Cold Steel

35

In the gray light of dawn, the singing of birds woke me. I eased out of his embrace, pulled on his shirt for modesty’s sake, and crept to the table to pick my way through the untouched food, for I was ravenously hungry. He stirred soon after and propped himself up on an elbow.

“You look very fetching in my shirt, Catherine,” he said in a tone that fetched me right back to bed.

Afterward I fell asleep. He woke me some time later by pulling a cover up over us, and I pretended to be asleep while servants bustled about the space. When they left we washed each other behind a screen where pitchers and a basin were set out for our use. He presented me with a linen dressing robe dyed a sumptuous midnight blue, while he slipped on a dark-gold silk dressing robe embroidered in bold geometric designs. The table had been laid with sliced meats and cheeses, fresh bread, and berries smothered in cream. A cup of coffee woke me right up.

“Why is my dressing robe so plain and yours so excessively decorative?” I asked.

He fed me a spoon full of nothing but the sweetened and whipped cream, and smiled as my eyes rolled back in ecstatic delight at its melting goodness. “You may have whatever you wish, love.”

“Did you arrange for the clothes?”

“As it happens, I did. In the field, I received a report every week, so I knew you had recovered and that my mother’s health was improving. When I heard we were coming to Lutetia, I insisted you be fitted with clothing suitable to my station. I remembered the dressmaker’s measurements from Sala. Do you like the style and cloth I chose?”

“They’re exactly what I like. Andevai…” I hesitated, not sure how to start.

“Why is it you only say ‘Andevai’ when you’re annoyed with me?”

Daylight revealed the cloth walls as canvas embroidered with elaborate garden scenes. I peered out through the slits to make sure no attendants waited within earshot, then sat back down.

“Vai, my love, I’m not annoyed with you. Far from it. Can I have shown you my feelings any more clearly than I already have?”

Because it pleased him to do so and it pleased me to accept, he fed me another fat spoonful of the glorious cream. A bit smeared on my lip. He leaned over the table to lick it off.

I had to forge forward before he mistook the nature of my hesitation. “I know the mansa has shown you an unbelievable honor by naming you as his heir. But it troubles me. He told me last night that you belong to the House. To me, this looks not as if he is freeing you but as if he is binding you more tightly to him.”

He tapped the spoon against the rim of the bowl half full of cream and berries. A pure faint tone rang. “I know, love. But… you should have seen my mother’s face when I told her.”

He bowed his head and covered his eyes with a hand. He said nothing, did not move at all except to breathe. I dared not move for I felt to do anything would profane the tears I doubted he had ever let anyone see except perhaps his beloved grandmother.

At length he took in a deep breath and wiped his cheeks. I buttered a piece of bread and handed it to him wordlessly. He ate it.

“I think I comprehend a little of what it must mean to her. And to you. But I cannot be easy with it. In fact, I think it is a mistake.”

A frown flickered. “How much choice do you think I have in this, Catherine? What was I to say to the mansa?”

“Doesn’t the mansa have sons?”

“He has four living sons. None have more than a candle’s worth of cold magic. That’s the first test, you know. Quenching a candle’s flame without touching it. But consider the advantages. As heir to Four Moons House I can change the customs of the House. I’ve already written to Chartji to ask her to meet with me here in Lutetia to discuss how we might go about it. I can walk among the magisters and elders and speak to them of why clientage is wrong and how it harms the mage Houses more than it helps them.”

“Have you done so? What did they say?”

“It has only been one month! People are naturally fixed on the crisis created by Camjiata.”

“Whose legal code you were once so determined to champion!”

“Camjiata is using James Drake to fight his war.”

I grasped his hand. “Bold Melqart! You’ve seen battle, haven’t you?”

His eyes shuttered. Then he spooned up another mound of cream. The way he fed me, with his lips slightly parted and his body leaning toward mine so his dressing robe gapped to give me a splendid view of his chest, was as delicious as the cream.

“I was never in danger. As for the war, you heard a great deal last night. You may be surprised to hear I have seen Professora Nayo Kuti’s pamphlets being passed among the soldiers of the Coalition Army. The radical philosophies are being talked about in our army, not just theirs.”

“Our army? The last time we were together, we were running from ‘our army.’ When exactly did the mansa make you his heir?”

“After the battle of Lemovis, a month ago. He saw that no one else had enough imagination to realize what was going on, much less the discipline and intelligence to discover ways to counter it. Furthermore, I am the only cold mage in Four Moons House besides the mansa who can truly build and hold a thorough illusion. There are other forms of cold magic that take more reach, but for illusion you must marry intense skill and discipline with the ability to reach deep into the ice.”

“You are the only one besides the mansa? Even including the women?”

To his credit he paused, forehead wrinkling. “I suppose I don’t know about the women. Although honestly, Catherine, to hear that anyone besides the mansa could best me in this would surprise me.”

