Cold Steel

“I know, Rory. I figured it out.”



“What’s got your hair up?” He peered at me. “You’ve had a fight with him! People do that, you know. After some talking and petting, it will all be set right again.”



“We haven’t had a fight.”



His tone changed. “Cat, don’t lie.”



“We didn’t have a fight. It’s just the mansa got his claws into Vai. I have to rescue him, only he doesn’t want to be rescued, he has everything he thinks he ever wanted. He can’t see what kind of man he is going to become if he stays there. He thinks he can change them but they’re changing him.”



I burst into tears. Rory patted my back and fended off the impertinent queries of passersby by telling them his sister had had a row with her husband, nothing that wouldn’t be fixed once he had had a manly talk with the rogue of a popinjay his sister had foolishly married all for being dazzled by the man’s peacock feathers and melting eyes.



I could not help but laugh.



“That’s better,” he said.



“Where is everyone else?” I asked. “Chartji’s letter said you were at the tavern.”



“That’s where we sleep. Today they’re addressing a secret convocation of radicals. We’ll go there.”



He led me on a road that ran parallel to the old city walls. As we entered the interior courtyard of a large compound, I drew the shadows around me. People were hammering in workshops on the ground floor. Men sawed in the courtyard beside wagons piled with rope for haulage. The carpenters touched the brims of their red caps in a signal, and made no move to stop Rory. We descended a flight of stone steps into a basement lit by oil lamps and heavy with tobacco smoke, the scent of the Antilles. The fragrance made me lose hold of my threads, but no one took any notice of two more in the crowded cellar.



The smell of strong coffee wafted from a bar where men, and a few women, talked in the local cant at a speed I could not understand. The women wore loose, simply cut gowns, while the men wore neckerchiefs tied in exciting knots over jackets cut short in front and long in back.



At the back of this cavernous space, Kehinde Nayo Kuti was giving a demonstration of her jobber press. She wore a knee-length tunic over belled trousers in the Turanian style common in the south. It was practical garb for a traveler, and the brown fabric almost hid the many ink stains where she had unthinkingly wiped her fingers. Standing on a box, Bee acted as the professora’s voice.



“The press can be taken apart and moved if the authorities raid. Besides that, when your prince demands another tax be levied on printers and pamphlets, think how hard it is to track it down. What you cannot chain, you cannot hold!”



“I’d like to hold you, sweetheart!” shouted some sad wit.



Bee pointed him out to laughter and applause. “If that is the best you can do in the way of courtship, Maester, then like this press I shall have to seek my words elsewhere. I have come to Lutetia to speak of justice and revolution, not to waste my time with men who are not serious about the great struggle we have undertaken.”



“Cat Barahal!” Brennan Du slid in beside us to shake my hand. “Chartji thought you might show up. Where is the cold mage?”



I sighed, for of all the things I had thought of, how to answer this question to anyone except Bee or Rory was not one of them.



Rory said, “He’s a prisoner of his vanity.”



“I beg your pardon? A prisoner of the banditry?” Brennan rubbed his ear. The roar in the chamber was astoundingly clamorous. Chartji and Caith flanked Bee, who was now wrangling with hecklers sure that women had no cause or right to speak in a public venue. “Come this way.”



We moved into a low passage and emerged into an old storage room lit by two basement windows. Lines of afternoon light cast gold over a table strewn with pamphlets, blank sheets of foolscap, and pens and ink.



He slid a pamphlet out of a heap. “Your account of the revolutionary philosophy of the Expedition radicals has traveled across Europa while you have laid low. Many have read it. Have you been a prisoner or a spy?”



“Cat!” Bee appeared, trembling as she rushed to embrace me.



“Oh, Bee! I’m so glad you’re here!” To my horror, I again burst into tears.



“Dearest! Has some terrible calamity befallen Andevai?”



Pleased with his cleverness, Rory repeated himself. “He’s become a prisoner of his vanity.”



Brennan chuckled. “Was he not that already? As the djeliw say, vanity is a mark of weakness, humility that of strength.”