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Andevai said, “I am no longer ashamed of where I come from, although the House made sure to tell me over and over again that I should be grateful to be allowed to enter where I was not wanted. I should never have been ashamed. I just did not see that before. You need me, Mansa.”
The young mage sniggered but swallowed his laughter when the mansa raised a hand.
“Do not believe for even one breath, child of slaves, that I need you more than you need me. I brought you in when you were a ragged, barefoot, ignorant youth.”
Suddenly every person in that wide space was slammed to their knees as though felled by a hammer blow. Every one, even the other two cold mages. All, except the mansa, and the djeli. And Andevai.
“Strong,” remarked the mansa. “But not strong enough.”
I knelt on bruised knees, not sure how I had come from standing to kneeling, for the blow had hit so hard I had no memory of it. Bee gasped for breath beside me.
Andevai and the mansa faced each other like two men embarking on a duel of honor. Magisters wield cold as blacksmiths wield heat; this secret they have held to themselves for generations. Already the temperature in the room was bitter, but now it plunged, and the metal of the machines groaned. The windows shattered with a snapping crash, and their shards rained like edged ice onto the silent looms and the sobbing onlookers, poor trapped souls. Bee’s teeth were chattering, and her lips were white. I tried to rise, but a bone-deep numbness pervaded my bones, and I could not move.
Tides of cold magic pulsed and ripped around us. Invisible to the eye, they throbbed in the air like unvoiced thunder until I could only hope for lightning to strike and put me out of this misery.
But it did not. Something else happened instead. In my left hand, the hilt of the sword bloomed.
Cold magic had woken it. Cold steel cuts cold magic. I twisted the hilt and unsheathed the sword. Its glittering edge flared, as bright as snow under the glare of the winter sun, almost blinding. Bee gasped, and then choked, as if she’d been stabbed, but it was only the cold striking so deep it would soon kill.
Neither magister moved. Rigid, they fought in a realm outside ordinary vision.
With cold steel in my hand, I rose and cut my way forward through the currents of magic. Icy swells slapped me, made me stumble, made my mouth ice and my feet lead weights, but my blade sliced a path, and I drove forward into the maelstrom.
How it felt to them I could not know; I was not a cold mage. But the mansa looked up, looked over, looked startled. His hold loosened. There came as in the eye of a violent storm an eddy as his attention shifted briefly away from Andevai.
Andevai glanced toward me. He raised a hand in a gesture copied from the mansa, and he said, in exactly the same preemptory tone he’d used in the inn in Adurnam on that long-ago night when we had first met, “Down!”
I dropped to my knees and ducked my head.
The cold hit like an ax blow, flattening me with a single, brutal cut. My chin slammed against the floor, and all breath was punched out of my lungs.
After a moment of stunned incomprehension, I discovered myself lying flat on the cold floor, pain lancing through my chin. Therefore, I was still alive.
A stunned silence muffled all sound except for a vague muzzy humming, half heard as in the distance. I raised my head cautiously as the cold eased. Only two men still stood: the djeli and Andevai.
The mansa had been driven down to his knees.
Andevai’s voice was cool, almost conversational. “You brought me in when I was a ragged, barefoot, ignorant youth because you could not ignore what I am, Mansa. I have been reminded every day in Four Moons House of where I came from and exactly who my people are and how my village stands in relationship to the Diarisso lineage. All that is true. But you will be better served by me if I am a willing magister than an unwilling one. There are other Houses. Are you sure I am not cold-blooded enough to abandon my village? For I think it must be clear to you now that if I decide to go, you cannot stop me. You want what is in me, since none among the other young men are what I am. And I want what you can teach me. So we each have something the other wants.”
The mansa climbed to his feet and, with a composure I had to admire, brushed off his robe before addressing the djeli. “My canoe has run to ground on the sand. Yet he is brash and insolent, and speaks out of turn to his elders.”
“Steel cuts steel,” remarked the djeli. “Do you wish the sword to rest in your hand, Mansa, or be held by another?”
The mansa’s silence seemed answer enough. He could not bring himself to say what must be obvious to everyone: that Andevai’s display of power had surprised even him. For all I knew, it had surprised Andevai himself.
Rising to hands and knees, I looked behind me. In fact, I had come barely four steps although it had seemed like a mile. Bee was crumpled on the ground, her face an awful ashen color, as if she was close to fainting. I scrambled to her, but she pushed up with unexpected strength and sat back on her heels, resting her forehead in one hand while she gestured with the other to show she was all right.
“Show your generosity and magnanimity by letting Catherine live,” continued Andevai. “Negotiate a new contract with the Barahal family on what terms you and they think fair for what protection you can offer and what gain the eldest daughter may achieve thereby. Show that Four Moons House can be a true ally, not a power that forces its will on others because it can.”
“You know nothing of the situation,” said the mansa impatiently. “The girl is a danger, but hers is also a necessary gift in such disordered times. We must possess her so others cannot take her. For you can be sure there are others who have agents seeking her.”
The steady hum had begun to resolve into a melange of voices, coming from outside and growing louder. Back by the walls, laborers lay on the floor, trying to remain unnoticed as the light withered and the shadows grew. At the doors, the soldiers brushed themselves off with commendable briskness, as if they were accustomed to being hammered down every day and almost killed with marrow-sucking cold. Of the two mages, the older one was shaking his hands as if flicking off unseen beads of water, while the younger, who had recovered more quickly, wore a remarkably sour expression as he stared resentfully toward Andevai. For his part, Andevai stood with his head slightly bowed, showing the humble respect of a student for his teacher—although the lift of his shoulders suggested a more complex stance.
In my hand, my sword had returned to its daylight state. A whisper of breeze stirred like the memory of summer. From my knees, I eyed the two doors and the shattered windows, wondering how we could make a break for it.
A crow came to rest on the lip of one of the broken windows, claws gripping the frame. It dipped its inquisitive black head and peered in with its bright black eyes to see what it could see.
Bee, looking up, saw the crow. Her expression and color changed, as if she’d just recognized something. She rose as stiffly as might an old woman, shook herself, and set her lips together in the determined frown that always presaged her worst explosions.
