Cold Steel

36

At dawn a steward announced himself. Vai was commanded to accompany the mansa to the city of Senones to meet three Roman legions arriving from the east and discuss with them the difficulties of battling an army protected by a fire mage. He might be gone for weeks.

After he left, I wept hot tears of frustration. Then I dried my eyes.

In the indoor bedchamber, which we had never used, stood a writing desk equipped with paper, ink, and pens. I wrote an impassioned letter to Kofi because it was the only way I had to express the ferocity of my misgivings. Afterward I would have burned my bitter words, but I had no fire. Instead I concealed the folded paper inside the skull. For the longest time I stood at the open door of the suite, staring along the corridor. As long as my back was in sight, my attendants let me be. Now and again a servant passed on an errand. I could not quite comprehend how I had gotten here, wife to the heir of the mansa!

A young steward sauntered into view, carrying a tray on which lay a sealed letter. He mistook me for an attendant because of the simple colors and sensible cut of my clothes.

“Where is the woman who stewards here? I am instructed to give all correspondence that comes for the Four Moons heir to her first.”

I made a pretty courtesy and flashed a flirting grin. “I shall take it in to her. She is attending on the heir’s wife, who has a headache this morning for that the men rode away.”

He leaned closer, with a confiding smile that I rather fancied. “Is it true, what they say?”

“What do they say?” I gave him a sly look to distract him as I slipped the letter off the tray.

“That she can vanish from plain sight and walk through mirrors. That she is a spirit woman the heir captured in the bush and brought back to be his wife to show off his power. That’s why they can’t marry him to any other women, because she would kill and eat them.”

“It’s all true!”

“What does she look like?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary. Haven’t you ever seen her?” I heard footsteps behind me. “I’d best take this to the steward right away. You wouldn’t want me to get in trouble, would you?”

“I could get you into the kind of trouble you’d like,” he said with a grin.

I winked at him as I closed the door, then tucked the letter inside my jacket before anyone saw it. When they asked whom I had been talking to, I sniveled that a passing steward had told me the men had left already. With sobs I retreated to the summer cottage, the one place the djelimuso and steward would not follow. Gracious Melqart! What providence was this! The letter came from Chartji, and informed Vai that she and her three clerks had arrived in Lutetia and were putting up at an establishment called the Tavern with Two Doors just outside the city limits at the Arras Gate.

And her three clerks. Caith was one clerk. Who were the other two?

When Prince Caonabo arrested me, I had not allowed myself to be detained all mild and acquiescent, although who knows what I might have done had the man been cunning enough to shower me with ardent kisses and embraces, for clearly I was susceptible to such blandishments.

Instead I had leaped into action.

I conceived a violently imprudent plan.

I begged the steward to take me for a tour of the schoolrooms, since the heir and I hoped to bring into the world many well-behaved children. In one schoolroom I made myself useful with the older children by engaging them in a geography lesson in which they described to me in great detail the particulars of a map of Lutetia. When I returned to my rooms I kept the door to my suite open while I paged through books of fashion on a couch by the door. Every time I heard footsteps I took a turn around the sitting room that led past the door.

At mid-afternoon my labors were rewarded when the young steward ambled past, obviously on the lookout for me. Men did strut about life with a strong sense of their self-importance!

“Shh!” I whispered, “for they keep me trapped here. They don’t want me to talk to people lest I say unkind things about the heir’s wife.”

“Have you unkind things to say of her?” he asked with keen interest as he ogled my chest. “I hear all kinds of smoke but have seen no fire.”

“I could show you some fire,” I said with a look meant to inflame his interest. “I’ve nothing to do but sit for hours in the garden. Not that the heir’s wife needs watching by people like us.”

“Is it true a djelimuso guards the suite at all hours, day and night?”

“It is. I can’t hope to slip out as long as her eye is open! The frustrating part is that I could be gone for hours and she would never know, if I could just get out this door.”

He was eager to show me what he could accomplish! We arranged for him to create a distraction in the morning at second bell, after which I would meet him at a place he named that I pretended to know the location of. He hadn’t even asked my name, although by the evidence of his gaze he had become well acquainted with the shape of my breasts.

