Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

Lord Marius whistled under his breath, but his amusement was a blade, flashing and then sheathed. “I will return to hear a full accounting.”

Vai stepped forward to kiss me, but before his lips met mine his mother’s voice cracked over us.

“Son! Are these the manners I taught you? To insult your wife by touching her in public before the eyes of others?”

He jerked away from me. The girl with the crutch clapped her free hand over her mouth to hide a smile. She had a rascal glint in her eye, that one. I had seen its like before.

“Go on, Son.”

He kissed the girls and left obediently. All the men fled, leaving the four of us and a pair of womanservants. His mother coughed with a dry wheeze. At length she could speak again, if barely in a whisper. Her proud aspect did not waver. Had she worn cloth of gold and sat on a throne, I would have called her a queen.

To the tall girl she said, “Bintou, fetch some of that broth we were brought this morning.”

To the short girl she said, “Sit down, Wasa. You will need your strength later.”

To me she said, “Bad enough you use his name, but I suppose your ways may be different.”

“What am I supposed to call him if not by his name?”

“A woman does not call her husband by his name. After her first child is born, she may address him by the eldest child’s name, as I did my husband, as ‘Andevai’s father.’ Despite your ignorance in such matters, I can see you have an idea how to handle him. I must warn you that his father and grandmother spoiled him.”

“Did they?” I ventured.

Her frown was daunting! “It is so easy for good-looking boys to be ruined by praise. It has taken all my effort to make sure he has learned proper manners. You must resist any inclination to let him have his way in things beyond what a man has a right to ask for, cooking and children.”

This hard speech did not upset me. Indeed, I found it enlightening. I stirred, wishing I dared sit up. “Maestra, I beg you, please lie down, for you are looking exhausted. Bintou, please bring your mother some of that hot broth, for I hope it will soothe her lungs.”

The grim line of her lips softened. The ghost of a younger, healthier woman danced briefly in her face, then vanished, but it was the way she carried herself that caught the eye. All this time I had been thinking that Vai’s pride came from his close study of the mansa.

Bintou brought her mother broth, then settled her on a cot. Meanwhile Wasa took my hand in the familiar manner of a little sister, tracing my fingers with her own. As her mother’s harsh breathing gentled to sleep, the girl spoke.

“Was he really going to kiss you right in front of Maa?”

I met her gaze gravely. “I think he was.”

She leaned closer with a smirk on that seemingly innocent little face. Her fingers crept up my arm. “He likes you.”

I grabbed her ear with my uninjured hand. “He does like me. What do you really want?”

“The locket.”

“You can’t have it. My father gave it to me.”

“I never met my papa. He died while my mama was big with us.”

“I’m sorry about that. I lost my father when I was six. I might let you look at it later if you’re very good.” I released her ear. “Where is my cane? And the basket?”

“No one can touch the cane. It bites. Also, there is a skull in that basket. I looked, even though Bintou told me not to. Then it talked to me.” She eyed me. “Do you believe me?”

“It would depend on what the skull said to you. Then I would know for sure.”

“She spoke like a foreign person. She was hard to understand. I think she asked me to tell her who I was and why I was staring at her so rudely.”

Hard to say if Wasa had a gift or was just exceedingly quick-witted. “If you are very well behaved, I will introduce you to her.”

She glanced at her sleeping mother. “I am always well behaved. Or at least, I am when Maa is awake.”

I smiled as she sat back to allow Bintou to bring a cup of broth. I sat up with a bolster propped behind me and handled the cup with my uninjured arm. Afterward, with my right side held motionless along a rolled-up blanket, I was able to doze.