Only Andevai could have managed that hint of peevishness, as if he, rather than I, had been the one inconvenienced by the mansa’s command to kill me!
“I recall him with a great deal of gratitude, if you must know.”
“I do not doubt it,” he said quellingly.
“He did not find me.” I fished out the locket. “But your grandmother did.”
He recoiled, taking a step back. A trio of passing trolls skirted him without breaking stride, as if accustomed to crowded streets where stray men lurched blindly into their path. A man not quite in control of a dozen leashed, unpleasantly large, and clearly short-tempered snapping lizards yelled at us to get out of the way.
Vai grabbed my wrist. “This isn’t the place to have this conversation.”
He strode back toward the carpentry yard, me trotting alongside, my mind whirling and my stride kicking awkwardly against the damp pagne. We went in by an unlatched gate. Wood shavings warmed by the sun padded my footsteps. Every man in the yard had ceased working in order to enjoy the spectacle. If one man among the twenty or so was not grinning or chuckling, I did not see him.
“Ja, maku! That a fine catch yee hauled in!”
“That the gal yee lost?”
“Yes,” said Vai in a clipped tone which likely meant he was strangling an intense emotion.
An ominous silence dropped over the men.
He tugged me to a thatched-roofed shelter with no walls where a woman, seated in its shade, was measuring a shaved plank with calipers. She had silver-streaked straight black hair and the broad features I was beginning to recognize as Taino.
“Boss,” he said, halting beside her table, “I need the rest of the day off. I’ll make it up.”
She finished her measurements and noted down the figures in an accounts book before she glanced up. She looked me up and down. “We’s not running a stud service, Vai. Nor a sly tavern.”
Some of the men had come up to the shelter’s edge.
“Never say yee mean it, maku,” said one of the younger ones. He had scarred cheeks and a keen gaze. “She really that one yee lost?”
“Yes.”
Soft whistles and murmurs greeted this curt pronouncement.
The boss measured me rather as she had just been measuring the plank. With no shift of expression, she nodded. “That change matters, then. I shall expect yee tomorrow, the usual.”
“My thanks.”
“I shall bring yee tools when I come for the areito,” said the young man with the scars.
“My thanks, Kofi,” said Vai in the absentminded tone of a man whose thoughts have already galloped over the next hill. He led me to another shelter, where he let go of me to grab a singlet out of several draped over a sawhorse. After tugging it on, he unhooked a leather bottle from a crossbeam.
“Drink,” he said, unstoppering it. “You look sun-reddened.”
“What is it?” I asked suspiciously.
“Guava juice sweetened with pineapple and lime. You need to drink or you’ll get sun sick.”
It was juice, sweet and pure, and after I had gulped down so much that I burped, he slung the bottle over his shoulder. The carpenters had moved off and the boss had gone back to her measuring. After a hesitation, he clasped my hand in the way of innocent children, palm to palm, and examined me, neither smiling nor frowning.
“Will you come with me, Catherine? Or would you rather not?”
“What choice do I have?” I demanded.
His lips thinned as he pressed them tight as if to hold back words he didn’t want to say. Then he spoke. “Why, the choice I just gave you. Which I meant. Is there something I need to know?”
I flushed, utterly embarrassed. “What do you think you might need to know?”