I hid Chartji’s letter in the skull and retrieved the one to Kofi, and retreated to the summer cottage, where I threw tantrums and also actual objects any time anyone attempted to enter. By evening they simply waited outside for me to ring. At dawn I rang for broth and informed them I felt so ill I wanted only to sleep all day and must on no account be disturbed. Then I dressed in my boots, my riding skirt, and my repurposed cuirassier’s jacket, which gave me the look of a humble but respectable woman. My cane and my locket gave me courage. The cacica I had to leave behind, because I saw no way to move her without the djelimuso’s wondering why. Anyway, I had to leave Chartji’s letter somewhere I could hope Vai would think to look for it.

What distraction the young steward concocted I did not know. As soon as I heard a commotion from the sitting room, I was up a tree and onto the wall and thence over the sloped roofs. Without djeliw following my every move it was easy for me to escape, as the mansa had known it would be.

With my newly acquired knowledge of Lutetia as a map in my head, I enjoyed a refreshing walk down to the lovely Sicauna River and over a stone bridge and across the holy island dedicated to the Lady of the River with her diadem and boat. On such a fine sunny day many people walked the streets, but I sensed a mood of fear and anticipation. I strode along a wide boulevard leading to the northwest. The long facades of the buildings were broken by gates leading to interior courtyards. Flagstones shone, drenched by pools of light from the midday sun. Side avenues broke away to smaller temples, shops, and city manufactories powered not by steam but by hand. A long line of shuttered windows down one narrow lane bore the plain white stamp of goblinkind, but their workshops were closed down for the day. I saw no trolls at all, because no trolls were allowed into the central city by order of the Parisi prince.

After several miles I reached Arras Gate, built across an old defensive wall of earlier days. Folk stood in line at a toll station, arguing with the guards over the cost of import duties on the items they were carrying into the city. Wrapped in shadow I walked right through, no one the wiser. Outside the gate more buildings spread along the Arras Road, for the city was growing outward. To the left rose a wooded hill on whose height stood a holy sanctuary dedicated to one of the aspects of Mars the Soldier. Farther off to the left I glimpsed the smokestacks of a factory district. I asked directions to the Tavern with Two Doors.

On such a beautiful summer’s day, trestle tables filled the tavern’s outdoor courtyard. Men drank and ate and argued. A youth read aloud from a pamphlet for those who could not read.

“ ‘A Declaration of Rights and a Civil Code. Book One. Title One. Chapter One. Every person shall enjoy civil rights.’ What do you think of that, eh? Every person!”

A lively argument arose among the men over who could be deemed a person. Did the word person include women? Inside, to my delight, I immediately spotted Rory seated in a corner next to a young man. They were sharing a mug of beer mostly, I thought, for the chance to dandle each other’s fingers. I gently eased my shadows away so no one would be startled by my sudden appearance. Seeing me, Rory broke off. Excusing himself with an apologetic smile, he made his way to me. I followed him to the back, into a separate building made up of rooms where, for the first time, I saw trolls. In a sequestered courtyard clusters of trolls drank and ate. After so long, I had forgotten trolls saw my cane as a sword even in daylight.

“Roderic, what is that shiny blade?” called one red-and-yellow male, the question followed up by whistled inquiries from all around the courtyard. Feathered people turned to look with the bared teeth of trolls mimicking human emotions, in this case amusement and curiosity.

“My sister has come to visit,” he replied, at ease in this flock. “Has Chartji flown off?”

Yes, she had, in company with the Honeyed Voice.

“The Honeyed Voice?” I asked as Rory hurried me out the back past a warren of lanes hung with mirrors and shards of glass whose flashing and spinning made me reel and gag. I felt like the very threads of being were unraveling.

“Those troll mazes are unpleasant, aren’t they?” He steered us to a lane lined with shops whose windows had only glass, no mirrors. I leaned against a wall as nausea and headache did a frenetic dance that slowly receded. After a while, he went on. “The Honeyed Voice is what the feathered people call Bee. It’s a play on words. She’s a Bee and she gives speeches…”

“I know, Rory. I figured it out.”

“What’s got your hair up?” He peered at me. “You’ve had a fight with him! People do that, you know. After some talking and petting, it will all be set right again.”

“We haven’t had a fight.”

His tone changed. “Cat, don’t lie.”

“We didn’t have a fight. It’s just the mansa got his claws into Vai. I have to rescue him, only he doesn’t want to be rescued, he has everything he thinks he ever wanted. He can’t see what kind of man he is going to become if he stays there. He thinks he can change them but they’re changing him.”

I burst into tears. Rory patted my back and fended off the impertinent queries of passersby by telling them his sister had had a row with her husband, nothing that wouldn’t be fixed once he had had a manly talk with the rogue of a popinjay his sister had foolishly married all for being dazzled by the man’s peacock feathers and melting eyes.

