I considered myself emancipated from their selfish affections.”

His eyes narrowed. “A fine and affecting speech, but I must suppose that legally you are still bound to them because you are an unmarried woman and such maidens can never be guardians of themselves.”

Bee laughed so sarcastically that everyone in the kitchen jumped as at a gunshot. “By which you mean to say, men like you do not wish such women to be guardians of themselves.”

He ignored her in favor of measuring my body. “I must assume you seduced Andevai in the usual way. You have that look about you that may make a young man feel hunger.”

At the boardinghouse I had learned to scold any man who ogled me in such an insulting way, and I usually succeeded in getting the other customers to laugh at him.

Bee murmured, “Cat! Don’t!”

But I did.

“Rather, I would say that radical principles seduced him. Really, Your Excellency, you have only yourself to blame. Why should he serve an unjust system as if he were a horse placed in harness who has no choice but to pull lest he be whipped if he balks? Even so, Vai made you a vastly generous offer. If you would release the village of Haranwy from the clientage it has labored under for generations, he promised to serve you loyally. He would have sacrificed his own freedom and happiness to assure their liberty. You laughed at him.”

“I did nothing so crude as laugh. I gave him his sister’s freedom, when in truth she ought to have been bred to see if more cold mages could be produced out of that family. It was far more than I needed to do!”

“Kayleigh is not a brood mare!”

His lack of recognition betrayed that he had no idea that Vai’s sister was named Kayleigh. “That I released her shows my appreciation for his value to Four Moons House. We may hope he will sire children on you who have some measure of the strength he has—”

“I’m not a brood mare either!”

“—but the genealogies sung by the djeliw tell us that cold mages with such deep roots rarely breed children who possess as much potency. To think how many advantageous matches the House lost now he is wasted on you! We might have sent him on a successful Grand Tour and afterward prosperously negotiated for three or even four wives for one such as him. Even if he does not sire powerful children, many Houses are willing to make the try for grandchildren out of such a mage. Each marriage creates a rope that binds us and makes us stronger for the coming war.”

“Vai is not a stallion to be put out to stud!”

“He is what I choose to make him.”

Bee tapped me sharply on the forearm to shush me.

“Are you saying your own children are not as potent cold mages as you so obviously are, Magister?” she asked with a sweet smile that startled the mansa and made the old djeli make a sign to avert disaster. “Have you no lofty sons to inherit your princely seat as mansa of Four Moons House? Are you forced to conceive the awful thought that the young cold mage best suited to become mansa after you is a humble young man born to people who have been enslaved by clientage for so many generations that you cannot think of them as anything except lowborn inferiors whom you may breed like livestock? Yet think! The son of a prince may rule whether he do so wisely or well, and he shall have advisors and kinsmen to steady him. But the son of a magister who has no magic cannot be given magic, can he?”

The temperature in the room dropped precipitously, making my eyes sting and my lips go dry. The mansa strode to the stove. With a look, he drove the soldiers from the kitchen. Accompanied by a horrible groaning strain, the door of the stove buckled.

I kicked over the table and dragged Bee down behind it just as the thick iron door shattered like the hull of a boat shot to splinters. Bee screamed. Shards of metal thunked into the table so hard that a few almost pierced through, their jagged blades the visible threat of his astonishing power. My ears rang. My breathing was all torn to pieces.

“Blessed Tanit shelter us,” whispered Bee, her complexion gone a sickly gray-white.

I was shaking. “You couldn’t have known. Stay down!”

As I rose, I drew my sword on the shimmering backwash of his magic. The cold steel glittered as if coated with burning oil, making the gloomy kitchen blaze with light.

“I cannot kill you, Your Excellency. Nor do I wish to. You lost Andevai not because I seduced him but because you refused to respect him as a man.”

The djeli had survived the mansa’s display of power unscathed, for he had his own secrets. He turned on me now. “Maestra, keep silence.”

“I won’t keep silence! You speak of fruitful alliances and breeding rights, but Andevai and Kayleigh are people the same as you.”

The mansa frowned. “Of course they are not the same as me! Their ancestors disgraced themselves and thus put their honor in chains.”

