Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (53 page)

Seated on a stone bench bent over the schoolbook, Bintou and Wasa looked up with wide
eyes. I caught the ball and held it against my hip.

“Then you came to Haranwy,” I prompted.

“Not then. We came to the Midsummer market outside the city of Cantiacorum. Andevai’s
father had come there on behalf of his village, with cattle to sell. Men who walk
in the world will take their fancy where they can. I was then about the age Kayleigh
was when she left for Expedition. Men do fancy the young ones they guess are untouched.
More than one man offered money to my father, but I refused. Then Andevai’s father
came and made the same offer. He was a rich man to our eyes. By this time my younger
sisters were crying from hunger. My father beat me when I refused again. The man said,
‘I can feed a third wife if she will cook for me and give me strong children.’ ”

“So you agreed?”

“I never thought I would find such fortune. He gave my father a cow as my bride price.
I saved my sisters with that cow.”

I managed to keep my eyes from popping open. For the daughter of a man forced to sell
his own daughters rather than starve, this was astoundingly good fortune indeed. “Your
son says you once told him that his father was the handsomest man you ever saw.”

There crept a reminiscent smile to lighten her expression, but her tone remained cool.
“My husband was a good man. He treated me well. I was a good wife to him. I did not
listen to what people in the village spoke about me. Their spite could not bow my
shoulders.”

I thought of how Andevai’s brother Duvai had told me his own
mother, the second wife, had left Haranwy and returned to her own village after the
arrival of Vai’s mother. I dared not venture into such turbulent waters. However,
there was a thing I was curious about.

“Maa, you love to hear me speak of Kayleigh, but you do not like it when I speak of
your son. May I ask why that is?”

She lifted her chin in a proud gesture so like Vai that I knew he had picked it up
from her. “He can no longer be part of my thoughts. His life is lifted beyond ours
now.”

I knelt on the gravel, looking up into brown eyes. “Maa, he will not leave you behind.”

“He must. So I have told him.”

I pressed a hand to hers. “He cannot. Don’t demand that he turn his back on you and
the girls and the village. The mage House almost ruined him.”

“He will stand high in the world!”

“Don’t destroy the good man that he struggles to be. Don’t dishonor that man by asking
him to become the mage the mansa wants him to be and that you think is best for him.
Let him fight in the way he must.”

Her fingers crushed the basket she was weaving. I had not known she had such strength
in those frail hands. “I am weary. I must lie down.”

Bintou and I helped her in, and I washed her face and sang a lullaby until she went
to sleep.

In the first days of our captivity, several attendants had remained in the room at
all times, but as the weeks passed they had grown complacent. Seeing no one around
I steered Bintou to the garden wall. She made a basket with her hands and hoisted
me up. My shoulder still twinged, and my illness had weakened me, but I got my stomach
atop the wall they thought was high enough to pen me in. Of course it was not high
enough.

From the height, hidden in my shadows, I surveyed a sprawling compound of courtyards,
wings, and separate buildings. I balanced along the wall, looking into an herb garden,
an open ground where children were playing in the sun, a well-tended rose garden where
two richly garbed and very pregnant women were holding hands on a bench. Their affection
for each other was so tender. How I missed the ones I loved!

What ought I to do? Summer had come, and autumn would follow. If I was stuck here
on Hallows’ Night I had no hope of escaping my sire’s anger. Yet should I run, Vai’s
mother and sisters would receive the brunt of the mansa’s punishment. Like Vai I could
not consider myself free as long as others were in chains. The mansa had known exactly
how to trap him.

“Are you sorry you swam to shore, now you’re stuck with us?” Bintou asked when I returned.

“No,” I said truthfully. “I met you, Bintou. That made it all worthwhile. Wasa, of
course, I might easily have lived many years longer in peace for not meeting.”

The girls giggled and hugged me, then reached around me to try to pinch each other,
as Bee and I used to do. The press of their bodies against mine brought tears to my
eyes, not of sorrow but of sweetness.

“Vai and I will find a way. I don’t know how yet. But we will.”

The scrape of a foot at the open door brought my head around. Vai’s mother leaned
against the door frame, watching us with the haughty look that was a cloak for her
vulnerability. Just like her son. I no longer wondered that he had found the strength
to survive the misery heaped on him in his first years at the mage House, or how he
had endured without getting melted down into slag.

