Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (43 page)

“I have not neglected your case, Magister. However, my case file is in Havery.”

“All the more reason I would be pleased to offer you and Caith conveyance in a comfortably
sprung carriage and lodging in respectable inns for as long as you choose to accompany
me.”

Chartji bared her teeth to mimic a human smile as she approached me to shake hands.
“Catherine Bell Barahal. I am pleased to flock with you again. Our clutch-cousin,
Keer, has written of your doings in Expedition.”

I hesitated, bruised by the memory of the dead horse. “Truly, I am glad to be reunited
with you all. I was just so… stunned by the fight at the livestock market.”

“It is not to be wondered at,” agreed Chartji. “Trolls from the north country in Amerike
have little understanding of human behavior and custom. They are brutish and abrupt.
They don’t properly know how to behave around you rats. Why, they don’t even take
rats as clutch-cousins or allow them to buy stakes in their consortiums, as we Expeditioners
do.”

As I grasped her hand I was overtaken by a distinctive scent of summer sun, hot stone,
and dry grass touched by the gentle spray of falling water. Keer had felt the same
to me. I liked it. The other trolls hadn’t smelled this way.

She bared her teeth again, sharing a smile as if she could smell my settling nerves
and wanted me to feel reassured. “Regardless, Cat, you have certain rights and privileges
now, for you have given up your weaknesses to the clutch and not been consumed.”

“Does that mean you and I are clutch-cousins also, Chartji? And me and Caith, too?”

“Ooo!” said Caith, who had been circling in with his bright gaze on my cold steel.
“If we are clutch-cousins, then can I hold that shiny blade?”

Chartji whistled, and Caith bobbed apologetically and retreated to the table, where
he tapped his talons so fretfully on the wood that he cut shallow gouges.

“That might just work,” said Brennan to Vai with a nod of appreciation that melted
Vai’s frosty manner a trifle. “How are you going to explain how you suddenly picked
up your three servants after being here two weeks with none?”

“What makes you think I have to explain anything to anyone?” Vai tugged on his sleeves.

Rory tugged on his with exactly the same movement. “The sleeves were too short,” he
said, “but the clever tailor put lace on to lengthen them. Don’t they look nice?”

Vai gave me a stern look to remind me not to criticize.

I said, quite truthfully, “The color looks well on you, Rory. The fit is good, too,
although you might need to have it let out a little at the shoulders. I’m delighted”—if
astounded!—“that Vai has seen fit to make sure you are properly clothed.”

“By the way, Magister,” said Chartji, “several letters came to you from Expedition.”

“Have they?” Vai grinned with such unfeigned delight that Bee looked as startled as
if he had turned into a different man. “Kofi said he would write! I don’t suppose
there is any chance you have the letters with you?”

“No—” Chartji broke off as I raised a hand for silence.

Footfalls sounded from the passage. The woman with the baby entered, carrying a tray.

“Cook will be having the soup hot soon now, Maester,” she said to Brennan, “meaning
no disrespect to the magister.” She glanced at Vai and then took a second look up
and down in an admiring way before she began unloading the dishes.

Bee cast me a look, rolling her eyes. Fortunately Vai was speaking to Chartji in a
low voice about sending letters back to Expedition, and did not notice. Youths brought
the food, a hearty fare of mutton stew and cabbage mashed up with turnips, and we
sat. I half expected Bee to be casting sly glances and arch looks at the man she had
confessed was her lover, but she treated him no differently from the rest of us.

“We radicals are not working
for
General Camjiata,” Brennan explained to Vai. “We are working
with
him to achieve those goals we share in common. He will soon march his army north
over the Pyrene Mountains into the Gallic Territories. We need to discover the plans
of the Alliance of princes and mages, where and when and with what numbers they mean
to fight him, because they will fight him. The general simply cannot have raised as
large an army as his enemies will. He will need our help to defeat them.”

“Have the radicals no spies?” I asked.

“We have successfully insinuated a few spies into the princely courts. What we lack
is any knowledge of the plans of the mage Houses, for they are closed to us.”

