illusion. I caught in a breath because I thought he was going to kiss me, but instead he stepped back and took my hand. “Upstairs.”
We climbed to a curtain made of long strings of beads. The beads rustled and clacked together as we pushed past into a corridor that ran the length of this floor, with closed doors on either side that led to private parlors. The corridor stood open-unwalled-at either end. The night breeze tickled down its length. At the far end, guarding the main stairs, a burly man with a bandaged head looked our way. He headed for us. He was wearing a singlet over trousers, and his arms were so corded with muscle I expected he could lift me with one and Vai with the other.
“Yee shall be the maku fire bane we have heard so many tales of.” He did no more than glance at the “candle” Vai was holding, seeing the illusion as real. By its nacreous light, I saw he had a pair of shockingly green eyes in a face otherwise Roman in its features. “Who is the gal?”
“This woman is my wife.”
“The gal was not invited, maku.” His appraising gaze lingered too long on my chest.
Vai stepped between us. “I said, she is my wife.”
A kind of heat flared that had nothing magic about it as the two men stared each other down. Vai did not have Kofi’s height. Although he had a carpenter’s back and arms and a dancer’s build, that was no match for the guard’s powerful girth and loose boxer’s stance, ready to land a punch. An eddy chilled around us as my laughing, teasing Vai transformed into the arrogant cold mage who had hammered the mansa to his knees. The guard gave ground with a startled look.
“Which door?” said Vai in an imperious tone that was not really a question.
A woman dressed in the local way appeared from the main stairs, fanning herself with a pamphlet which she lowered the instant she saw us.
“Thank Ma Jupiter yee have come, Jasmeen,” said our guard. “Yee’s late.”
“Who is this, Verus?” Her glance at me was swift and dismissive; she looked Vai up and down in the same way the guard had just measured me. “Surely the fire bane. Who is the gal?”
“His wife, he say,” said Verus.
“She was not invited,” said Jasmeen, pausing before a door, “although we heard a tale about the maku fire bane’s lost woman providentially washing up on the jetty.”
“What did you hear?” asked Vai, gaze narrowing.
Jasmeen was a handsome woman of middle years, old enough to have adult children and yet young enough that she might think about bearing more if the appreciative look she gave Vai was any indicator of her state of mind. She smiled, amused by my frown. “We hear everything. Let her come in.”
We entered a pleasant chamber with a long table and chairs set just inside the door, and divans and wicker chairs spaced along a row of open doors that let onto a balcony. The remains of a meal had turned the table into a complex pattern of abandoned platters and bowls plundered of their riches. The woman crossed to the divans and chairs, where she greeted the personages already in the chamber: three humans and three trolls; she made a seventh.
They watched Vai and me approach. The only illumination came from Vai’s illusory candle. Its pearlescent glow cast strangely distorted shadows along the crests of the three trolls and across the faces of the three rats. One was a vigorous-looking old man, the second a middle-aged man with such a pleasant expression and calm smile that I was instantly suspicious of him, and the third the young woman I had seen at Aunty’s gate the night before and walking with Kofi at the areito earlier this evening.
“This is the fire bane, Livvy?” said the old man, looking at the young woman.
“Yes, ’tis he,” Livvy answered. “Hard to mistake once yee have seen him. The gal is he lost woman.”
“She is the one yee other associate don’ trust?”
“Yes, the very one.” She considered me with a frown that shaded rueful, as if she was sorry to have to say such a thing. I was certainly sorry to have to hear it!
“Very well. Yee may remain for the meeting, Livvy.”
“Me thanks, Grandfa’.” She retreated to a chair in the shadows where she sat with hands clasped, leaning toward the conversation as toward a long-anticipated treat.
Outside, the long moan of a conch sounded. A high-spirited brawl had overtaken the wide deck while drummers out on the plaza started up a driving rhythm.
The old man sighed. “What is done is done. Sit, if yee please.”
Vai pretended to set the candle on a shelf by the window, although its light was surely too bright for anyone to be fooled into believing that it was real. We sat on a divan placed perpendicular to the others. The woman with the pamphlet, Jasmeen, sat between the men.
“Ooo. Elegant jacket,” said one of the trolls, by the brilliance of his crest likely elderly and male. He was flanked by two younger trolls, one of whom I guessed to be female by her larger stature. About the other I could not tell. “Silk. That pattern look like shiny chains. I love shiny chains.”
“Thank you,” said Vai so coolly I could tell he was pleased.
The elderly troll’s gaze flicked to me and then to my cane. He showed his teeth but made no comment. The old man and Jasmeen were looking at me the way hungry people look at food that is spoiled. The other man watched with that vaguely pleasant and thereby ominous smile.
The old man spoke. “Ja, maku, this is not a philosophical society where friendly debate is served along with beer and supper in a public venue. I don’ like that yee is told yee may meet with us, and then yee bring this gal without permission.”
“She is my wife. I have kept nothing from her.”
“She know why yee’s come to Expedition?”
“She knows everything.”
“That yee was sent here to assassinate General Camjiata?”
“That I was sent here to stop him from returning to Europa, by whatever means necessary. Yes, she knows.”
Jasmeen waved the pamphlet in Vai’s direction. “Our committee have taken a considerable chance in meeting with yee tonight. We have done it at short notice so as to protect we own selves from arrest and, most importantly, to protect the cause of liberty which we champion.”
The old man spoke as with the slash of a whip. “Yee services we can trust because yee’s an unregistered fire bane. We can turn yee over to the wardens if yee shall prove troublesome. But how can we trust she when we know nothing of she? Where did yee lose she? How did she reach the Antilles? Yee own associates don’ trust she, so we’s told.”
Vai stiffened, jaw tight, chin lifted. I knew that expression well. It often preceded his saying or doing something it would have been better for him not to. I had to help him.
I rose. “I have not formally introduced myself. My name is Catherine Bell Barahal. I was raised in the city of Adurnam, in a Hassi Barahal household.”
The middle-aged man started visibly, the first crack in his mask. The old troll’s crest rose.
“Some of you recognize the name.” I recalled what Chartji had said the first time we had met. “The old histories call my people ‘the messengers.’ I have been trained in all aspects of the business. My sword-craft is rusted, but decent. Also, I can memorize large blocks of text and repeat them later. So you see, I am perfectly suited for the work of radicals. These were my husband’s only considerations when the time came to decide whether to bring me along to your society.”
In the corner, the young woman made a noise more like a snort than a laugh.
“Have yee aught yee wish to say, Livvy?” asked the old man. “Speak.”
“After everything I have heard from me friends, I think it more likely he brought she along to impress her with daring revolutionary deeds.”
“That way, is it?” said Jasmeen with a cutting smile, again fanning herself with the pamphlet. “Not so sure of the gal, after all.”
The trolls’ half-lifted crests I could not interpret, but with the rats I had clearly dug Vai in deeper. I had to try again.
“I am in Expedition because I am a fugitive. If you wish to be rid of me, you need only turn me over to any representative of the prince of Tarrant. I arrived in Expedition because I…escaped from a ship and almost
