Cold Steel

He smiled as easily at her as he had at me a moment before. “My trials were made easier by my knowing such a beautiful young woman was spared thereby.” He glanced up as the door opened and the woman appeared.

He rose. “Time for you to move on. I saw with my own eyes when the mansa of Four Moons House came to Fox Close with his djeli to set the mirror in place. An impressive man, the mansa. Rioters had set a barricade in the road and set it afire. He put out the bonfire with a blast of hail and cold wind that shattered windows and made every hearth fire go out. His men will come to see who opened the door. I don’t reckon you want to be here when they get here.”

“Cat, let’s go now.” Rory’s gaze flickered toward the man, and then toward the woman, and then back to us.

“Of course,” I agreed, smiling at the woman, who stared dourly back at me. “Have you any word of where these particular birds might have flown?”

“To another nest east of here by name of Havery.”

“My thanks to you for the information, and the food and drink.”

“May Bright Venus bring fertility to you and your brave man,” he replied. He laughed as I blushed.

We took our leave and stumped along Enterprise Road in a plaguing rain.

“ ‘Bright Venus’! I thought it very rude to wish a person of Kena’ani heritage luck in breeding under the auspices of a Roman goddess. Didn’t you, Bee?”

She was chewing over more urgent problems. “The mansa knows you’re here, so he’ll secure the house.”

“We have to get the chest!”

“Ba’al forbid that you lose Andevai’s fashionable dash jackets! Some other man might be seen wearing them!”

“If never so well,” I muttered mulishly. I missed Vai. How sweet those weeks seemed now, when I had seen him every day.

“Are you saying I don’t look well in this fine dash jacket?” Rory straightened his shoulders as a group of two men and two women passed who were laughing in the way of folk out about the business of pleasure. His smile made the women loose their holds on the arms of their beaux as they gave him a closer look over. When the men objected, Rory smiled more deeply, with a hint of dusky corners in his gaze, and one man took a startled step back while the other bit his lip.

Bee’s scorching glare drove them off. “Rory! We are skulking and running! We are not lighting a bonfire and ringing bells so people will notice and remember us.”

“Cat said I didn’t look well in my jacket.”

I rapped him on the arm. “It’s not your jacket.”

“Have we survived the mansa’s wrath, the prince’s fury, the general’s devious plotting, and the Wild Hunt only to have you two squabble over clothes? You look perfectly handsome, Rory, and I am sure many a female would love to pet you, and by that look you just got a few males as well, but none of them will get a chance if I murder you first. Are we done?”

“Yes, Bee, my apologies,” he said so contritely I was astonished.

“Cat?” she demanded. “Does Rory look well in that fine dash jacket?”

With a look like that, directed at me, I knew how to answer. “He looks very fine.”

“You’re only saying it because she told you to,” said Rory.

Bee’s hand tightened on his arm. “Rory, dearest, did you know that in anatomy class at the academy we learned how the ancient Turanians used to castrate young men so they could no longer engage in petting? I paid careful attention to that part of class but unfortunately there was never a practicum in which we were given an opportunity to see if we could manage the operation ourselves. But I haven’t given up hope.”

If he could have put his ears down, he would have. Then he laughed, and I did, too.

Yet I could not help but notice how women and men mostly moved in separate groups. Here women never walked anywhere alone, even though in Expedition women had felt free to come and go as they wished. Nor did people laugh and talk with the same friendly clamor with which folk had in Expedition. Voices stayed hushed and dampened. Maybe that was the prince’s newly harsh reign, but perhaps it had always been this way and we had just never noticed.

It was strange to think we were only passing through the city where we had grown up, on our way to somewhere else.

“Amadou Barry saw you on the street, and the djeli saw me at the law offices,” I said. “Nothing to be done about that now. Since the academy is on the way home, we may as well go there first and hope we find the headmaster before anyone comes looking for us.”