“I never thought I would find such fortune. He gave my father a cow as my bride price. I saved my sisters with that cow.”

I managed to keep my eyes from popping open. For the daughter of a man forced to sell his own daughters rather than starve, this was astoundingly good fortune indeed. “Your son says you once told him that his father was the handsomest man you ever saw.”

There crept a reminiscent smile to lighten her expression, but her tone remained cool. “My husband was a good man. He treated me well. I was a good wife to him. I did not listen to what people in the village spoke about me. Their spite could not bow my shoulders.”

I thought of how Andevai’s brother Duvai had told me his own mother, the second wife, had left Haranwy and returned to her own village after the arrival of Vai’s mother. I dared not venture into such turbulent waters. However, there was a thing I was curious about.

“Maa, you love to hear me speak of Kayleigh, but you do not like it when I speak of your son. May I ask why that is?”

She lifted her chin in a proud gesture so like Vai that I knew he had picked it up from her. “He can no longer be part of my thoughts. His life is lifted beyond ours now.”

I knelt on the gravel, looking up into brown eyes. “Maa, he will not leave you behind.”

“He must. So I have told him.”

I pressed a hand to hers. “He cannot. Don’t demand that he turn his back on you and the girls and the village. The mage House almost ruined him.”

“He will stand high in the world!”

“Don’t destroy the good man that he struggles to be. Don’t dishonor that man by asking him to become the mage the mansa wants him to be and that you think is best for him. Let him fight in the way he must.”

Her fingers crushed the basket she was weaving. I had not known she had such strength in those frail hands. “I am weary. I must lie down.”

Bintou and I helped her in, and I washed her face and sang a lullaby until she went to sleep.

In the first days of our captivity, several attendants had remained in the room at all times, but as the weeks passed they had grown complacent. Seeing no one around I steered Bintou to the garden wall. She made a basket with her hands and hoisted me up. My shoulder still twinged, and my illness had weakened me, but I got my stomach atop the wall they thought was high enough to pen me in. Of course it was not high enough.