“Easy to speak of honor when you get to choose whose honor to champion. Is it the gods who foreordain our birth and position in life, or only chance? What if things had been different, if the history of the world had fallen out in another way? What if your people had been forced into chains? Would it not be wrong that a man of your power be whipped as a common laborer all his life just because of a chance of birth? Would it not be wrong that a man of your dignity be bound to a master who does not respect him and can use or discard or kill him without penalty? What then of your power and majesty? Why do you deny to Andevai what you assume for your own self?”

“You are a fatherless bastard. For you to believe you can lecture one such as me is not just absurd but unnatural. Andevai belongs to Four Moons House. As do you. Understand that I can kill you, and take no legal penalty for doing so.”

“Yet you have not done so!”

A spark of cold fire winked into existence, then expanded into a globe of light. “I admit to curiosity about a girl who can vanish and reappear at will. A girl who can walk into the spirit world and return to this one. A girl who can tell me where Andevai is.”

Footsteps rapped along the passage. A magister wearing a fine indigo dash jacket under an unbuttoned winter coat stepped into the kitchen. I had seen him before; he was the mage who had unsuccessfully pursued me at Cold Fort, the one whose horse I had stolen.

He made a clipped courtesy to the mansa. “Uncle, we found this man—”

The mansa smiled triumphantly at me. “Ah. My nephew has found him despite your efforts to shield him.”

Rory sauntered in, toying with the end of his long braid. “Cat? Do you want me to—?”

“No!” I exclaimed, just as Bee said, “No!”

The mansa stared, startled by Rory’s appearance. The djeli tried to catch Rory’s image in the mirror’s slippery surface, but all he saw was a saber-toothed cat. I studied the young magister, tracing the family resemblance between him and the mansa.

The young man caught me looking. “Caught you this time, haven’t we? You’ll not escape my uncle now he has taken an interest in you himself.”

I offered him a courtesy, to mock him. “My apologies about the horse.”

Despite my sword, the fool took a step toward me, a hand raised as if he believed he could slap me.

“Enough, Jata,” said the mansa. “Do not touch her.”

The young mage turned away from me at once. “The village boy is close by, Uncle, I’m sure of it. He doesn’t have the wit to hide, thinking himself so much better than he is.”

“Your envy serves you ill, Jata,” said the mansa. “Go out and look again. Find him.”

The nephew’s eyes flared with anger, but he made no retort. Instead, he tramped out.

The mansa gestured toward my sword. “However curious I am about you, Catherine Barahal, I will order my soldiers to kill you and your companions if you cannot bring me Andevai.”

Rory’s lips curled back. Bee took a step toward me.

I was not a fool. I lowered my blade. “Andevai is in the spirit world. Perhaps with your help, I can get him back.”

The mansa laughed, but the djeli did not.

With a frown, the mansa reconsidered. “Bakary, is she telling the truth?”

“A mirror is the water that allows me to look onto the other side, Mansa,” said the old man. “It should be possible to discover if she lies or speaks truth. Especially since the mirror in this house is the mirror through which their marriage was chained.”

I had been racing down one path, thinking I might convince the mansa to convey us to Haranwy. Like a noose at my throat, the djeli’s words yanked me to a halt.

“What do you mean, Honored One, that a mirror is the water?” I asked.

“It is not solid, like stone, and yet not lacking substance, like air. Therefore, it is water, for we djeliw can see through it to the spirit world which lies both beneath and above us.”

I caught Bee’s gaze with my own, looked down at the packs, and back up to her. Her brow wrinkled as she grasped and considered my unspoken plan. I was playing a very deep game of batey, about to try a hit whose arc would pass right over every person near me with but a small chance of reaching the stone eye that was the goal.

Upstairs, the front door opened and closed. Footsteps approached.

A soldier appeared at the kitchen door. “Mansa! The legate has arrived.”

With a sucked-in hiss, Bee closed her hands into fists. We managed to grab the packs before soldiers herded us up the stairs after the mansa. The chest, with most of Vai’s dash jackets, had to be left behind, but fortunately no one seemed to notice that my sword was still unsheathed. I wondered if they could see the blade now that the mansa’s magic had faded.

