Cold Steel

“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?”