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.
Serena led me back through the parlor and through the double doors into a splendid dining room decorated in the old style, a long table surrounded by twenty-four cushions. Past another door I saw a staging area where male servants were arranging a veritable army of platters. At a side table an elderly steward supervised the decanting of multiple bottles of wine. After washing and drying our hands in a brass basin, we waited by the wine.
“I am told you are not House-raised, Catherine. In the mage Houses, when the mansa presides over a meal with important guests, it is customary for his wife to pour the wine and keep the glasses of the guests filled.” She sighed with a hint of exasperation. “I told the mansa it would be best to give me time with you to instruct you in the proper handling of the carafe and how to pour. Under the circumstances he cannot wish you to stumble, but…”
The far doors opened and the mansa entered. In his wake men streamed in, chatting as stewards showed them to their seats and brought bowls and towels for them to wash their fingers. No doubt the mansa had his own reasons for throwing me straight into the fire. Well! There was a lot about me he did not know!
As host of the gathering, the mansa naturally sat at one end of the table. The older guests were placed next to and then down from him in, I had to suppose, declining degrees of importance. The younger men were seated at the other half of the table. I recognized the mansa’s nephew, who had tried to kill me at Cold Fort and whom I had met again in Adurnam. When a steward directed him to a place midway down the table, close to neither end, the nephew cast me such a hostile look that I flinched.
Serena patted my hand. Under cover of the men’s talk she whispered, “Be gracious and silent. You must expect hostility from those who expected they were to be raised highest.”
To my surprise Mansa Viridor entered. He was seated in a place of honor among the younger men, to the left of the empty end cushion. Viridor saw me, then glanced toward the door.
Just when I realized Vai had not the status to be invited to such an exalted gathering of august magisters and princely allies, he walked in, last of all. His beard was freshly trimmed. He had let his hair grow out a little. He wore a long black-and-gold riding jacket trimmed with soldierly red braid, slim trousers, and gleaming boots. Possibly, I might have sighed longingly.
Serena’s fingers caught mine as she whispered, “You are staring at him. Do not. It makes you look like the cheapest sort of serving girl in a tavern where laborers congregate after work.”
Vai glanced at the mansa, already seated, and dipped his chin respectfully as he looked down at the only