Vai considered his bowl of stew, then met Brennan’s gaze. “I can move easily into
any mage House in Europa. But I do not stand so high in mage ranks that I would ever
be admitted to councils of war.” He glanced sidelong at me in a way meant to make
me smile, and it did. “However, once I introduce my wife into those halls, she can
eavesdrop.”

“Are you truly willing to do this for the radicals, Magister?” Brennan asked.

“I don’t do this for you. I do this for my friends in Expedition, and for my village.”

“If the mage Houses discover you are acting as our agent, they will kill you.”

He shrugged. “If I am willing to risk nothing for freedom, then I am not a man.”

“Spoken like a radical, Magister.” Brennan set down his cup. “We had best get out
of Sala sooner rather than later. I won’t travel with you all the way to Noviomagus.
I need to deliver news of the general’s victory to printers and allies in Koumbi.
We’ll meet in Havery after we have both completed our other business.”

“Caith and I are not going to Noviomagus,” added Chartji. “Not if one of our older
brethren is nesting there.”

“Keer also used the phrase
older brethren
,” I said. “By which I collect you mean the creatures we call dragons. Why can you
not go to Noviomagus if the headmaster is one of them?”

She showed her teeth again, all white and sharp, and chuffed in a way meant to show
amusement or, perhaps, a shiver of what a human would have called nervous laughter.

“Because he would eat us.”

On a cold late Martius day, slushy and stinging, we reached the mighty Rhenus River.
The town of Noviomagus had been founded as a far-flung outpost of the expanding Roman
empire and was now a thriving center of trade and textiles. The central district was
crowded with opulent four-story edifices, the homes of rich lords and merchant families.
In contrast, the mage House was ostentatiously single-storied, its sprawling wings
and courtyards eating up several city blocks.

The palatial forecourt of Five Mirrors House looked every bit as grand as the estate
of Four Moons House. Even decently dressed in well-tailored clothing I felt utterly
out of place. Vai slapped his gloves repeatedly onto his palms as he examined the
sweep of the steps, the pillared portico, and the double doors.

“Keep silence and follow my lead.” The press of his mouth gave him a sneer.

A steward starched to perfection in a magnificent orange boubou appeared at the door.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and as dark as Vai, the patrician height of all that
is cultured and impeccable.

“We interview for servants in the kitchen wing. You may go around to the left.”

Vai crushed his gloves in his hands. “I am Andevai Diarisso, a magister of the Diarisso
lineage, out of Four Moons House. I suggest you escort me to see your mansa as soon
as we are properly purified and have made the rightful courtesies.”

The steward’s eyebrows flew up in an expression of astonishment. “Is this all an honored
magister of Four Moons House travels with? A satchel and a woman?”

A chilly blast of air huffed over us as a few stray hailstones clattered down.

“I am on a Grand Tour. My coach overturned this morning. It will take days before
it can be repaired. Likewise, my servants were injured. I left them behind with the
coach and driver and came ahead myself with my wife to have a hope of acceptable accommodation
and some manner of edible food. Really, the fare at the mage House hostels in this
part of the world is unpalatable. I had heard that the magnificence of the architecture
and the lavishness of the table fare at the mage Houses in old Roman territory were
beyond description, but I admit myself sorely disappointed in what I have so far experienced.”

Here stood the Andevai I had first known and loathed!

The steward’s stare made my neck prickle. “Ah, of course. This way, Magister.”

He ushered us into an antechamber furnished with plain wooden benches and a set of
tapestries depicting the diaspora from the Mali Empire. A heavyset woman in an indigo
robe offered us water in the traditional way.

“Magister, you must be purified through water.” She indicated that Vai should go with
the steward. “I will myself attend you, Maestra.”

The House had splendid baths in the Roman style, split into a men’s and a women’s
half just as they had been at the gatehouse of Four Moons House.

“Tell me what happened,” she said after I immersed myself.

We had deposited Bee and Rory and our luggage at a modest hostel at the edge of town
and sent the carriage back to Sala, but naturally I was not going to tell her any
of that.

“It was so frightfully rough to be tumbled in such a vile manner. And I had to leave
all my gowns behind.” I simpered into a digression on why I preferred wool challis
to damask that soon caused her expression to glaze over in a satisfactory manner.

