“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.
“You are the eldest Adurnam Hassi Barahal daughter?” he repeated.
“I am the eldest.”
“You are the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter?”
“I’m the eldest.”
“If I may, Mansa,” said the djeli. “What she says is no lie, but I am troubled. If you will allow me, may I ask?”
The mansa nodded.