Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

“I know what you are thinking,” said Vai.

“I don’t believe you do,” I said in my coolest voice, although in fact it was difficult to be morose when a puppy was chewing on my leg.

“I understand your concerns, Catherine.” He flipped out the length of his dash jacket and sat beside me, shoving me with his hip to make room. “Beatrice and I already have a plan, although I agree we should have made it more clear to you. But you’ve been so distracted and tired and hard to talk to, love. You’ve not spoken a word about what happened to Drake, or why Four Moons House is now encased in ice just as if the Wild Hunt had devoured it. Just like Crescent House.”

“It is an odd resemblance, is it not?” I agreed. “But the Master of the Wild Hunt can only enter the mortal world on Hallows’ Night. Everyone knows that!”

He rubbed a finger along the trimmed magnificence of his beard. “That’s true. Still, I did not know an eru had such power.”

“Neither did I!” agreed Bee, with a suspicious look, but it was evident she had not the slightest memory of my sire’s passage through the coach or what he had done.

“I did not know it either, but it appears to be an eru’s work.” It was no lie. The one who gave him birth had had an eru’s form when he was disgorged. Rory looked a question at me, and I shook my head. He pulled his lips back as if to snarl at me, and I opened my eyes very aggressively, head jutted forward, until he backed off. Glimpsing his movement, the puppy gamboled after him.

“Is that all you have to say on the matter?” Vai demanded. “Because it seems no one witnessed every part of what happened except for you.”

“I asked for their aid, for that is my right. I cut a path for them through the mirror. But they had no obligation to stay once Drake was dead.”

At that moment I knew I would not tell them. They could not stop the Wild Hunt, nor could I allow them to follow me into the spirit world. If they knew what bargain I had made, the next two months would swamp them in misery and fear. It would be cruel to tell them. So I would keep silence and tell no one.

He took my hands in his. Bee set her arms akimbo and fixed him with an axe-blow glare. A wind teased through her curls, making them dance, like happiness. His breath brushed my ear.

“No kissing, Andevai!” said Bee. “You promised! You must present your argument in a reasoned and sensible manner.”

He released my hands and stood. I had washed and mended his clothes while he was bedridden, but despite the skillful job I had done, they looked like clothes bought in the secondhand market, not like costly garments appropriate to a powerful magister whose status was every bit the equal of a prince’s. Yet he looked so very fine. It wasn’t the clothes that made him beautiful.

“Catherine, I know you have told me that you cannot live in Four Moons House. And you heard me promise the mansa on my mother’s honor that I will rebuild Four Moons House. I am a cold mage, and I have to do it.”

“I know, my love.”

“Besides the promise to my mother, I have a responsibility to the House that educated me and to the mansa who raised me up. To every fledgling magister who may never get proper training, like the fire banes in Expedition. To my own family, to the village that birthed me, and also to the other villages chained by clientage to Four Moons House. To all villages so chained. All communities have a right to liberty, a right to the dignity and security of their own persons.”

“After which,” said Bee in a portentously deep voice, “he will cause all strife in the world to cease, every infant child to be born healthy, and all men to have the taste to dress fashionably and in colors that suit their complexions. What Andevai is working up to tell you, dearest, is that while he promised to rebuild Four Moons House, he cleverly did not specify how he would do so. Nor did the mansa ask. I keep trying to tell you about my plan, and you keep ignoring me.”

I considered my folded hands, and then looked up at them. So bright they were in the afternoon sun. The wind fell cool across us, but the light cast a glorious, rich glow across the land. From here we could see a glint of the great river whose waters had so altered my life, although in truth it was the hunter who had acted that day for his own hidden reasons. He had driven me to this moment as hunters will, stalking their prey until they are cornered.

So be it. I still had life in me.

Rory scooped up the puppy and walked over to sit at my feet.

I smiled at them, whom I loved best in all the world. “What plan could you possibly have agreed on?”

47

Had I understood the monumental nature of their scheme, I might have taken a nap first.

To argue with elders who object to such a radical change of direction needs a honeyed voice and a stubborn persistence working in concert. The new mansa informed his people that no House could rise on the ruins of the old. The ice had caged it forever and, with it, the old chains by which Four Moons had long sustained itself. Those who did not wish to walk this new path with the mansa had the right to go elsewhere, to join whatever mage House would take them in. The deceased mansa’s nephew and perhaps half of the survivors departed. I was surprised at how many stayed, including Serena and all of the House’s djeliw. I couldn’t blame the bards. Given the choice of the two men, I knew which one I would rather sing about.

The mansa called together the village councils and asked them to invoke rei vindicatio: A community belongs to itself. The ancient contracts were dissolved. Much of the farm and pastureland reverted to the villages, but enough remained for a home farm overseen by House stewards. Here those who wished to work the land would farm, with the surplus marked for the support of the new House.

To uproot and move seventy-one people from their accustomed life is no small undertaking. Remarkably, the September weather held fair for the two weeks’ journey to the city of Havery. Everyone went a little hungry, and everyone except for the littlest, the eldest, and the infirm had to walk most of the way, but not one person died. There was only one serious fight, between two young men over a village girl from Trecon who had sneaked along with the kitchen staff to escape an unwanted marriage at home.

“Should we send her back?” Vai asked me that night.

We were camped next to a mage hostel along the turnpike that ran from Audui to Havery. Naturally the indoor places were given to the elders and the children, but Vai did demand the privilege of a private shelter. It was astonishing how a gal might come to appreciate a crude tent rigged of canvas in which she and her loved one could sleep alone every night on a mat on the hard ground with but a single blanket to cover them.

“The elders are split on the question and have asked if I or my wife wish to make our opinion known. We ought to respect the arrangements made by our elders. That is the way least disruptive to the harmonious peace of the community.”

“Yes, because forcing a young woman into a marriage she does not wish for seems harmonious to me!”