In the last week the trough of flowers had finally bloomed, stalks and branches blasted
with color like fireworks exploding. Was this what it was like for a person, who had
drifted all the years of his life without magic, to bloom with power? One day you
are closed, and the next you are open.

Vai’s mother smiled at me.

I shook off the girls and hurried over to take her hand. “Awake so soon?”

“I heard you laughing,” she said in the tone of a woman who has only just remembered
that she once knew how to laugh. “My son is fortunate to have found one such as you,
Catherine.”

I laughed, because otherwise I would have cried. “Have you not heard the story of
how we were forced to marry, and then he wouldn’t let me eat my supper? Look! Here
they are come with our supper! Mmm! Is that yam pudding? I’ll tell you while we eat.”

Some days later, on a sunny afternoon, I read sentences aloud as the girls wrote them
out on slate tablets. Vai’s mother rested on her bed. In this isolated wing of the
huge complex, the sounds and smells of each day had a familiar rhythm as the servants
went about their tasks. An unexpected drum of footfalls surprised me into setting
down the schoolbook. The door opened and four guards entered. I grabbed my cane.

The mansa strode in. The damask of his flowing indigo robes gleamed. His hair was
braided into canerows, the ends ornamented with white beads that clacked softly. I
looked in vain for the old djeli, Bakary, who I was sure liked me. In the passage
waited a younger man with a djeli’s gold earrings; he wore a dash jacket instead of
Bakary’s traditional robes.

Vai’s mother got to her feet as Bintou and Wasa rose, Wasa fumbling with her crutch.

The mansa barely glanced at them. He studied the cacica’s skull briefly, but in truth
his interest was all for me. “Catherine Bell Barahal, I have been blind to how valuable
a person you are.”

He glanced toward the door as Lord Marius walked in. The soldier had an arm in a sling
and a lurid but healing cut across his forehead and the bridge of his nose.

I made a pretty courtesy. “Your Excellency. My lord! You arrive with no warning, quite
to my astonishment. I find surprise has made my mouth too dry to speak. Surely a soothing
pot of tea and some news of my husband might help me find my voice.”

Lord Marius slapped me.

The force rocked me back. My skin stung so fiercely that tears welled in my eyes.

Wasa lost hold of her crutch and fell. Lord Marius grabbed my arm to stop me from
going to her, so Bintou had to help her sister to her feet, both girls crying with
fear.

“For shame,” said Vai’s mother. “The girl is defenseless and a prisoner.”

“Enough!” The mansa signaled toward the door. “Bring tea.” He regarded Vai’s mother
with a considering frown. “I was told you were likely to die on the journey here to
Lutetia, and sure to die within a week. Yet here you stand, still living. How does
this come about?”

“Mansa,” she said, not answering, although she kept her gaze lowered.

“Stubborn, like your son. He lives,” he added, looking at me. “Satisfy me, and you
will be allowed to see him. Defy me, and he will bide here never knowing you are held
so close.”

I kept my chin high, for of course if Vai were here, he knew I was here.

The mansa chuckled, reading more into my expression than I intended. “Do not think
to be prowling about to find him with the curious magic you possess. We have djeliw
set to watch you. Right now, I have promised Lord Marius a full accounting of the
fate of Legate Amadou Barry.”

“Will you be seated, Your Excellency, so Andevai’s mother may be seated?”

“They may sit, for whom standing is a burden,” he agreed magnanimously. A chair was
brought for him. The moment he sat, Vai’s mother sank onto the bed, the girls pressed
to either side.

With the chair came a pot of tea with two cups only. I took the pot from the servant
and poured for the men. Lord Marius paced as I described Amadou Barry’s brief sojourn
in the spirit world. He asked questions, and I answered each one in such excruciating
detail that eventually he admitted defeat. Never let it be said I could not talk longer
than they could listen!

“We shall never know the truth,” Marius said with the narrowed eyes of a man who has
decided you are a liar.

“Perhaps not,” said the mansa, “but her account tallies with what Andevai told us.”

“They have colluded on their story. The magister never saw Amadou Barry at all.”