I could not help but laugh.

“That’s better,” he said.

“Where is everyone else?” I asked. “Chartji’s letter said you were at the tavern.”

“That’s where we sleep. Today they’re addressing a secret convocation of radicals. We’ll go there.”

He led me on a road that ran parallel to the old city walls. As we entered the interior courtyard of a large compound, I drew the shadows around me. People were hammering in workshops on the ground floor. Men sawed in the courtyard beside wagons piled with rope for haulage. The carpenters touched the brims of their red caps in a signal, and made no move to stop Rory. We descended a flight of stone steps into a basement lit by oil lamps and heavy with tobacco smoke, the scent of the Antilles. The fragrance made me lose hold of my threads, but no one took any notice of two more in the crowded cellar.

The smell of strong coffee wafted from a bar where men, and a few women, talked in the local cant at a speed I could not understand. The women wore loose, simply cut gowns, while the men wore neckerchiefs tied in exciting knots over jackets cut short in front and long in back.

At the back of this cavernous space, Kehinde Nayo Kuti was giving a demonstration of her jobber press. She wore a knee-length tunic over belled trousers in the Turanian style common in the south. It was practical garb for a traveler, and the brown fabric almost hid the many ink stains where she had unthinkingly wiped her fingers. Standing on a box, Bee acted as the professora’s voice.

“The press can be taken apart and moved if the authorities raid. Besides that, when your prince demands another tax be levied on printers and pamphlets, think how hard it is to track it down. What you cannot chain, you cannot hold!”

“I’d like to hold you, sweetheart!” shouted some sad wit.

Bee pointed him out to laughter and applause. “If that is the best you can do in the way of courtship, Maester, then like this press I shall have to seek my words elsewhere. I have come to Lutetia to speak of justice and revolution, not to waste my time with men who are not serious about the great struggle we have undertaken.”

“Cat Barahal!” Brennan Du slid in beside us to shake my hand. “Chartji thought you might show up. Where is the cold mage?”

I sighed, for of all the things I had thought of, how to answer this question to anyone except Bee or Rory was not one of them.

Rory said, “He’s a prisoner of his vanity.”

“I beg your pardon? A prisoner of the banditry?” Brennan rubbed his ear. The roar in the chamber was astoundingly clamorous. Chartji and Caith flanked Bee, who was now wrangling with hecklers sure that women had no cause or right to speak in a public venue. “Come this way.”

We moved into a low passage and emerged into an old storage room lit by two basement windows. Lines of afternoon light cast gold over a table strewn with pamphlets, blank sheets of foolscap, and pens and ink.

He slid a pamphlet out of a heap. “Your account of the revolutionary philosophy of the Expedition radicals has traveled across Europa while you have laid low. Many have read it. Have you been a prisoner or a spy?”

“Cat!” Bee appeared, trembling as she rushed to embrace me.

“Oh, Bee! I’m so glad you’re here!” To my horror, I again burst into tears.

“Dearest! Has some terrible calamity befallen Andevai?”

Pleased with his cleverness, Rory repeated himself. “He’s become a prisoner of his vanity.”

Brennan chuckled. “Was he not that already? As the djeliw say, vanity is a mark of weakness, humility that of strength.”

“The mansa made him his heir!” I cried.

Brennan whistled with real admiration. “When I suggested you spy in the mage House, I had no idea you would do so with such success!”

“Heir to Four Moons House?” demanded Bee. “So he will become the next mansa?”

I nodded, too choked to speak.

She patted my hand. “Blessed Tanit! No wonder you’re crying! If there is one enticement Andevai could not resist, that would be it.”

“It gets worse,” I sniveled. “The mansa brought Vai’s mother along to be prisoner with his sisters. Now with his elevation his mother is elevated, too! She was born a peddler’s daughter and now she’s the honored mother of the heir to Four Moons House!”

Brennan whistled again. “Bold Teutates! Remind me never to play chess with the mansa. That will have secured the young man’s loyalty. You can’t ask a man to take a course of action that will seem to him to be dishonoring his mother.”

“Did you ask him to give up the heirship, Cat?” Bee asked. “Or did he cast you out so he could secure a more valuable bride?”

“Of course he didn’t cast me out!” I crumpled a pamphlet in my hands. I hated the way my anger and distress surged like storm tides, ripping me this way and that until I could not even think straight for wanting to cry one moment and rage the next.