I leaned across the table to give him a kiss. “Of course it would surprise you. My point is that the mansa may yet sire more sons and choose to replace you with one of them. Furthermore, you said Five Mirrors House in Noviomagus is ruled by a mansa who is not as powerful as the magister who tested you. She happened to be a woman, and thus according to House custom ineligible. So let us say the mansa truly wishes for you to become mansa after him. If you do not have the support of the elders of Four Moons House, what is to stop them from demanding a more eligible if less powerful man once the mansa has passed on? Then you would have waited for all that time, perhaps for decades, only to find yourself just as powerless as you were the day you came to Four Moons House. All that time when you might have been working for a greater cause. It is the perfect means to keep you in harness.”

An eddy of cold air pooled around us. “Do you suppose I am too uneducated and common-born to have thought of exactly these sorts of complications?”

“Of course I don’t! I will thank you not to pretend that I do so you can wallow in your wounded feelings! You have just bested the rivals who tormented you for so long. You have raised your mother to a position of honor beyond anything she can ever have thought to expect. And you have been proven in the starkest way possible as exactly the rare and uncommonly potent cold mage you have always known you are. All laudable things. I want to know if you have forgotten your promise to Kofi.”

Ice crackled as frost across the surface of the cream as he pushed back his chair and rose with a curl of his lip. “I think that is enough! Do not believe you understand my promise to Kofi.”

“I’ve just gotten started!” I shoved back my own chair and stood. “Either you want a wife who respects you enough to challenge you when she thinks you may be wrong, or you want a wife like the gracious Serena, whose manners are beyond impeccable, and whose desire and purpose is solely to serve the wishes and needs of a husband who chose her for her beauty.”

“How do you know she doesn’t challenge him in private? How do you know she didn’t desire and even seek the marriage? It may not seem so to you, but marriage to the mansa of Four Moons House gives a woman’s lineage significant prestige and valuable connections. For that matter, how do you know she isn’t a magister herself, married for her magical potency and not just her signal beauty?”

“How would you know what she is like in private?” I demanded.

He blinked. With a shake of his head the contemptuous mage vanished, and the Vai I loved returned. “Why, Catherine. Here is an unexpected sting of jealousy!”

How I hated that particular smirk of his. I fumed, not wanting to admit he was right or that I had simply assumed a dazzling beauty could not also be an accomplished magister.

“In fact, as the mansa’s heir, I am allowed to sit in his private parlor in the most casual manner imaginable. I may even converse easily, like a son, with his charming wife.” He slid into a light Expedition cant. “I reckon that gal’s a little lonely and like me company.”

“Peradventure some maku is going to find he own self a little lonely sleeping on the floor!”

He glided so quickly around the little table that I did not have time to step away before he pulled me to him. “Is he, now?” he murmured caressingly.

“Do you want to provoke me, Andevai?”

“Now that you mention it, I rather find that I do. You have no idea how attractive I find you when you get like this.” Given that he held me against him and his dressing robe had fallen half open, I had some idea. “I have been promised this whole day is mine to do as I wish.”

“To argue with me?”

“We can argue as much as we need to, love, as long as it is understood that we trust each other. I know this is unexpected and that it may seem like the wrong path that goes against everything we have discussed at such length. I admit I have some reasons that are not the right ones and that I just… to do this, to receive this… heir to the mansa…”

He kissed me in a tumult of emotion that he had no other way to express. I struggled not to give way to the intense desire I felt for him, to think with my mind instead of my body, but the two were woven too intimately together.

I eased the dressing robe off his shoulders. “I shall need more of that ambrosial sweetened and whipped cream when I am done with you.”

“Not yet, not yet,” he whispered in a hoarse murmur that made me wild.

All entangled and kissing him, I nudged him toward the bed.

“Announce me.”

The mansa’s voice fell like the stroke of a sword. Vai would have leaped back as if cut from me, but modesty made me cling to him. The mansa had in fact already announced himself, standing on the upper step with the entry curtain held away in his left hand and his thick eyebrows raised interrogatively. I thought he looked amused or, perhaps, relieved that the young man he had chosen as his heir was capable of the deed. He stepped back and dropped the curtain to give us privacy in which to straighten and retie our dressing robes.

“Thank Tanit we hadn’t made it to the bed,” I muttered, my face aflame.

But after recovering from his surprise, Vai did not look displeased. He lifted the curtain. “Mansa, please. Come in.” To a servant beyond, he said, “Bring more coffee and a fresh cup. Another bowl of berries and cream.”

The mansa sat in my chair and Vai opposite him, leaving me to accept the new pot and cup when it was expeditiously brought. I squelched an urge to pour coffee over both their heads and instead poured for them and afterward for myself. I heaped my cup with two spoonfuls of the cream, after which I retreated to stand off to the side.

“There is news,” said the mansa, careful not to look at me, for although I was covered from neck to ankles in the dressing robe, his presence in the gazebo felt strangely intimate. “Camjiata’s skirmishers have been sighted in Cena. He may intend an assault on Lutetia.”

