Cold Steel

When I kissed him, I could hold on to my patience for one more night. But I had to make something change.

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?”