“Girls!” scolded their mother.
“So if you are done with your humble business about the pisspot, Husband, then go back to bed. You will get strong if you rest and meanwhile cease whipping yourself raw over the obvious fact that even your astoundingly monumental cold magic has its limits although clearly your vanity does not. Also, I will smack you if you keep whining like this, because I. Have. No. More. Patience. For. It.”
He withdrew the arm that shielded his eyes. His tight jaw and frustrated sneer smoothed into loving concern as he examined me. “Catherine, are you well? Is something wrong, love? I am accustomed to you speaking your mind, but you sound sour and on edge. That’s not like you.”
In two months the Wild Hunt would ride up to my door and take me away, but I was not about to tell him that.
When I did not answer he sighed and, with a grimace, heaved himself up. “Yesterday I could not even sit up, so I am somewhat improved. I’ll go back to bed and be patient a little longer.”
“I doubt that,” I muttered.
But he did go back to bed, stubbornly refusing my helping arm, and he ate every bit of the porridge his mother brought. Afterward he slept restfully.
I had a long talk about law and history with Bakary at the bedside of the mansa, where I found him whistling the spirit melody as he wove a song describing Andevai’s magic and exploits. That night, as always, Bee slept on the far side of the bed while I took the middle between her and Vai. Rory was curled up in his cat form on the floor, with the puppy sleeping trustfully between his big paws. House children who had been sleeping in the village festival house lay crammed together on mats on the floor, exhausted from Rory letting them climb all over him. They had come to us because the mansa’s nephew had taken over the festival house for his entourage without even asking the village elders for their permission.
Vai was dead asleep. I held Bee’s hand, twisting and turning. “If the House council chooses the nephew, we’ll be free. But we haven’t a sesterce to our name, so I can’t imagine what we’ll do.”
“I have an idea about that.”
“Yet I fear for what will happen to the House in that case. I worry the nephew will take a petty revenge on Haranwy. Although I think regardless he’ll have a village revolt on his hands. But if the council supports Vai… Bee, don’t let Vai be trapped by the House.”
“You’re so tired you’re fretting needlessly, Cat. This isn’t like you.”
“You won’t leave me, will you? Never, not until the end?”
“Are you feeling well?” She pressed her lips to my forehead. “You’re not feverish. Dearest, you must sleep. You mustn’t get ill.”
Sometimes the gods are merciful and will let you sleep instead of think.
In the morning, although still weak, Vai insisted on shaving and dressing and walking under his own power to his grandmother’s house. There, by the bedside of the mansa and with his mother seated in a chair behind him, he requested permission of the House elders to stand before them. At once, and far less politely, the mansa’s nephew challenged Vai’s right even to stand there, much less claim to be heir. I did not know what to expect, but the months of war, the days of captivity, and perhaps even his slow recovery had planed down the edges and splinters that had always made Vai so quick to take offense when he felt his dignity and honor were being challenged.
This time he let the other man talk on and on, cajole and whine, even blame the destruction of the House on Vai as if Drake had never existed. The nephew complained at length about the lowborn origins of the village boy in such insulting terms that even though the Houseborn elders might well have scorned Vai’s mother for being born in a cart with no lineage to her name, they still shuddered to see a dignified mother mocked in public in front of her son. At length the nephew ran dry, and by this time everyone was certainly waiting for him to stop.
“Are you finished?” asked Vai. “Very well, then. With the permission of the elders of the House, I will answer.”
They granted it.
“Your words speak for themselves. I would be ashamed to let such speech pass my lips. My mother knows I honor and respect her. That is all that needs to be said. As for the other, according to tradition, the mansa of a mage House is the man whose magic reaches the deepest. Can you stand before the elders of this council and tell them honestly that your magic is stronger than mine?”
Thus Vai defeated him.
Just then the mansa stirred, as though the voice of his heir had roused him. “Let it be Andevai,” he whispered.
Andevai knelt beside him, taking his hand. “I am here, mansa. It shall be as you say.”
The thread of the mansa’s voice was barely audible. It clearly hurt him to speak, but he was determined to be heard. “Andevai, promise me on your mother’s honor that you will stand as mansa and rebuild Four Moons House.”
“I promise on my mother’s honor.”
His mother did not smile. She was not such a woman. But her pride was a light in the room.
As the council filed out, Rory slipped in. “I’ll sit with you in attendance, with your permission,” he said to Bakary and Serena. “He will pass soon to the other side.”
Outside, Duvai confronted his brother. “What do you mean to do, Mansa?” he said mockingly.
Weary but unbowed, Vai frowned. “He yet lives. I am not mansa.”
“The hunter has already crept into the shadows of the House. Death stalks that place.”
I looked wildly around the open courtyard of the family’s compound, but I did not see my sire in light or in shadow. Then a crow fluttered down to perch on the roof.
“Do you intend to stay here?” Duvai held a stout staff as tall as his head, tipped with a fringe of feathers and beads. He shifted it now from his left hand to his right, as if making ready for an attack. “You and your people are eating out our winter stores. You claim you mean to change things, but you’re doing exactly what the mages have always done, living off our flesh.”
Vai was tired enough that he allowed himself to lean on me as he met his brother’s gaze without anger or malice. “What I mean to do, you will know when the mansa dies and I am free to act. But you may be sure that I intend to release every village from the clientage that binds it to Four Moons House. Until then, I ask you to remember what our father taught us.”
“Our father told us that a hero is loved only on troubled days. Otherwise he causes too much disruption for the village to find him a comfortable presence. Is that what you meant to remind me of, Andevai?”
“Are those words meant for me because you think I am the hero? Because if they are, then you have directed them at the wrong person. Although I do not think of Catherine as disruptive. Just precipitous sometimes.”
With a sigh Duvai handed his staff to his younger brother. No doubt Duvai felt it beneath the dignity of any man to have to lean on a woman, much less thank her for salvaging what she could out of a desperate situation.
Vai took the staff as if it were an offering of peace. “Brother, surely you do not forget that when I was a boy, I did nothing but follow after you.”
“You were a terrible nuisance, always underfoot,” agreed Duvai gravely.
I looked from one to the other, seeing the stamp of the father I had never met in their features but also in the way they both carried themselves as men. Strength can be used to harm, but it can also be used to build and to sustain. No doubt they had clashed in later years because they were so much alike. One had always known the place he meant to grow into. The other had hoped to follow, only to find himself completely uprooted and forced into unfriendly earth.