“Of course he didn’t cast her out,” said Rory with a disdainful sniff. “For one thing, his scent is still all over her, and pretty fresh. For another, he would think it would make him look bad, as if he’s ashamed of Cat. If there’s one thing he truly hates, it’s the thought of looking bad or feeling demeaned in front of other people. No, there’s one thing he hates worse. He hates people thinking he is ashamed of where he comes from, because a part of him is ashamed of it.”

We all stared at him.

He explained with the patience of an elder to slow-witted children. “People often lie with their words, even if they don’t mean to purposefully. But almost no people can lie with their bodies. Do you need me to go and scold him?”

I wiped tears off my cheeks. “No. It would just make him worse. They praise and fawn over him to his face and talk about his low origins behind his back. But they’re scared of him, too, and so very impressed by how powerful he is.”

Bee nodded, stroking my arm. “What now, Cat?”

I flipped through the pamphlets to give my hands something to do. The writings ranged from broadsheets in simple verse to Professora Nayo Kuti’s lengthy tracts. “It was insupportable living in the mage House as the heir’s wife with nothing to do or look forward to except—”

“You need not describe the whole,” said Bee quickly.

“But I won’t let the mage House have him. I love him too much to let them ruin him!”

“Only you could. Honestly, Cat, sometimes I don’t know how you put up with him.”

“No doubt I learned how to love annoying people by growing up with you!”

Rory snorted.

Without the least furrow of irritation, she smiled at Brennan in a gentle way that made her look as radiant as a kind goddess standing in a heavenly beam of light. “I suppose you did.”

She glanced toward the archway as the two trolls and Kehinde came into the room. Chartji held aloft a candle lantern. Her taloned feet clacked as she walked in the oddly rhythmic glide trolls had. She bobbed to acknowledge me.

Kehinde came forward with hands extended to grasp mine. “Cat Barahal! I am so pleased to see you. May your heart be at peace.” She looked at our expressions, and raised an eyebrow in inquiry. “What news do you bring?”

I drew myself up. “I’ve glimpsed the mage Houses and their princely and Roman allies from the inside. I’m now convinced the general is the only one who can overthrow their grip on power. But Vai will never support Camjiata as long as the general is allowing James Drake to use fire magic to fight his battles. Nor should he. So I am going to infiltrate Camjiata’s army and kill James Drake.”

Before anyone could respond to my bold and dramatic declaration, a shrill troll whistle sounded outside, followed by a cascade of human whistles. The rumble of voices from the chamber ceased so abruptly that for an instant I thought I had gone deaf.

“Here come the authorities!” said Brennan with a glint in his smile that got my heart pounding, and not in a romantical way. He looked like a person spoiling for a fight. “Kehinde, you and Bee go swiftly now. You, too, Cat.”

“I am an accomplished swordswoman,” said Bee.

“We need your voice most now,” said Kehinde. “Come along.”

To my surprise Bee meekly followed Kehinde and the trolls into the passage. The silence in the far room was replaced by the trampling of feet as people hurried to rescue the press.

Brennan shoved the table against the thick wall and climbed up on it to open one of the deep-set windows. “Cat! Go along after them now.”

My stormy despair was overtaken by a desire to punch someone. I jumped up next to him. “Give me a leg up. I can fight dirty in ways you never imagined.”

“Cat…”

I met his eye. “If you say because I am a woman, I am best away from the fight, I will lose all respect for you.”

“Let her go first,” said Rory. “You won’t regret it.”

With a shrug he made a basket with his hands. I shimmied through the window into a light well and up to the courtyard. A quick survey revealed many handy coils of rope on the wagons. Tying an end to a post, I uncoiled it across the paving stones to the far wall. When men wearing marshals’ uniforms ran into the courtyard carrying muskets and flourishing halberds, I yanked on the rope with all my strength.

As I slammed back into the wall, the rope popped up tautly to waist height. None of them saw it coming, for they could not see me. The force of so many men pushing into the rope at the same time jerked me forward so hard I had to let go, but the men in front stumbled and the men behind bumped into them. Into this confusion I waded with my cane, whacking men in the back of the neck so they turned around to chastise their comrades. I grabbed muskets and halberds out of their hands and flung the weapons as far as I could. I trod on feet. Their boiled leather helmets made excellent balls to be tossed high, so they had to throw up their hands to protect themselves as the helmets crashed down. Flailing hands struck and pushed me. A burly man with stinking onion breath bumped hard into me, so I dropped to a crouch and he smacked heads with the man next to him. By sticking my cane between the legs of staggering men, I tripped four in a row before they thought to start kicking.