“He proclaimed his legal code here in Lutetia in the year 1818,” I said. “Twenty-two years ago. That must mean something to him.”

The mansa sipped thoughtfully at his coffee. “Indeed. Handbills and broadsheets and seditious pamphlets circulate in the streets. They claim to be the text of a declaration of rights. By this means he has deluded gullible villagers and illiterate laborers with an idea they will be better off with his imperial rule than with the rule of local lords and mages who know their people and are concerned for the health of their lands. Can you imagine?” He paused to give Vai a long look.

Vai would never stare down an elder, but his respectful manner was not meek. “I would not call them gullible, Mansa.”

“I suppose you would not. Yet should the general succeed, he will need governors to oversee provinces. Such people will skim off bribes for themselves and hand the right to collect taxes and tithes to their cronies and favored underlings. A great deal of petty and grand corruption will ensue. Meanwhile, there is the problem of fire mages. You are sure he is using fire mages, Andevai? The mansa of Gold Cup House was an old man. His heart might simply have given out.”

“You saw what happened. You know I am right. Furthermore, I know exactly what manner of unscrupulous and callous man is being allowed to have his way by the general.”

With a faintly mocking half smile, the mansa examined Vai. “One thing you have never lacked is certainty that you are right. I will be sending Serena back to Four Moons House immediately with an escort. See that your mother and sisters are ready to depart with her at midday.”

“Will my wife accompany them?”

“No,” said the mansa, at the same time as I said, “No!”

Vai’s rigid posture did not ease. “Mansa, I have some concern over how my mother and sisters will be received at Four Moons House if there is no one there to see to their comfort, nurse my mother properly, and protect them from disrespect.”

“Be sure I recognize your concern, Andevai. At my request and command, Serena will take charge of ensuring they be received in all ways appropriate to my heir. Understand that disrespect shown to them is now the same as disrespect shown to me.”

“The girls should be allowed to take lessons,” I said. “Even if they have no cold magic—and of course that is not yet determined—they should be educated as any girl in the House would be. Wasa should be treated no differently just because she’s undersized and her legs don’t work well. She’s a very intelligent girl, and it would be a mistake to allow her to languish. Forcing her to study will also keep her out of mischief. Also, the crutch she has been using is too short and heavy. I asked several times if it might be replaced with something better, but the attendants said they had no authority to replace it. If she had one made to fit her frame she would be able to get around more easily and that would allow her to gain strength.”

The mansa lifted his cup to indicate that I had not anticipated that he needed more coffee. “It has come to my notice, Andevai,” he said, ignoring me as I poured, “that your wife has a mouth on her, as I would have crudely said when I was a lad.”

“Yes, Mansa.”

“Are you going to teach her to curb her tongue?”

“Mansa, it is her place to determine whether and when she speaks, not mine.”

“Are you going to continue talking about me as if I am not here?” I demanded.

“Curbing her tongue would surely be a difficult task for anyone,” said the mansa. “Some of that cream, if you will, Catherine. As you put on yours. I want to try it. Andevai, you have not touched your cup.”

“No, Mansa.” He picked up the cup, looked at it, and set it down without drinking.

“You don’t eat enough,” added the mansa, “as I have had cause to observe.”

“I tell him the same thing,” I said promptly. “Would you prefer tea, Husband?”

He shot me an accusing look, and the mansa actually chuckled.

Blessed Tanit protect me! A few more steps down this road and I might start believing it was possible to like him, the cunning architect of our prison! Perhaps it was only coincidence or perhaps Noble Ba’al saw fit to remind me that I stood garbed in false clothes in the palace of my enemy, for a rumble like thunder drifted in the distance.

Vai leaped to his feet.

The mansa rose. “See to your family, Andevai. I want them on the road within the hour.”

As I held away the curtain for him to leave, I puzzled at the blue sky, where I saw not a trace of storm cloud.

“How can it be thundering?” I said to Vai.

“It’s not thunder. It’s cannon.”

Servants hurried in. They stripped the table bare with the speed of locusts. A manservant appeared with a fresh set of clothing, including a brown-and-gold dash jacket I hadn’t seen since we’d had to abandon most of Vai’s garments in Adurnam.

“Gracious Melqart, Vai! How did you get your clothes back?”

Vai stepped behind a screen to dress. “The mansa had them delivered to me one day. I admit, I was surprised. I had riding clothes made for you, love, so we can go out today.”

A woman helped me into a split skirt cut in an exceedingly practical and flattering style with buttons down the front, and a long jacket in an amber-brown challis. Expensive calfskin gloves and a saucy hussar’s shako crowned by a jaunty feather completed the ensemble, although it was Vai’s smiling admiration that made me preen.

We traversed the garden on a path of white gravel through a stand of ornamental fruit trees. Bintou and Wasa sat on a bench by a fountain, playing with an adorable puppy that licked their faces as they giggled. They were wearing new clothes, neatly made and brightly colored.

