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He flipped open the landau’s low door and leaped out before the carriage came to a complete halt. By now, the field-workers had seen the carriage. He strode beneath the trees, and a young woman hurried over to greet him. She was tall and, I suppose, handsome, although that was difficult to tell from this distance. Her complexion was much like his, her hair wrapped in a scarf the color of clay. They embraced, then parted, but stood close together, speaking in the flood of words that betokens close knowledge, much to relate and much to hear. The other field-workers trudged away under the trees.
I shut my eyes.
Obviously, this was not Esi, whoever she was, for Esi had been spoken of as a woman born into the highest ranks within the House, descendant of those who had founded Four Moons House long ago, or of those who had married in accompanied by wealth or other valuable connections, or of those who had bred magisters and thus gained prominence.
A mere field-worker, given attention by a House mage, can hope only to become a concubine, if a woman whose status is little more than slave can even be given so high and mighty a title.
What did I expect? Handsome men are likely to find lovers, and how much more easily they may find them when they are also powerful and rich! It was best to face the truth.
I opened my eyes.
She stepped away from him and took three paces toward me before he caught her wrist and pulled her to a halt. They exchanged heated words. She scolded him; he retorted. Even so, they parted with another embrace. He strode back to the carriage as she ran after the other field hands.
He swung up in one huge stride and sat down hard on the seat opposite.
I could not help myself. “Who is she?”
His gaze struck with such fury that I flinched.
But I wasn’t to be cowed. I had already drowned, hadn’t I? I was already dead to my old life. “If there’s some arrangement I need to know about, best you tell me now.”
He stared into the orchard as the field-workers walked away into the trees, a song rising as they walked. He spoke so low I thought he was hoping that the footmen, seated behind him, would not hear what he must now confess.
“That is my sister. Seven years ago, walking among those field-workers, that would have been me.”
16
It is an odd thing, truly, to feel a twinge of compassion for a person you have no reason to wish to feel sympathy for. An odd thing. We halted at another stone pillar and made another offering. Then we drove up a gentle slope in a straight line as the orchard fell away behind us. The great house, with its central round tower and main edifice with a two-storied wing flown out to the right, loomed before me like a beast waiting to devour me. Whatever words I might have been thinking of saying expired on my tongue.
Or so I thought. For then they abruptly flew out of my mouth. “You were a common laborer? A slave to the land? To Four Moons House?”
“Just keep silence, Catherine,” he said in a flat voice. “Can you manage that much?”
I closed my lips on silence, its taste like ashes.
The main estate of Four Moons House was a palace, in its own way, with round rooms at either end and its bulk stretching behind. The carriage pulled up before the grand escalade. Out of the interior swarmed a host of people who formed two lines for a formal greeting.
An elderly man wearing white robes and the gold earrings of a djeli limped out, leaning on a cane, speaking in a kind of singsong chant. “He returns! He returns! With his power, he was sent out. With his power, he returns. It is sure he has accomplished what was demanded of him.” Here he looked at me, and naturally he took a step back, as if surprised by what he saw. The scarf that looked so handsome on the House women made me feel ridiculous.
Up the stairs I walked, looking neither to my left nor right, keeping my head high; that was the sum of what I could manage. I could not look people in the eye; it might not be the custom here. I was also afraid of what I might see in their expressions.
A hand to be shaken, in the radical way, or a kiss between equals as was the custom of my people; there was none of that here. There must be giving way, the lesser before the greater and I in Andevai’s wake, or at least within the ripples made by his passing. We mounted the steps, made an offering of water at the threshold, crossed under the door, and passed beneath a roof so high that birds flew in the rafters. To the right and then the left, through corridors wide enough to be chambers and all with heat rising from the floor. Left again, and right, and I found myself standing in a large room beside a high bank of arched windows over windowpaned doors. The glass looked over an expansive and prettily landscaped garden enclosed by the wings of the house, and a high stone wall.
“Catherine,” Andevai said, grasping my left elbow with his right hand.
I wished I had my sword as he guided me toward closed double doors reinforced with strips of sullen iron. My father had written: The strength of the most powerful cold mages can be measured by the magister’s ability to extinguish fires and shatter iron.
A servant opened the right side door. Andevai stepped back to allow the elderly djeli to go in first. Then I had to walk beside him. My throat was choked with tears. My pulse was a hammer of sound in my ears, like runaway horses.
The mansa was standing at a table beneath a rank of windows, surveying papers strewn across some kind of architectural drawing unrolled and fixed at its edges to lie flat. He could be no one else. He was tall and heavily built. He looked neither old nor young. His face was black and his eyes blacker, although his hair, close-cut, was a coarse, tightly curled red. Maybe he resembled the warden of the gate. Maybe they were cousins, or maybe they weren’t related at all but simply both descendants of blacksmiths and sorcerers, their ancestors the mixed children of the Afric south and the Celtic north who had made common cause long ago. They had countered the power of chieftains and princes but had not become lords themselves, at least not in name. For after all, the only son of a prince may rule after his father whether he is a good prince or an incompetent one, but if the only son of a magister is not a mage, then nothing can raise him to that position.
The mansa looked at Andevai, and the mansa looked at me, and I stopped dead because my heart could not beat and my feet could not move. Maybe they spoke formal greetings, the three of them between themselves. I could not be sure because I was empty.
Then the mansa spoke directly to me. His voice was a voice, nothing special and nothing strange in it, except that it commanded me.
“Are you the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter?”
“I am the eldest,” I whispered, eyes cast down, remembering Aunt’s words.