Servants brought clean underthings and a shapely gown with a shawl. In this pleasing
garb I was escorted to a parlor fitted with low couches. Attendants brought a tea
tray with tiny almond cakes and jellied berries. Vai was shown in, and we were left
alone. He wore the same dash jacket he had arrived in, although it needed to be cleaned
and pressed.

“Did they not offer you a change of clothes?” I asked.

“Nothing I could lower myself to wear,” he said in a combative tone.

Refusing the bait, I reclined on the cushions and drank three cups of tea and ate
four almond cakes and all of the jellied berries while Vai glared over the bare branches
of a winter courtyard as if his gaze had ripped the leaves from the shrubs. The way
he tapped a drumbeat on his thigh was a sure sign he was churning with restlessly
unpleasant thoughts.

“Vai, you need not use that expression when there is only me here to see for I can
assure you it no longer intimidates me although it does make me want to bite you.
And not in an amorous way.”

My wit did not raise even the ghost of a smile.

The door opened. I rose. A wiry man in an indigo boubou walked in; his gold earrings
marked him as a djeli. He was followed by the woman and the steward. An elderly man
wearing a modern dash jacket and trousers entered and took a seat.

“To our House we give you welcome, son of the Diarisso lineage.” The djeli slipped
into a melodic chant heavily infused with Bambara. By the way Vai’s hands stilled,
I could tell this elaborate greeting mollified him.

At length the djeli finished. The elderly man raised a hand to indicate he meant to
speak with his own voice. “The Diarisso lineage has a reputation for strong cold mages
who are proud to the same measure that they are powerful.” The mansa’s gaze slid from
Andevai to me. “You are not mage House born, Maestra.”

“I am Kena’ani, Your Excellency,” I said, dropping my gaze respectfully.

“What is your name?” asked the djeli.

I heard Vai’s intake of breath but to lie to the face of a djeli was to invite disaster.
“I am Catherine Bell Barahal, Your Honor.”

“You’re chained,” the djeli said. “Such a marriage is unusual these days.”

The mansa pressed his fingers together. “I had no idea any Kena’ani clan had the means
or opportunity to interest a mage House in a marriage contract.”

I had not worked at Aunty’s boardinghouse for two months without learning how to handle
old men. “It is certainly not anything I can
speak of, Your Honor, for having been but a child of six at the time the marriage
was contracted, naturally I knew nothing about it. Indeed, you may imagine my consternation
when I was suddenly informed but a week before my twentieth birthday that I was required
to marry a man I had never met and indeed never before heard of. In fact, I only discovered
my fate when the magister himself arrived at my aunt and uncle’s house to claim me.
I was speechless.”

Vai’s lips twitched but he did not quite smile.

“Most would marvel at your good fortune,” said the woman. “I hope you appreciate the
unexpected bounty you have received.”

“I make sure she appreciates it every day,” Vai said in a stern tone belied by the
flicker of his eyes.

The woman chuckled.

The mansa was less amused. “I should like to see how powerful your magic really is.”

Vai’s frown returned. “I can prove myself in any manner you request.”

My cane trembled to life as he spun a rainbow into a carriage drawn by horses and
then into the horse-headed prow of a ship and then into an antlered stag.

“If nothing else, you can earn a living entertaining in the taverns,” remarked the
steward. “I hear that is how village-born cold mages make their living in the circuses
of Rome.”

A crashing cold made me hasten to Vai’s side. His hands were in fists, and I was afraid
he might draw his sword.

The mansa raised a hand in a gesture of peace. “You are no impostor. Be welcome here
as our guests. It will take us a few days to properly consult our records to determine
which women might be best cultivated by your seed. I’ll need to know the names of
your forebears, likewise.”

The steward opened the door. “Do you prefer to take supper in the hall or a tray of
food in the guest suite so you may recover from your travails in comfort and quiet?”

“A quiet evening tonight, if you will be so kind,” said Vai.

We took a polite leave and followed the steward past the schoolroom wing with its
echo of children reciting in loud voices. People paused to watch us pass. Their reserved
expressions were as intimidating as their highly decorative and rather old-fashioned
clothing.