In the entry hall the mansa greeted Amadou Barry and Lord Marius, speaking with his own voice to equals. “It is good you came quickly. I have momentous news. I received word this morning that General Camjiata has landed at Gadir.”

Bee and I glanced at each other as Lord Marius exclaimed, “At Gadir! He has returned to Iberia! That is the news we feared most!”

Amadou Barry marked us as we climbed into view. His red-and-gold half-cape glistened with raindrops, and made him look quite dashing. “Beatrice! I knew you would return to me!”

Bee’s expression was one of the queenly pride that we of Kena’ani upbringing call the Dido’s Fury, a womanly emotion associated with the famous story of the dido and Aeneas, when the queen realized the untrustworthy Roman soldier of fortune had been seeking to rule over her through marriage.

“Legate Amadou Barry! I did not expect to meet you here! Nor, indeed, was any meeting with you a thing I desired, not after our last unfortunate encounter and the condescending insult you offered me. I realize that a man of your exceedingly high position in the world and your exceptional wealth and standing must look at a young woman such as myself with disdain. You may consider my impoverished circumstances and Phoenician connections to be marks against me which you are gracious enough to overlook. But I assure you I am proud of who I am and where I come from. I was sorely mistaken in what manner of man I thought you were. I now understand you are not the sort of man on whom a vulnerable young woman is wise to cast her hopes.”

Every man except Rory was staring at Bee with expressions so broad that only actors playing in a farce would have used such gaping mouths to express shocked surprise. I choked down a laugh as I nudged Rory with my hip and indicated he should take the packs to the stairs.

“Indeed, I am done with all of you lordly men!” Bee’s gaze flashed sideways to note Rory’s movement, then back to her audience. “You believe you have the right to own me merely because you wish to possess me. Some of you desire to control me because I walk the dreams of dragons and others because you consider me beautiful. But I am not your property to be handed about or exchanged according to your desire rather than my own. Be sure that I realize you are all far more powerful in this world than I am, for I am only a young woman whose household has neither wealth nor noble status to raise it into the ranks of those who stand on high and look down upon the low. Be sure that I realize you could kill me, or arrest me, or forcibly assault me, or purchase me from the elders of Hassi Barahal house if you offered them a rich enough inducement or a frightening enough threat. We who are not protected by wealth and high station are so vulnerable in the world, are we not?”

“You cannot be Beatrice Hassi Barahal!” Amadou Barry looked as if he had seen a poisonous snake unexpectedly rearing up out of thick grass. “You are some manner of malevolent spirit who has taken the form of an innocent girl.”

“Not as innocent as you would wish, Legate!” she said with a smoldering gaze that made his face pinch as she looked him up and down in a frankly sexual way. “Did you not murmur in the greenhouse that you wished to instruct me in the music of sweet pleasure? That I would be an ‘apt pupil’ if only I let you take command of my heart and my more intimate parts?”

Lord Marius whistled under his breath. “Ripe Venus! No wonder your courtship failed!”

It was all I could do not to burst out laughing at the way her erstwhile suitor’s hands crushed into fists and his face tensed with anger at her plain speaking. I was sure Bee felt my shaking, for she swept an axe-blow glance in my direction to warn me to keep my peace.

“How was it you phrased it, Legate?” She tapped a finger against her perfect chin as she glanced at the ceiling for inspiration. “What awkward poetic phrases did you use to describe my—”

“You dare not mock me in this impertinent way.”

“I am mocking you, Legate. You considered me beneath you, and you meant that in so many different ways. But I am not the woman you wish me to be. I never was.”

She dismissed Amadou Barry with a proud lift of her chin and settled her implacable gaze on the mansa of Four Moons House. He was staring at her with an expression of outright astonishment, but I could see the beginnings of a condescending smile pull at his lips. The clock ticked over and rang six bells. No one moved until the last echo of the sixth bell died away.

“You may think me amusing, Mansa,” she said, “for I must suppose you are now thinking I am a fiery little lass ripe for plucking by a strong man in his prime. But I do not find you amusing, nor do you awe me, you and your cold magic. You would have murdered my dearest cousin just for the sake of getting hold of my dreams.”

