“Are you saying your own children are not as potent cold mages as you so obviously are, Magister?” she asked with a sweet smile that startled the mansa and made the old djeli make a sign to avert disaster. “Have you no lofty sons to inherit your princely seat as mansa of Four Moons House? Are you forced to conceive the awful thought that the young cold mage best suited to become mansa after you is a humble young man born to people who have been enslaved by clientage for so many generations that you cannot think of them as anything except lowborn inferiors whom you may breed like livestock? Yet think! The son of a prince may rule whether he do so wisely or well, and he shall have advisors and kinsmen to steady him. But the son of a magister who has no magic cannot be given magic, can he?”

The temperature in the room dropped precipitously, making my eyes sting and my lips go dry. The mansa strode to the stove. With a look, he drove the soldiers from the kitchen. Accompanied by a horrible groaning strain, the door of the stove buckled.

I kicked over the table and dragged Bee down behind it just as the thick iron door shattered like the hull of a boat shot to splinters. Bee screamed. Shards of metal thunked into the table so hard that a few almost pierced through, their jagged blades the visible threat of his astonishing power. My ears rang. My breathing was all torn to pieces.

“Blessed Tanit shelter us,” whispered Bee, her complexion gone a sickly gray-white.

I was shaking. “You couldn’t have known. Stay down!”

As I rose, I drew my sword on the shimmering backwash of his magic. The cold steel glittered as if coated with burning oil, making the gloomy kitchen blaze with light.

“I cannot kill you, Your Excellency. Nor do I wish to. You lost Andevai not because I seduced him but because you refused to respect him as a man.”

The djeli had survived the mansa’s display of power unscathed, for he had his own secrets. He turned on me now. “Maestra, keep silence.”

“I won’t keep silence! You speak of fruitful alliances and breeding rights, but Andevai and Kayleigh are people the same as you.”

The mansa frowned. “Of course they are not the same as me! Their ancestors disgraced themselves and thus put their honor in chains.”