As angry as Lord Marius was, he also had a sense of the absurd. “How will you manage that, I wonder, with your hands bound behind you?”

Vai’s mother rose. That she scarcely had the strength to stand was evident by the tension in her frail frame, but to look at the stately lift of her head and the pressure of her gaze, one might never guess she was anything but a woman of power.

“I will take the cup, my lord, and minister to the young woman, as was my intention.” She held out her hand.

Something in that voice struck him. His forehead wrinkled as he obediently handed over the cup. “Are you mage House born, Maestra? For you have something of the manner about you, although I can’t quite figure your accent.”

“I am a peddler’s daughter, my lord. Not even a garden or hut to our name. We were the least among people you could ever meet. Lift her head. Gently, if you will, my lord.”

To my astonishment Lord Marius tucked a strong hand under my neck and carefully raised me. Obviously he had practice assisting wounded people to drink. The cup she set to my dry lips did not interest him. He examined her. “Ah. Then some Houseborn man took a fancy to you, did he? I know that happens.”

She did not look at him, not from shame, I thought, but because she considered the tea more important than the answer. “No, my lord. I am no man’s jade. I was the third and last wife of a village man who was born into clientage to Four Moons House. Lest you wonder, he was the only man who ever touched me. The boy is his, and mine. You may lower her head now, my lord.”

“Proud Jupiter,” muttered Lord Marius, setting me back. He looked Vai up and down. They had given Vai dry clothes, now scuffed from whatever fights he had been in, but for all that he wore someone else’s clothes and a smear of mud on his cheek, he still looked magnificent. “I had no idea the magister was not born to the House.”

She handed the cup to the tall girl, and then sank onto the chair. I could hear the hoarse crackle of her labored breathing. Yet when she found breath to speak, her words were firm. “He is not of their making. So powerful he is that they must bind him lest they lose him.”

“Mama,” muttered Vai.

“I did not raise you to be ashamed, Andevai. Now go, you and the lord both. You can return at a more proper time, and when you have wiped the mud off your face, for I am sure I did not teach you to appear so slovenly in public.”

Lord Marius whistled under his breath, but his amusement was a blade, flashing and then sheathed. “I will return to hear a full accounting.”