“You might have said all that in my hearing to make me believe I can trust you.”
“My hearing is weak. I could not hear what you just said.” The tenor of her voice made her point clear. I had insulted her and, indeed, the village. “You may walk where you wish, leave if you feel you must. No one will stop you. Duvai will await you at the gate at dawn.”
Thus was I dismissed, and I opened my mouth to speak, regretting what I had said, and then pressed my lips closed before I spoke words I was not sure I meant. To babble out meaningless assurances of my respect would only condescend. Maybe I ought to have been more trusting, but I dared not. The one thing I was sure of was that Duvai would be pleased to make his younger brother’s life more difficult. How far he was willing to go against the mansa I could not know. The villagers had no recourse if the mansa acted against them. The village belonged to the House.
Just as I did. But I did not have to live here, or stay here.
The elderly attendant gestured to show I had overstayed my welcome, so I took myself and my sword and my weary heart into the cold as she shut the door firmly behind me. Outside, the compound appeared deserted. Snow spun lazily. I ventured out the compound gate and stood against a wall, staring toward the structure at the center of the village, with its thatched roof and a railing built around under the eaves. Smoke eked from stone chimneys and heat radiated from the open doorways. Inside flashed movement; drums beat, accompanied by the stamp of feet and calls of encouragement. Drums have their own magic. My toes twitched, and my feet shifted as my shoulders hitched a little back and forth.
“Catherine?” Kayleigh stood at the compound gate, looking around without seeing me where I stood not ten paces from her.
I said nothing, and when she walked away, I hurried the other way. It was easy enough to remain unseen when it seemed the entire village had crammed into the festival house. Night is a friend to cats on the prowl. At the inner gate, I became air and walked right past the two young guardsmen; not so difficult in any case because they were diverted by the sounds of the celebration they were missing.
“Did you hear Vai? Says he’ll still outlast us tonight.”
“You’d think if them at the House treat him so poorly he’d have been humbled, but he’s the same as he ever was.”
They laughed as I passed out of range. Three older men stood vigil at the gate of the outer stockade. Outside the stockade, a bonfire blew heat into the cold night. In the farthest aura of its light, just beyond visual range, pairs of eyes glimmered and four-legged shapes moved, prowling the perimeter. Waiting.
I stopped short. I took in a few breaths to steady my pulse as the sound of drums rolled like a shield around the village. Then I turned around and crept back past the inner gate, against the wall. A burst of laughter surprised me. Andevai strode among his age-mates up to the inner gate to fetch their friends; several older men had come to take their place at guard. The young men jostled and talked in a rapid release of insults and jokes as they coursed away back toward the celebration. Andevai walked as easily among them as he had, I now realized, moved uneasily within the House. He looked much less affected in the homespun clothing worn by country folk. He and his friends looked like the kind of young men a young woman might happily flirt with. Laughing, they pushed into the festival house while I remained alone in the dark.
Everyone had either gone into the festival house or bided behind closed doors in their compounds. They had a place to be, while I…
I became aware of a shadowy figure spinning and hopping into the open ground, its movements woven in with the rhythm of the drums. I held still, willing myself to become the stockade behind me, nothing more than poles of wood tied tightly together. Nothing to see. Nothing to take notice of. I could see in the dark that it was no man who approached me. It was a tall creature with horns and feathers and a mantle shimmering over its massive form. It spun and spun, the mantle flaring around it like sparks spinning in a vortex of wind. But there was no wind. And the mantle was not woven of cloth; it was woven out of threads of magic. The air had become deadened, and my ears grew as full as if stuffed with cotton until I could not hear the drums except as vibrations trembling up through the soles of my feet.
Although I had drawn a cawl of concealment over me, the creature spun closer and closer until it became clear it knew I was there. That it saw me. That it meant to investigate me as a guard investigates a suspicious noise and a movement where there ought to be stillness.
Like a cornered rat, I tensed with a hand on the hilt of my sword, ready to draw and fight my way free.