That night I went early to bed and slept hard. Bee came in late, and she dreamed, because at dawn before I even completed my yawn, she grabbed her sketchbook and drew with such focus and speed that I watched in awe. She filled two facing pages with a landscape of such splendor and detail that we might have been looking through a window: a calm lake surrounded by slender birch and sleepy pine, the flat landscape rimed with a thin carpet of snow; a rowboat tied to a rickety little pier; mist wreathing a wooded island. An indistinct figure stood on the pier.
She threw pencil and sketchbook onto the bed with a sigh of relief and scrambled up. “All right, now I can pee.”
I examined the sketch as she hurried behind the screen to the chamber pot and then back out to pour water from a pitcher into the copper basin. “Too much wine at last night’s dinner? What glittering notables did you associate with?”
She washed hands and face. “The professora was back last night. She asked after you again. Something about a story she wants to tell you about Uncle Daniel.”
I turned the page, but the next sheet was blank. “I want to hear it. She must be at the university. Bee.” She patted her face dry and looked at me, caught by my tone. “Bee, promise me. On Hallows’ Night, go to the law offices and ask for Keer. The maze that is troll town will hide you.”
She examined me, her gaze guileless and pure. “If you say so, I’ll do it. But I wonder how you can be sure.”
“Nothing is sure. But there are only twenty-nine days left until Hallows’ Night. I don’t know what the Taino can actually do. So right now, I think the troll town maze is the best chance you have.”
31
The week dragged past, for all I could do was wonder if Vai would meet with me and if the troll town maze could save Bee. If all else failed I would offer up Drake, but I wasn’t sure my sire would take him. I found a measure of peace by preparing a distillation of Daniel’s extensive notes on the legal congress presided over by Camjiata. Daniel had been a knowledgeable and astute student of the law, careful to note how the new legal code improved the condition of the general populace of Europa, and the ways it imposed restrictions.
On Mercuriday, the day before Jovesday, I stayed at the fencing hall after Bee had to leave for her language and protocol lessons. The fencing master had to scold me twice for too aggressively pushing in on an opponent, but the exercise calmed my foul mood.
I met Professora Alhamrai at the front door as she was coming down and I was going up.
“Peace to you,” I said by way of greeting. “Have you been in conference with the general?”
“He is out. In fact, I came to see you.” She fanned herself with a copy of my pamphlet. “I thought to invite you and your cousin to dine with me this afternoon. I would enjoy discussing your monograph. You may be interested in hearing about my meeting with your father.”
“I would be honored and delighted,” I said. It might also help the weary day pass.
“Gaius Sanogo will escort you. He knows how to reach my house.”
Visions of cells buried beneath Warden Hall bloomed in my mind’s eye. “The commissioner?”
She chuckled. “He will not be arresting you. He particularly enjoys showing up at this door to remind General Camjiata that the general does not rule in Expedition.”
I smiled. “Very well, then.”
When Bee returned in mid-afternoon, she proved more skeptical. “The general is out all day at a military exercise with the new recruits. I wonder if Sanogo knows that?”
“Why do you ask me questions to which you already know the answer?”
She tapped me on the arm with her painted fan. “To annoy you, dearest.”
We dressed in bright pagnes and matching blouses, me with my hair braided back and Bee with her curls partly covered by a yellow scarf that complemented her sea-struck blue-and-green pagne with its schools of stylized fish. We might have been any two local gals walking with a pleasant uncle through the late afternoon heat, except, of course, that we weren’t. We conversed amiably on neutral subjects like batey, batey, batey, and batey. Sanogo did not ask about the cacica’s imminent arrival at the border or the great areito by which the Taino queen would celebrate her son’s marriage to a humble Kena’ani girl of no particular lineage or wealth. Maybe he had spies in Taino country tracking the progress of the cacica and her entourage. Maybe he had spies in the general’s household. Maybe this was just a social visit.
We crossed the harbor in a boat rowed by four silent men. The water was so greasy it was opaque. Bits of rubbish fetched up against the prow as we passed boats and ships tied to moorings. The university lay across the harbor on an artificial island, a vast stone plaza rising from the muddy brown shallows and further reinforced by stone walls. There was only one water gate by which boats could approach, and we waited in line to put in under an archway fitted with a portcullis drawn up and secured by chains. After passing under the archway, we pulled up at a stone pier under the watchful eye of friendly uniformed watchman smiling the way folk do when they know they have the right to bash your head in if you so much as look at them in a way they decide to take offense at.
“Commissioner, no need to ask yee errand. Who is these two pretty gals?”
“Nieces of Professora Habibah ibnah Alhamrai.”
They laughed as at a good joke but let us disembark and pass down the pier to a second gate, also manned by watchmen, who waved us through. Beyond the gate lay a public square paved in stone and inhabited by young men napping in the shade of trees.
“This is more like a fortress than an institution of learning,” said Bee. “Who is the university protecting themselves against?”
Sanogo smiled his most pleasant smile. “The Council. By a decree passed fifty years ago, the Council cannot interfere with the university. The university guards its independence.”
Dusk swirled down over us with a smattering of rain as lamplighters made their rounds. Cobo-hooded gas lamps lit the street at mathematical intervals gauged to provide maximum coverage. As in the old city, the buildings were packed together. We turned out of the built-up portion and onto a tongue of land appointed by fenced gardens and isolated workshop compounds.
A sudden pop shuddered the air. Sparks spun skyward. We turned down a dirt path toward the compound the sparks had come from. Overhead, half the sky ran gray with cloud and the other half shaded toward night, stars breaking through. The sea sighed beyond the breakwater. Sanogo indicated an open gate in a whitewashed wall that surrounded four long roofs.