Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (58 page)

“Despite every hesitation, there is no better candidate. You know what he did at Lemovis.
It would be better to kill him than to see him defect to the general. But to kill
one as powerful as he is would be a terrible deed we would all regret. He belongs
to Four Moons House, and now I have made sure of it.”

A chill of horror spun through my bones.

The Two Gourds mansa went on, “Is it true the marriage contract constrains you? I
would give you my youngest daughter for him, even as a second wife. She has seen the
boy and approves.”

“It was a chained marriage. Magic binds our hands in this regard.”

“Is the Phoenician girl truly worth that much to you?”

“You will soon see.”

A steward appeared at the far doors. “Your Excellencies, if you will.”

The men flowed away into a room I could not see from my unlit prison. I heard men’s
laughter and the clink of utensils as they sat down to their meal.

“You will soon see.”

That sounded ominous.

Footsteps scraped the corridor. The lock clicked, the door opened, and a steward led
me into the dining room. Two Gourds was a traditional household. The old mansa’s young
kinsmen served their elders while his wives and daughters poured wine for the more
than thirty men in attendance. Vai was describing how a cold mage might defuse a square
of riflemen without getting killed.

“The risk to the cavalry will be great, but that risk arises regardless. If the cold
mage is placed at the center of the horsemen, the riders can sweep in and out at speed.
The proximity of the cold mage to the combustion will kill their shot. If it is coordinated
properly, then a second cavalry charge can break the enemy square during that interval
when the riflemen and cannon cannot fire.”

“An excellent idea,” said Lord Marius, “but horses will not break a wall of infantrymen.”

“Lancers? Mounted crossbowmen? Longbowmen can surely do
damage from a distance. The point is that Camjiata relies on superior firepower, and
we can render his guns impotent in bursts. And then take advantage of their weakness.”

The entire table might as well have been feeding him fruit with their own hands, the
way they were seducing him with their respectful attention. The young woman who had
made slighting comments about Phoenician baby-killers and whores offered him more
wine. He glanced up with a smile that stabbed right through me, until his gaze flicked
past her and I realized the smile was for me. The Two Gourds mansa raised a hand for
silence.

Every person in the room turned to look at me. Six djeliw were present.

“So, young Andevai,” said the old Two Gourds mansa. “Let us see what your wife can
do.”

Vai’s smile vanished. People whispered as they cast glances at me. It took me a few
moments to realize my expression must have matched my heart. I was no actress, to
pretend to a bland, agreeable character that wishes nothing more than to jump through
hoops like a trained dog. My gaze raked the table, for I was determined that these
high-and-mighty men would not see me cringe or smile to please them.

It was a high-and-mighty gathering indeed! Six mansas were present: Four Moons, Two
Gourds, Five Mirrors, and Viridor of White Bow House, as well as two others I identified
by the tasseled whisks hanging from their robes. A Roman legate wearing the purple
stripe of his rank was flanked by four fawning young tribunes. Lord Marius sat at
the other end of the table beside an ornately dressed man who was surely the Parisi
prince. At least ten other Celtic-born princely lords with their thick mustaches filled
out the august assembly.

“She’s just a girl,” said the legate. “She doesn’t even look like a Phoenician, if
you ask me. But it would be like them to cuckoo a child into a nest of magisters,
would it not?”

Lord Marius raised his glass of wine mockingly, as if toasting me with Amadou Barry’s
blood. “We dare not bring in a mirror, for fear she will cut a door and through it
flee with the young man in tow. But let us see what else this strange creature can
do.”

“Eh? What manner of creature is she?” demanded the Parisi prince, lifting a pair of
spectacles to his eyes to peruse me more clearly. “Bold
Hunter! My grandaunt was northern-born, up in the princedom of Carn. When I was but
a little lad she used to frighten us with stories of black-haired beasts who had eyes
the color of amber. They crept out of the ice and turned into lads and maidens to
tempt the willing and then rip out their throats.”

My hands curled into fists. My chin came up.

Vai said, coolly, “I cannot sit and listen to my wife being spoken of with disrespect.
I will not tolerate it.” He paused to survey the table. No one spoke. The legate coughed.
Lord Marius set down his glass with the nod of a man who has just won a bet with himself.

Vai’s gaze settled on me. The tension in his shoulders spoke more loudly than words.
“Catherine?”

I was not a dog to perform tricks.

But I could not be the means by which he lost face in front of all these men.

So I wrapped the shadows around me, and vanished.

In the eruption of commentary and astounded exclamations, I padded over to the table,
snagged Lord Marius’s wineglass, and drained it. The wine rushed down my throat, pear
essence kissed with a faint rind of peppery oranges. I flung the glass into a corner,
where it shattered most pleasingly while I skated over to where Vai sat.

My lips brushed his ear as I muttered, “Don’t push me too far.”

Last I walked to the djeliw, who watched my perambulations with astonishment as our
mansa watched them watch me. I composed my furious expression into something meant
to resemble placid affability, for truly I was an amiable person who preferred to
get along with everyone! The moment I unwound the shadows and reappeared, several
of the men chuckled as if they guessed exactly my sentiments from the defiant set
of my head.