“Vai! Cat!” they shrieked, seeing us. Bintou leaped up and ran to him while Wasa bounced on the bench in excitement. Vai released Bintou to pick up Wasa’s crutch and give it a frowning examination. Then he carried Wasa into the breakfast room, where his mother sat on a couch, watching our arrival through the glass. She, too, wore new clothing. When he knelt before her in greeting, she did not effuse over him but merely laid a hand on his head. Excluded, the girls swarmed me. I held one in the curve of each arm and watched as he raised his head to address her.

“Mama, I have news.” The rumble of a distant cannonade stirred the air, then faded. “You will return to Four Moons House with the girls.”

“To Four Moons House? You cannot think of taking us to live in the House.”

“It is appropriate for you to live on the estate in a suite of rooms like this one, suitable to your consequence.”

Her slender frame tensed. “How will the girls be comfortable in that place?”

“You must be shown the honor and respect that is due to you,” he said, a little exasperated. “If you don’t live in Four Moons House, it looks as if I am ashamed of you. You never liked the village anyway.”

“To live in a prosperous village was my greatest dream! I was satisfied.”

“After Father died, I don’t think you were happy.” He glanced at the carpet and muttered, “I certainly couldn’t make you happy.”

Her thin shoulders trembled.

He drew in a breath as if he had been struck. “If it does not please you, Mama, if you prefer to return to Haranwy, then you shall do so.”

Her chin lifted. “With your father’s passing, there is nothing in Haranwy I shall miss. We will do what suits you, now you have been raised so high.”

If I hadn’t been looking at her I would have missed the shine of pride that brightened her face, quickly limned and quickly gone.

Vai saw it, too. His smile blended relief and satisfaction. “That’s settled, then. The girls will receive schooling, and they will not be bullied as I was.” He glanced toward us, without a trace of teasing smile. “They will work hard and comport themselves with good manners.”

“No child of mine will embarrass our family with poor manners.” Vai’s mother spoke the words in such a stern tone that I would have feared to disgrace her.

Bintou nudged me. “The girls in the House won’t want to be our friends.”

Vai rose. “Your trouble will be that the girls in the House will want to be your friends, and some of them will want it for the wrong reasons. You two shall have to discover which are honest and which false. As for your friends in Haranwy, it can be arranged that they visit you. In fact…” He looked at me, radiant with triumph. “I see no reason I cannot ask the mansa to consider expanding the school to include the village children. It is not too far for them to walk. It would not tax the resources of the House to admit thirty more children to the school during the day.”

“That is a fine idea in principle, Husband,” I said, “but what about the House’s other client villages? Will they languish, while you favor Haranwy?”

His mother said, “The children in the village are needed to work at chores.”

“I will find a way to do this,” said Vai with a stubborn pinch of his lips.

Fortunately an attendant announced Serena, who came accompanied by two other women. I greeted her with clasped hands. She greeted Vai casually, like an equal, then introduced me to her companions: One had married into Four Moons House and one been born into it. I escorted them to Vai’s mother, who remained seated, which was the privilege of an elder, although I was pretty sure Vai’s mother was younger than the mansa for all that she looked much older from years of illness. She accepted their polite greetings with a rigid aspect of seeming calm. The girls were so stricken by shyness that they barely whispered.

“They will ride in my personal coach,” said Serena. “If there is trouble, I can protect them.”

“That’s very generous,” I said, in genuine surprise.

“Is it?” she asked with lifted eyebrows. She turned back to Vai’s mother, bending over her to clasp her hands. “Maa, be sure I will take proper care of you and your girls, both on the journey and once we return to Four Moons House. Now I must go and make ready.”

She kissed me on the cheek and departed with her companions. Going to collect the cacica’s skull from a table by the door, I heard them murmur as they walked away down the passage.

“Really, Serena! He is certainly the epitome of a man in looks and dress, and we have all heard more times than we could possibly wish about his cold magic, but the family! How could you not laugh at seeing his mother’s rustic simplicity? They say she was born in a cart.”

“My grandmother would slap me for any such display of poor manners. Nor do I forget that my children will one day need the favor of the new mansa to make their way. Besides that, now my husband has chosen his heir, disrespect shown to them is like disrespect shown to him.”

“Catherine, what is it?” Vai murmured, coming up beside me as I laced the basket shut. Seeing his mother distracted by a steward’s quiet instructions, he caught my hand in his. “That’s a brilliant idea you have about opening up the school to all the children of the local villages.”

“Yes,” I said dreamily, imagining the consternation at the introduction of so much rustic simplicity when Vai and I announced our new plan.

Noble Ba’al! Had I already acquiesced? Had the mansa defeated me so easily? Or was it the look on Vai’s mother’s face that had weakened my resolve? How could Vai and I possibly manage a household if we started from nothing among people hostile to cold mages? How would we even keep warm in winter? To build a house with a hypocaust system was ruinously expensive even if Vai did much of the carpentry himself. We hadn’t a sestertius to our names.