“If we colluded,” I pointed out reasonably, “then we might as easily have woven up
a tale in which the magister was present for every part of the business. Or I might
have claimed we never saw the legate at all in the spirit world, thus leaving you
to wonder if he became lost in some benighted realm. But I did not. I am telling the
truth.”

“Yes, I think you are telling the truth, if not all of the truth.” The mansa studied
me across the rim of his cup before he drained the last.

“More tea, Your Excellency?” I asked.

“I have quite underestimated you. I daresay the Hassi Barahals sent you to spy on
us. But I wonder if even the Hassi Barahals know the whole. I am certain we do not.
Perhaps Andevai does.”

I smiled politely.

The mansa rose, gesturing for Vai’s mother to remain seated. “Do you dine with us
this evening, Marius?”

“I do not. I am summoned to the Parisi court to give a report on the campaign. The
prince was angered I did not come to his palace the moment I set foot in Lutetia,
but this business of Amadou took precedence. I will call on you tomorrow.” He did
not take his leave of me, and Vai’s mother and the girls were too far beneath a man
of his rank for him to notice them, any more than he would have deigned to say goodbye
to the servants.

“You will accompany me, Catherine,” the mansa said as he went to the door.

“Will supper be brought for Andevai’s honored mother and his innocent young sisters?
Who will watch over them if I am not here to make sure they are safe?”

He paused under the threshold. “Do you think it is your presence that has made them
safe? Please disabuse yourself of that notion. It is my word that makes them safe.
As long as Andevai obeys me, they remain safe. Come.”

I kissed the girls and knelt before Vai’s mother to get her blessing.
Then, with my cane, I followed the mansa through long corridors into a grand part
of the House.

“It is the opinion of the healer of this House that you saved the woman’s life,” he
said. “Your stubborn persistence brought her through the crisis.”

“My thanks, Your Excellency,” I said. He stood a head taller than me, big-boned and
meaty without being ungainly. He went beardless in the Celtic fashion, which made
him look younger than he probably was. His praise made me nervous. “That is a very
fine damask. The color suits you.”

He chuckled. “Flattery may work on your husband, but it does not work with me.”

We halted before a set of doors carved with scenes of wolves leaping upon hapless
deer. Attendants ushered us into a private parlor and shut the doors, leaving us alone.
Dusk had settled over a garden outside. The mansa casually pulled a spark of cold
fire from the air and let it grow to the size of his head. The chamber had gilt wallpaper
and a ceiling painted with running gazelles and turbaned horsemen in pursuit. A second
set of double doors, also closed, led to an unknown chamber on the right, while a
single door on the left marked another unseen room beyond.

“You are an interesting creature, Catherine Bell Barahal. What do you want?”

“Your Excellency, do not think I am being disrespectful when I admit I am startled
to be asked such a question by a man who previously sought to have me killed.”

“I am not often wrong, but now and again I make a mistake. You have many strange talents,
and a command of magic outside my knowledge. As well, quite unexpectedly, I have seen
changes in Andevai. It is true you brought him to defy me, when he never had before.
But in showing complete loyalty to you, he has comported himself with remarkable discipline.
A mansa would be well served with a wife like you.” My wince made him chuckle. “Do
not misunderstand me. I have no interest in you on my own behalf.”

He clapped his hands thrice. The single door opened. A dignified and beautiful young
woman entered. She wore a truly magnificent purple boubou with patterns of white roundels
and a matching head
wrap elaborately towered and knotted. Beside her, in my worn skirt and village tunic,
I looked like the drab girl I was.

“What is your wish, Husband?” Her voice was elegant and cultured, her black complexion
flawless, her wrists weighted with gold bracelets. “Ah, yes, as we discussed. I will
take charge of you now, Maestra. I am Serena. You are Catherine. Please come with
me.”

She offered a hand not to shake but to clasp in a sisterly greeting as she drew me
into a woman’s sitting room decorated with low couches heaped with embroidered cushions
on which people might comfortably relax and converse. Under one window stood a table
with a chess set. Attendants hustled me behind a screen. They stripped me, washed
me in scented water, dressed me in new underthings, and combed and braided my hair.
Last they dressed me in a burgundy challis skirt, cut for striding, with a short jacket
in thin stripes of rose and burgundy. I was no peacock, but then, I had never wanted
to be. These well-tailored and sober clothes suited me perfectly.