Cold Fire

“This shall be painful, I fear,” said Kofi as he unshipped the oars and pushed off. “For I have to sit facing yee two in order to row.”



“I was just thinking of leaning here against Vai with my eyes shut and my mouth closed quite tamely for the whole of the voyage.”



They seemed happy to ignore me. It struck me how much they genuinely liked each other, how their talk flowed with the ease of people who have spent a lot of time conversing together. That ease, the motion of the boat, Vai’s arm around me and his shoulder against my cheek, and the sun’s warmth on my head so relaxed me that I dozed off.



The boat’s bumping against a pier roused me.



“Good luck to yee,” Kofi was saying softly, “for I can see how much she matter to yee.”



I felt him kiss my hair. “She’s awake. Aren’t you, Catherine?”



I opened my eyes to bask in Vai’s smile. He gathered up the coiled rope with the arm that wasn’t fixed around me. A thin man with sun-lightened hair and the splotched and freckled sun-weathered skin of a man born in northern climes loped over to help us tie up.



“Ja, Kofi-lad,” said the fellow, with a polite nod at me and Vai. “I’s looking for work today. Yee got anything?”



Kofi and Vai exchanged a glance, and Vai lowered his chin enough to signal agreement.



“Ja, maku,” said Kofi. “But here, hold the boat while I get out.”



Kofi leaped up to the pier with the ease of a man accustomed to the harbor and made a show of helping me out, which I understood as an attempt to make up for his suspicion of me. Vai shook out the pagne and followed. Folk on the jetty did notice him, and his clothes, and his good looks, and I supposed that, like Bee, he desired and perhaps even enjoyed the attention. But he did not seem to notice it as he walked a short way with Kofi.



Kofi spoke in a low voice. “As for the other, yee must promise me yee shall do nothing rash. Don’ let yee pride get in the way of yee thinking.”



Vai grabbed my hand to pull me up alongside him. “I can keep a level head.”



“’Twould be the first time,” said Kofi, “but listen, maku. Yee can be the net we throw across the ocean to the radicals in Europa.”



“I think it is our best choice, for I’m sure there’s no other way to force the mage Houses and princes to change.”



“If any man know what power these mage Houses have, it shall be yee, Vai.”



“Yes, it shall be. They will not go down without an ugly fight.”



Shaking hands, they looked each other in the eye with such grim smiles, like two men about to ride into battle, that a swell of fear surged up from the pit of my stomach.



I knew then I would do anything to protect him, as my mother had once done to protect the man she loved. When I rested a hand on the top of my cane, the sense that my mother stood beside me, in understanding and support, bloomed so strongly in my spirit that for an instant I was sure I felt her touch on my shoulder. She had been a soldier, and now I must be one.



Kofi offered me a hand in the radical manner. He seemed about to say something but instead he slapped Vai on the shoulder and went back to his boat.



Vai took my hand and we walked along the jetty toward the main gate. Sailors reeled drunkenly toward a ship. A man tacked up a broadsheet with the bold headline BOYCOTT on a public board as people clustered around to read the radicals’ call to boycott the wedding areito.



“Why did he look at you and you nod? When that man asked for a day’s hire?”



“Kofi’s household is poor, Catherine.”



“It is?”



“No one in that house goes hungry, so I suppose they are wealthy in that way. The mansa sent a bank draft with me, so I am quite well situated because he assumed I would be living in a manner suited to the consequence of a magister of Four Moons House. I was therefore able to settle a significant sum on Kayleigh as her marriage portion. Because she is not yet legally an adult I am her guardian. If Kofi hires a day laborer, he is using her money, so that’s why he was asking my permission. If you want to know, Kofi tried to argue me out of the dowry being quite so large. It does not make it easy for Kayleigh to come into a household as a rich maku bride.”



“No, I can see it would not.”



“I had a long talk with his mother and aunts. I would trust Kofi with my life, and they raised him to be that man I trust. Kayleigh’s a smart girl. She’ll find a way to use the mansa’s money to help the household prosper.”



“Did I miss something when I slept on the boat? What did Kofi mean about you being the net thrown across the ocean?”