Arms tensing, he stopped nuzzling. “I never got used to that name. It always seemed like mockery to me, even when none was meant.”

I really was hungry, but his confession fell so unexpectedly that I thought of how Kofi had seemed to understand Vai in ways I had never glimpsed. “People in Expedition respected you.”

“Because I worked hard and was a good carpenter. Not because I am a cold mage.”

“How did you become such a good carpenter?”

I felt his smile in the tilt of his head against my hair. “My father and uncle were carpenters. They were teaching me the trade. Remember, my magic didn’t bloom until I was sixteen.”

“I thought your father and uncle were hunters.”

“They were also hunters. But a person must have a trade. Before she became ill, my mother was renowned for her basketry. Did I ever tell you that?” He did not wait for my answer. “When things got bad for me in the youth hall at Four Moons House, I started sneaking out to the carpentry barn. The mansa’s uncle let me work there.” He began stroking my belly with a motion similar, I supposed, to that he might delicately use to plane a surface.

“The mansa’s uncle was a carpenter?”

“An architect. He was educated in Camlun and had studied with learned masters across Europa. He said knowing the carpenter’s craft helped him understand how to build. In a mage House, many sons and daughters have no magic, so they serve the House in some other way. Because he was the uncle of the mansa he was willing to defy the mansa by teaching me, since it was seen as lowborn of me to wish to work with my hands. But the work helped me concentrate on my studies. I couldn’t be angry or fighting if I was working with my hands.” His stroking hand clenched.

“How did things get bad for you in the youth hall?”

He pushed to sit. “Can you heat enough water to scald and pluck the grouse? The sooner we can leave here and get away from the ice, the better. Next Hallows’ Night your sire will come after us. I can hide from the Hunt in a troll maze, but you can’t. We must find a way to protect you from him.”

His sudden change of subject forced me to ask a question whose answer I feared. “Did my sire harm you?”

He gave a curt laugh leavened by a self-mocking smile that reassured me that he had not been hurt. “He did an injury to my pride, that is certain. My magic counts for nothing in comparison to the magic he wields as easily as breathing.”

“Yet you had the courage to stab him. Even knowing how strong he is.”