Cold Steel

I was shaking. “You couldn’t have known. Stay down!”

As I rose, I drew my sword on the shimmering backwash of his magic. The cold steel glittered as if coated with burning oil, making the gloomy kitchen blaze with light.

“I cannot kill you, Your Excellency. Nor do I wish to. You lost Andevai not because I seduced him but because you refused to respect him as a man.”

The djeli had survived the mansa’s display of power unscathed, for he had his own secrets. He turned on me now. “Maestra, keep silence.”

“I won’t keep silence! You speak of fruitful alliances and breeding rights, but Andevai and Kayleigh are people the same as you.”

The mansa frowned. “Of course they are not the same as me! Their ancestors disgraced themselves and thus put their honor in chains.”

“Easy to speak of honor when you get to choose whose honor to champion. Is it the gods who foreordain our birth and position in life, or only chance? What if things had been different, if the history of the world had fallen out in another way? What if your people had been forced into chains? Would it not be wrong that a man of your power be whipped as a common laborer all his life just because of a chance of birth? Would it not be wrong that a man of your dignity be bound to a master who does not respect him and can use or discard or kill him without penalty? What then of your power and majesty? Why do you deny to Andevai what you assume for your own self?”

“You are a fatherless bastard. For you to believe you can lecture one such as me is not just absurd but unnatural. Andevai belongs to Four Moons House. As do you. Understand that I can kill you, and take no legal penalty for doing so.”

“Yet you have not done so!”

A spark of cold fire winked into existence, then expanded into a globe of light. “I admit to curiosity about a girl who can vanish and reappear at will. A girl who can walk into the spirit world and return to this one. A girl who can tell me where Andevai is.”

Footsteps rapped along the passage. A magister wearing a fine indigo dash jacket under an unbuttoned winter coat stepped into the kitchen. I had seen him before; he was the mage who had unsuccessfully pursued me at Cold Fort, the one whose horse I had stolen.

He made a clipped courtesy to the mansa. “Uncle, we found this man—”

The mansa smiled triumphantly at me. “Ah. My nephew has found him despite your efforts to shield him.”

Rory sauntered in, toying with the end of his long braid. “Cat? Do you want me to—?”

“No!” I exclaimed, just as Bee said, “No!”

The mansa stared, startled by Rory’s appearance. The djeli tried to catch Rory’s image in the mirror’s slippery surface, but all he saw was a saber-toothed cat. I studied the young magister, tracing the family resemblance between him and the mansa.

The young man caught me looking. “Caught you this time, haven’t we? You’ll not escape my uncle now he has taken an interest in you himself.”

I offered him a courtesy, to mock him. “My apologies about the horse.”

Despite my sword, the fool took a step toward me, a hand raised as if he believed he could slap me.

“Enough, Jata,” said the mansa. “Do not touch her.”

The young mage turned away from me at once. “The village boy is close by, Uncle, I’m sure of it. He doesn’t have the wit to hide, thinking himself so much better than he is.”

“Your envy serves you ill, Jata,” said the mansa. “Go out and look again. Find him.”

The nephew’s eyes flared with anger, but he made no retort. Instead, he tramped out.

The mansa gestured toward my sword. “However curious I am about you, Catherine Barahal, I will order my soldiers to kill you and your companions if you cannot bring me Andevai.”

Rory’s lips curled back. Bee took a step toward me.

I was not a fool. I lowered my blade. “Andevai is in the spirit world. Perhaps with your help, I can get him back.”

The mansa laughed, but the djeli did not.

With a frown, the mansa reconsidered. “Bakary, is she telling the truth?”

“A mirror is the water that allows me to look onto the other side, Mansa,” said the old man. “It should be possible to discover if she lies or speaks truth. Especially since the mirror in this house is the mirror through which their marriage was chained.”

I had been racing down one path, thinking I might convince the mansa to convey us to Haranwy. Like a noose at my throat, the djeli’s words yanked me to a halt.

“What do you mean, Honored One, that a mirror is the water?” I asked.