Laborers swarmed out of the building on all sides. I snatched up as many muskets and halberds as I could. Now mostly unarmed, and surrounded by men bearing hammers, adzes, and axes, the marshals shrank back into a defensive group.

Brennan sauntered into the gap between the two groups without the least evidence that he feared the muskets pointed at him. He rolled back his sleeves and put up his hands. “I challenge you all to put down your weapons and settle this as real men do, with our fists. Who will be first? It is sure not one man of you can outlast me.”

Onion-breath man shoved past his fellows. “Let’s see what ye have got.”

They circled in the manner of men putting on a show in a boxing ring, but by the scowl on the marshal’s face and the measuring gaze of Brennan, the fight was deadly serious. The marshal broke in to throw a blow that was easily parried by Brennan, who followed with a jab that landed square on the other man’s nose. Blood gushed like a pungent iron brine. I thought it prudent to back away lest I betray myself. Other men bolted forward, and the courtyard dissolved into a mass of men slugging each other. I backed up to the cellar windows and dumped muskets and halberds into the window well. Rory watched the fight with a lazy smile.

“Aren’t you going in?” I asked. “To prove you’re a real man?”

“I’m not a man. I need prove nothing. If there’s trouble, I’ll pounce.”

“That’s not trouble?” The roil of the fight echoed against the walls.

“The marshals in Lutetia are underpaid and recruited from the plebeian class. They don’t like to arrest men who share the same grievances they do. But they have no choice but to obey orders even though they chafe at them. Now they can say they fought.”

Above, windows on the second story were thrown open. Bee stood framed in the opening.

“Enough! Those who oppress us feast on the blood we spill for them when we fight each other! Who is our true enemy? Our neighbor whose children cry for bread in the evening? Or the lord who throws the leavings from his heavily laden table to his pigs?”

As the fighting men paused to look up, women moved into the courtyard and thrust pamphlets into the hands of the marshals.

“What d’ye mean me to do with this?” shouted Onion Breath, shaking a pamphlet toward the upper windows. “D’ye think I can read?”

“If you cannot, then whose fault is that? The lord’s children can all read. They who hold the lash do not want you to know you are not alone in speaking against its cruel bite! Why do you think they hate printing presses or any person whose voice spreads the news of a declaration of rights? Why do you think they fear a civil code whose laws will demolish the privileges of the few? Why do you think they send the likes of you to arrest printers and smash presses? Not for your sake! They aren’t protecting you! Go on, then! Go, but remember that you are our brothers. Remember that we fight for you.”

She stepped back into the gloom as Rory tugged on my wrist. Abandoning the weapons, we passed through a carpentry shop smelling of sawdust and hurried by diverse passages into a hidden staircase and thus out onto another street. Brennan strode up with Bee. He had a scuffed chin and an abrasion on his right cheek. His trousers were ripped at the left knee.

“I’m getting slow,” he said. “Invincible Andraste! How did you do that, Cat?”

Bee shook her head to indicate that whatever else she had told Brennan, my secrets had never passed her lips. “It’s a Hassi Barahal secret,” she said.

“Where are the others?” I asked as we set out.

“Taking down and moving the press,” he said. “That was a spectacular diversion, Cat.”

“My thanks.” My heart was still pounding, and I had barely caught my breath, yet I felt alive as I had not for weeks now. Indeed, I was scarcely thinking of Vai constantly at all.

“Diversions are her specialty,” said Bee with a laugh. “Dearest, I can’t imagine how Andevai could ever imagine you would tolerate being closed within stultifying walls, whatever attentions he might think to assuage you with.”

“Even I would get bored, no matter how good the petting was,” said Rory.

By the time we reached the tavern I had worked up an impressive hunger. The Tavern with Two Doors was made up of two squares of buildings, one for human people and one for feathered people. Each had a central courtyard, linked by a shared wing. This central wing housed the kitchens, one for each courtyard, and other service rooms. Part of the ground floor, beneath the upper floor, lay open as a wide portico. Because it was summer, tables were set here, where rats from one side and trolls from the other could congregate as they wished. We took a table here. Men strolled up, a few to flirt with Bee but most to argue the serious business of radical philosophy. People spoke of rising up against the prince in order to open the city gates to Camjiata’s army.

