Cold Steel

She sniffed imperiously. “According to tradition, Kena’ani women can take two husbands if it serves the clan: one husband from within the clan and one trade husband, an outsider, to seal an alliance.”



“I can’t figure which one you would call the trade husband and which one within the clan.”



She ignored this perfectly legitimate question with an airy wave of her hand. “Anyway, when will I ever see Caonabo again? How can I ever afford even to go to Noviomagus? We can barely afford to feed everyone. The only reason we have managed all the renovation and repairs is that the household is doing all the work.”



I swung her hand in mine. “That’s true. But after Hallows’ Night you must promise me you’ll find a way to go. Just to see what happens. Do you promise me, Bee? Do you?”



“Gracious Melqart, Cat! If I protest that I do not want to, you’ll know I am lying. And if I say yes, love will carry me across the distance like wings, I’ll appear as giddy in love as you! Maybe after things are more sorted out here and the household is better established and everyone has a decent cot to sleep on… Prim Astarte! What I wouldn’t give for decent plumbing!”



We discussed such mundane matters all the way home, and I cherished every word of it.



So it was that at midday on the last day of October, I finished darning a worn elbow on the last of Vai’s dash jackets that needed repair, the much-abused but lovingly tended gold-and-red chained pattern he had worn the night of the areito and Hallows’ Night and thus into the spirit world. As a fine elegant dash jacket suitable for court, it was utterly ruined, but I could read the course of our love across its mended injuries and still-shining threads and know it for the glorious garment it was.



He had selected the sturdiest of his jackets to labor in, and they did get worn. I had worked hard to get all the mending done to my liking, sitting at an old secondhand table at the window in the corner room Vai had picked out for the mansa’s study. At this table in the evenings, while I sewed and Bee drew or practiced declaiming and while visitors came and went, he wrote letters, planned lessons, practiced illusions, and had me read out loud to us from a recently published monograph by Professora Alhamrai regarding accounts of how shrinkage in the ice sheets correlated with the creep of hardy trees into the Barrens.



Besides the table and chairs, necessary for when the mansa wished to meet people, the spacious chamber was furnished with his clothes chests, the chest with my father’s journals in it, a copper basin and pitcher on a stand, and the rolled-up mat on which he and I slept. Because Vai wasn’t there, I heated the air with a little brazier. The hypocaust beneath the planks was blocked by old rubble and not yet cleared out because the dormitories had to be readied for winter first. Fortunately it had been an unusually mild autumn, with not a single snowfall.



“Cat!” Bee hurried in without knocking, as she always did when she knew Vai was elsewhere. “I just heard Andevai tell Serena that she must sell all his dash jackets. He wants them out of the house today, so he may begin the new year knowing he has sacrificed like everyone else.”



“Gracious Melqart! I knew we had run low on funds for the kitchen, but I didn’t know things had gotten this desperate!” I leaped up and, with Bee’s help, hid my six favorite of his jackets in another chest, under the fur pelt blanket, together with the beautiful dressing robes.



Bee frowned and grabbed out of my hands the dash jacket sewn from the fabric of flowers bursting into fireworks. “I swear an oath to you, Cat, I just made up the pattern, I didn’t dream it!”



I snatched the jacket out of her hands and folded it in paper just as the red coals in the brazier dulled to ash.



Magister Serena sailed into the room beside Vai’s more clipped, impatient stride. Sadly they looked very handsome together, but I liked her enough that if someday such a suitable match were to be made because I was no longer there, I could bear the thought of it.



Vai smiled so sweetly at me that my heart melted all over again. “It will take another month to get a substantial carpentry shop up and running,” he was saying to one of the stewards, “and meanwhile we’ve had all these expenses to make the House livable. Take both chests. Sell everything. We must all begin the new year with an understanding of our changed circumstances. Don’t argue with me, Catherine!”



“I said nothing! But besides the clothing you must have to wear every day, Andevai, I insist you set aside two elegant dash jackets for when you go to court or are invited to some lordly mansion for dinner. You cannot attend such functions wearing the clothes you work in. It would not reflect well on the House, would it?”