“I do what I must,” he said, with a frown at her rebuke. “You do not understand the consequences.”

“I do not understand the consequences? My dearest cousin is the one who would have died, had your command been carried out. I would have been forced to marry a man against my will, and been cast into your House as a prisoner. You couldn’t have protected me from the Wild Hunt regardless. I would have been dismembered and my head thrown in a well. So don’t tell me that I am the one who does not understand the consequences.”

Rory had moved halfway up the stairs, while I stood on the first step. Bee unlaced the basket and pulled out the skull. There was a struggling silence, broken at last by Lord Marius.

“Whose skull is that?”

“This?” she asked with a flutter of eyelashes. “This is the skull of my mother-in-law.”

“Did you smite her dead with a scolding lecture?” the soldier asked with a laugh.

“Married!” Amadou Barry’s face was cut with a look of sheer jealous rage. He took a step toward her, but Lord Marius fastened a hand on his arm, halting him. “Who married you?”

Bee ignored him. “I did not smite her. I rather liked her, and I believe she rather liked me, although we did not have the leisure to come to know each other well before the unpleasant incident in which she died. I show this to you, Mansa, to let you know that legally you have no grounds to force me to your will. I am a nitaino—a noble woman of independent means—in the Taino kingdom. No court and not even my family can use the threat of legal possession over me now. I have standing under Taino law.”

“How did your mother-in-law die?” I asked.

“Why, thank you for asking, Cat.” She swept them with a combative gaze. “The Wild Hunt killed her on Hallows’ Night. They dismembered her and threw her head in a well.”

“Bright Jupiter!” muttered Amadou Barry.

When she pressed a hand to her delicate throat, they all flinched.

“Cold mages are themselves at risk of being hunted down on Hallows’ Night. I understand it is the reason mage Houses are reluctant to rise to positions of political power in the world. Power draws the Hunt as scent draws hounds.”

Amadou Barry and Lord Marius gave each other startled looks. They had clearly never known there might be a hidden reason the mage Houses did not set themselves up as princes and emperors in their own right.

The mansa had not gained control of Four Moons House by being impulsive, thoughtless, crude, or impatient, but even his temper had its limits. “These secrets are not yours to share.”

“Who is to stop me from sharing them?” exclaimed Bee. “Will you kill me right now with your magic? Crush me with cold? Shatter me like iron?”

Ice crackled across the tabletop. Bee smiled so gloatingly that had that smile been turned on me, I would have slapped her; it had happened, on one of the rare occasions when we fought.

“I would have you stop and consider one thing before you act, Mansa,” she said.

“What we thought was a log has revealed itself as a crocodile,” remarked Bakary.

“I expect you mean to tell us, Maestressa, for you have quite the storyteller’s gift,” said Lord Marius appreciatively.

“My thanks,” she said with a pretty courtesy. “Queen Anacaona died because the Wild Hunt must take blood on Hallows’ Night. Because I was hidden from the Wild Hunt, Queen Anacaona was taken in my place. Isn’t that a thing you would like to know how to do, Magister?”

“Die in your place?” said the mansa.

Bee laughed with genuine amusement at his jest. “Would you willingly die in my place, to spare me?”

His smile flashed. Its easy charm shocked me. One could never look at the mansa and see him as anything except a man of exceptional status and self-confidence, because he lived at the pinnacle of rank and wealth. I had not known the man had a sense of humor, or was able to laugh at himself. The obvious had blinded me: All along Vai had modeled his arrogant behavior on the mansa’s, because Vai had been trying to be like the man who commanded his life.

“You intend to trade the secret of how you hid from the Wild Hunt in exchange for your freedom,” said the mansa. “How like a Phoenician!”

“I have not relinquished my claim to her!” cried the legate.

The mansa looked Amadou Barry up and down in a way that reminded me of Vai at his most obnoxiously cutting. “Legate, I mean no offense, but to offer to make a woman your mistress is not a claim. I will offer her a legal standing within Four Moons House while you are merely demanding she gratify your sexual desire for her.”

“I will marry her! She belongs to me!”

