His shoulders had been lifted and tight, but they eased as he absorbed the blow.
“I thank you for your honesty,” he said in the tone of a man who has just been told his chest must be sliced open with a butcher’s knife in order for a poisonous thorn to be extracted.
“What I want to know,” said Bee, “is the whole of your intention in accepting the mansa’s offer to make you heir. What could possibly have induced you to say yes when you know what the mage Houses are? Do you feel no shame that you courted Cat in part by expressing radical sentiments that quite go against everything the mage Houses stand for?”
Seeing that Bee was speaking, Brennan returned and sat down as Vai answered.
“What choices do people truly suppose I have? The perilous journey Catherine and I took from the ice to Sala in the dead of winter was salutary lesson enough, had you been with us! Why do you suppose mages have had to band together to live? How am I to manage without a mage House to protect me? I can’t go back to Haranwy even if I wished to, for the village cannot survive if I am continually putting out their fires. No matter how much your kin love you, they must drive you out when your cold magic blooms. At best, you might hope for a little cottage with a hypocaust set away from the village in isolation, but most do not have the means or skill to build and maintain such a place properly. Although I can manage for several days in very cold temperatures without heat, Catherine saw what it does to me if I go too long without rest. Add to that the hatred and suspicion people feel toward cold mages. A man has to sleep.”
He looked at them each in turn.
“As Catherine knows, I would be dead if not for her. She braved the spirit world to rescue me, as I knew she would.” His back straightened as his head came up. The line of his neck had an elegant beauty visible only from the back, not that I was noticing such a thing at a time like this. “If the Master of the Wild Hunt could not keep us apart, then I don’t see how you people can hope to.”
“I think you are the one keeping the two of you apart,” retorted Bee. “Don’t change the subject. I am not yet satisfied with your answer.”
But he now walked on ground where he felt confident. “What I am trying to say is that mage Houses exist for a reason. That they have abused their privileges is not the same thing as saying they ought to be abolished. Rather, they should be confronted and reformed. As for the rest, there is my mother to consider. I do not need to defend my actions in seeing her placed in a position of honor where no one can scorn or harm her and where she may receive the care she deserves. But I do see it is impossible for Catherine. She said long ago that she does not belong in Four Moons House, and it is true in ways I could not bring myself to accept when the mansa made me his heir. It will take much work and time for me to change the nature of the House enough that she can find a place alongside me. I thought I could easily make it palatable for now…” He pressed fingers to his eyes, then lowered them. “I was thinking more of my own triumph than her struggle. I let my pride go to my head, as I will no doubt do again someday—”
“Tomorrow,” Bee muttered.
“—but I know it is my weakness.”
“In truth, I think your vanity is your weakness, not your pride,” added Bee. “The mansa pandered to your vanity by elevating you to become heir. That is how he captured you. In a way, he still has you trapped, for you speak of nothing now except how you will change the mage Houses and not how the mage House might change you.”
“I think you have all made clear to me my faults,” he retorted. “I need only apply to you, Beatrice, to be reminded of them!”
“You can be sure I will be ready to comply!”
“You’re both right in part,” remarked Rory, before the exchange boiled over, “but your worst weakness, Vai, is that you are secretly a little ashamed of where you were born. If you were not, then nothing they say would matter. You are not comfortable in your skin.”
Vai stared at Rory. A kind of shudder ran through his body, not so much physical, and yet as profound as at a blow that struck him to the heart. He shielded his face with a hand, hiding his expression, head propped on hand and elbow propped on table. I held my breath, yet not a touch of icy angry air sullied the humid evening heat.
Bee considered Vai with a thoughtful frown. Brennan was staring at his hands. Kehinde was nodding. What Chartji thought I could not guess.
Rory grinned around the table as if the somber mood had finally rubbed his fur the wrong way. “Is that not a clever way of phrasing it, coming from me? Comfortable in his skin?”