Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (57 page)

His mother said, “The children in the village are needed to work at chores.”

“I will find a way to do this,” said Vai with a stubborn pinch of his lips.

Fortunately an attendant announced Serena, who came accompanied by two other women.
I greeted her with clasped hands. She greeted Vai casually, like an equal, then introduced
me to her companions: One had married into Four Moons House and one been born into
it. I escorted them to Vai’s mother, who remained seated, which was the privilege
of an elder, although I was pretty sure Vai’s mother was younger than the mansa for
all that she looked much older
from years of illness. She accepted their polite greetings with a rigid aspect of
seeming calm. The girls were so stricken by shyness that they barely whispered.

“They will ride in my personal coach,” said Serena. “If there is trouble, I can protect
them.”

“That’s very generous,” I said, in genuine surprise.

“Is it?” she asked with lifted eyebrows. She turned back to Vai’s mother, bending
over her to clasp her hands. “Maa, be sure I will take proper care of you and your
girls, both on the journey and once we return to Four Moons House. Now I must go and
make ready.”

She kissed me on the cheek and departed with her companions. Going to collect the
cacica’s skull from a table by the door, I heard them murmur as they walked away down
the passage.

“Really, Serena! He is certainly the epitome of a man in looks and dress, and we have
all heard more times than we could possibly wish about his cold magic, but the family!
How could you not laugh at seeing his mother’s rustic simplicity? They say she was
born in a cart.”

“My grandmother would slap me for any such display of poor manners. Nor do I forget
that my children will one day need the favor of the new mansa to make their way. Besides
that, now my husband has chosen his heir, disrespect shown to them is like disrespect
shown to him.”

“Catherine, what is it?” Vai murmured, coming up beside me as I laced the basket shut.
Seeing his mother distracted by a steward’s quiet instructions, he caught my hand
in his. “That’s a brilliant idea you have about opening up the school to all the children
of the local villages.”

“Yes,” I said dreamily, imagining the consternation at the introduction of so much
rustic simplicity when Vai and I announced our new plan.

Noble Ba’al! Had I already acquiesced? Had the mansa defeated me so easily? Or was
it the look on Vai’s mother’s face that had weakened my resolve? How could Vai and
I possibly manage a household if we started from nothing among people hostile to cold
mages? How would we even keep warm in winter? To build a house with a hypocaust system
was ruinously expensive even if Vai did much of the carpentry himself. We hadn’t a
sestertius to our names.

He allowed a servant to push his mother and Wasa in the invalid chair so he could
walk behind them arm in arm with me. As we paced through the compound along corridors
I had never before seen, he smiled, for the people who lived in Two Gourds House did
pause to look. Blessed Tanit! The man meant to make sure everyone saw him. I was both
amused and embarrassed. I did not like so many people staring at me. I did not like
the feeling that I was being seduced into the clutches of the mage House with lovely
clothing and flattering admiration, even though I knew that was not Vai’s intention.
No doubt he simply wanted to give things to me to show he could, like the sandals
he had bought for me at Aunty Djeneba’s and the bed he had built for us.

The troubling confusion of my thoughts made it therefore a relief when we settled
the family in the coach. When a big basket appeared with the puppy in it, to be conveyed
with the girls in the coach, I thanked Serena so profusely that she smiled in a way
that made me feel gauche, an emotion I would never have believed I could experience.

“The creature will give them something to keep their minds off the journey and whatever
trouble lies behind us.”

The girls wept and clung first to me and then to Vai before he gently reminded them
that he relied on them to take care of their mother.

Vai’s mother took my hand in hers, speaking in a low voice. “You were right. He did
not leave us behind.” To my surprise she kissed me on the cheek.

From the steps we watched the cavalcade depart. The spears of the escort flashed under
the bright eye of the sun. The Four Moons banner rippled in a brisk wind. Distant
thunder rolled, and everyone waiting in the courtyard looked up at the cloudless sky.

Vai spoke. “The cannonade is not battle. It’s Lord Marius’s army at field maneuvers.
We shall take a tour of the city today. The river walk is lovely in the sun.”

