you in harness.”
An eddy of cold air pooled around us. “Do you suppose I am too uneducated and common-born to have thought of exactly these sorts of complications?”
“Of course I don’t! I will thank you not to pretend that I do so you can wallow in your wounded feelings! You have just bested the rivals who tormented you for so long. You have raised your mother to a position of honor beyond anything she can ever have thought to expect. And you have been proven in the starkest way possible as exactly the rare and uncommonly potent cold mage you have always known you are. All laudable things. I want to know if you have forgotten your promise to Kofi.”
Ice crackled as frost across the surface of the cream as he pushed back his chair and rose with a curl of his lip. “I think that is enough! Do not believe you understand my promise to Kofi.”
“I’ve just gotten started!” I shoved back my own chair and stood. “Either you want a wife who respects you enough to challenge you when she thinks you may be wrong, or you want a wife like the gracious Serena, whose manners are beyond impeccable, and whose desire and purpose is solely to serve the wishes and needs of a husband who chose her for her beauty.”
“How do you know she doesn’t challenge him in private? How do you know she didn’t desire and even seek the marriage? It may not seem so to you, but marriage to the mansa of Four Moons House gives a woman’s lineage significant prestige and valuable connections. For that matter, how do you know she isn’t a magister herself, married for her magical potency and not just her signal beauty?”
“How would you know what she is like in private?” I demanded.
He blinked. With a shake of his head the contemptuous mage vanished, and the Vai I loved returned. “Why, Catherine. Here is an unexpected sting of jealousy!”
How I hated that particular smirk of his. I fumed, not wanting to admit he was right or that I had simply assumed a dazzling beauty could not also be an accomplished magister.
“In fact, as the mansa’s heir, I am allowed to sit in his private parlor in the most casual manner imaginable. I may even converse easily, like a son, with his charming wife.” He slid into a light Expedition cant. “I reckon that gal’s a little lonely and like me company.”
“Peradventure some maku is going to find he own self a little lonely sleeping on the floor!”
He glided so quickly around the little table that I did not have time to step away before he pulled me to him. “Is he, now?” he murmured caressingly.
“Do you want to provoke me, Andevai?”
“Now that you mention it, I rather find that I do. You have no idea how attractive I find you when you get like this.” Given that he held me against him and his dressing robe had fallen half open, I had some idea. “I have been promised this whole day is mine to do as I wish.”
“To argue with me?”
“We can argue as much as we need to, love, as long as it is understood that we trust each other. I know this is unexpected and that it may seem like the wrong path that goes against everything we have discussed at such length. I admit I have some reasons that are not the right ones and that I just… to do this, to receive this… heir to the mansa…”
He kissed me in a tumult of emotion that he had no other way to express. I struggled not to give way to the intense desire I felt for him, to think with my mind instead of my body, but the two were woven too intimately together.
I eased the dressing robe off his shoulders. “I shall need more of that ambrosial sweetened and whipped cream when I am done with you.”
“Not yet, not yet,” he whispered in a hoarse murmur that made me wild.
All entangled and kissing him, I nudged him toward the bed.
“Announce me.”
The mansa’s voice fell like the stroke of a sword. Vai would have leaped back as if cut from me, but modesty made me cling to him. The mansa had in fact already announced himself, standing on the upper step with the entry curtain held away in his left hand and his thick eyebrows raised interrogatively. I thought he looked amused or, perhaps, relieved that the young man he had chosen as his heir was capable of the deed. He stepped back and dropped the curtain to give us privacy in which to straighten and retie our dressing robes.
“Thank Tanit we hadn’t made it to the bed,” I muttered, my face aflame.
But after recovering from his surprise, Vai did not look displeased. He lifted the curtain. “Mansa, please. Come in.” To a servant beyond, he said, “Bring more coffee and a fresh cup. Another bowl of berries and cream.”
The mansa sat in my chair and Vai opposite him, leaving me to accept the new pot and cup when it was expeditiously brought. I squelched an urge to pour coffee over both their heads and instead poured for them and afterward for myself. I heaped my cup with two spoonfuls of the cream, after which I retreated to stand off to the side.
“There is news,” said the mansa, careful not to look at me, for although I was covered from neck to ankles in the dressing robe, his presence in the gazebo felt strangely intimate. “Camjiata’s skirmishers have been sighted in Cena. He may intend an assault on Lutetia.”
“He proclaimed his legal code here in Lutetia in the year 1818,” I said. “Twenty-two years ago. That must mean something to him.”
The mansa sipped thoughtfully at his coffee. “Indeed. Handbills and broadsheets and seditious pamphlets circulate in the streets. They claim to be the text of a declaration of rights. By this means he has deluded gullible villagers and illiterate laborers with an idea they will be better off with his imperial rule than with the rule of local lords and mages who know their people and are concerned for the health of their lands. Can you imagine?” He paused to give Vai a long look.
Vai would never stare down an elder, but his respectful manner was not meek. “I would not call them gullible, Mansa.”
“I suppose you would not. Yet should the general succeed, he will need governors to oversee provinces. Such people will skim off bribes for themselves and hand the right to collect taxes and tithes to their cronies and favored underlings. A great deal of petty and grand corruption will ensue. Meanwhile, there is the problem of fire mages. You are sure he is using fire mages, Andevai? The mansa of Gold Cup House was an old man. His heart might simply have given out.”
“You saw what happened. You know I am right. Furthermore, I know exactly what manner of unscrupulous and callous man is being allowed to have his way by the general.”
With a faintly mocking half smile, the mansa examined Vai. “One thing you have never lacked is certainty that you are right. I will be sending Serena back to Four Moons House immediately with an escort. See that your mother and sisters are ready to depart with her at midday.”
“Will my wife accompany them?”
“No,” said the mansa, at the same time as I said, “No!”
Vai’s rigid posture did not ease. “Mansa, I have some concern over how my mother and sisters will be received at Four Moons House if there is no one there to see to their comfort, nurse my mother properly, and protect them from disrespect.”
“Be sure I recognize your concern, Andevai. At my request and command, Serena will take charge of ensuring they be received in all ways appropriate to my heir. Understand that disrespect shown to them is now the same as disrespect shown to me.”
“The girls should be allowed to take lessons,” I said. “Even if they have no cold magic—and of course that is not yet determined—they should be educated as any girl in the House would be. Wasa should be treated no differently just because she’s undersized and her legs don’t work well. She’s a very intelligent girl, and it would be a mistake to allow her to languish. Forcing her to study will also keep her out of mischief. Also, the crutch she has been using is too short and heavy. I asked several times if it might be replaced with something better, but the attendants said they had no authority to replace it. If she had one made to fit her frame she would be able to get around more easily and that would allow her to gain strength.”
The mansa lifted his cup to indicate that I had not anticipated that he needed more coffee. “It has come to my notice, Andevai,” he said, ignoring me as I poured, “that your wife has a mouth on her, as I would have crudely said when I was a lad.”
