Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

Servants were assigned to guard, serve, and clean our suite, and a steward was on duty at all times to advise me in matters of propriety. No mirror graced the suite. Except when Vai and I were in the bedchamber, a djelimuso would sit in formal attendance, so it was clear the mansa did not trust me.

Playing batey along the garden wall distracted me from the intense boredom of the next many days. When I asked for books and newspapers to read, I was brought accounts of household management and plates of the current fashions, which I would have enjoyed had I had companions to share them with. The attendants kept a formal distance from me at all times despite my efforts to draw them out. In the end I sat next to the skull and browsed the books while keeping up a one-sided conversation with the cacica about my reading.

I saw Vai only at night in the intimacy of the summer cottage and our gauze-curtained bed, where he was diligent in his attentions. Afterward he fed me scraps of news before falling asleep, and kept promising we would talk more the next day. But the next day never came because after we had eaten our breakfast of rice porridge garnished with berries and cream, he would be called away. Everyone in the women’s hall treated me politely, but they weren’t friendly and confiding, and no one was interested in my stories of Expedition and the Taino or even my store of tales from my father’s journals. Two Gourds House had an ancient lineage and a vast treasure-house of wealth and power to give it consequence in the world. One thing I did not have, in that world, was anything but borrowed consequence. It was pretty clear they thought I talked too much. When I thought of how the gals in Expedition had taken me in, it made me want to cry.

Fortunately I was allowed to sew in the women’s courtyard, under the eye of the steward, who counted out needles and pins and collected them at the end of each day. I amused myself by piecing together the cut-up parts of my ruined cuirassier jacket into a serviceable garment.

One day one of the younger women ventured a personal question. “Is it true you are Phoenician, Maestra? That your marriage contract restricts him to only one wife?”

“I was born and raised in a Kena’ani household,” I replied, aware that this point was of particular interest to the unmarried woman, for a mansa’s heir might normally expect eventually to take three or four wives. “But naturally I knew nothing of the contract or the marriage until the day it happened. It was all properly arranged for us by our elders.”

In a whisper I could hear perfectly well, a sour-faced young woman murmured, “A shame the man is wasted on a trifling girl like her. You know what they say about Phoenicians. They sacrifice their children to their bloodthirsty gods, and whore out their daughters.”

“No matter, I suppose,” her friend replied with a scornful smile, “for as soon as the Iberian Monster is dispatched, they’ll send him on a Grand Tour.”

I stabbed the needle into the wool, pretending I was sewing tongues together. If only Bee had been with me, we could have demolished them.

With the first flight of barbs unleashed, they were not done with me.

“Yet I have heard a strange tale from the servants, Maestra, which I cannot believe could possibly be true. They say you strip down to almost nothing and bounce a ball on your knee. Like a savage. Or a man.”

My gaze flashed up. I was glad to see their hesitation as I took notice of them. They were right to be scared of me! Their trembling made me pounce. “Did no one tell you? My father is a spirit beast who stalks the bush but walks in this world in the shape of a man. No man can tame me, and only one man has enough strength and charm to coax me into loving him.”

The benefit of telling the truth, as Rory had once said, is that no one believes you.

The young women tittered and smirked. The steward frowned, her gusty sigh a whip of disapproval. But the older women looked thoughtful, and an elder abruptly declared she had it in mind to have a story. A djelimuso sang the tale of Keleya Konkon’s prodigious cooking pot, which was, in truth, an exceedingly grand story. I did not get to hear the end of it, for a male steward arrived.

I had been summoned by the mansa of Four Moons House.

I thought I would be asked to pour wine for the mansa’s noonday dinner, where at least I would get to see Vai even if I was not allowed to speak. But the steward escorted me instead to the most splendidly decorated suite of rooms I had ever seen, all gilt trim and ceilings painted in a distinctive style that intermarried Celtic knotwork with the arcane symbols of the Mande hunters. An armed attendant locked me into a small antechamber, where I paced rather than sitting on the cushioned bench. A latticework window overlooked a parlor, from which double doors opened onto a larger audience room beyond, where men circulated, talking. I looked for Vai but did not see him.

The mansa entered the parlor together with the Two Gourds mansa, an elderly man with a seamed face and black hair shot through with white. They stood by a window overlooking a garden, too far away for any ordinary mortal to overhear, but I cast my threads through the tangling magics of the House and listened.

The mansa of Two Gourds House spoke in a low voice. “His birth is low but his power is clear, so I have not questioned your plans. But now Lord Marius returns and tells me the girl has been working with Camjiata. That she was the general’s agent all along, and seduced your young magister into doing the general’s work. Are you certain this course is the wise one?”

“Leave him to me. I have him coming along just as I wish. He will guard his mother’s honor with his own.”

“And the girl?”

“She is part of my plan. He is badly infatuated with her.”

The Two Gourds mansa clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “A woman is wet clay. If he does not shape her to obedience now, he will have trouble later.”

“Lord of All, my brother, you must have felt ardent about one woman or another in your youth! Never mind. What matters to us is that for all he is the most cocksure of young men, he desires above all things to seem a man in her eyes.”

“Yes, yes, I vaguely recall how it was to be young and led by my passions. I suppose he will get her pregnant soon enough. But a Phoenician mercenary house is not a worthwhile ally. I understand it was your council’s only way to bind the Hassi Barahal clan back when they had information about the general at the end of his first campaign. I can see why you married her to him when you thought he was of little utility to your House. But now he is your named heir! If you mean to follow through with it.”

“Despite every hesitation, there is no better candidate. You know what he did at Lemovis. It would be better to kill him than to see him defect to the general. But to kill one as powerful as he is would be a terrible deed we would all regret. He belongs to Four Moons House, and now I have made sure of it.”

A chill of horror spun through my bones.

The Two Gourds mansa went on, “Is it true the marriage contract constrains you? I would give you my youngest daughter for him, even as a second wife. She has seen the boy and approves.”

“It was a chained marriage. Magic binds our hands in this regard.”

“Is the Phoenician girl truly worth that much to you?”

“You will soon see.”