Cold Steel

“What did you discuss?” I asked Vai once we were back out on the river.



“I can’t speak of it.” To a man raised as he had been, such secrets were sacred. He was careful not to touch me. Even Rory was unusually solemn, in a mood I might have called brooding.



Bee said, “I did not see you, Rory. Were you with the men?”



“I don’t like temples. They make my skin itch.” He perused our faces as if he expected to uncover a rebuke. “I saw a terrible thing while you three were about your feasts and friendly talk! These people wish they were not bound to the mage House, but they bind people in their turn, don’t they? While they feast and sing and sleep, aren’t there people who serve?”



“Everyone must work,” said Vai, with a shake of his head.



The river’s voice almost drowned out Rory’s words, for he could barely choke them out. “I heard a noise in one of the byres as I was sniffing about as I like to do at dusk. There was a man handling a woman who did not want him. He pushed her down into the dirty straw and pulled up her skirt and shoved his part into her. She did not cry out for help or fight but I could smell her humiliation and shame. So I pulled him off. I told him I was the spirit of vengeance visited upon men who abuse helpless women. He laughed at me. He said the woman is a slave and thus a whore because slaves have no honor. So I showed him my true face. And he pissed himself and ran off. Then the woman reviled me. She said she was taken from her village by soldiers when she was young and sold months later to the blacksmith’s father. Any man in the village can use her as he wishes, just as he said. She will be punished now for what I have done. So I was ashamed for having done a thing to bring trouble on her. I told her she could escape with us.”



“Lord of All,” muttered Vai.



“But she refused! She said she has a healthy boy child who has been adopted as a son by a village man who has only daughters. He means the boy to marry one of the girls and inherit his cottage. If she runs, the boy will be turned out. She cannot let the chance go that he will have a good life. How can this be true? How can people live, with their spirits crushed day after day?”



“Blessed Tanit protect her!” murmured Bee.



Rory trembled with hissing fury. “I thought the radicals mean to free people who are bound to serve others. But what of people like her? I should have stolen the boy and made them both come with us, but I was a coward.”



For a long while we floated downstream in silence.



At last I said, “You’re not a coward, Rory.”



“Such a woman would fare worse as a stranger in a town with a child in tow and no family to protect her,” added Vai. “That the child may flourish gives her hope each day.”



Bee said, “You can’t save every mistreated person, not alone and with the law against you.”



Rory shifted onto the bench beside Vai. “I want to row now. I’m too angry to talk.”



Though our hearts felt wintry, signs of spring had crept into the landscape: buds greening on trees, violets in patches of color beneath the stark woodland, birds flocking north as they honked or trilled. In this flat country the river split into channels separated by long, flat islands. We passed several villages. At midday we saw riders on the eastern shore. Later in the afternoon a man with a spear watched us pass. Sheep worked their way over a greening pasture still damp with yesterday’s rain. As we swept around a wide bend, the sun peeped out from behind a patchwork of clouds.



Open land breached by a canal spread away from the eastern bank. Through this grassy expanse a troop of mage House soldiers picked their way toward the water’s edge.



“Curse it,” said Vai. “Bee, you’ve the steadiest hand. Keep the prow in line with the current. Rory. Catherine. You two sit close in the middle.”



He shifted up to kneel at the prow as Bee settled to the oars. Rory and I weighted the bench at the stern. My cane flowered into a sword as two boats exactly like ours appeared alongside us. It was an impossible illusion to hold through every shift and nuance, and Vai meanwhile kept glancing up at the sky. Thunder rolled although the sky hadn’t the weight of storm clouds.



The soldiers parted to let through a man on a horse. In his flowing robes and with his height and hair, I knew him at once as the mansa of Four Moons House. Soldiers with crossbows knelt to take aim.



“How could the mansa have come after us so quickly?” muttered Vai.



“The dragon betrayed us,” muttered Rory.



“Kemal never would!” Bee glared, but her steady rowing and skillful piloting did not slacken.