He allowed a servant to push his mother and Wasa in the invalid chair so he could walk behind them arm in arm with me. As we paced through the compound along corridors I had never before seen, he smiled, for the people who lived in Two Gourds House did pause to look. Blessed Tanit! The man meant to make sure everyone saw him. I was both amused and embarrassed. I did not like so many people staring at me. I did not like the feeling that I was being seduced into the clutches of the mage House with lovely clothing and flattering admiration, even though I knew that was not Vai’s intention. No doubt he simply wanted to give things to me to show he could, like the sandals he had bought for me at Aunty Djeneba’s and the bed he had built for us.

The troubling confusion of my thoughts made it therefore a relief when we settled the family in the coach. When a big basket appeared with the puppy in it, to be conveyed with the girls in the coach, I thanked Serena so profusely that she smiled in a way that made me feel gauche, an emotion I would never have believed I could experience.

“The creature will give them something to keep their minds off the journey and whatever trouble lies behind us.”

The girls wept and clung first to me and then to Vai before he gently reminded them that he relied on them to take care of their mother.

Vai’s mother took my hand in hers, speaking in a low voice. “You were right. He did not leave us behind.” To my surprise she kissed me on the cheek.

From the steps we watched the cavalcade depart. The spears of the escort flashed under the bright eye of the sun. The Four Moons banner rippled in a brisk wind. Distant thunder rolled, and everyone waiting in the courtyard looked up at the cloudless sky.

Vai spoke. “The cannonade is not battle. It’s Lord Marius’s army at field maneuvers. We shall take a tour of the city today. The river walk is lovely in the sun.”

“Vai, yesterday Viridor acted as your ally, yet he is the one who betrayed you.”

He shrugged. “He did what he thought was best for his House, not out of malice. I can’t fault him for that. In a way he helped me, for none of this would have happened had I not fallen into the mansa’s hands. He and I talked it all out.”

“You are friends again? You trust him?”

“Yes.”

A steward dressed in the brown livery of Two Gourds House approached Vai. “Magister, you are required in the men’s hall. Maestra, if you will, the steward of the women’s hall attends you.”

Vai went his way and I went mine, accompanied by a young djelimuso with jangling gold bracelets on both wrists and gold earrings. In our guest suite a formidable woman stood examining the cacica’s skull. Her resplendent starched boubou and head wrap marked her as Houseborn. After a suitable exchange of greetings, she cut to the point.

“As long as you remain here in Two Gourds House, you will need persons to attend to your needs and those of your husband. Have you any particular requests, Maestra?”

I thought I might as well take the bull by the horns. “I am newly married, Maestra, and I was not raised in a mage House. As you must surely know, I am only recently released from confinement in another wing of this magnificent establishment. If you could assign me an experienced and patient woman to help me make my way, I would be grateful.”

She nodded. “Yes, you must learn to do things in the proper way. There was some talk in the servants’ quarters about the unseemly way you laced up your skirt and bounced a ball around the back courtyard. Yet Magister Serena said you acquitted yourself well when you poured wine for the men’s supper last night. So you cannot be unversed in all aspects of a woman’s duties.”

I just could not resist. “The game with the ball is called batey. I would be happy to teach it to anyone who wishes to learn, boys and girls alike, for everyone plays in the Antilles.”

She sighed. “I will be blunt, Maestra. It is my understanding that his origins are very low. The honored mansa of Four Moons House and my own cousin, who is mansa here, believe your husband to be crucial to the effort to defeat the Iberian Monster’s greedy ambitions. For him to be raised to such a position of honor is an unexpected act that speaks to his exceptional promise. If you will allow yourself to be guided by me, then you will avoid doing things that could shame your husband. As it is said, a well-behaved wife will bear well-behaved children.”

My lips closed over several imprudent retorts. I plied a different stitch. “Goodness, Maestra, I am only thinking of my husband and future children when I play batey. In the Antilles, they encourage girls and young women to play so as to strengthen themselves for childbirth.”

She frowned. “In that case, I suppose it must be seen as unexceptionable.”

Servants were assigned to guard, serve, and clean our suite, and a steward was on duty at all times to advise me in matters of propriety. No mirror graced the suite. Except when Vai and I were in the bedchamber, a djelimuso would sit in formal attendance, so it was clear the mansa did not trust me.

Playing batey along the garden wall distracted me from the intense boredom of the next many days. When I asked for books and newspapers to read, I was brought accounts of household management and plates of the current fashions, which I would have enjoyed had I had companions to share them with. The attendants kept a formal distance from me at all times despite my efforts to draw them out. In the end I sat next to the skull and browsed the books while keeping up a one-sided conversation with the cacica about my reading.