I ate my way through three platters of meats flavored with sauces, but more than that I relished the talk, the laughter, the freedom to say what I wished or to get up and take a turn around the trolls’ courtyard had I the desire to do so, which I did more than once before the trolls went to bed at nightfall. Kehinde appeared late, having conveyed the components of the jobber press to its next hiding place. Rory slipped off to talk to the young man I had seen him with earlier.

I ate an entire tray of mouthwatering pastries while everyone else was debating the question of whether women could bear the burden of having the same rights as men, because if I had not kept my hands busy I would have punched every man who argued that women simply could not have any independent legal capacity separate from their fathers, husbands, or sons. I could have sat there all night, listening to Bee and Kehinde eviscerate them, with Brennan tossing in the occasional joking remark to assuage male vanity. We almost did sit there all night, talking under the gleam of lanterns because the Parisi prince, in concert with Two Gourds House, had forbidden the installation of gas lighting anywhere in the city or its outer districts.

The first birds chirruped a dawn song as we staggered to our rest. Brennan and Kehinde had taken a narrow room above the kitchens whose window looked over the trolls’ courtyard. Here rooms were cheapest, since the trolls made many people uncomfortable. Chartji and Caith slept elsewhere.

A screen divided the room to create privacy. On the side where Kehinde and Bee slept was a bed just wide enough for two, supplemented by a narrow pallet, which Bee set on the floor as Kehinde took off her shoes by the light of a candle.

“Let you and Cat share the bed, Bee. I shall take the pallet for as long as Cat is with us.”

“Are you sure, for we surely do not mind taking the pallet,” Bee said with such solemnity that I gaped at her downcast gaze and folded hands. Tension bled between the two women, yet their polite respect toward each other seemed sincere.

“There are two of you. It is unreasonable of me to take the larger space.” She glanced at the door as Brennan came in, looked our way, then vanished behind the screen. He whistled as he fussed around getting ready to sleep. A chair clacked as he shifted it. Ropes squeaked as he lay down. The tilt of Kehinde’s head made me think she was blushing.

Bee slanted a portentous glance my way. “Cat and I will be glad to share the bed.”

“Where is Rory?” I whispered as I settled onto the bed in my shift.

Kehinde chuckled. “He takes care of himself.”

As Bee snuggled down between me and the wall, the professora pulled off her tunic and lay down in trousers and under-blouse.

I whispered. “Kehinde, if I may ask, I heard you were arrested by the prince here and had to return to Massilia. Isn’t it risky for you to come back now?”

After a silence in which I thought I had perhaps offended her, she said, “The work must be done despite the risk. It is more important than one life.” She blew out the candle.

Brennan coughed.

Bee and I lay side by side in the old familiar way, holding hands.

“After the war, we’ll set up a little household together, you and me and Rory,” she whispered. “Men can come and go if we approve it or wish it, dearest. We don’t need them to live.”

“Yes.” My shattering despair subsided to a weary throb. “I can manage anything as long as we are together.”

It was almost midday when Bee and I woke. Kehinde still slept, a hand gripping the end of one of her locks as if she had never let go of a child’s habit. Brennan was gone.

We dressed and went out to wash our faces in a trough. The sun burnished the ebony of Bee’s curls as she rubbed shadowed eyes. “Blessed Tanit! Cat, why did you let me drink so much?”

In late morning most of the tables were empty. We settled where we could look over the trolls’ courtyard but also see into the courtyard of the other half of the inn. There we saw Rory laughing next to his friend. Bee tended her hangover with a mug of beer and a bowl of broth. I devoured a splendid spelt porridge garnished with butter and a creamy pear sauce.

“Whatever happened with Kemal?” I asked.

She swirled the dregs of the ale in the mug. “Once we reached Havery, I sent a letter to the New Academy. After some weeks I received a reply. He wrote all manner of pleasing words, but he reiterated that he cannot leave the hatchlings until he is certain of their safety. I cannot fault him for the sentiment, but I felt obliged to reply that I could not visit him in Noviomagus given the current unpleasantness wracking Europa. I have my work, too, you know! Speeches to declaim! People to scold into behaving better! Blessed Tanit! Perhaps after all this he has reconsidered his partiality for me now he has come into his full power.”

I considered my empty spoon. “We are a sad pair.”

“Dearest, what do you mean to do now?”

