Cold Steel
“Peace to you, Andevai’s brother, and to all who live in your compound,” I said in the traditional way. “Do you have peace?”
“I am well, thanks to the mother who raised me,” he replied, “and my family has peace also. And you, Cat Barahal?”
“I am well, thanks to my power as a woman.”
He raised an eyebrow, as if something in my face made him take pause. Then he looked past me to the massif of ice that entombed Four Moons House.
“Will the village give these refugees shelter?” I asked. “On their behalf, and on my own, I ask for guest rights.”
“That is our duty and obligation,” he said. “We will do what we must.”
“The mansa named Vai as heir.”
“We heard the rumor.” He glanced toward Vai’s mother, who had not left Vai’s side. The stubborn line of old resentment creased his brow. “An honor to his mother, indeed. He has made his choice between his two hats. This turn of events cannot have improved his conceit.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about the hats. You must work honestly with him, Duvai. I think you will find him something changed. He is the village’s ally, not its enemy, not its ruler.”
“Is that what you think? You surely were determined to escape him the last time we met.”
A flush warmed my cheeks. “I am something changed as well.”
The resemblance between the two men was keen, although Duvai was lighter, having a mother who had been born in a Celtic village, and being therefore more mixed of feature and complexion. Ten years older, he had the surety of a man in his prime strength, fully aware of who he is and of his place in the world. Besides that, he was a hunter who had braved the spirit world more than once and returned successfully.
“Are you something changed in the matter of my brother?” he said with a chuckle that made me blush yet more. “I would not have taken you for a woman to be bought by the offer of riches and rank, so I must suppose he found another way to capture you.”
“You are mistaken. No man can capture me. But he might have… courted me.”
His smirk resembled Vai’s. “So my brother finally smiled at you, did he?”
I had no answer to this, except to refrain from punching him.
“Grandmother made us promise never to fight each other. Out of respect for her, and knowing she watches over us still, I will speak in his favor. The elders of Haranwy have agreed to house as many of these refugees as we can until a decision is reached. The rest can shelter at Trecon and other House villages.”
The ice-bound House breathed like winter on our backs as we walked away.
No one would ever live there again.
The mansa was brought to Grandmother’s single-roomed house with its tiny private courtyard. The room smelled of pine wreaths even though no one had lived in it for some time. Vai was conveyed to the room where his mother had lived for so many years with her children. She directed him to be placed on a cot and asked for hot water to be brought so he might be stripped of his grimy clothes and washed. This task I asked to do, behind a screen for privacy. The furnishings in the modest room were nothing compared to the luxurious riches in Two Gourds House, but the modern circulating stove, the four-poster bed, an oak table, and the rosewood wardrobe revealed the concern Vai had taken both for his mother’s comfort and for her status in the village.
He mumbled incoherent syllables. Settled in the bed, he tossed and turned for the next three days, feverish one hour and shivering with cold the next as I forced broth down his throat. Every now and then he had lucid moments, during which I told him some of what had happened and fed him gruel. At length the worst of it eased, and he slept like the dead.
At intervals I attended Bee, who sat for hours in the village’s festival house acting as mediator. I admired her fair-minded intercessions between the demands of the Houseborn, many of whom had never set foot in so rustic a situation, and the complaints of the burdened villagers. Disputes were also sparked between the younger generation in the village, who agitated for resistance, saying this was their chance to throw off the yoke of clientage, and the elders, who refused to offend the ancestors and the gods by violating guest rights.
I just wanted to stab everyone when they started to argue. My foot got bruised from Bee stepping on it.
The mansa was dying. Everyone knew it but no one spoke of it. Rory had taken a violent liking to the old djeli, Bakary, and prowled around him seeking any pat of attention, which meant he spent most of his day in Grandmother’s cottage listening to the old bard sing the story of the mansa’s life and deeds, the tale of the Diarisso lineage, and the history of the world.