“Think of how many people would have been hurt or killed if you had unleashed your magic! It was better to go on with you than to risk injury to people who had no part in the fight.”
He slipped his fingers between mine until our palms touched. “You chose their safety over what you must have believed to be your own happiness. That is how it is with you, Catherine. You never questioned what your aunt and uncle thrust on you. You stayed loyal to their wishes up to the moment the mansa commanded me to kill you. Even then, love, you stayed loyal to your cousin. You didn’t run away to save yourself. You ran back to save her. Just as you jumped into the river because you thought my sisters looked frightened, and probably because you thought that together you and I could rescue them. Just as you tirelessly nursed my mother.” I thought he was going to kiss me, but that was not what he was about. “Your mother was right about you. ‘Loyalty will be the bright light this child will bring to the world.’ Never think otherwise, my sweet Catherine.”
A balmy night breeze chased through the cloth hangings that shielded us from view. Every cresset of cold fire in the garden went out.
I leaned into him.
He kissed my hair.
I raised my head and brushed his mouth with mine.
For a very long while neither of us spoke a single word, except what was in our hearts.
Much later we lay in the bed, drowsy and contented, yet I could not stop caressing him. I traced his lips, his chin, his throat, and then his shoulders and up the back of his neck.
“You’ve kept your beard trimmed but decided to let your hair grow out.”
“I promised myself I would not cut it until we were reunited.”
I would have made a joke about it, but my heart was too full. He held me as I lightly stroked his chest, and after a while I thought he had fallen asleep.
“Catherine.” His whisper made me shiver as from a touch of winter. “Everything has changed, love. Everything.”
My wandering hand stilled. “What has changed, Vai?”
I wished I could see his face, and then, after all, I was glad he could not see me.
“You must have suspected when you were brought in to pour wine. That honor is granted only to the mansa’s wife or daughters. When you saw where I was seated. The mansa has adopted me as his son and named me as his heir.”
“But… what about… your village, and clientage, and Chartji’s court case, and Camjiata’s legal code, and Kofi and the radicals?”
“It’s not even that I’ve bested them, every cursed one of them. For all those years the mansa scorned me as the village boy. He never thought I would amount to more than a lamplighter who renews cold fire each night at mage inns. No matter what I did, it was never good enough. But now he knows. Think of the honor to my mother! I will become mansa of Four Moons House.”
Exhausted by his climb up Triumph Spire, he fell asleep in my arms. But every time I closed my eyes, I remembered the troll lunging to rip out the belly of the horse.
The mansa had trapped him in the most gilded cage of all.
35
In the gray light of dawn, the singing of birds woke me. I eased out of his embrace, pulled on his shirt for modesty’s sake, and crept to the table to pick my way through the untouched food, for I was ravenously hungry. He stirred soon after and propped himself up on an elbow.
“You look very fetching in my shirt, Catherine,” he said in a tone that fetched me right back to bed.
Afterward I fell asleep. He woke me some time later by pulling a cover up over us, and I pretended to be asleep while servants bustled about the space. When they left we washed each other behind a screen where pitchers and a basin were set out for our use. He presented me with a linen dressing robe dyed a sumptuous midnight blue, while he slipped on a dark-gold silk dressing robe embroidered in bold geometric designs. The table had been laid with sliced meats and cheeses, fresh bread, and berries smothered in cream. A cup of coffee woke me right up.
“Why is my dressing robe so plain and yours so excessively decorative?” I asked.
He fed me a spoon full of nothing but the sweetened and whipped cream, and smiled as my eyes rolled back in ecstatic delight at its melting goodness. “You may have whatever you wish, love.”
“Did you arrange for the clothes?”
“As it happens, I did. In the field, I received a report every week, so I knew you had recovered and that my mother’s health was improving. When I heard we were coming to Lutetia, I insisted you be fitted with clothing suitable to my station. I remembered the dressmaker’s measurements from Sala. Do you like the style and cloth I chose?”
“They’re exactly what I like. Andevai…” I hesitated, not sure how to start.
“Why is it you only say ‘Andevai’ when you’re annoyed with me?”
Daylight revealed the cloth walls as canvas embroidered with elaborate garden scenes. I peered out through the slits to make sure no attendants waited within earshot, then sat back down.
“Vai, my love, I’m not annoyed with you. Far from it. Can I have shown you my feelings any more clearly than I already have?”
Because it pleased him to do so and it pleased me to accept, he fed me another fat spoonful of the glorious cream. A bit smeared on my lip. He leaned over the table to lick it off.
I had to forge forward before he mistook the nature of my hesitation. “I know the mansa has shown you an unbelievable honor by naming you as his heir. But it troubles me. He told me last night that you belong to the House. To me, this looks not as if he is freeing you but as if he is binding you more tightly to him.”
He tapped the spoon against the rim of the bowl half full of cream and berries. A pure faint tone rang. “I know, love. But… you should have seen my mother’s face when I told her.”
He bowed his head and covered his eyes with a hand. He said nothing, did not move at all except to breathe. I dared not move for I felt to do anything would profane the tears I doubted he had ever let anyone see except perhaps his beloved grandmother.
At length he took in a deep breath and wiped his cheeks. I buttered a piece of bread and handed it to him wordlessly. He ate it.
“I think I comprehend a little of what it must mean to her. And to you. But I cannot be easy with it. In fact, I think it is a mistake.”
A frown flickered. “How much choice do you think I have in this, Catherine? What was I to say to the mansa?”
“Doesn’t the mansa have sons?”
“He has four living sons. None have more than a candle’s worth of cold magic. That’s the first test, you know. Quenching a candle’s flame without touching it. But consider the advantages. As heir to Four Moons House I can change the customs of the House. I’ve already written to Chartji to ask her to meet with me here in Lutetia to discuss how we might go about it. I can walk among the magisters and elders and speak to them of why clientage is wrong and how it harms the mage Houses more than it helps them.”
“Have you done so? What did they say?”
“It has only been one month! People are naturally fixed on the crisis created by Camjiata.”
“Whose legal code you were once so determined to champion!”
“Camjiata is using James Drake to fight his war.”
I grasped his hand. “Bold Melqart! You’ve seen battle, haven’t you?”
His eyes shuttered. Then he spooned up another mound of cream. The way he fed me, with his lips slightly parted and his body leaning toward mine so his dressing robe gapped to give me a splendid view of his chest, was as delicious as the cream.
“I was never in danger. As for the war, you heard a great deal last night. You may be surprised to hear I have seen Professora Nayo Kuti’s pamphlets being passed among the soldiers of the Coalition Army. The radical philosophies are being talked about in our army, not just theirs.”