“Camjiata’s skirmishers were last seen near the town of Cena. If I can find his army, I can sneak into his camp to kill Drake, and then return before Vai gets back from Senones and finds out I left. Then I’ll convince him to leave the mage House and fight for the general.”

“That’s your plan? Do you think it will be easy to convince him to leave now that he’s heir? With his monumental vanity, he’ll believe he can change things from within. That the mansa made sure to bestow such an honor on Andevai’s mother makes me respect the man’s devious mind. Has Andevai been unkind to you? Is that what drove you away?”

“Not at all. If anything, he has been overly kind.”

“That being so, you might have chosen a more prudent and less dramatic and public way of expressing your discontent.”

“I did express my discontent! He said that my being there made ‘all the difference,’ to him.”

She laughed. “I can see how that would have rubbed you the wrong way. Yet even you must see Andevai will take this defection very ill.”

“I just had to get out of there.”

Rory slipped onto the bench beside me, winkled the spoon from my hand, and started eating my porridge.

“Are you really willing to kill James Drake?” Bee asked.

“You have no idea how willing I am.” My fingers clutched my cane so tightly that, had it been ordinary wood, I would have crushed it into splinters. “He means to kill Vai regardless, so I must do it to protect Vai. Even if I cannot live in the mage House and he cannot leave it and so we must be parted… at least I will know he lives and thrives in his chosen place.”

Bee clapped one hand to her chest and the other, palm out, to her brow. “How affecting these maudlin ramblings are! I shall expire in their wake!”

Rory pressed a hand to my forehead. “Are you feverish, Cat?”

“It’s not amusing!”

“What isn’t amusing?” Brennan strolled up, looking fresh and handsome without a trace of hangover-sodden eyes. No wonder he was famous for his ability to hold his liquor! He glanced at Bee, then at Kehinde coming down the stairs from the upper floor with spectacles in hand as she squinted shortsightedly across the courtyard. After ordering porridge and ale, he sat next to me. Chartji and Caith joined us at the table. We exchanged morning greetings. Caith began picking through a heaping platter of nuts and dried berries, looking for the hazelnuts.

“Chartji, I’m wondering if you could see that this letter is dispatched to Expedition.” I handed her the letter I had written to Kofi. “I know I have not a sestertius to my name, and that we must already be deeply in debt to the clutch—”

“I have an idea about that,” said Bee.

“—but if you can send it with your regular dispatches to the Expedition office of Godwik and Clutch, they will know how to get it to this person, because he knows your aunt and uncle.”

Chartji’s crest flared with an emotion I could not interpret, but she took the sealed letter and tucked it inside her jacket. “It will be done. An interesting and important person he must be, this Kofi Osafo. The magister has already sent him six letters via my offices.”

“Has he?” I asked, squinting as at a bright light. When was Vai writing to Kofi?

“I have long been in correspondence with Professora Alhamrai from the university in Expedition, whom you know,” said Kehinde. “Recently we have been discussing the question of the ice shelves and whether they are shrinking or growing and how we might measure their extent. She has written about her theories of the properties of cold magic, which like all things”—here she spared such a jaundiced eye for Brennan that he laughed almost nervously, and she frowned as if she judged him a frivolous fellow—“can be explicated using the principles of science alone.”

“Thus am I scolded,” he said with a lightly mocking smile. “But what I want to know is how any fire mage can survive if he has not been accepted into the guild of blacksmiths. Everyone knows that a person born to the flame will die young in a fire of their own making.”

I said, “James Drake survives by channeling the backlash of his fire magic into living people. An ordinary person will die if so used, but cold mages can absorb most backlash without harm.”

Brennan whistled.

“A fascinating struggle between fire, which many natural historians believe releases energy, and this sort of freezing or locking of energy that it might be said the cold mages do,” said Kehinde. “Where does the fire go when it flows into the cold mage?”

“We believe it disperses into the spirit world. The Coalition will fight by using the presence of cold mages to kill the combustion of Camjiata’s superior weaponry. The general will fight by using Drake to throw the backlash into the cold mages, because when cold mages are acting as catch-fires, they can’t kill combustion or work magic. Not to mention he will burn his enemy’s houses, goods, and camps, and generally terrify the population.”

Brennan considered a spoonful of porridge. “This is valuable information, Cat. If the mages nullify Camjiata’s superior weaponry, then without this fire magic, the general may lose. The Invictus Legion is already here, working in concert with Lord Marius. My spies tell me three more legions are on the march from Rome to join the Coalition.”

