“This woman is my wife.”

“The gal was not invited, maku.” His appraising gaze lingered too long on my chest.

Vai stepped between us. “I said, she is my wife.”

A kind of heat flared that had nothing magic about it as the two men stared each other down. Vai did not have Kofi’s height. Although he had a carpenter’s back and arms and a dancer’s build, that was no match for the guard’s powerful girth and loose boxer’s stance, ready to land a punch. An eddy chilled around us as my laughing, teasing Vai transformed into the arrogant cold mage who had hammered the mansa to his knees. The guard gave ground with a startled look.

“Which door?” said Vai in an imperious tone that was not really a question.

A woman dressed in the local way appeared from the main stairs, fanning herself with a pamphlet which she lowered the instant she saw us.

“Thank Ma Jupiter yee have come, Jasmeen,” said our guard. “Yee’s late.”

“Who is this, Verus?” Her glance at me was swift and dismissive; she looked Vai up and down in the same way the guard had just measured me. “Surely the fire bane. Who is the gal?”

“His wife, he say,” said Verus.

“She was not invited,” said Jasmeen, pausing before a door, “although we heard a tale about the maku fire bane’s lost woman providentially washing up on the jetty.”

“What did you hear?” asked Vai, gaze narrowing.

Jasmeen was a handsome woman of middle years, old enough to have adult children and yet young enough that she might think about bearing more if the appreciative look she gave Vai was any indicator of her state of mind. She smiled, amused by my frown. “We hear everything. Let her come in.”

We entered a pleasant chamber with a long table and chairs set just inside the door, and divans and wicker chairs spaced along a row of open doors that let onto a balcony. The remains of a meal had turned the table into a complex pattern of abandoned platters and bowls plundered of their riches. The woman crossed to the divans and chairs, where she greeted the personages already in the chamber: three humans and three trolls; she made a seventh.

They watched Vai and me approach. The only illumination came from Vai’s illusory candle. Its pearlescent glow cast strangely distorted shadows along the crests of the three trolls and across the faces of the three rats. One was a vigorous-looking old man, the second a middle-aged man with such a pleasant expression and calm smile that I was instantly suspicious of him, and the third the young woman I had seen at Aunty’s gate the night before and walking with Kofi at the areito earlier this evening.

“This is the fire bane, Livvy?” said the old man, looking at the young woman.

“Yes, ’tis he,” Livvy answered. “Hard to mistake once yee have seen him. The gal is he lost woman.”

“She is the one yee other associate don’ trust?”

“Yes, the very one.” She considered me with a frown that shaded rueful, as if she was sorry to have to say such a thing. I was certainly sorry to have to hear it!

“Very well. Yee may remain for the meeting, Livvy.”

“Me thanks, Grandfa’.” She retreated to a chair in the shadows where she sat with hands clasped, leaning toward the conversation as toward a long-anticipated treat.

Outside, the long moan of a conch sounded. A high-spirited brawl had overtaken the wide deck while drummers out on the plaza started up a driving rhythm.

The old man sighed. “What is done is done. Sit, if yee please.”

Vai pretended to set the candle on a shelf by the window, although its light was surely too bright for anyone to be fooled into believing that it was real. We sat on a divan placed perpendicular to the others. The woman with the pamphlet, Jasmeen, sat between the men.

“Ooo. Elegant jacket,” said one of the trolls, by the brilliance of his crest likely elderly and male. He was flanked by two younger trolls, one of whom I guessed to be female by her larger stature. About the other I could not tell. “Silk. That pattern look like shiny chains. I love shiny chains.”

“Thank you,” said Vai so coolly I could tell he was pleased.

The elderly troll’s gaze flicked to me and then to my cane. He showed his teeth but made no comment. The old man and Jasmeen were looking at me the way hungry people look at food that is spoiled. The other man watched with that vaguely pleasant and thereby ominous smile.

The old man spoke. “Ja, maku, this is not a philosophical society where friendly debate is served along with beer and supper in a public venue. I don’ like that yee is told yee may meet with us, and then yee bring this gal without permission.”