Cold Steel

The nephew’s eyes flared with anger, but he made no retort. Instead, he tramped out.

The mansa gestured toward my sword. “However curious I am about you, Catherine Barahal, I will order my soldiers to kill you and your companions if you cannot bring me Andevai.”

Rory’s lips curled back. Bee took a step toward me.

I was not a fool. I lowered my blade. “Andevai is in the spirit world. Perhaps with your help, I can get him back.”

The mansa laughed, but the djeli did not.

With a frown, the mansa reconsidered. “Bakary, is she telling the truth?”

“A mirror is the water that allows me to look onto the other side, Mansa,” said the old man. “It should be possible to discover if she lies or speaks truth. Especially since the mirror in this house is the mirror through which their marriage was chained.”

I had been racing down one path, thinking I might convince the mansa to convey us to Haranwy. Like a noose at my throat, the djeli’s words yanked me to a halt.

“What do you mean, Honored One, that a mirror is the water?” I asked.

“It is not solid, like stone, and yet not lacking substance, like air. Therefore, it is water, for we djeliw can see through it to the spirit world which lies both beneath and above us.”

I caught Bee’s gaze with my own, looked down at the packs, and back up to her. Her brow wrinkled as she grasped and considered my unspoken plan. I was playing a very deep game of batey, about to try a hit whose arc would pass right over every person near me with but a small chance of reaching the stone eye that was the goal.

Upstairs, the front door opened and closed. Footsteps approached.

A soldier appeared at the kitchen door. “Mansa! The legate has arrived.”

With a sucked-in hiss, Bee closed her hands into fists. We managed to grab the packs before soldiers herded us up the stairs after the mansa. The chest, with most of Vai’s dash jackets, had to be left behind, but fortunately no one seemed to notice that my sword was still unsheathed. I wondered if they could see the blade now that the mansa’s magic had faded.

In the entry hall the mansa greeted Amadou Barry and Lord Marius, speaking with his own voice to equals. “It is good you came quickly. I have momentous news. I received word this morning that General Camjiata has landed at Gadir.”

Bee and I glanced at each other as Lord Marius exclaimed, “At Gadir! He has returned to Iberia! That is the news we feared most!”

Amadou Barry marked us as we climbed into view. His red-and-gold half-cape glistened with raindrops, and made him look quite dashing. “Beatrice! I knew you would return to me!”

Bee’s expression was one of the queenly pride that we of Kena’ani upbringing call the Dido’s Fury, a womanly emotion associated with the famous story of the dido and Aeneas, when the queen realized the untrustworthy Roman soldier of fortune had been seeking to rule over her through marriage.

“Legate Amadou Barry! I did not expect to meet you here! Nor, indeed, was any meeting with you a thing I desired, not after our last unfortunate encounter and the condescending insult you offered me. I realize that a man of your exceedingly high position in the world and your exceptional wealth and standing must look at a young woman such as myself with disdain. You may consider my impoverished circumstances and Phoenician connections to be marks against me which you are gracious enough to overlook. But I assure you I am proud of who I am and where I come from. I was sorely mistaken in what manner of man I thought you were. I now understand you are not the sort of man on whom a vulnerable young woman is wise to cast her hopes.”

Every man except Rory was staring at Bee with expressions so broad that only actors playing in a farce would have used such gaping mouths to express shocked surprise. I choked down a laugh as I nudged Rory with my hip and indicated he should take the packs to the stairs.

“Indeed, I am done with all of you lordly men!” Bee’s gaze flashed sideways to note Rory’s movement, then back to her audience. “You believe you have the right to own me merely because you wish to possess me. Some of you desire to control me because I walk the dreams of dragons and others because you consider me beautiful. But I am not your property to be handed about or exchanged according to your desire rather than my own. Be sure that I realize you are all far more powerful in this world than I am, for I am only a young woman whose household has neither wealth nor noble status to raise it into the ranks of those who stand on high and look down upon the low. Be sure that I realize you could kill me, or arrest me, or forcibly assault me, or purchase me from the elders of Hassi Barahal house if you offered them a rich enough inducement or a frightening enough threat. We who are not protected by wealth and high station are so vulnerable in the world, are we not?”

“You cannot be Beatrice Hassi Barahal!” Amadou Barry looked as if he had seen a poisonous snake unexpectedly rearing up out of thick grass. “You are some manner of malevolent spirit who has taken the form of an innocent girl.”

“Not as innocent as you would wish, Legate!” she said with a smoldering gaze that made his face pinch as she looked him up and down in a frankly sexual way. “Did you not murmur in the greenhouse that you wished to instruct me in the music of sweet pleasure? That I would be an ‘apt pupil’ if only I let you take command of my heart and my more intimate parts?”

Lord Marius whistled under his breath. “Ripe Venus! No wonder your courtship failed!”

It was all I could do not to burst out laughing at the way her erstwhile suitor’s hands crushed into fists and his face tensed with anger at her plain speaking. I was sure Bee felt my shaking, for she swept an axe-blow glance in my direction to warn me to keep my peace.

“How was it you phrased it, Legate?” She tapped a finger against her perfect chin as she glanced at the ceiling for inspiration. “What awkward poetic phrases did you use to describe my—”

“You dare not mock me in this impertinent way.”

“I am mocking you, Legate. You considered me beneath you, and you meant that in so many different ways. But I am not the woman you wish me to be. I never was.”

She dismissed Amadou Barry with a proud lift of her chin and settled her implacable gaze on the mansa of Four Moons House. He was staring at her with an expression of outright astonishment, but I could see the beginnings of a condescending smile pull at his lips. The clock ticked over and rang six bells. No one moved until the last echo of the sixth bell died away.

“You may think me amusing, Mansa,” she said, “for I must suppose you are now thinking I am a fiery little lass ripe for plucking by a strong man in his prime. But I do not find you amusing, nor do you awe me, you and your cold magic. You would have murdered my dearest cousin just for the sake of getting hold of my dreams.”

“I do what I must,” he said, with a frown at her rebuke. “You do not understand the consequences.”

“I do not understand the consequences? My dearest cousin is the one who would have died, had your command been carried out. I would have been forced to marry a man against my will, and been cast into your House as a prisoner. You couldn’t have protected me from the Wild Hunt regardless. I would have been dismembered and my head thrown in a well. So don’t tell me that I am the one who does not understand the consequences.”

Rory had moved halfway up the stairs, while I stood on the first step. Bee unlaced the basket and pulled out the skull. There was a struggling silence, broken at last by Lord Marius.

“Whose skull is that?”

“This?” she asked with a flutter of eyelashes. “This is the skull of my mother-in-law.”

“Did you smite her dead with a scolding lecture?” the soldier asked with a laugh.

“Married!” Amadou Barry’s face was cut with a look of sheer jealous rage. He took a step toward her, but Lord Marius fastened a hand on his arm, halting him. “Who married you?”

Bee ignored him. “I did not smite her. I rather liked her, and I believe she rather liked me, although we did not have the leisure to come to know each other well before the unpleasant incident in which she died. I show this to you, Mansa, to let you know that legally you have no grounds to force me to your will. I am a nitaino—a noble woman of independent means—in the Taino kingdom. No court and not even my family can use the threat of legal possession over me now. I have standing under Taino law.”

“How did your mother-in-law die?” I asked.