“Yes. Vai and the Four Moons mansa were sent to Senones to meet them. Camjiata’s skirmishers have been spotted near the city of Cena.”

“You are indeed an excellent spy, because I have not heard that news,” said Brennan appreciatively. “But it doesn’t change the fact that we can’t risk harming the general’s best weapon.”

“Drake is an unscrupulous criminal! He kills people by burning them alive!”

“So does war,” said Brennan. “So does revolution. So do the mage Houses and the princes with their unjust laws. Which deaths do you choose?”

“Justice can only ultimately be gained through law,” said Kehinde. “But to get the law, it seems we must have the war.”

“It seems wrong to me that people say terrible acts have to be tolerated because it serves our goals. If we can only win by allowing a man like James Drake to murder people indiscriminately and in such an awful way, then how are we different from the princely and mage Houses who rule by standing on the backs of those who serve them?”

Brennan offered me a courtly flourish. “Maestra, never believe the radical cause is without its own dilemmas and contradictions. We need Camjiata, and I believe he needs us.”

“What happens when he doesn’t need you any longer?” I demanded. “And what happens when Drake decides he no longer needs Camjiata? What do you think, Chartji?” I added, for all this time she had been listening with cocked head, picking at a bowl filled with nuts and sun-dried fruit but not popping more than one or two into her mouth.

She lifted her muzzle toward the courtyard of the feathered people. Because trolls went about their business during the day, the open expanse scattered with high tables and inclined perches lay mostly vacant. Only a few groups gossiped and negotiated in the corners, well away from each other.

The courtyard thereby provided an ample stage for the entrance of a man.

He wore a striking garment in the local style, quite different from his usual dash jackets. I was stunned by how extremely flattering it looked on what was, after all, an already well-formed figure. The unbuttoned front of the jacket was cut to the length of a waistcoat, displaying light-colored lawn trousers as well as a black waistcoat, while the back of the garment swept in two long tails to his knees. The black brocade of the fabric had a weave so tight that the cloth shone in the sunlight. To this muted ensemble he had added a neckerchief of the most shocking orange-and-gold fabric, simply tied, to give a splash of color.

He looked very very angry as he slapped gloves against a palm and scanned the courtyards. He had not yet seen us at our table in the shadow of the portico.

A curse rose from the kitchens as the stoves went out. Brennan slipped a hand under his coat as for a knife. Rory began to rise.

Chartji said, “Please sit down, Roderic. If fur flies, my brethren may grow heated.”

Bee said, “I shall take care of this.”

When he saw her emerge into the light, he strode to her as an arrow flies to its target.

“Andevai! I am overwhelmed with joy at seeing you safe and well after our long separation!”

“Where is she?” he demanded in a tone so grippingly arrogant that it took my breath away, and not in a pleasant way.

She bestowed an aggressive greeting kiss. “Now you are to say, ‘How lovely to see you, Beatrice, and indeed it relieves my mind to know that you and Roderic survived your adventures unscathed after we were so rudely and violently parted on the river.’ ”

“I must assume you came to Lutetia with Chartji in answer to my letter, and have concocted some scheme to rip Catherine from me.”

“To which I reply, ‘My thanks for your good wishes, Andevai. It was a frightful journey, not an adventurous one at all. I was cold and hungry and damp. After we sold the boat to the most unpleasantly contemptuous man I have ever had the misfortune to meet if I do not include you when you are in this unreasonable mood, we had perforce to walk for twenty days over the muddiest paths and in the worst continual sleet I have ever experienced…’ ”

He was staring at her with such an expression of imperiousness being torn to shreds by her sarcastically cheerful tone that Brennan choked down a laugh, and Kehinde shushed him.

“… 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.

“Kehinde, don’t go out there,” said Brennan, but she did, walking out into the sun with Brennan following right behind her to face Vai.

“Here is my answer, all of you ranged against me!” For once his undoubted beauty could not smooth away the distasteful contours of his conceit. “You have chosen your place then, Catherine! And I mine!”

He strode off toward the archway that led from the trolls’ courtyard to the street beyond.

Goaded by a stab of pain both hot and desperate, I shouted after him. “Now we see what manner of man you have decided to become! Just like the ones who tormented you!”

He staggered to a halt in the shadow of the arched passage, catching himself with a fist on the wall. For a long, drawn-out silence no one moved, not him, not us, not the trolls.

Then, as if shaking awake from slumber, Andevai Diarisso Haranwy walked out to the street, out of my sight.