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I pulled on my boots and dashed outside. It took me a moment to spot him trudging along the shoreline with three dead grouse slung on a line. He was farther away than I would have expected, until I saw what trailed behind him.
A mage House troop of turbaned riders pursued him. They wore gray wool winter coats cut for riding, and their heads were wrapped in bright green turbans. The horses picked their way over the uneven ground. My heart pounded as I cursed under my breath, rage and frustration exploding. How had the mansa found us so quickly?
I counted forty men before I noticed Vai glance over his shoulder to measure the distance between them and him. A lance that had been nothing more than a long spear with a wicked steel point unfurled a banner marked with the four phases of the moon, the sigil of Four Moons House.
The moment he saw me waiting, the soldiers vanished in a patter of sleet that doused my rage. My heart fluttered as his step quickened. He was disheveled, dirt smeared like paint down one side of his face. His once-elegant clothes looked like a beggar’s chance-met rags. He dazzled me.
“I thought the soldiers were real!”
His face shone, dark and beautiful. “My magic is unbelievably strong here.”
“Didn’t Professora Alhamrai say cold magic is stronger when the mage is close to the ice?”
“Cold mages have always known our power lies in the ice. There’s so much nyama. I could do anything, love.” He laughed again as he hung the grouse from the eaves.
“Not that thinking poorly of yourself has ever been a problem for you,” I remarked.
His eyes flared as he looked me up and down. He had the dizzy good humor of a man who is half drunk. “Not only do you look clean and fed, but you obviously have no idea how beautiful you are, especially with your hair down and that mouth of yours talking. Are we going in?”
The interior seemed dim after the bright sky and the snowy landscape. The lingering heat warmed me right up, or maybe it was hearing him stamp about in the entry hall behind me. I tested the water in the tub. He came in, shedding his coat.
I was not minded to be subtle. I helped him out of his clammy garments and wrapped him in a fur for long enough to make him drink the hot tisane and eat soup and barleycake, although he wasn’t much interested in the food. The tub interested him more, where I washed every bit of him with the sweet-smelling lavender soap. I managed to dry most of him with one of the pagnes before he picked me up.
“The problem, Catherine, is that if you want a fire, I have to be outdoors away from the hearth. And if you want us to be together indoors, then”—he dumped me on the mattress—“we are going to have to spend most of our time in this bed.”
He braced his body over mine, his arms on either side of me. He lowered himself to brush a kiss over my lips, then pushed back up. The feel of him a hand’s span above me made me wriggle. I had to put my hands all over him before finally pulling him down on top of me so we could kiss. When I was breathless, my heart racing and my body aflame, I broke off.
“What I don’t understand is why you still have clothes on,” he murmured in a voice like honey.
I nipped at the lobe of his ear. Did I have to inform the man of everything I wanted?
He sat up, although he left a hand cupped over my right breast, fingers teasing absentmindedly through the cloth of my bodice in a way that made me squirm. “You can’t be waiting for me to undress you, can you? Perhaps there was something else you wanted to discuss? I had many long conversations in Expedition on the fascinating subject of the properties of heat, whether heat is dynamic or perhaps undulating a little bit like you are now.”
“If you are going to do nothing but taunt me, then I am done speaking to you, Andevai.”
His eyebrows arched. He leaned closer. “Not one more word?”
I lifted my chin defiantly as I pinched my lips together.
His lazy smile was more challenge than sweetness. “We’ll see about that.”
23
Much later, we lay quietly together. For the longest time I luxuriated in the feel of his arms around me. A light fall of snow drifted down outside, flakes dusting along the roof with a hiss.
“Vai?”
“Mmm?” He kissed my neck.
“Our efforts have left me hungry.” I stuck a foot out from under the blankets, and sucked in a breath. “It’s cold out there. You’re such a nuisance, you fire banes.”
Arms tensing, he stopped nuzzling. “I never got used to that name. It always seemed like mockery to me, even when none was meant.”
I really was hungry, but his confession fell so unexpectedly that I thought of how Kofi had seemed to understand Vai in ways I had never glimpsed. “People in Expedition respected you.”
“Because I worked hard and was a good carpenter. Not because I am a cold mage.”
“How did you become such a good carpenter?”
