Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (84 page)

Vai was dead asleep. I held Bee’s hand, twisting and turning. “If the House council
chooses the nephew, we’ll be free. But we haven’t a sesterce to our name, so I can’t
imagine what we’ll do.”

“I have an idea about that.”

“Yet I fear for what will happen to the House in that case. I worry the nephew will
take a petty revenge on Haranwy. Although I think regardless he’ll have a village
revolt on his hands. But if the council supports Vai… Bee, don’t let Vai be trapped
by the House.”

“You’re so tired you’re fretting needlessly, Cat. This isn’t like you.”

“You won’t leave me, will you? Never, not until the end?”

“Are you feeling well?” She pressed her lips to my forehead. “You’re not feverish.
Dearest, you must sleep. You mustn’t get ill.”

Sometimes the gods are merciful and will let you sleep instead of think.

In the morning, although still weak, Vai insisted on shaving and dressing and walking
under his own power to his grandmother’s house. There, by the bedside of the mansa
and with his mother seated in a chair behind him, he requested permission of the House
elders to stand before them. At once, and far less politely, the mansa’s nephew challenged
Vai’s right even to stand there, much less claim to be heir. I did not know what to
expect, but the months of war, the days of captivity, and perhaps even his slow recovery
had planed down the edges and splinters that had always made Vai so quick to take
offense when he felt his dignity and honor were being challenged.

This time he let the other man talk on and on, cajole and whine, even blame the destruction
of the House on Vai as if Drake had never existed. The nephew complained at length
about the lowborn origins of the village boy in such insulting terms that even though
the Houseborn elders might well have scorned Vai’s mother for being born in a cart
with no lineage to her name, they still shuddered to see a dignified
mother mocked in public in front of her son. At length the nephew ran dry, and by
this time everyone was certainly waiting for him to stop.

“Are you finished?” asked Vai. “Very well, then. With the permission of the elders
of the House, I will answer.”

They granted it.

“Your words speak for themselves. I would be ashamed to let such speech pass my lips.
My mother knows I honor and respect her. That is all that needs to be said. As for
the other, according to tradition, the mansa of a mage House is the man whose magic
reaches the deepest. Can you stand before the elders of this council and tell them
honestly that your magic is stronger than mine?”

Thus Vai defeated him.

Just then the mansa stirred, as though the voice of his heir had roused him. “Let
it be Andevai,” he whispered.

Andevai knelt beside him, taking his hand. “I am here, mansa. It shall be as you say.”

The thread of the mansa’s voice was barely audible. It clearly hurt him to speak,
but he was determined to be heard. “Andevai, promise me on your mother’s honor that
you will stand as mansa and rebuild Four Moons House.”

“I promise on my mother’s honor.”

His mother did not smile. She was not such a woman. But her pride was a light in the
room.

As the council filed out, Rory slipped in. “I’ll sit with you in attendance, with
your permission,” he said to Bakary and Serena. “He will pass soon to the other side.”

Outside, Duvai confronted his brother. “What do you mean to do, Mansa?” he said mockingly.

Weary but unbowed, Vai frowned. “He yet lives. I am not mansa.”

“The hunter has already crept into the shadows of the House. Death stalks that place.”

I looked wildly around the open courtyard of the family’s compound, but I did not
see my sire in light or in shadow. Then a crow fluttered down to perch on the roof.

“Do you intend to stay here?” Duvai held a stout staff as tall as his head, tipped
with a fringe of feathers and beads. He shifted it now from his left hand to his right,
as if making ready for an attack. “You
and your people are eating out our winter stores. You claim you mean to change things,
but you’re doing exactly what the mages have always done, living off our flesh.”

Vai was tired enough that he allowed himself to lean on me as he met his brother’s
gaze without anger or malice. “What I mean to do, you will know when the mansa dies
and I am free to act. But you may be sure that I intend to release every village from
the clientage that binds it to Four Moons House. Until then, I ask you to remember
what our father taught us.”

