“What choices do people truly suppose I have? The perilous journey Catherine and I took from the ice to Sala in the dead of winter was salutary lesson enough, had you been with us! Why do you suppose mages have had to band together to live? How am I to manage without a mage House to protect me? I can’t go back to Haranwy even if I wished to, for the village cannot survive if I am continually putting out their fires. No matter how much your kin love you, they must drive you out when your cold magic blooms. At best, you might hope for a little cottage with a hypocaust set away from the village in isolation, but most do not have the means or skill to build and maintain such a place properly. Although I can manage for several days in very cold temperatures without heat, Catherine saw what it does to me if I go too long without rest. Add to that the hatred and suspicion people feel toward cold mages. A man has to sleep.”
He looked at them each in turn.
“As Catherine knows, I would be dead if not for her. She braved the spirit world to rescue me, as I knew she would.” His back straightened as his head came up. The line of his neck had an elegant beauty visible only from the back, not that I was noticing such a thing at a time like this. “If the Master of the Wild Hunt could not keep us apart, then I don’t see how you people can hope to.”
“I think you are the one keeping the two of you apart,” retorted Bee. “Don’t change the subject. I am not yet satisfied with your answer.”
But he now walked on ground where he felt confident. “What I am trying to say is that mage Houses exist for a reason. That they have abused their privileges is not the same thing as saying they ought to be abolished. Rather, they should be confronted and reformed. As for the rest, there is my mother to consider. I do not need to defend my actions in seeing her placed in a position of honor where no one can scorn or harm her and where she may receive the care she deserves. But I do see it is impossible for Catherine. She said long ago that she does not belong in Four Moons House, and it is true in ways I could not bring myself to accept when the mansa made me his heir. It will take much work and time for me to change the nature of the House enough that she can find a place alongside me. I thought I could easily make it palatable for now…” He pressed fingers to his eyes, then lowered them. “I was thinking more of my own triumph than her struggle. I let my pride go to my head, as I will no doubt do again someday—”
“Tomorrow,” Bee muttered.
“—but I know it is my weakness.”
“In truth, I think your vanity is your weakness, not your pride,” added Bee. “The mansa pandered to your vanity by elevating you to become heir. That is how he captured you. In a way, he still has you trapped, for you speak of nothing now except how you will change the mage Houses and not how the mage House might change you.”
“I think you have all made clear to me my faults,” he retorted. “I need only apply to you, Beatrice, to be reminded of them!”
“You can be sure I will be ready to comply!”
“You’re both right in part,” remarked Rory, before the exchange boiled over, “but your worst weakness, Vai, is that you are secretly a little ashamed of where you were born. If you were not, then nothing they say would matter. You are not comfortable in your skin.”
Vai stared at Rory. A kind of shudder ran through his body, not so much physical, and yet as profound as at a blow that struck him to the heart. He shielded his face with a hand, hiding his expression, head propped on hand and elbow propped on table. I held my breath, yet not a touch of icy angry air sullied the humid evening heat.
Bee considered Vai with a thoughtful frown. Brennan was staring at his hands. Kehinde was nodding. What Chartji thought I could not guess.
Rory grinned around the table as if the somber mood had finally rubbed his fur the wrong way. “Is that not a clever way of phrasing it, coming from me? Comfortable in his skin?”
Brennan chuckled in the manner of a man desirous of any excuse to laugh.
Lowering his hand with a sigh, Vai looked at Chartji. “Have you anything to add to this litany of my faults, Chartji?”
“It is clearly a fascinating discussion for you rats,” said Chartji, “but I am more interested in the case you wish me to bring to the law courts.”
Brennan saw a man with a tray and waved him over. “I think we can now send Rory to ask Cat if she wishes to join us.”
“No need to send anyone,” said Vai in his smuggest tone. “She’s been standing behind us the entire time.”
Bee squinted into the darkness. “Cat? What a frightful spy you are, dearest!”
I waited until Brennan had spoken to the server and sent him off before unwinding the shadows.
“That is truly astounding,” said Brennan with a startled smile.
Kehinde asked, “Has anyone ever studied you, Cat? There must be some explanation for how you can do that. Were you taught, or did you teach yourself?”
Vai rose to give me a place to sit next to him. He was staring at the ground, lashes shadowing his lovely eyes. When I hesitated he looked up, and I could not breathe. I saw exactly how it would go if he and I were left alone. I took a place next to Kehinde, facing him. Vai sat with a resigned smile, but when a stout meal of mutton stew simmered in wine, pears poached in brandy, and fresh bread arrived, he ate just like anyone else and looked at me only ten or twelve times that I noticed, for every time I glanced at him he was watching me.
“If you apologize to him for leaving the mage House, I shall kick you,” Bee said under her breath as I savored the moist meat, turnips, and carrots. Beneath the table the toe of her boot nudged my shin in warning.
“This seems to me a conundrum, Magister,” said Kehinde. “Are you a radical or a cold mage?”
“ ‘He who tries to wear two hats will discover he does not have two heads.’ That is what I have had to consider, is it not? I am a cold mage whether I wish to be or not. But why should I have to choose? It is not that mage Houses cannot exist in a just world, but that they must change. For example, the princely law courts are often used merely to stamp and seal the wishes of the prince and his noble kin. But that does not mean law and courts are not necessary, or cannot serve justice. Chartji and I have discussed how to use the law courts to challenge clientage.”
Bee shook her head. “Every prince has his own law court. Furthermore, the mage Houses need not bow before princely law because they rule themselves and their lands as if they are princes. That does not even take into account the various different legal codes of the empire of Rome, the Iberian city-states, the Oyo kingdom that Kehinde comes from, and all the rest. Camjiata’s legal code is meant to supersede all these individual local codes into a universal civil code that addresses specific natural rights.”
“There is much to favor in the general’s legal code,” agreed Vai. “But when he dies, the princes and magisters who were forced to comply by force of arms will revert to their old ways. The princes who have already thrown their lot in with Camjiata will hope to avoid the legal implications of his civil code, thinking they can escape the provisions that shift their power and privilege most. Furthermore, the Iberian city-states that have banded together to support Camjiata’s imperial enterprise will want a reward if he wins. When he dies, do you suppose the Iberians will go home so easily? They have hated the Romans for centuries—”
“For good reason,” said Bee.