I saw Vai only at night in the intimacy of the summer cottage and our gauze-curtained bed, where he was diligent in his attentions. Afterward he fed me scraps of news before falling asleep, and kept promising we would talk more the next day. But the next day never came because after we had eaten our breakfast of rice porridge garnished with berries and cream, he would be called away. Everyone in the women’s hall treated me politely, but they weren’t friendly and confiding, and no one was interested in my stories of Expedition and the Taino or even my store of tales from my father’s journals. Two Gourds House had an ancient lineage and a vast treasure-house of wealth and power to give it consequence in the world. One thing I did not have, in that world, was anything but borrowed consequence. It was pretty clear they thought I talked too much. When I thought of how the gals in Expedition had taken me in, it made me want to cry.

Fortunately I was allowed to sew in the women’s courtyard, under the eye of the steward, who counted out needles and pins and collected them at the end of each day. I amused myself by piecing together the cut-up parts of my ruined cuirassier jacket into a serviceable garment.

One day one of the younger women ventured a personal question. “Is it true you are Phoenician, Maestra? That your marriage contract restricts him to only one wife?”

“I was born and raised in a Kena’ani household,” I replied, aware that this point was of particular interest to the unmarried woman, for a mansa’s heir might normally expect eventually to take three or four wives. “But naturally I knew nothing of the contract or the marriage until the day it happened. It was all properly arranged for us by our elders.”

In a whisper I could hear perfectly well, a sour-faced young woman murmured, “A shame the man is wasted on a trifling girl like her. You know what they say about Phoenicians. They sacrifice their children to their bloodthirsty gods, and whore out their daughters.”

“No matter, I suppose,” her friend replied with a scornful smile, “for as soon as the Iberian Monster is dispatched, they’ll send him on a Grand Tour.”

I stabbed the needle into the wool, pretending I was sewing tongues together. If only Bee had been with me, we could have demolished them.

With the first flight of barbs unleashed, they were not done with me.

“Yet I have heard a strange tale from the servants, Maestra, which I cannot believe could possibly be true. They say you strip down to almost nothing and bounce a ball on your knee. Like a savage. Or a man.”

My gaze flashed up. I was glad to see their hesitation as I took notice of them. They were right to be scared of me! Their trembling made me pounce. “Did no one tell you? My father is a spirit beast who stalks the bush but walks in this world in the shape of a man. No man can tame me, and only one man has enough strength and charm to coax me into loving him.”

The benefit of telling the truth, as Rory had once said, is that no one believes you.

The young women tittered and smirked. The steward frowned, her gusty sigh a whip of disapproval. But the older women looked thoughtful, and an elder abruptly declared she had it in mind to have a story. A djelimuso sang the tale of Keleya Konkon’s prodigious cooking pot, which was, in truth, an exceedingly grand story. I did not get to hear the end of it, for a male steward arrived.

I had been summoned by the mansa of Four Moons House.

I thought I would be asked to pour wine for the mansa’s noonday dinner, where at least I would get to see Vai even if I was not allowed to speak. But the steward escorted me instead to the most splendidly decorated suite of rooms I had ever seen, all gilt trim and ceilings painted in a distinctive style that intermarried Celtic knotwork with the arcane symbols of the Mande hunters. An armed attendant locked me into a small antechamber, where I paced rather than sitting on the cushioned bench. A latticework window overlooked a parlor, from which double doors opened onto a larger audience room beyond, where men circulated, talking. I looked for Vai but did not see him.

The mansa entered the parlor together with the Two Gourds mansa, an elderly man with a seamed face and black hair shot through with white. They stood by a window overlooking a garden, too far away for any ordinary mortal to overhear, but I cast my threads through the tangling magics of the House and listened.

The mansa of Two Gourds House spoke in a low voice. “His birth is low but his power is clear, so I have not questioned your plans. But now Lord Marius returns and tells me the girl has been working with Camjiata. That she was the general’s agent all along, and seduced your young magister into doing the general’s work. Are you certain this course is the wise one?”

“Leave him to me. I have him coming along just as I wish. He will guard his mother’s honor with his own.”

“And the girl?”

“She is part of my plan. He is badly infatuated with her.”

The Two Gourds mansa clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “A woman is wet clay. If he does not shape her to obedience now, he will have trouble later.”

“Lord of All, my brother, you must have felt ardent about one woman or another in your youth! Never mind. What matters to us is that for all he is the most cocksure of young men, he desires above all things to seem a man in her eyes.”

“Yes, yes, I vaguely recall how it was to be young and led by my passions. I suppose he will get her pregnant soon enough. But a Phoenician mercenary house is not a worthwhile ally. I understand it was your council’s only way to bind the Hassi Barahal clan back when they had information about the general at the end of his first campaign. I can see why you married her to him when you thought he was of little utility to your House. But now he is your named heir! If you mean to follow through with it.”

“Despite every hesitation, there is no better candidate. You know what he did at Lemovis. It would be better to kill him than to see him defect to the general. But to kill one as powerful as he is would be a terrible deed we would all regret. He belongs to Four Moons House, and now I have made sure of it.”

