“What else would you call it?”
“I could call it a hundred different things, but those are just words. I could use a hundred words to describe cold magic, but none would be this.” He pinched a spark of cold fire out of the air and stretched it and wove it to become a golden flower dappled with light as with dew, and then a chain of such flowers like a necklace hammered out of light.
I stared open-mouthed, for it was the most astonishingly lovely vision. “Ought you to be doing that in public?”
“Who will know,” he said, bending closer to pretend to loop the chain from my shoulders low along the swell of my breasts, “if you do not tell them?”
Even through the challis of my jacket, the illusion’s touch felt like the tickle of bees exploring along my skin. He was still toying with the illusion, darkening the shadows and muting the lights until it no longer glowed like sorcery but only like polished gold catching glints from the lamps that burned around the plaza. None, I realized, were hissing gas lamps or blustering torches.
“Are they all cold fire?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, glancing around at the gleaming lights. “That’s the only training they allow their lowly fire banes. Not a one can manage more than the most rudimentary illusion. And they can put out a weak fire. The fire banes who work for Warden Hall are obligated to call light for festivals and hire themselves out to folk who have to run errands at night. Imagine a man of the mansa’s stature and pride forced to be a linkboy all his life!”
“I can’t imagine it,” I murmured, remembering how the mansa had shattered rifles.
“Or the wardens sell them into Taino country. It’s against the law for mages of any sort, even fire mages, to form associations to aid and educate each other. They keep them weak by denying them knowledge. I can’t wait to go home.”
“To Four Moons House?” I asked as my heart hardened.
“More pudding?” He brought the spoon to my lips. As he fed me, he spoke in a voice whose intensity pierced me to the bone. “When you fell into the well and crossed into the spirit world, I thought I would rather die than have to live knowing I had lost you. I left Adurnam and went to Haranwy. There I found my grandmother making ready to cross over. I gave her the locket, hoping it might lead her to you with my message.”
I touched the locket. “How did you get it back from those two girls I gave it to?”
He chuckled. “I promised those girls I would never tell. Anyway, I got Duvai and Uncle Mamadi to agree to hunt with me at Imbolc, even though we knew the chance we could track you down was small. Then the mansa summoned me. They’d had news. General Camjiata had taken ship right out from under their noses in Adurnam. No one had even known he was in the city. And he was sailing to Expedition with plans to raise a new army. You can imagine the mansa’s consternation.”
I said nothing. He fed me another spoonful.
“The mansa commanded me to go to Expedition. My task was to discover Camjiata’s intentions. And, if the general intends to launch a new war, to stop him.”
A chill knife of foreboding pricked my breath. I did not want him to be that man: the man who would kill in cold blood, with cold steel. “But the general does mean to start a new war.”
“I know.” He looked away. My glowing necklace of lit flowers faded, as if it were a lamp running out of fuel. “The mansa argued that one death is a small price to pay to avert the deaths of tens of thousands. I said killing is not the only solution. But I also said I would stop the general, if the mansa would release the village of Haranwy from its clientage to Four Moons House.”
“You didn’t ask for yourself??”
He bridled. “Do you think I would walk free if my village could not? Since the mansa has all the advantage over me, naturally he refused. But he said I could bring Kayleigh and establish her here, with a legal writ to release her from clientage. Otherwise they would breed her to see if they could produce more cold mages from my family’s bloodline.”
“So you were never given a choice, only a sort of a bribe.”
“That is how the mansa thinks, because it is the only way he knows how to think. But you must understand, Catherine, that while it is certainly true I am an exceedingly rare and unexpectedly potent cold mage-”
I rested a hand against his cheek, the touch silencing him instantly. The bristle of his beard on my palm made me want to purr. “Such rare potency matched by the inverse of your modesty.”
He drew my hand away, his breathing ragged as he went on even more pedantically. “It is also true that in Four Moons House I paid closer attention to our lessons and practiced more diligently and asked more questions and experimented more freely than the others did. Their expectations hurt them, I suppose. They knew what seat of power and wealth was theirs to sit in. It was nothing to them. A few enjoyed the challenge of weaving cold magic. Some felt the weight of duty. But no one worked harder than I did. No one. Maybe my reach is that much greater than the others of my age group. Or maybe I simply am more disciplined and responsible. That being so, how can the children born into the House believe they are somehow in blood better, if my own experience shows they are not? So after the things you said to me, after the mansa commanded me to kill you, I began to question. Why should my village remain under a system of clientage that’s little better than slavery just because it has always been that way?”
“You truly listened to me?”
“I did.”
“That’s why you went to Godwik and Clutch?”
“Yes. I found Chartji’s legal knowledge most helpful. She said I could learn a great deal in Expedition, and so I have. All people have a right to liberty. They have a right to the dignity and security of their own persons. Why must we remain chained to an antiquated system that benefits a few on the backs of the many?”
“Are you a radical now?”
He gathered me close, an arm around my back, his lips against my ear. “Oh, yes, Catherine. I am a radical now. I will unbind my village from the chains of clientage. I may not manage it this year or the next, but I will not rest until I find a way to do it, legal or otherwise. I am nothing if not persistent. My village will not be chained forever. Nor should you be. Chartji is still looking into the matter of dissolving a chained marriage. If you wish to wait until I receive word from her, of her findings, then so be it. I will wait for you. And if you do not want me, then you shall not be forced to have me.”
He said it not knowing what the head of the poet Bran Cof had told me, words my sire’s binding prevented me from repeating to him. Blessed Tanit! I was not drowning. I was being dragged along by the unerring tidal force that was him, or us, or destiny, or-whispered the shade of Heartless Cat-nothing more than proximity and lust.
For it was not that his eyes were beautiful, although they were. It was not that his features were symmetrically pleasing, although they surely were. It was not that his body, which I by now had an arm around, felt so very promising held close against mine, although I could scarcely think of anything except how I yearned to touch him all over.
After all, I had only to wait, hold on for seven more weeks, and then I could get what I wanted from him without being chained by it. If physical love was the only thing I wanted.
Four Moons House owned Vai through his village’s clientage, but even so, his magic gave him access to immense status within the House. Yet he had not abandoned and would not abandon his family and his entire village, although he could easily have left them behind for the wealth and privilege his power as a mage granted him. Instead, he made their burdens his own. He intended to risk his own security and no doubt his life to free them. That was the man he wanted to be.
I could take what I wanted as I walked free. Or I could share the burdens and risks with him.
I felt my lips part, as if to speak, but all that came out was a mute exhalation.
He drew back slightly, studying me with the serious look that seemed to see not just me but all the things that made me what I was. That seemed to offer not just him but all the things that made him what he was.
“We can walk our paths each alone. Or we can walk this unknown road together. If anyone can find a way through, it will be you. If you will walk with me, my sweet Catherine, then I will never let go of you. And I promise you that together we will get there.”
I thought he was going to kiss me, but that was not what he was about. He brushed a hand along my hair and drew his thumb down the side of my face until I could not remember how to breathe.
Eyes half closed in a way that made me wonder how he might look if I woke up beside him made all drowsy
