Cold Steel

Page 161

“Have you done so? What did they say?”
“It has only been one month! People are naturally fixed on the crisis created by Camjiata.”
“Whose legal code you were once so determined to champion!”
“Camjiata is using James Drake to fight his war.”
I grasped his hand. “Bold Melqart! You’ve seen battle, haven’t you?”
His eyes shuttered. Then he spooned up another mound of cream. The way he fed me, with his lips slightly parted and his body leaning toward mine so his dressing robe gapped to give me a splendid view of his chest, was as delicious as the cream.
“I was never in danger. As for the war, you heard a great deal last night. You may be surprised to hear I have seen Professora Nayo Kuti’s pamphlets being passed among the soldiers of the Coalition Army. The radical philosophies are being talked about in our army, not just theirs.”
“Our army? The last time we were together, we were running from ‘our army.’ When exactly did the mansa make you his heir?”
“After the battle of Lemovis, a month ago. He saw that no one else had enough imagination to realize what was going on, much less the discipline and intelligence to discover ways to counter it. Furthermore, I am the only cold mage in Four Moons House besides the mansa who can truly build and hold a thorough illusion. There are other forms of cold magic that take more reach, but for illusion you must marry intense skill and discipline with the ability to reach deep into the ice.”
“You are the only one besides the mansa? Even including the women?”
To his credit he paused, forehead wrinkling. “I suppose I don’t know about the women. Although honestly, Catherine, to hear that anyone besides the mansa could best me in this would surprise me.”
I leaned across the table to give him a kiss. “Of course it would surprise you. My point is that the mansa may yet sire more sons and choose to replace you with one of them. Furthermore, you said Five Mirrors House in Noviomagus is ruled by a mansa who is not as powerful as the magister who tested you. She happened to be a woman, and thus according to House custom ineligible. So let us say the mansa truly wishes for you to become mansa after him. If you do not have the support of the elders of Four Moons House, what is to stop them from demanding a more eligible if less powerful man once the mansa has passed on? Then you would have waited for all that time, perhaps for decades, only to find yourself just as powerless as you were the day you came to Four Moons House. All that time when you might have been working for a greater cause. It is the perfect means to keep you in harness.”
An eddy of cold air pooled around us. “Do you suppose I am too uneducated and common-born to have thought of exactly these sorts of complications?”
“Of course I don’t! I will thank you not to pretend that I do so you can wallow in your wounded feelings! You have just bested the rivals who tormented you for so long. You have raised your mother to a position of honor beyond anything she can ever have thought to expect. And you have been proven in the starkest way possible as exactly the rare and uncommonly potent cold mage you have always known you are. All laudable things. I want to know if you have forgotten your promise to Kofi.”
Ice crackled as frost across the surface of the cream as he pushed back his chair and rose with a curl of his lip. “I think that is enough! Do not believe you understand my promise to Kofi.”
“I’ve just gotten started!” I shoved back my own chair and stood. “Either you want a wife who respects you enough to challenge you when she thinks you may be wrong, or you want a wife like the gracious Serena, whose manners are beyond impeccable, and whose desire and purpose is solely to serve the wishes and needs of a husband who chose her for her beauty.”
“How do you know she doesn’t challenge him in private? How do you know she didn’t desire and even seek the marriage? It may not seem so to you, but marriage to the mansa of Four Moons House gives a woman’s lineage significant prestige and valuable connections. For that matter, how do you know she isn’t a magister herself, married for her magical potency and not just her signal beauty?”
“How would you know what she is like in private?” I demanded.
He blinked. With a shake of his head the contemptuous mage vanished, and the Vai I loved returned. “Why, Catherine. Here is an unexpected sting of jealousy!”
How I hated that particular smirk of his. I fumed, not wanting to admit he was right or that I had simply assumed a dazzling beauty could not also be an accomplished magister.
“In fact, as the mansa’s heir, I am allowed to sit in his private parlor in the most casual manner imaginable. I may even converse easily, like a son, with his charming wife.” He slid into a light Expedition cant. “I reckon that gal’s a little lonely and like me company.”