“It explains how the girl escaped,” said Lord Marius. “What of her cousin and brother?”

“There are more like her?” demanded the Parisi prince. “What fine spies such creatures
will make!”

Vai kept his gaze on me to remind me to keep my lips closed. As if I would talk! I
almost laughed as I realized he and the mansa had kept secrets from their allies:
They had not told their allies that my cousin walked the dreams of dragons.

“A difficult woman to bind and chain, as you may imagine, but we managed it,” said
our mansa, as if binding and chaining me into his House had been his intention all
along! “Lord Marius, I am sure you already have a scheme or two in mind with which
to usefully employ the woman.”

He caught my eye and gestured, flicking his fingers toward the door. Falling as I
was into a red-hot fulmination, I strode out as proudly as I might. Let Andevai enjoy
his little triumph! I was so angry I could not sit down even once I returned to our
rooms. All I could bring myself to do was bounce the ball from wall to knee to wall
to elbow, counting how many times I made the pass before I dropped it. At dusk I had
to stop, by now sweaty and a little sore. I asked for a tray of food and a bath. I
got what I asked for but not what I wanted.

Very late Vai came hurrying in to rush me back to the summer cottage.

“You were magnificent, love. They couldn’t stop talking about you the rest of the
day!” His smile glittered. “Some of them said they envied me—”

“I had far more freedom at Aunty’s boardinghouse than I do here! It seems to me the
women of Two Gourds House are too elegant and rarified to ever leave these walls,
or perhaps it would just be considered shameful to do so. Certainly they scorn me
too much to ask me to come along on their shopping trips and their tours of the famous
landmarks of the famous city, of which need I remind you I have not seen a single
paving stone nor a single vendor’s umbrella.”

“If they are treating you with disrespect, I will have a word with—”

“Yes!
You
will have a word. Everything I am here is due to my marriage to
you
. I might as well have allowed Prince Caonabo to arrest me! Whatever you may think,
I am still being held like a prisoner as surety for
you
.” I repeated the conversation I had overheard between the two mansas.

“Yes, yes, that is how they talk, that is how they see things. But they can be brought
to change. What matters is that they know they need me, that I am the best. Do not
forget that Camjiata is letting James Drake do as he wills. You cannot want that to
continue, Catherine!”

“Of course I understand that James Drake has to be stopped! That is not my point.
The locked room in the servants’ wing was better
than this because I had your mother and sisters to keep me company. I should have
gone with them!”

“My sweet Catherine,” he murmured, nuzzling me in just the way I liked best, “you
know it makes all the difference to me to have you here. You have been so patient.
I see how it chafes you.”

“I dislike this coaxing manner, Andevai, with your wiles and caresses.”

“We’ll make a child.”

Trembling, I shoved him to arm’s length. “Is this the same man who swore we would
bring no child into the world until we’re free of clientage?”

“Yes, but—”

“Not to mention my sire.”

“Yes, love, but—”

“I would be very careful what you say next.”

He sighed.

“They won’t even let me sew, except under their eye. As if they think I can effect
an escape with a needle.”

“My love,” he murmured. This time I let him embrace me, because I was so tired of
being alone all day that to feel the press of his hand on my back and the warmth of
his chest against mine was the nectar I wished to feed on. “I promise you, we will
go out tomorrow and promenade along the Sicauna River. We’ll take coffee at one of
the little cafés, as people do here.”

Yet this night, finally, the kisses of a handsome man were not enough.

“If this is what it means to be wife of the mansa, I cannot live it. You would do
better to marry the daughter of Two Gourds House and let her pour your wine!”

“Love, love, love, this is not what it will be once the war is over.”

But it would. I knew it, and he did not want to know it.

Yet he was right that a war was being fought. The old order did not want to die, and
why should it? The radicals wanted change, and why wouldn’t they? Meanwhile Camjiata
had a foot in each camp: His father and mother had both been born into the highest
ranks, while his legal code would tear down the bed his noble forebears had long luxuriated
in.

The bells of conflict rang down through the interwoven worlds. The dragons lost their
hatchlings and began to die out, so they walked their dreams through the minds of
mortal girls and by this means hatchlings survived, even if the girls did not. The
courts drank mortal blood to strengthen themselves, and the salt turned them into
ghouls, and thus, unable to change, as ghouls they fell into the mortal world and
spread the salt plague that had killed so many.

So on and on, always the long struggle: The worlds are a maze with many paths.

“What about my sire?” I asked. “What are we to do when Hallows’ Night comes, as it
will?”

“I have been discussing Hallows’ Night and troll mazes with the mansa—”

I shoved him to arm’s length. “With the mansa!”

“Beatrice is the one who revealed to him that we know how to escape the Hunt. You
can’t wish people to die, Catherine! That’s all I told him, love. None of your secrets,
I promise you.”

I could not scold him. I did not want people to die any more than he did. “Yet troll
mazes won’t help me,” I muttered, letting him gather me against him.

He held me so close and so so sweetly. “My sweet Catherine, if we walk this road together,
we will find a way through. I promise you, love. We will find a way.”

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

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.”