“Our father told us that a hero is loved only on troubled days. Otherwise he causes
too much disruption for the village to find him a comfortable presence. Is that what
you meant to remind me of, Andevai?”

“Are those words meant for me because you think I am the hero? Because if they are,
then you have directed them at the wrong person. Although I do not think of Catherine
as disruptive. Just precipitous sometimes.”

With a sigh Duvai handed his staff to his younger brother. No doubt Duvai felt it
beneath the dignity of any man to have to lean on a woman, much less thank her for
salvaging what she could out of a desperate situation.

Vai took the staff as if it were an offering of peace. “Brother, surely you do not
forget that when I was a boy, I did nothing but follow after you.”

“You were a terrible nuisance, always underfoot,” agreed Duvai gravely.

I looked from one to the other, seeing the stamp of the father I had never met in
their features but also in the way they both carried themselves as men. Strength can
be used to harm, but it can also be used to build and to sustain. No doubt they had
clashed in later years because they were so much alike. One had always known the place
he meant to grow into. The other had hoped to follow, only to find himself completely
uprooted and forced into unfriendly earth.

Vai rubbed the wood, approving the polish of the grain. “Father taught us that a man
knows he is a man by the good he brings to his village.”

Bakary appeared at the door of Grandmother’s house. All the people
loitering in the courtyard and at the gate to the family compound turned to look,
every voice stilled.

The old djeli raised a hand skyward. “Mansa,” he said, to Andevai.

Between one breath and the breath that was never taken, I found myself married to
the mansa of Four Moons House. Not that anyone had asked if this was what I wanted!

The next day, in the ensuing gatherings and rituals, I crept away by the path I had
taken when I had fled Haranwy almost two years ago. The open gate gave way to a track
that led through gardens and pasture. A herd of fat sheep worked through the forage.
I did not go far through the golden stalks of autumn. An orchard of apple, plum, and
cherry had been harvested but for a few stragglers. An old stump made a good resting
place. I sat for the longest time staring at the wind in the grass and the sway of
branches, but everywhere I looked I saw my sire’s shadow and felt the icy touch of
his hand. The pulse of blood in my ears drowned me.

Where the hand of fortune branches, Tara Bell’s child must choose
.

I had made the only choice I could, not just once but many times. I had to save the
ones I loved, for although I had grabbed for their hands, I hadn’t been able to save
my parents that terrible day. Maybe my sire had saved me. Maybe I had accidentally
saved myself. All I remembered was how I had struggled to reach them.

It wasn’t drowning I was truly afraid of. It was the moment my mother’s hand had slipped
away from mine as the current pulled her into the murky depths where my father had
already sunk.

No more! I would not lose them! I would not!

So I had made the bargain with my sire. I wouldn’t lose them, but they would lose
me.

Bee’s laughter floated like the memory of summer past and the promise of summer to
come. She and Andevai appeared, arguing with the intensity of two people who agree
on the fundamentals and are now clashing about what color the curtains should be.
Rory trailed after them, distracted by the puppy racing around his heels and barking
in excitement as it demanded he play.

“There you are, dearest!” Bee called. “Cat, you can’t just run off like that. For
one thing, it looks very disrespectful to the elders both of
the village and of the mage House. Furthermore, something is bothering you, and I
am going to bully you until you tell us what it is.”

The puppy gnawed on my ankle while wriggling its hindquarters in ecstatic excitement.

“I know what you are thinking,” said Vai.

“I don’t believe you do,” I said in my coolest voice, although in fact it was difficult
to be morose when a puppy was chewing on my leg.

“I understand your concerns, Catherine.” He flipped out the length of his dash jacket
and sat beside me, shoving me with his hip to make room. “Beatrice and I already have
a plan, although I agree we should have made it more clear to you. But you’ve been
so distracted and tired and hard to talk to, love. You’ve not spoken a word about
what happened to Drake, or why Four Moons House is now encased in ice just as if the
Wild Hunt had devoured it. Just like Crescent House.”

