Cold Magic

Duvai brought him to me. He traced the air around me without touching me, and a shiver of power crawled along my skin. Duvai helped him sit on the first bench. Still holding on to his nephew, the old man spoke to the assembly in a voice as hoarse as a frog’s spring croak. “The spirit world is knit into her bones. But she is not a spirit woman. Hers is true human flesh. Therefore, she did not deceive us in asking for guest rights. It is a serious matter to consider handing over one we have promised to shelter.”



“The mansa will punish us,” said one of the women, “if we do not turn her over.”



“Give her to Andevai,” said a man, “and let him do what he must.”



“To kill in the village on Hallows Night,” said Mamadi, “is a very dangerous thing. Spirits will flock to her blood. That they would enter this village would be a very ill thing for the village.”



“Then hold her prisoner,” said that first man, “until Hallows Day has passed. Let her be taken back to the House, or have her throat slit beyond the stockade. We’ll be rewarded.”



“Rewarded as we were before,” asked another woman, “to see our noble son snatched away by the mansa?”



“Will we be rewarded for offering guest rights to a traveler who asked properly and then breaking our word?” demanded another woman. “What troubles will rain over us in the years to come, because we have done a wrong thing? She must be released to go on her way. If the mansa’s hunters track her down later, then it will not be on us that she is dead.”



“If we do not tell Andevai,” said another man, “then how will he know she was here? If he does not know, the mansa does not know.”



They discussed the matter while I stood there pressed against the wall, amazed so many spoke in my favor. Or not in my favor, precisely—I never felt they cared much for me one way or the other—but in favor of a code that safeguarded guests. This was not about me, but about the integrity of the village.



When all had made their arguments, the old hunter spoke again in his frog’s whisper. “If she has been offered guest rights, then we risk a worse thing if we turn her over to the mansa. If other villages should hear—and they will hear, you can be sure—then how can we expect them to greet our hunters and our women out gathering if they are caught betimes needing shelter? The mansa may fine us, add to our burden, even kill some among us, but his power is limited to this world. If we go against what the ancestors and the gods have told us is right behavior, then we offend a deeper power. And trouble will come down much harder on us, and on our children and on their children.”



Last of all, Andevai’s grandmother spoke. “If we prosper only through the suffering or death of another, then that is not prosperity.”



It was agreed by a nodding of heads, some resigned, some reluctant, but in the end no one objected.



Duvai said, as briskly as if he had been waiting eagerly just for this opportunity, “Vai cannot leave the village until dusk tomorrow. If I set her on her way at dawn, we can fairly be said to have given her shelter and not left her vulnerable or tried to trick her into being trapped by him later. After that, it is out of our hands.”



Silence followed his words.



Torn equally by shame, gratitude, and suspicion, I whispered, “My thanks to you.”



I did not know what reaction I would receive for these paltry words, but to my surprise, after Duvai left to make his preparations, they invited me to sit among them. They were curious about who I was and where I came from. They asked nothing about Andevai or how I had fallen into the trouble that currently engulfed me. Being an inland village, they had not heard of the Kena’ani, not even to call them Phoenicians, but they were interested to hear I was city born and raised, and they asked questions about where I came from and what life was like in a city. Duvai’s uncle, the best traveled among them, had been once to the city of Havery, when he was a young man, and he had never desired to repeat the experience. They might have kept me in the smoky little house all night had Andevai’s grandmother not intervened.



“Let the guest be fed and invited to the celebration,” she said.



The elders took their leave.



She said to me, “Trust can only be offered where it is also received.”



“I ask for your pardon, maestra. But I was raised by people I thought were kin, who I thought cared for me. They threw me to the wolves the moment they feared for their own daughter. Why should I trust anyone?”



Yet I had trusted the eru and the coachman. Why?



She gave a soft noise, more of a grunt than a laugh. “As you heard, no one argued to spare you for your own sake. Rather for the village’s honor.”