“Vai, yesterday Viridor acted as your ally, yet he is the one who betrayed you.”

He shrugged. “He did what he thought was best for his House, not out of malice. I
can’t fault him for that. In a way he helped me, for none of this would have happened
had I not fallen into the mansa’s hands. He and I talked it all out.”

“You are friends again? You trust him?”

“Yes.”

A steward dressed in the brown livery of Two Gourds House approached Vai. “Magister,
you are required in the men’s hall. Maestra, if you will, the steward of the women’s
hall attends you.”

Vai went his way and I went mine, accompanied by a young djelimuso with jangling gold
bracelets on both wrists and gold earrings. In our guest suite a formidable woman
stood examining the cacica’s skull. Her resplendent starched boubou and head wrap
marked her as Houseborn. After a suitable exchange of greetings, she cut to the point.

“As long as you remain here in Two Gourds House, you will need persons to attend to
your needs and those of your husband. Have you any particular requests, Maestra?”

I thought I might as well take the bull by the horns. “I am newly married, Maestra,
and I was not raised in a mage House. As you must surely know, I am only recently
released from confinement in another wing of this magnificent establishment. If you
could assign me an experienced and patient woman to help me make my way, I would be
grateful.”

She nodded. “Yes, you must learn to do things in the proper way. There was some talk
in the servants’ quarters about the unseemly way you laced up your skirt and bounced
a ball around the back courtyard. Yet Magister Serena said you acquitted yourself
well when you poured wine for the men’s supper last night. So you cannot be unversed
in all aspects of a woman’s duties.”

I just could not resist. “The game with the ball is called batey. I would be happy
to teach it to anyone who wishes to learn, boys and girls alike, for everyone plays
in the Antilles.”

She sighed. “I will be blunt, Maestra. It is my understanding that his origins are
very low. The honored mansa of Four Moons House and my own cousin, who is mansa here,
believe your husband to be crucial to the effort to defeat the Iberian Monster’s greedy
ambitions. For him to be raised to such a position of honor is an unexpected act that
speaks to his exceptional promise. If you will allow yourself to be guided by me,
then you will avoid doing things that could shame your husband. As it is said, a well-behaved
wife will bear well-behaved children.”

My lips closed over several imprudent retorts. I plied a different
stitch. “Goodness, Maestra, I am only thinking of my husband and future children when
I play batey. In the Antilles, they encourage girls and young women to play so as
to strengthen themselves for childbirth.”

She frowned. “In that case, I suppose it must be seen as unexceptionable.”

Servants were assigned to guard, serve, and clean our suite, and a steward was on
duty at all times to advise me in matters of propriety. No mirror graced the suite.
Except when Vai and I were in the bedchamber, a djelimuso would sit in formal attendance,
so it was clear the mansa did not trust me.

Playing batey along the garden wall distracted me from the intense boredom of the
next many days. When I asked for books and newspapers to read, I was brought accounts
of household management and plates of the current fashions, which I would have enjoyed
had I had companions to share them with. The attendants kept a formal distance from
me at all times despite my efforts to draw them out. In the end I sat next to the
skull and browsed the books while keeping up a one-sided conversation with the cacica
about my reading.

I saw Vai only at night in the intimacy of the summer cottage and our gauze-curtained
bed, where he was diligent in his attentions. Afterward he fed me scraps of news before
falling asleep, and kept promising we would talk more the next day. But the next day
never came because after we had eaten our breakfast of rice porridge garnished with
berries and cream, he would be called away. Everyone in the women’s hall treated me
politely, but they weren’t friendly and confiding, and no one was interested in my
stories of Expedition and the Taino or even my store of tales from my father’s journals.
Two Gourds House had an ancient lineage and a vast treasure-house of wealth and power
to give it consequence in the world. One thing I did not have, in that world, was
anything but borrowed consequence. It was pretty clear they thought I talked too much.
When I thought of how the gals in Expedition had taken me in, it made me want to cry.

Fortunately I was allowed to sew in the women’s courtyard, under the eye of the steward,
who counted out needles and pins and collected them at the end of each day. I amused
myself by piecing together the cut-up parts of my ruined cuirassier jacket into a
serviceable garment.

