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“Curse it,” said Vai. “Bee, you’ve the steadiest hand. Keep the prow in line with the current. Rory. Catherine. You two sit close in the middle.”
He shifted up to kneel at the prow as Bee settled to the oars. Rory and I weighted the bench at the stern. My cane flowered into a sword as two boats exactly like ours appeared alongside us. It was an impossible illusion to hold through every shift and nuance, and Vai meanwhile kept glancing up at the sky. Thunder rolled although the sky hadn’t the weight of storm clouds.
The soldiers parted to let through a man on a horse. In his flowing robes and with his height and hair, I knew him at once as the mansa of Four Moons House. Soldiers with crossbows knelt to take aim.
“How could the mansa have come after us so quickly?” muttered Vai.
“The dragon betrayed us,” muttered Rory.
“Kemal never would!” Bee glared, but her steady rowing and skillful piloting did not slacken.
A force both terrible and strong was grinding within the clouds drifting innocently above. On the shore the mansa raised his gaze heavenward as snow began to fall. Vai was going to hide us in a blizzard. All we needed to do was get beyond the range of their bows.
More soldiers rode into view. They were wearing three different uniforms: the black-on-white squares of Five Mirrors House, the four phases of the moon of Four Moons House, and the strung bow of White Bow House. Mansa Viridor trotted up to greet the mansa and look across the water toward us. I was too shocked to utter a word.
“I should have known better than to trust friendship offered by cold mages,” Vai muttered.
Snow began to fall in earnest.
Soldiers bundled two slight figures to the shoreline, making sure we could see the swords held to their throats. Vai’s hands gripped the gunnel. The illusions of the other rowboats dissolved.
“Who are those terrified girls?” said Rory. “Do the soldiers mean to kill them?”
“Those are my little sisters,” said Vai in a voice I scarcely recognized because it was flat with fear and rage. “Lord of All, he will kill them. They are nothing to him. Love, go on to Havery. I will find a way back to you, but I cannot abandon them.”
He cast me a desperate look, shed his coat, and plunged into the river with his sword.
A crossbow bolt plopped into the river near him. A captain shouted at the troops to stop shooting because the man they wanted was in the water. The girls could not have been more than thirteen or fourteen. They clung to each other as swords caged them. I looked at Bee, and she looked at me. I knew what she would say before she said it.
“Cat, you have to go after him while he’s still in the water so they can’t shoot you.”
“I have to stay with you to protect you, Bee.”
Her gaze held me. “Rory and I can protect ourselves. Look how frightened the girls are. Together, you and he can manage an escape with them. You know where to meet us. Go!”
I shed my cloak. This river had drowned my parents, but I plunged in anyway. Fear drove all thought from my mind as I came up floundering and gasping to the surface.
Rory called, “Swim! Don’t paddle like a dog!”
I churned my arms through the current and did not gulp down more than four or five mouthfuls of water before my feet scraped on river bottom. I crawled onto the bank, trying to hack out the water I’d swallowed. A crow flapped down from the sky and landed so close to me, watching me with its black eyes, that I shrank back. Then it fluttered off, cawing. Soldiers surrounded me as though I were a cornered boar, their spears ready to pierce me through.
I leaped up, fumbling for my sword. A whistling hiss spat past my ear. Something pushed hard on my shoulder, spinning me backward.
A crossbow bolt stuck out of my flesh, right below the collarbone. Where had that come from?
I toppled to my knees. The world filled with a whirl of snow. An imposing man loomed before me out of the blizzard. His voluminous robes rippled across my sight like the wings of death.
“Don’t kill her,” the mansa said.
I fainted.
33
I woke to a warm cloth wiping my face. Opening my eyes, I looked up at a woman with gaunt cheeks and short wiry hair more gray than black.
“Do not speak,” she said in a raspy voice, careful not to jostle the crossbow bolt sticking out of my body. Stabs of pain pulsed through my right shoulder. “Here comes the surgeon.”
Over her shoulder I caught a glimpse of a man in a traditional boubou, carrying a leather bag and a small drum. I lay on a cot in a hospital tent spacious enough to house a dozen soldiers, although I was the only patient. Before the doctor could reach me, a soldier cut him off.
