Cold Magic

“They won’t come after me. But don’t you expect Vai to search along the toll road? Isn’t that why Duvai set you on this path instead?”

“So I hope. So Duvai told me, that the magisters would expect me to flee along the toll road or the river. It seems,” I added cautiously, “that Duvai and Andevai do not get along.”

I was not sure she would answer me. We walked some distance in silence with the wind shushing through the trees below and bending the grass and bushes that grew along slopes still visible under the moon’s light. The air tasted of winter and made my eyes hurt. My fingers, even in gloves, ached with cold.

“They did not share a mother’s womb, as Vai and I did. So there is no peace between them. That’s often how it is with people, haven’t you found?”

“I would trust my cousin with anything.”

“Would you?”

I touched the bracelet Bee had given me. “Yes. Anything.”

“Would she do the same for you?”

“Yes, she would.”

“Then you understand me. Also, you know what is said: Two bulls don’t bide quietly in the same pasture. Both Duvai and Andevai are ambitious. That makes trouble for everyone.”

“You are not ambitious? What did you hope for? I mean, before you heard about what the mansa wanted. Is there someone your elders expect you to marry?”

“There is always talk. No one in our village, but maybe some men in villages not so far away if it pleases my family and theirs. If we get permission from the mansa.”

“Do you need the mansa’s permission to marry?”

“Of course we do. The mansa’s deputies oversee the villages. There must be work for those sons and daughters of the magisters whose sorcery is too weak to harness. The seneschal and her deputies measure our third in labor and crops. Every year the newborns are brought up to be sealed into the House. Certain lads are taken away to work as grooms for the soldiers of the House. And girls…” She glanced over her shoulder, as if fearing the mansa’s soldiers might be coming up behind us on the path to take her away.

“Tell me if you get tired,” I said quietly.

“Never!”

We both laughed. This country girl was not so strange after all. We traded stories of lads and young men we had fancied. She had spoken to a soldier from the House cavalry one time, a handsome fellow with blue-black skin and a charming accent, the magicless son of a mage House based in Massilia.

“Where is that, Catherine? You seem to know such things.”

I told her it was a port city on the northern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, the sea that separated Europa and Africa. I told her how the Kena’ani had plied those coasts for centuries despite the interference of the Romans.

“But the Romans built the roads and brought civilization to the north,” said Kayleigh.

“To the barbaric Celts. The refugees from the empire of Mali were already a civilized people, of course. What happened to the soldier?”

She shrugged. A village girl had to be cautious in speaking to soldiers. Bad things could happen. There was also a young man from the same village as Duvai’s mother, a day’s walk east, who was a charming fellow, one of the tawny Trinobantic Celts, a very fine fiddler with a hunter’s lineage. “He is someone I could marry,” she said, “for a young soldier in the House is usually not allowed to keep a wife, only a concubine. But Duvai’s mother resents our village because of what happened, so she will speak against any marriage between me and him.”

“What happened?”

“She left because of my father marrying my mother, as he had every right to do!”

“I might suppose a woman would be uncomfortable seeing a second wife brought in—”

“She was herself the second wife! Everyone says she was proud of her youth and beauty, and treated her elder wife with no respect at all until the poor woman lost her wits from crying so much and died. Even sweetest butter will sour when stirred by a bitter hand. When my father grew tired of her boasting and complaints, he found a more amiable wife. She took her bride price and went home. He could have stopped her, but no one wished him to, for the entire village was happy to be rid of her.”

“She left Duvai behind.”

“Boys belong with their fathers. Now she has poisoned her village against ours with her gossip and whispering.”

“Surely your hopeful suitor no longer matters, anyway, if you have left all that behind.”

She looked startled, almost missing a step; the enormity of the choice she had made was staggering. “I am rid of such troubles.”