“I do not belong to you, Amadou!” cried Bee so indignantly that a suspicion flowered that she still retained a partiality toward the man. “Perhaps I do not want to marry any man. Perhaps I no longer see marriage as a contract that can benefit me. Look at my poor dear cousin, chained to a man against her will. Is this all I am to be allowed to hope for? I have decided it is not.”

“Yes, quite magnificent,” Lord Marius said with a shade too much sarcasm for my liking. “You can’t marry her, Amadou. The day after tomorrow you are to marry the prince of Tarrant’s daughter. I shall have to take charge. You are all dazzled by her fabled beauty, as the Hellenes of old squabbled over a woman and all for her cherry lips and fulsome bosom—”

“In fact,” I corrected, “Helen was the heiress to Sparta, a splendidly rich kingdom. They were fighting over her inheritance, not her beauty.”

“—but I am not willing to lose the war we are fated to fight because of a squabble over a woman. If we do not use her gift of dreaming, then General Camjiata will. You all know I have no interest in her comely person, so I will take her into my custody until we have sorted out how to best make use of her dreaming to defeat Camjiata.”

“Very well, Lord Marius, I surrender most humbly and gratefully, knowing I am to be well kept by such notable personages as yourselves,” she said, wielding the blade of sarcasm. “I must say, at least General Camjiata pretended to give me a choice. There is something about the illusion that makes one like a man better for the sake of his wishing to be polite. Yet what can a poor young female do in circumstances such as mine? I will languish in the cage of your making and never learn those things I dream of learning. Meanwhile, naturally, you will find my lips are sealed and my secrets untold. The mansa will never learn how I hid from the Wild Hunt in a way cold mages might also protect themselves.”

Lord Marius ran a hand over the lime-whitened spikes of his short hair. “Let me speak clearly. If you try to escape and refuse to cooperate, we will have to kill you rather than risk your falling back into the hands of Camjiata. What baffles me is why the general let you go. He used the dreams of his wife to remain a step ahead of us in his first war. Any good strategist would keep you close and use your dreams to benefit his campaign.”

“What makes you think he let us go?” I replied. “We escaped him, too. We do not mean to be owned or manipulated by any man. Not him, and not any of you.”

The mansa took hold of my chin. His stare was a command demanding I give up my secrets. I gazed back with all the mulish determination I possessed. He intimidated me. While Vai had edges made of insecurity and youthful pride, the mansa had the surety of a man who has never doubted his worth, his high station, or his honor.

“Maybe it is not to be wondered at that the boy believes himself in love with you. You defied me, and lived to speak of it. He has too much pride. He resented the natural dislike the other boys felt for him, so he refused to acknowledge their higher station. When his magic bloomed to its fullness, he forced them to their knees, just to let them know he could do it. But he never defied me. Never. Not until you did.”

“That’s very gratifying, Your Excellency.”

“Don’t mock me, Catherine. Where is Andevai?”

“He is in the spirit world. I need only look into the mirror upstairs to find him.”

“Can it be done, Bakary?” the mansa asked. “She is not a djlelimuso, a woman of craft and words who can bind the threads of power.”

Bakary rubbed his gray beard. “I can see into the spirit world but cannot cross, while you can do neither, Your Excellency. I was taught that only the dead cross into the spirit world.” He glanced at Rory as he spoke the words. “Her flesh is living flesh, like ours, yet she has crossed.”

Did they not know that the hunters of Vai’s village could walk into the spirit world at the cross-quarter days in order to hunt? I kept silence.

The mansa released my chin. “Very well. Show me.”

I took the skull and tucked it into the basket. We climbed the stairs. A year and a half ago, I had descended them from the second floor while Andevai had ascended from the entryway. It was strange to return to the place where he and I had first looked on each other, face-to-face. Then, I had wanted nothing more than for him to leave us all alone. Now, I wanted nothing more than to find him.

I dragged the cover off the mirror.

Illuminated by the dregs of fading daylight and a single sphere of cold fire, the mirror reflected the seven people gathered on the landing. I had never realized how my hair writhed as if in a wind blowing off the spirit world. Did my eyes really gleam in that unexpected fashion, like polished amber? A sleek saber-toothed cat watched, waiting for my signal. No whisper of spirit-world magic tangled through Bee, but there was a smoky gleam in her eyes and on her forehead, as if a third eye was about to sprout there.