A chill of horror spun through my bones.

The Two Gourds mansa went on, “Is it true the marriage contract constrains you? I would give you my youngest daughter for him, even as a second wife. She has seen the boy and approves.”

“It was a chained marriage. Magic binds our hands in this regard.”

“Is the Phoenician girl truly worth that much to you?”

“You will soon see.”

A steward appeared at the far doors. “Your Excellencies, if you will.”

The men flowed away into a room I could not see from my unlit prison. I heard men’s laughter and the clink of utensils as they sat down to their meal.

“You will soon see.”

That sounded ominous.

Footsteps scraped the corridor. The lock clicked, the door opened, and a steward led me into the dining room. Two Gourds was a traditional household. The old mansa’s young kinsmen served their elders while his wives and daughters poured wine for the more than thirty men in attendance. Vai was describing how a cold mage might defuse a square of riflemen without getting killed.

“The risk to the cavalry will be great, but that risk arises regardless. If the cold mage is placed at the center of the horsemen, the riders can sweep in and out at speed. The proximity of the cold mage to the combustion will kill their shot. If it is coordinated properly, then a second cavalry charge can break the enemy square during that interval when the riflemen and cannon cannot fire.”

“An excellent idea,” said Lord Marius, “but horses will not break a wall of infantrymen.”

“Lancers? Mounted crossbowmen? Longbowmen can surely do damage from a distance. The point is that Camjiata relies on superior firepower, and we can render his guns impotent in bursts. And then take advantage of their weakness.”

The entire table might as well have been feeding him fruit with their own hands, the way they were seducing him with their respectful attention. The young woman who had made slighting comments about Phoenician baby-killers and whores offered him more wine. He glanced up with a smile that stabbed right through me, until his gaze flicked past her and I realized the smile was for me. The Two Gourds mansa raised a hand for silence.

Every person in the room turned to look at me. Six djeliw were present.

“So, young Andevai,” said the old Two Gourds mansa. “Let us see what your wife can do.”

Vai’s smile vanished. People whispered as they cast glances at me. It took me a few moments to realize my expression must have matched my heart. I was no actress, to pretend to a bland, agreeable character that wishes nothing more than to jump through hoops like a trained dog. My gaze raked the table, for I was determined that these high-and-mighty men would not see me cringe or smile to please them.

It was a high-and-mighty gathering indeed! Six mansas were present: Four Moons, Two Gourds, Five Mirrors, and Viridor of White Bow House, as well as two others I identified by the tasseled whisks hanging from their robes. A Roman legate wearing the purple stripe of his rank was flanked by four fawning young tribunes. Lord Marius sat at the other end of the table beside an ornately dressed man who was surely the Parisi prince. At least ten other Celtic-born princely lords with their thick mustaches filled out the august assembly.

“She’s just a girl,” said the legate. “She doesn’t even look like a Phoenician, if you ask me. But it would be like them to cuckoo a child into a nest of magisters, would it not?”

Lord Marius raised his glass of wine mockingly, as if toasting me with Amadou Barry’s blood. “We dare not bring in a mirror, for fear she will cut a door and through it flee with the young man in tow. But let us see what else this strange creature can do.”

“Eh? What manner of creature is she?” demanded the Parisi prince, lifting a pair of spectacles to his eyes to peruse me more clearly. “Bold Hunter! My grandaunt was northern-born, up in the princedom of Carn. When I was but a little lad she used to frighten us with stories of black-haired beasts who had eyes the color of amber. They crept out of the ice and turned into lads and maidens to tempt the willing and then rip out their throats.”

My hands curled into fists. My chin came up.

Vai said, coolly, “I cannot sit and listen to my wife being spoken of with disrespect. I will not tolerate it.” He paused to survey the table. No one spoke. The legate coughed. Lord Marius set down his glass with the nod of a man who has just won a bet with himself.

Vai’s gaze settled on me. The tension in his shoulders spoke more loudly than words. “Catherine?”

I was not a dog to perform tricks.

But I could not be the means by which he lost face in front of all these men.

So I wrapped the shadows around me, and vanished.

In the eruption of commentary and astounded exclamations, I padded over to the table, snagged Lord Marius’s wineglass, and drained it. The wine rushed down my throat, pear essence kissed with a faint rind of peppery oranges. I flung the glass into a corner, where it shattered most pleasingly while I skated over to where Vai sat.

My lips brushed his ear as I muttered, “Don’t push me too far.”

Last I walked to the djeliw, who watched my perambulations with astonishment as our mansa watched them watch me. I composed my furious expression into something meant to resemble placid affability, for truly I was an amiable person who preferred to get along with everyone! The moment I unwound the shadows and reappeared, several of the men chuckled as if they guessed exactly my sentiments from the defiant set of my head.

“It explains how the girl escaped,” said Lord Marius. “What of her cousin and brother?”

