Cold Steel

He shouted, staggering up so off balance that I needed only to nudge his knee to send him tumbling ignominiously onto his backside.

“Noble Ba’al, forgive me, Magister!” I cried, slapping a hand to my chest in an exaggerated gesture worthy of Bee. “From the garbage that came out of your mouth, I mistook you for the slops bucket.”

The older men laughed appreciatively and the younger nervously, while the servants looked as if they wished they were anywhere except in the dining room.

I knelt under cover of laughter. “One word more, Magister,” I whispered, “and I will tell the tale of what a fool the Phoenician girl made of you, the day you and your soldiers and your highborn magic could not catch me when you found me unarmed on the road. I’m sure every man here wants to hear the part about how I mocked you and then stole your horse.”

Picking up the fallen wineglass, I rose, handed the empty tureen back to the stunned serving man, and to my surprise was greeted by the head wine steward handing me a full carafe.

“Well done, Maestra,” he murmured.

“Do go clean up, Jata,” said the mansa to his fuming nephew, who was picking bay leaves out of his hair. “Now, Andevai, describe in greater detail for our guests why and how you believe General Camjiata is using fire mages to fight his battles. More wine.”

As if more wine were what a pack of half-drunken men needed! But Serena nodded at me, so I poured, one eye always on Vai. He did not drink or eat a single morsel more. He explained crisply and in detail what he had seen and what conclusions he had drawn. Someone who did not know him might have mistaken the edge to his voice as arrogance when by the set of his shoulders and the angle of his chin it was clear he was covering humiliation.

The meal dragged on long past my patience for it, but I smiled and served to the end. The men departed in a mood half martial and half jocular, soaked in wine. Vai was sent out with the visitors to see them safely on their way home.

The mansa remained, lost in thought as the servants cleared the table around him and themselves departed. When only the mansa and Serena and I were left in the room, she poured three glasses of wine. The first she gave to me. She set the other two on the table and seated herself on a cushion next to her husband with an enigmatic smile.

I was so thirsty and angry that I drained the wine in one swallow, a rush like wet earth and giddy flowers. “Why do you let the powerful abuse the powerless? Why would you allow the one who had the least to fear to abuse the one who had no one to help him?”

“The magic should never have bloomed so strongly in a common-born slave like him, a boy whose own mother has not even a village lineage to claim,” said the mansa harshly. “When it did so, he ought to have been grateful we brought him into the House.”

“Where he was mocked and reviled every single day?”

“Boys will fight and compete to prove who is strongest. He should have bowed his head to those who stand above him, as a courtesy if nothing else. He would have done better with the youths he took his lessons with if he had not insisted on besting them in every trial.”

“That excuses it? Did all of you just look the other way while this kind of thing went on?”

A chill shuddered the air as his gaze tightened, but I did not retreat. “Do not be insolent, Catherine. One time it happened, in his first year at the House. Never after. The youths were warned they had gone too far in this instance.”

“Because you saw how powerful his cold magic could be? How useful he could be to you? Had he been a village child with no such promise, would anyone have cared?” Serena gave a shake of her head to remind me to be serene and placid. But I could not. “His own grandmother was impregnated against her will! She was not the only woman so used!”

He shrugged. “You will understand better when you must supervise the whole.”

“When I must supervise the whole…” I stared at the brilliant stain of beet soup mottling the rug. A dreadful fear gripped my heart. “What do you mean?”

He rose, leaving his full cup untouched. Serena rose gracefully alongside, a superb ornament, the sort of polished and splendid young woman of high rank a man may marry as his third or fourth wife, when he can choose for his own desire rather than the House’s needs and convenience. But he did not look at her. He was sure of her. He looked at me.

“You would do well to remember that he belongs to me, Catherine. Not to you. Not to himself. I will keep him in Four Moons House by whatever means I must.”

He clapped his hands. A steward appeared to escort me back to my prison.