Lord Marius examined the mirror with the attention of a man trained to strike at the opportune moment. He looked exactly as he seemed. Amadou Barry stared at Beatrice. His visage had an avaricious glint that made him seem less handsome and more selfish.

The mansa’s cold magic chased around him like the currents of many streams. One of those currents lashed out into the silvery depths of the mirror as the air around us fell suddenly colder. He was pulling in energy from the other side with which to weave here, although I had no idea how he was doing it.

Of us all, Bakary’s was the most solid presence in the mirror: an old man with silver-black hair and a calm gaze.

The glittering chain with which another djeli had bound me to Andevai flowed into the mirror. I brushed my fingers across its gleam. Magic thrummed like a pulse anchored to Vai’s heart.

“Catherine? Where are you?” Vai whispered, as if he felt my attention. “Beware, love. Think with your mind, not your body.”

The tremor of his beloved voice so shocked me that I yanked on the chain.

It moved. Or I moved. Or the world moved.

Past the surface of the mirror, my gaze spanned the depths as if I were an eagle gliding above and watching the land roll past beneath. Mountains and valleys skimmed by below. Outside a walled town, peaceful eru worked and laughed and gossiped in the same manner as ordinary people did in the mortal world, only the eru were creatures of the spirit world with wings, third eyes in the center of their foreheads, and magic more powerful than that of any cold mage. The fields they farmed were sown in spirals. The beasts they shepherded were antelopes whose triple horns were studded by gemstones and glazed as with silver. A bloated beast like a slothfully blinking airship drifted past above the black line of a road and the warded triangle of a watering hole. A clan of tawny saber-toothed cats had gathered to nose at the pool, lick at a pillar of salt, and lounge in the shade of a tree.

Light flashed on the horizon. Where the land ended in a long straight shoreline, it met not water but the ashy ocean that we had traversed in the belly of a dragon, the Great Smoke. A tide of dark mist washed in, spilling over the land like the sweep of a broom. Beneath the smoke the land vanished. Only the road and warded ground remained unmoved and unchanged. My rope of magic held firm, but when the tide receded back into the smoky churn of the depths, the shoreline had changed.

The once-straight shoreline was now cut by fingerlike bays, as if the Great Smoke had taken bites out of the spirit land. The bloated air beast had vanished, although a large animal lumbered over a field of thorns, crushing all under its hooves. Eru rose in a cloud from the warded walls of their town, but they did not see me. I thought that maybe I wasn’t even really there, that the chain acted like a hunter’s scent to lead me toward my prey. Was this chain how Vai could always find me?

A white cliff towered above a lake riddled with icebergs. At first I thought it was an ice shelf, but as I swooped closer I realized it was a fortress built of crystal.

I slammed right into its wall.

The impact jolted me out of the vision. I found myself back on the first-floor landing with my right arm halfway into the mirror as if plunged up to the elbow in water, and the rest of me standing in front of the mirror blinking back tears. The heat of summer baked like sun on the arm that was thrust into the spirit world, while the rest of my body shivered in the cold house.

Bakary spoke behind me. “Don’t touch her, Your Excellency.”

“If Lord Marius stabs her with his sword, will she die?” asked the mansa.

Never let it be said I could not throw caution to the winds and just take the leap.

“Rory, take off your clothes. Bee, the mirror is water. You can cross if you will come.”

“Of course I will!” cried Bee.

I cut my skin. Blood streamed from the gloomy spring chill of the mortal world into the hot blaze of the spirit world. When my sword’s tip grazed the surface, the mirror peeled back like an eye opening. Was this part of the power I had as a spiritwalker? With my blood to seed it, could cold steel open a gate through which others could cross?

Steel flared at my back, felt on my tongue as the gritty remains of a blacksmith’s forge. Lord Marius had drawn his sword.

“She can’t be allowed to escape!” cried Amadou Barry.

“Follow me!” I cried.

I fell through, pouring like blood through the gash.