“It is an odd resemblance, is it not?” I agreed. “But the Master of the Wild Hunt
can only enter the mortal world on Hallows’ Night. Everyone knows that!”

He rubbed a finger along the trimmed magnificence of his beard. “That’s true. Still,
I did not know an eru had such power.”

“Neither did I!” agreed Bee, with a suspicious look, but it was evident she had not
the slightest memory of my sire’s passage through the coach or what he had done.

“I did not know it either, but it appears to be an eru’s work.” It was no lie. The
one who gave him birth had had an eru’s form when he was disgorged. Rory looked a
question at me, and I shook my head. He pulled his lips back as if to snarl at me,
and I opened my eyes very aggressively, head jutted forward, until he backed off.
Glimpsing his movement, the puppy gamboled after him.

“Is that all you have to say on the matter?” Vai demanded. “Because it seems no one
witnessed every part of what happened except for you.”

“I asked for their aid, for that is my right. I cut a path for them through the mirror.
But they had no obligation to stay once Drake was dead.”

At that moment I knew I would not tell them. They could not stop the Wild Hunt, nor
could I allow them to follow me into the spirit world. If they knew what bargain I
had made, the next two months
would swamp them in misery and fear. It would be cruel to tell them. So I would keep
silence and tell no one.

He took my hands in his. Bee set her arms akimbo and fixed him with an axe-blow glare.
A wind teased through her curls, making them dance, like happiness. His breath brushed
my ear.

“No kissing, Andevai!” said Bee. “You promised! You must present your argument in
a reasoned and sensible manner.”

He released my hands and stood. I had washed and mended his clothes while he was bedridden,
but despite the skillful job I had done, they looked like clothes bought in the secondhand
market, not like costly garments appropriate to a powerful magister whose status was
every bit the equal of a prince’s. Yet he looked so very fine. It wasn’t the clothes
that made him beautiful.

“Catherine, I know you have told me that you cannot live in Four Moons House. And
you heard me promise the mansa on my mother’s honor that I will rebuild Four Moons
House. I am a cold mage, and I have to do it.”

“I know, my love.”

“Besides the promise to my mother, I have a responsibility to the House that educated
me and to the mansa who raised me up. To every fledgling magister who may never get
proper training, like the fire banes in Expedition. To my own family, to the village
that birthed me, and also to the other villages chained by clientage to Four Moons
House. To all villages so chained. All communities have a right to liberty, a right
to the dignity and security of their own persons.”

“After which,” said Bee in a portentously deep voice, “he will cause all strife in
the world to cease, every infant child to be born healthy, and all men to have the
taste to dress fashionably and in colors that suit their complexions. What Andevai
is working up to tell you, dearest, is that while he promised to rebuild Four Moons
House, he cleverly did not specify
how
he would do so. Nor did the mansa ask. I keep trying to tell you about my plan, and
you keep ignoring me.”

I considered my folded hands, and then looked up at them. So bright they were in the
afternoon sun. The wind fell cool across us, but the light cast a glorious, rich glow
across the land. From here we could see a glint of the great river whose waters had
so altered my life, although in truth it was the hunter who had acted that day for
his own
hidden reasons. He had driven me to this moment as hunters will, stalking their prey
until they are cornered.

So be it. I still had life in me.

Rory scooped up the puppy and walked over to sit at my feet.

I smiled at them, whom I loved best in all the world. “What plan could you possibly
have agreed on?”

Had I understood the monumental nature of their scheme, I might have taken a nap first.

To argue with elders who object to such a radical change of direction needs a honeyed
voice and a stubborn persistence working in concert. The new mansa informed his people
that no House could rise on the ruins of the old. The ice had caged it forever and,
with it, the old chains by which Four Moons had long sustained itself. Those who did
not wish to walk this new path with the mansa had the right to go elsewhere, to join
whatever mage House would take them in. The deceased mansa’s nephew and perhaps half
of the survivors departed. I was surprised at how many stayed, including Serena and
all of the House’s djeliw. I couldn’t blame the bards. Given the choice of the two
men, I knew which one I would rather sing about.