and contented, he whispered, “And I do here ask you if you will come home with me, tonight, to the bed I built for us.”
Blessed Tanit, how I wanted him!
Wanting is like the tide of a dragon’s dream, sweeping away the safely familiar landscape and all the cautions with which you have so carefully guarded yourself. Those who are caught in the tide can never come back. But maybe they would not regret being changed.
So I said, “Yes.”
26
“Vai. Ja, maku! Me wholehearted apologies, but I need a word with yee.”
How long Kofi had been standing about ten paces from us, I could not guess. The dance and the drums, the polyrhythm of conversation and laughter and song, the press of bodies and the smell of pepperpot mingling with the kick of dust slammed back up against my awareness.
Vai dragged his gaze away from mine. “I’ll be right back.” He released me, rose, and walked over to Kofi.
I dredged for a semblance of thought. The intricate voices of the drums throbbed up from the earth. My feet twitched as if drums were a partner who led you into the dance, and of course they were. Rhythm was another thread wound through bone and blood to weave together existence. For one night I could set aside my worries about Bee and Rory. For this night.
I watched as Kofi spoke urgently into his ear. I needed to listen, yet it seemed wrong to eavesdrop on a man who had just confided his secret hopes and dreams. At first he was smiling as if expecting to hear how his conspirator’s machinations had brought him triumph. His brow furrowed. Then his eyes widened, and he frowned and shook his head.
I heard him say, annoyed and thus a little loud, “This is not a good time.”
With an unreadable glance toward me, Kofi said, “’Tis the message I’s told to give yee.”
As Kofi hurried off, Vai strode back, pulled me up, and brushed off the burlap. I trotted beside him to the food cart whence he had borrowed it.
“You’d hate it if the last of this pudding dribbled down that gorgeous jacket. What were you thinking to wear it to an areito?”
The coy glance he gave me from under half-lowered lashes was enough to make my breathing stutter and my heart flame. “Only of you. Whatever is necessary, I will do.”
Suspicion flowered into a burst of vibrant certainty. “You blinded Aunty Djeneba and Brenna with your good manners and your appealing way of confiding in them. Uncle Joe was right. You haven’t been crying in your pillow at all. You’ve been biding your time. Plotting my downfall.”
“You think with your feet, Catherine. That’s how you escaped the mansa and fought off a shark. But I”-he offered me the last slice of papaya, his gaze fixed on my mouth as I tried to eat it up delicately and quite failed-“ I think with my mind.”
I should have been angry, but instead I was delirious. I laughed.
He smiled as he wiped out the bowl with a wedge of maize bread and fed it to me. After slinging bowl and spoon on the cord, he twined his fingers intimately through mine and we walked to the jetty. He wore a busy, thoughtful expression, so I let him think and enjoyed the pleasure of walking hand in hand. It was good to have a chance to catch my breath.
After a while, he spoke. “Kofi was just given an unexpected message.”
“From the radicals. The Assemblymen.”
“Yes.”
I recalled I had seen Kofi at the areito earlier with one of the women who had shown up at the gate last night. “Are those two gals really part of the organization?”
“Is there some reason they shouldn’t be?” He pressed a fleeting kiss on my mouth without breaking stride. The touch of his lips made me quite forget who I was for at least ten heady steps. “Were you jealous when I went off with them?”
“Why would you think I was?”
“Why did you wait up, then?”
“Were you drunk when you came back?” I asked, trying not to laugh.
“Only intoxicated by thinking of you.”
“I thought so. I could hear the liquor in your voice. Why do the radicals trust a maku who has only been in Expedition six months?”
We turned onto Breakwater Street, the boulevard that ran all the way to the old city. Here in Lucairi lay work yards opposite the stone jetty shore where local canoes and boats came and went. Vendors had set up stalls, selling fried fish, cassava bread hot off portable griddles, green mango on sticks, and roasted crab in the shell whose shattered remains crunched underfoot.
“Kofi trusts me, just as I trust him. I’m an unregistered fire bane. That makes me a good risk because anyone could have me arrested. Also, as a true cold mage, I have something they didn’t know they wanted. I’ve been instructing local fire banes in the most basic teachings any child at a mage House is taught in the schoolroom. Obviously that is also against the law.”
“How did you find the radicals in the first place?”
“Chartji’s aunt introduced me to Kofi. Trolls have a complex net of affiliations.”
“Chartji’s aunt? Is she related to those two trolls who come every Jovesday?”
“Why, Catherine, have you been watching me?”
His dash jackets were tailored so exactly to him that they didn’t bind, and he knew perfectly well how good he looked. The red and gold of the magnificent fabric set off the deep brown of his complexion most flatteringly. “Why do you ask when you know the answer?”
“Just to hear you say it.”
I laughed again. “You are such an irritating man. Where are we going?”
“We’re going to Nance’s. The boardinghouse down by the gates of the old city.”
He drew me over next to the rock wall against which waves slurped so noisily that it would be difficult for passersby to hear. “The radical leadership has finally agreed to talk with me. It’s taken months for me to get this invitation. You’re right, they’re cautious. They can’t afford to trust anyone new. They’re very close to calling a general strike and bringing the city to a halt until their demands are met.”
“What are their demands?”
“The establishment of a committee to compose a charter for the establishment of a new government for Expedition Territory. And a time span to accomplish it in: three months. The Council would arrest them in a heartbeat if the wardens knew who the leaders actually were. In fact, the radicals were ready to call the strike last Martius. But the arrival of General Camjiata threw the whole city into an uproar. Meanwhile here I am, an unknown agent. That’s why I have to meet with them now, at such short notice. If I refuse, they’ll think I’m plotting something and won’t give me another chance.” He looked searchingly at me. “Catherine, I need to know if there is anything you want to tell me about all this. Anything it would be better for me to know now, before the meeting with the radicals. I see you brought your cane-your sword, I mean-as if you are expecting trouble.”
The Hassi Barahal house had spied for Camjiata. My mother had fought for him, and then escaped imprisonment at his hands. In the entryway of the law offices of Godwik and Clutch, he had told me he was looking for Tara Bell’s child. Me. I touched the ghost hilt, for twilight had brought the sword to life even though to the eye it still appeared as a black cane. Was it truly a cemi, of a kind? Was it my mother’s spirit that touched me when I felt the shiver of its cold steel? She who had left me with a memory of only five words? Tell no one, not ever.
“I always bring my cane because I’m always expecting trouble,” I said.
He pressed his cheek to my hair. “There is surely a great deal about you I do not understand.”
Water slapped across the rocks. In the distance, thunder rumbled like a warning. I turned my face into the curve of his neck, remembering the voice of the hurricane’s herald and his taunting words. The spirit had told me to
