“Easy to speak of honor when you get to choose whose honor to champion. Is it the gods who foreordain our birth and position in life, or only chance? What if things had been different, if the history of the world had fallen out in another way? What if your people had been forced into chains? Would it not be wrong that a man of your power be whipped as a common laborer all his life just because of a chance of birth? Would it not be wrong that a man of your dignity be bound to a master who does not respect him and can use or discard or kill him without penalty? What then of your power and majesty? Why do you deny to Andevai what you assume for your own self?”

“You are a fatherless bastard. For you to believe you can lecture one such as me is not just absurd but unnatural. Andevai belongs to Four Moons House. As do you. Understand that I can kill you, and take no legal penalty for doing so.”

“Yet you have not done so!”

A spark of cold fire winked into existence, then expanded into a globe of light. “I admit to curiosity about a girl who can vanish and reappear at will. A girl who can walk into the spirit world and return to this one. A girl who can tell me where Andevai is.”

Footsteps rapped along the passage. A magister wearing a fine indigo dash jacket under an unbuttoned winter coat stepped into the kitchen. I had seen him before; he was the mage who had unsuccessfully pursued me at Cold Fort, the one whose horse I had stolen.

He made a clipped courtesy to the mansa. “Uncle, we found this man—”

The mansa smiled triumphantly at me. “Ah. My nephew has found him despite your efforts to shield him.”

Rory sauntered in, toying with the end of his long braid. “Cat? Do you want me to—?”

“No!” I exclaimed, just as Bee said, “No!”

The mansa stared, startled by Rory’s appearance. The djeli tried to catch Rory’s image in the mirror’s slippery surface, but all he saw was a saber-toothed cat. I studied the young magister, tracing the family resemblance between him and the mansa.

The young man caught me looking. “Caught you this time, haven’t we? You’ll not escape my uncle now he has taken an interest in you himself.”

I offered him a courtesy, to mock him. “My apologies about the horse.”

Despite my sword, the fool took a step toward me, a hand raised as if he believed he could slap me.

“Enough, Jata,” said the mansa. “Do not touch her.”

The young mage turned away from me at once. “The village boy is close by, Uncle, I’m sure of it. He doesn’t have the wit to hide, thinking himself so much better than he is.”