One day one of the younger women ventured a personal question. “Is it true you are
Phoenician, Maestra? That your marriage contract restricts him to only one wife?”

“I was born and raised in a Kena’ani household,” I replied, aware that this point
was of particular interest to the unmarried woman, for a mansa’s heir might normally
expect eventually to take three or four wives. “But naturally I knew nothing of the
contract or the marriage until the day it happened. It was all properly arranged for
us by our elders.”

In a whisper I could hear perfectly well, a sour-faced young woman murmured, “A shame
the man is wasted on a trifling girl like her. You know what they say about Phoenicians.
They sacrifice their children to their bloodthirsty gods, and whore out their daughters.”

“No matter, I suppose,” her friend replied with a scornful smile, “for as soon as
the Iberian Monster is dispatched, they’ll send him on a Grand Tour.”

I stabbed the needle into the wool, pretending I was sewing tongues together. If only
Bee had been with me, we could have demolished them.

With the first flight of barbs unleashed, they were not done with me.

“Yet I have heard a strange tale from the servants, Maestra, which I cannot believe
could possibly be true. They say you strip down to almost nothing and bounce a ball
on your knee. Like a savage. Or a man.”

My gaze flashed up. I was glad to see their hesitation as I took notice of them. They
were right to be scared of me! Their trembling made me pounce. “Did no one tell you?
My father is a spirit beast who stalks the bush but walks in this world in the shape
of a man. No man can tame me, and only one man has enough strength and charm to coax
me into loving him.”

The benefit of telling the truth, as Rory had once said, is that no one believes you.

The young women tittered and smirked. The steward frowned, her gusty sigh a whip of
disapproval. But the older women looked thoughtful, and an elder abruptly declared
she had it in mind to have a story. A djelimuso sang the tale of Keleya Konkon’s prodigious
cooking pot, which was, in truth, an exceedingly grand story. I did not get to hear
the end of it, for a male steward arrived.

I had been summoned by the mansa of Four Moons House.

I thought I would be asked to pour wine for the mansa’s noonday dinner, where at least
I would get to see Vai even if I was not allowed to speak. But the steward escorted
me instead to the most splendidly decorated suite of rooms I had ever seen, all gilt
trim and ceilings painted in a distinctive style that intermarried Celtic knotwork
with the arcane symbols of the Mande hunters. An armed attendant locked me into a
small antechamber, where I paced rather than sitting on the cushioned bench. A latticework
window overlooked a parlor, from which double doors opened onto a larger audience
room beyond, where men circulated, talking. I looked for Vai but did not see him.

The mansa entered the parlor together with the Two Gourds mansa, an elderly man with
a seamed face and black hair shot through with white. They stood by a window overlooking
a garden, too far away for any ordinary mortal to overhear, but I cast my threads
through the tangling magics of the House and listened.

The mansa of Two Gourds House spoke in a low voice. “His birth is low but his power
is clear, so I have not questioned your plans. But now Lord Marius returns and tells
me the girl has been working with Camjiata. That she was the general’s agent all along,
and seduced your young magister into doing the general’s work. Are you certain this
course is the wise one?”

“Leave him to me. I have him coming along just as I wish. He will guard his mother’s
honor with his own.”

“And the girl?”

“She is part of my plan. He is badly infatuated with her.”

The Two Gourds mansa clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “A woman is wet clay. If he
does not shape her to obedience now, he will have trouble later.”

“Lord of All, my brother, you must have felt ardent about one woman or another in
your youth! Never mind. What matters to us is that for all he is the most cocksure
of young men, he desires above all things to seem a man in her eyes.”

“Yes, yes, I vaguely recall how it was to be young and led by my passions. I suppose
he will get her pregnant soon enough. But a Phoenician mercenary house is not a worthwhile
ally. I understand it was your council’s only way to bind the Hassi Barahal clan back
when they
had information about the general at the end of his first campaign. I can see why
you married her to him when you thought he was of little utility to your House. But
now he is your named heir! If you mean to follow through with it.”