them watch me. I composed my furious expression into something meant to resemble placid affability, for truly I was an amiable person who preferred to get along with everyone! The moment I unwound the shadows and reappeared, several of the men chuckled as if they guessed exactly my sentiments from the defiant set of my head.
“It explains how the girl escaped,” said Lord Marius. “What of her cousin and brother?”
“There are more like her?” demanded the Parisi prince. “What fine spies such creatures will make!”
Vai kept his gaze on me to remind me to keep my lips closed. As if I would talk! I almost laughed as I realized he and the mansa had kept secrets from their allies: They had not told their allies that my cousin walked the dreams of dragons.
“A difficult woman to bind and chain, as you may imagine, but we managed it,” said our mansa, as if binding and chaining me into his House had been his intention all along! “Lord Marius, I am sure you already have a scheme or two in mind with which to usefully employ the woman.”
He caught my eye and gestured, flicking his fingers toward the door. Falling as I was into a red-hot fulmination, I strode out as proudly as I might. Let Andevai enjoy his little triumph! I was so angry I could not sit down even once I returned to our rooms. All I could bring myself to do was bounce the ball from wall to knee to wall to elbow, counting how many times I made the pass before I dropped it. At dusk I had to stop, by now sweaty and a little sore. I asked for a tray of food and a bath. I got what I asked for but not what I wanted.
Very late Vai came hurrying in to rush me back to the summer cottage.
“You were magnificent, love. They couldn’t stop talking about you the rest of the day!” His smile glittered. “Some of them said they envied me—”
“I had far more freedom at Aunty’s boardinghouse than I do here! It seems to me the women of Two Gourds House are too elegant and rarified to ever leave these walls, or perhaps it would just be considered shameful to do so. Certainly they scorn me too much to ask me to come along on their shopping trips and their tours of the famous landmarks of the famous city, of which need I remind you I have not seen a single paving stone nor a single vendor’s umbrella.”
“If they are treating you with disrespect, I will have a word with—”
“Yes!
“Yes, yes, that is how they talk, that is how they see things. But they can be brought to change. What matters is that they know they need me, that I am the best. Do not forget that Camjiata is letting James Drake do as he wills. You cannot want that to continue, Catherine!”
“Of course I understand that James Drake has to be stopped! That is not my point. The locked room in the servants’ wing was better than this because I had your mother and sisters to keep me company. I should have gone with them!”
“My sweet Catherine,” he murmured, nuzzling me in just the way I liked best, “you know it makes all the difference to me to have you here. You have been so patient. I see how it chafes you.”
“I dislike this coaxing manner, Andevai, with your wiles and caresses.”
“We’ll make a child.”
Trembling, I shoved him to arm’s length. “Is this the same man who swore we would bring no child into the world until we’re free of clientage?”
“Yes, but—”
“Not to mention my sire.”
“Yes, love, but—”
“I would be very careful what you say next.”
He sighed.
“They won’t even let me sew, except under their eye. As if they think I can effect an escape with a needle.”
“My love,” he murmured. This time I let him embrace me, because I was so tired of being alone all day that to feel the press of his hand on my back and the warmth of his chest against mine was the nectar I wished to feed on. “I promise you, we will go out tomorrow and promenade along the Sicauna River. We’ll take coffee at one of the little cafes, as people do here.”
Yet this night, finally, the kisses of a handsome man were not enough.
“If this is what it means to be wife of the mansa, I cannot live it. You would do better to marry the daughter of Two Gourds House and let her pour your wine!”
“Love, love, love, this is not what it will be once the war is over.”
But it would. I knew it, and he did not want to know it.
Yet he was right that a war was being fought. The old order did not want to die, and why should it? The radicals wanted change, and why wouldn’t they? Meanwhile Camjiata had a foot in each camp: His father and mother had both been born into the highest ranks, while his legal code would tear down the bed his noble forebears had long luxuriated in.
The bells of conflict rang down through the interwoven worlds. The dragons lost their hatchlings and began to die out, so they walked their dreams through the minds of mortal girls and by this means hatchlings survived, even if the girls did not. The courts drank mortal blood to strengthen themselves, and the salt turned them into ghouls, and thus, unable to change, as ghouls they fell into the mortal world and spread the salt plague that had killed so many.
So on and on, always the long struggle: The worlds are a maze with many paths.
“What about my sire?” I asked. “What are we to do when Hallows’ Night comes, as it will?”
“I have been discussing Hallows’ Night and troll mazes with the mansa—”
I shoved him to arm’s length. “With the mansa!”
“Beatrice is the one who revealed to him that we know how to escape the Hunt. You can’t wish people to die, Catherine! That’s all I told him, love. None of your secrets, I promise you.”
I could not scold him. I did not want people to die any more than he did. “Yet troll mazes won’t help me,” I muttered, letting him gather me against him.
He held me so close and so so sweetly. “My sweet Catherine, if we walk this road together, we will find a way through. I promise you, love. We will find a way.”
When I kissed him, I could hold on to my patience for one more night. But I had to make something change.
36
At dawn a steward announced himself. Vai was commanded to accompany the mansa to the city of Senones to meet three Roman legions arriving from the east and discuss with them the difficulties of battling an army protected by a fire mage. He might be gone for weeks.
After he left, I wept hot tears of frustration. Then I dried my eyes.
In the indoor bedchamber, which we had never used, stood a writing desk equipped with paper, ink, and pens. I wrote an impassioned letter to Kofi because it was the only way I had to express the ferocity of my misgivings. Afterward I would have burned my bitter words, but I had no fire. Instead I concealed the folded paper inside the skull. For the longest time I stood at the open door of the suite, staring along the corridor. As long as my back was in sight, my attendants let me be. Now and again a servant passed on an errand. I could not quite comprehend how I had gotten here, wife to the heir of the mansa!
A young steward sauntered into view, carrying a tray on which lay a sealed letter. He mistook me for an attendant because of the simple colors and sensible cut of my clothes.
“Where is the woman who stewards here? I am instructed to give all correspondence that comes for the Four Moons heir to her first.”
I made a pretty courtesy and flashed a flirting grin. “I shall take it in to her. She is attending on the heir’s
