“Because I won’t allow it! I read Uncle Daniel’s journals. If you have to answer questions with questions, then when you were in the spirit world without me, you must have been forced to become a servant of the night court. You must promise me you won’t sacrifice yourself. Promise me!”
I wanted to say, “ Alas, he will not let me,” but my lips seemed to freeze together, knit by ice.
“Sit down, Cat.”
I sat.
“That was an interesting reaction,” she said, chafing my hands.
After a bit, I could speak. “When do you go to Taino country?”
“It’s complicated, because the wedding is a series of ceremonies that takes place over many days. It all culminates with a five-day areito that begins on October thirtieth.”
“I have to be with you when you go to the Taino. Promise me you won’t leave me behind.”
“I won’t, dearest. I was hoping you would offer. I don’t want to be alone.”
“You won’t be because I won’t leave you. Now, I feel the need to stab something. Does this city have a fencing academy?”
“I was attending one before we went to Sharagua. It’s run by a branch of the Barahal clan.”
“Excellent! We have the entire afternoon before supper. We shall go enroll. I’ll let you pay my tuition since I have no money.”
We came home sore and laughing with just enough time to wash and change for dinner. I had to hope the illustrious of Expedition knew something about powerful fire mages and behiques and were willing to talk. By gaslight, servants bustled behind the windows of the dining room where a table laden for twelve was set out. The chamber’s walls were painted with scenes of flowering vines in whose branches nestled half-hidden birds like so many avian eavesdroppers.
The general had assembled a collection of philosophically inclined minds whose ability to lapse into the most abstruse tangents defied my ability to sift through the thickets of natural history, practical science, and political theory to figure out who was a supporter of Camjiata and who was just there to enjoy the conversation and feast on a splendid meal. For the meal was indeed splendid, with platters of whitefish stewed with chilies hot enough to make my nose run, chicken marinated in rum and garlic and ginger, and mounds of sweet potatoes sliced and grilled with yet more rum.
An older maku professora in residence at the university engaged in a lively debate with a toweringly young and prosperous merchant who had been born into one of the city’s most prestigious founding families. He betrayed his noble origins with the ostentatiousness of his clothes and the presumptuous way he addressed everyone. Both young merchant and older general claimed Keita lineage, so they could be in some way cousins.
“Yee are a maku, Professora Alhamrai,” young Maester Keita was saying in a tone so bombastic that it reminded me of an overstuffed chair in whose pillows you drown. “So it is no mystery that yee shall not fully understand the principles of government here in Expedition.”
I liked the bland smile the professora offered in response. “It is true I investigate the nature of the physical world rather than the body politic. Scientific principles teach us that friction creates heat. If a majority of the populace of Expedition has become fractious due to their perception they are being governed poorly, then is it not likely they shall catch fire?”
“Most people have no ability to moderate their emotions. ’Tis why they are unable to govern themselves and need their betters to govern on their behalf. What do you think, Maestressa Barahal?” The young Keita turned his attention on Bee with a smile so condescending it set my blood to boiling.
Bee simpered winningly up at him. “I think you shall be the first one shot when the radicals assault the old city.”
Forks and spoons stilled. Glasses thumped, set on the table. Conversations withered. All eyes turned to Bee as she blinked as into the noonday sun with the look that fooled everyone but me.
“For that jacket is certainly very fine. Any young man would be eager to wear it. I suppose most must be too poor and lazy to gain such resplendent garb by any means but foul ones.”
The general coughed into a hand as the rest of the table shared a polite and mildly bewildered laugh. The servants brought platters of fruit, but I was too full to do more than stare longingly at a plate of papaya whose slices had been meticulously arranged in the shape of a fish.
Professora Habibah ibnah Alhamrai was seated to my right. She addressed me in the Latin spoken in southern Europa. Judging by her coloring and curly black hair as well as her name, she was a native of the Levant. “You are come but lately to the general’s household, Maestressa.”
“I do not belong to the general’s household. I am here only as companion to my cousin.”
“Ah. You are not one of the general’s partisans or servants.”
“One may have other reasons for sitting at this table or sleeping in this house,” I said. “I do not serve the general nor have I ever.”
Yet her frank assessment embarrassed me. “You retain some skepticism about the general’s motives?”
“Can there be any skepticism where the general is concerned? Is he not exactly what he claims to be?”
“A worthwhile question. If I may change the subject, I am told you are the daughter of Daniel Hassi Barahal. I met him once.”
I leaned in too swiftly, drawing notice for my lurch. “Please, tell me about him! For you know, he and my mother died when I was six.”
Before she could answer, the general asked her opinion about the efficacy of cold magic in the Antilles. “For I am surprised,” he said, “to find there is a general belief here in Expedition that fire banes are weak creatures of little utility.”
“So they are,” proclaimed the young merchant. “Good for parlor tricks, lighting a path at night in the countryside, and acting as auxiliaries to the municipal firefighting force. These stories of how they call down storms and shatter iron are the credulous fantasies of the gullible natives of Europa, who have been treated for so long to such tales that they have come to believe them.”
“In fact, that is wrong,” said the professora. “I have studied this question at some length. Many of the properties of cold magic can be explicated using the principles of the sciences. In fact, I suspect testimony from the mages would serve only to confuse precisely because they deliberately conceal what they know. For example, the first question we must ask is, What is the source of the vast energies available to cold mages? Does it lie in that plane of existence often called ‘the spirit world’? Or does it lie in the ice itself??”
“Is the spirit world a physical place, Professora,” asked the young merchant with a laugh, “or a metaphorical one?”
“Let me complete my thought,” she said with the sort of graciousness that cut him off at the throat. “I believe both may be necessary.”
“You know this for certain, Professora Alhamrai?” asked the general.
She inclined her head. “I am an inquirer, General. In the Chibcha kingdom of southern Amerike, in the mountains, rests an ice shelf. I have traveled there to ascertain this for myself. Likewise, my colleagues among the”-here she whistled four notes, denoting trolls-“have a map of the great ice wall whose southern cliff stretches across most of North Amerike. This wall I have seen for myself, although not its entire extent. I think it likely that the cold mages of the Antilles exist too far from these sources to use them with as much efficacy as cold mages can do in Europa, where the ice lies closer to human habitation.”
I said, “So a cold mage would have power here, but it would be weaker because the ice is farther away? I mean, is the ice actually farther away?”
Bee looked at me, lifting one eyebrow in an unspoken question.
The professora nodded. “The extent and mass of the nearest ice may also matter. In addition, it is likely that, over the generations, the mage Houses in Europa have developed a particularly skilled and nuanced method of drawing from the source of these energies. Without such specific knowledge, and living in a place where it is illegal for them to form associations to better themselves, the fire banes here in the Antilles would be at an additional disadvantage. In a geography with a number of active volcanoes, it is no wonder fire mages are treasured and ennobled. While, in a tropical climate, the seemingly weaker cold magic is ignored and belittled.”