A crow came to rest on the lip of one of the broken windows, claws gripping the frame. It dipped its inquisitive black head and peered in with its bright black eyes to see what it could see.
Bee, looking up, saw the crow. Her expression and color changed, as if she'd just recognized something. She rose as stiffly as might an old woman, shook herself, and set her lips together in the determined frown that always presaged her worst explosions.
'Bee!' I said fiercely.
She faced the mansa as the didos once faced the hated Romans: proud and queenly.
'I am not mute.' Her clear voice filled the space. 'If you have business with me, Mansa, then speak or be silent.'
I tightened my grip on my cane, sure that this time she had gone too far.
The mansa shifted his gaze from Andevai, with his bowed head, to Bee, with her challenging stare. She met him look for look, and the grim press of his mouth softened. His eyes crinkled to reveal unexpected laugh lines. Then the cursed magister chuckled in that condescending way older men do, who are amused by the antics of downy goslings or who find young women attractive.
The light overhead changed consistency, or maybe that was just her look darkening as a familiar stormy expression transformed her face. 'How dm you imagine I would stand by while my beloved cousin's life is threatened? While she is pursued through no fault of her own merely because you are angry that you did not get what you wanted? Am I to think this is the act of a man who wishes to do what is right in the eyes of the gods, or rather the act of a man who is angry that he did not get what he wanted the instant he wanted it?'
'Maestressa,' began the djeli hastily, 'to address the mansa without an intermediary-'
'No, Bakary. I'll speak to her with my own mouth.' His smile faded as he, like all of us, heard the growl of a crowd approaching, shouts raised in a chorus I had heard before:
'Away with the oppression of princes and mages! We'll rule ourselves!'
'Take your choice. Freedom or fetters!'
Bee said, 'My cousin and I are leaving. These laborers will go with us, unmolested.'
The mansa looked torn between amusement as at a charming child's antics and annoyance at her defiance. 'No one here can interfere. Four Moons House has a legal contract, made by your elders, that gives your person into our House should we at any time choose to take possession of you. Any court and any jurist will rule in our favor.'
From far away, farther it seemed in that moment than the remembered days of a childhood whose happy security I could never again embrace even in my memories, I heard Adurnam's bells speak. The bell guarding the temple of the god Ma Bel-lona, who is valiant at the ford, raised his voice as herald to the crossing from day into night. The sister bells by the river, at the twin temples of Brigantia and Faro, sang out a response in their sopranos.
Bee's smile flashed triumphantly. 'But the gods have ruled otherwise. The bells ring in sunset, and therefore the solstice. I am now twenty, Mansa. Your contract is void.'
32
In the icy twilight, the mansa called cold fire, its eerie glimmer making monsters of the bulky machinery that surrounded us. The laborers caught inside with us murmured in fear.
Bee did not tremble. 'I have by law attained my majority. I am thus released from the contract Four Moons House forced on the Hassi Barahals. However, by the laws of my own people, I remain under the guardianship of the Hassi Barahal family. If you wish to discuss a new contract, then you may send representatives to the mother house in Gadir to open negotiations for some manner of agreement between them, you, and me.'
'Pretty words from a pretty girl, but they are foolish as well as ignorant.' His words fell heavily. 'Do not doubt, daughter of the Barahals, that you will be pursued by people far less merciful than I am. Do not doubt that there are more people in the world who suspect you exist than you can possibly know. Others will discover you soon enough. The Barahals cannot protect you. You cannot stand against both prince's court and mage House.'
Bee drew her sketchbook out of the knit bag and held it in her right hand, and his gaze fixed on the book, and his eyes widened as if he guessed what lay within. She spoke. 'You are not my master, and you do not rule over me. Nor do you know what I have seen. Do you think you can force me to talk?'
'There are ways to enforce compliance.'
'Yet you might more easily negotiate in good faith. Whyever would you not, when that avenue is open to you? Put me in a cage, Mansa, or sit me across a table. I think you can imagine in which chamber I will prove more cooperative. I can go on a hunger strike just as the poets do. As the Northgate Poet has, in the council square, to force the Prince of Tarrant to listen to his words and to listen to the grievances of the populace. What makes you think I'm not courageous enough to do the same thing?'
Our audience of laborers raised their heads at these words. The soldiers shifted restlessly, for the threat of a public hunger strike was enough to make any powerful lord anxious. Outside, the rumble of the crowd grew more ominous, a few voices crying out, 'Burn them!'
The mansa's cold fire burned more brightly, as if fueled by his anger. But his voice remained soft. 'What makes you think the Prince of Tarrant and I cannot simply sweep you up and haul you away? That we will not, for the good of all people?'
'You hear the crowd gathering outside. Do you think they will let me be taken prisoner so easily? The people in that crowd will favor my cause over yours. Do you doubt it?'
'The mob will trample you an hour after they raise you up. If they raise you up and do not simply swallow you whole.'
She raised her chin. 'And how, Mansa, is that different from how you and your allies intend to treat me?' Turning, she gestured imperiously to me. 'Catherine, come. We are going now.'
I glanced toward Andevai, who looked up to meet my gaze. Something in his look made my heart race, or perhaps it was only the realization that Bee truly meant to defy the mansa, to dare him to stop her in front of witnesses he could easily have killed afterward. No one need ever know what transpired here except his own loyal followers. And Andevai.
She turned her back on him and marched, head high, to the far door in the shadows. Andevai nodded at me, as if to say he would protect our backs. My heart was thudding, like repeated hammer blows; I was almost dizzy with them, with him. I was unsteady, but I gripped the hilt of my sword. And I followed Bee. The soldiers stepped back from the door as if she had commanded them to open a path for her. The mansa said nothing.
Not until we reached and shoved open the heavy door.
'Very well, maestressa.' He did not raise his voice. He had so much power that he need never shout. 'My soldiers will escort you to your family's house, where your father bides. They and the prince's militia will guard the house so none disturb you. This night and tomorrow are festival days, not an auspicious time to engage in negotiations. On the day after solstice, the Prince of Tarrant and I will call to begin discussions. Do you think that a reasonable compromise? Ah. Listen!'
The thunder of horses' hooves and the hallooing of cavalry guardsmen announced the arrival of more soldiers. The growling voice of the crowd began to shatter into a hundred voices as their resolve crumbled and people began to scatter.
The mansa's smile mocked Bee's brief triumph. 'As I expected, the prince's militia has arrived to disperse the crowd.'
I covered my face with a hand, bracing for the sound of terrible mayhem, but instead the rush of shod feet sprayed in every direction as people fled into the drowning night. The militia rode up and took places surrounding the mill. I uncovered my face. Flakes of snow drifted down through broken windows overhead like the last drowsy remains of lint.
'Reflect on this, stubborn girl,' the mansa said. 'I am a reasonable man. You, and this girl you call cousin, and even this rebellious young mage I have harbored, have convinced me that perhaps it is time to consider a different sort of arrangement. Yet I must always do whatever is necessary to safeguard my kin and my House. As for you, Maestressa Hassi Barahal, you are in more danger than you comprehend. I can protect you. You will not get a
