“I doubt it.”
He hissed in a breath. “I am trapped. What is one life set against all that?”
“A question you will have to answer.”
“They despise me, Mother. Whatever stories I may tell my mama so that she does not worry, you know the truth of it. I am nothing to them, only they cannot waste me because I am too powerful.”
“Is there no other House where you can go?”
“They dare not cast me out, because they know another House will take me. They will not trade me away because I am too valuable. Even if I ran away, no other House will shelter me. They wouldn’t dare risk the mansa’s enmity should he discover where I was hiding. Anyhow, if I were to leave my teacher on bad terms, what other teacher would take me in?”
“Is there no life for you outside a mage House?”
“Why do you even ask?” he cried bitterly. “Do you think I would be better off an outlaw starving in the hills? No princely house can take me in, because the mage Houses would turn on it and destroy it. No guild will take me, for the same reason. And, anyway, what guild would admit a poor village man with no guild connections, no property, and no craft? I suppose I might walk to a city and seek work as a laborer. No cold mage survives for long outside the protection of a House. People fear and resent us. My own father’s other son fears and resents me! Even a magister cannot stay awake always. You know the saying: Saber-cats, wolves, and mages can be killed when they sleep. But, anyway, let’s say I could. I might be able to escape them. Let’s say I could travel to Qart Hadast or into the Barren Lands or across the ocean to Expedition. I have skills, and I have power—then what? I could hunt, maybe. I remember what hunting magic I learned from Fa before the cold magic bloomed and the House took me away. But do you think I would abandon you and my mother and sisters and my kin and the village to the mansa’s anger? Because he will punish you to get back at me. So even if I could walk free, you cannot.”
Even wrapped in my fur-lined cloak, I was by now shivering where I crouched. Crystals of ice skinned the surface of my uneaten porridge as the sorcery of winter radiated from him, released by his emotions. The fire was laid but not alight, and the elderly woman had vanished.
“These are harsh chains,” said his grandmother in the same gentle tone she had been using all along, “although even you cannot say for certain what the mansa will do.”
“Please say nothing to Kayleigh of what I learned! Let her have peace for as long as she can.”
“Go on, Vai. You have friends who have missed your company.”
He left.
After the door closed behind him and the fire spurted up with a flicker and licked along the wood with gathering strength, I leaped out from my corner. I gulped down the last of the cold porridge before I set the bowl down on the chest at the foot of her bed and let her see the sword; although out of courtesy, I kept it in its sheath.
“I thank you for the food, Grandmother, and your kind words, but I have to leave. I’m sorry for his troubles and for yours. I am quite sure that it is wrong for an entire village of people to be held hostage and in such an indenture for so long with no recourse, but I will not offer up myself just because—”
“Why does the mansa want you dead?”
Her question compelled me. It was as if she had ensorcelled my tongue. “Andevai married the wrong woman. He was sent to the Barahals to marry Bee, but he was tricked by Bee’s parents into marrying me to save Bee.”
“You were party to this deception?”
“I knew nothing of it! The Barahals deceived me, too. They lied to me, just as they lied to him! I am expendable, to the Barahals and to the mansa.”
“So you mean to run for the rest of your life, never able to rest?”
The weary, horrible prospect unrolled before me like a path overgrown with vicious brambles. I would run and run and be torn until at last I collapsed with the wolves at my throat breathing death into my face. And yet even so, I could not accept defeat.
“If I can survive until the winter solstice, then they might still wish to kill me, just for the revenge of it. But as soon as Bee reaches her majority, the contract expires. So she has a chance if I can find her before they do. I’ll never let them take her. Never.”
The door opened. I whirled while pulling the sword half out of its sheath. Three elderly women entered, and by the time I accepted that these were not the mansa’s soldiers, several older men had entered as well, including Mamadi. I retreated to the foot of the bed with my back to the wall as the men set out the benches. Eight men and seven women of advanced years took a place, men on one side, women on the other. Last, Duvai entered, supporting a bent and frail man who could barely walk. He looked as old as the tiny woman in the bed, yet I guessed he was her son. He wore about his neck and had pinned to his clothing many amulets, and in his rheumy eyes I saw blindness.