“There are more like her?” demanded the Parisi prince. “What fine spies such creatures will make!”

Vai kept his gaze on me to remind me to keep my lips closed. As if I would talk! I almost laughed as I realized he and the mansa had kept secrets from their allies: They had not told their allies that my cousin walked the dreams of dragons.

“A difficult woman to bind and chain, as you may imagine, but we managed it,” said our mansa, as if binding and chaining me into his House had been his intention all along! “Lord Marius, I am sure you already have a scheme or two in mind with which to usefully employ the woman.”

He caught my eye and gestured, flicking his fingers toward the door. Falling as I was into a red-hot fulmination, I strode out as proudly as I might. Let Andevai enjoy his little triumph! I was so angry I could not sit down even once I returned to our rooms. All I could bring myself to do was bounce the ball from wall to knee to wall to elbow, counting how many times I made the pass before I dropped it. At dusk I had to stop, by now sweaty and a little sore. I asked for a tray of food and a bath. I got what I asked for but not what I wanted.

Very late Vai came hurrying in to rush me back to the summer cottage.

“You were magnificent, love. They couldn’t stop talking about you the rest of the day!” His smile glittered. “Some of them said they envied me—”

“I had far more freedom at Aunty’s boardinghouse than I do here! It seems to me the women of Two Gourds House are too elegant and rarified to ever leave these walls, or perhaps it would just be considered shameful to do so. Certainly they scorn me too much to ask me to come along on their shopping trips and their tours of the famous landmarks of the famous city, of which need I remind you I have not seen a single paving stone nor a single vendor’s umbrella.”

“If they are treating you with disrespect, I will have a word with—”

“Yes! You will have a word. Everything I am here is due to my marriage to you. I might as well have allowed Prince Caonabo to arrest me! Whatever you may think, I am still being held like a prisoner as surety for you.” I repeated the conversation I had overheard between the two mansas.

“Yes, yes, that is how they talk, that is how they see things. But they can be brought to change. What matters is that they know they need me, that I am the best. Do not forget that Camjiata is letting James Drake do as he wills. You cannot want that to continue, Catherine!”

“Of course I understand that James Drake has to be stopped! That is not my point. The locked room in the servants’ wing was better than this because I had your mother and sisters to keep me company. I should have gone with them!”

“My sweet Catherine,” he murmured, nuzzling me in just the way I liked best, “you know it makes all the difference to me to have you here. You have been so patient. I see how it chafes you.”

“I dislike this coaxing manner, Andevai, with your wiles and caresses.”

“We’ll make a child.”

Trembling, I shoved him to arm’s length. “Is this the same man who swore we would bring no child into the world until we’re free of clientage?”

“Yes, but—”

“Not to mention my sire.”

“Yes, love, but—”

“I would be very careful what you say next.”

He sighed.

“They won’t even let me sew, except under their eye. As if they think I can effect an escape with a needle.”

“My love,” he murmured. This time I let him embrace me, because I was so tired of being alone all day that to feel the press of his hand on my back and the warmth of his chest against mine was the nectar I wished to feed on. “I promise you, we will go out tomorrow and promenade along the Sicauna River. We’ll take coffee at one of the little cafés, as people do here.”

Yet this night, finally, the kisses of a handsome man were not enough.

“If this is what it means to be wife of the mansa, I cannot live it. You would do better to marry the daughter of Two Gourds House and let her pour your wine!”

“Love, love, love, this is not what it will be once the war is over.”

But it would. I knew it, and he did not want to know it.

Yet he was right that a war was being fought. The old order did not want to die, and why should it? The radicals wanted change, and why wouldn’t they? Meanwhile Camjiata had a foot in each camp: His father and mother had both been born into the highest ranks, while his legal code would tear down the bed his noble forebears had long luxuriated in.

The bells of conflict rang down through the interwoven worlds. The dragons lost their hatchlings and began to die out, so they walked their dreams through the minds of mortal girls and by this means hatchlings survived, even if the girls did not. The courts drank mortal blood to strengthen themselves, and the salt turned them into ghouls, and thus, unable to change, as ghouls they fell into the mortal world and spread the salt plague that had killed so many.

So on and on, always the long struggle: The worlds are a maze with many paths.

“What about my sire?” I asked. “What are we to do when Hallows’ Night comes, as it will?”

“I have been discussing Hallows’ Night and troll mazes with the mansa—”

I shoved him to arm’s length. “With the mansa!”

“Beatrice is the one who revealed to him that we know how to escape the Hunt. You can’t wish people to die, Catherine! That’s all I told him, love. None of your secrets, I promise you.”

I could not scold him. I did not want people to die any more than he did. “Yet troll mazes won’t help me,” I muttered, letting him gather me against him.

He held me so close and so so sweetly. “My sweet Catherine, if we walk this road together, we will find a way through. I promise you, love. We will find a way.”

When I kissed him, I could hold on to my patience for one more night. But I had to make something change.