I eased the dressing robe off his shoulders. “I shall need more of that ambrosial sweetened and whipped cream when I am done with you.”

“Not yet, not yet,” he whispered in a hoarse murmur that made me wild.

All entangled and kissing him, I nudged him toward the bed.

“Announce me.”

The mansa’s voice fell like the stroke of a sword. Vai would have leaped back as if cut from me, but modesty made me cling to him. The mansa had in fact already announced himself, standing on the upper step with the entry curtain held away in his left hand and his thick eyebrows raised interrogatively. I thought he looked amused or, perhaps, relieved that the young man he had chosen as his heir was capable of the deed. He stepped back and dropped the curtain to give us privacy in which to straighten and retie our dressing robes.

“Thank Tanit we hadn’t made it to the bed,” I muttered, my face aflame.

But after recovering from his surprise, Vai did not look displeased. He lifted the curtain. “Mansa, please. Come in.” To a servant beyond, he said, “Bring more coffee and a fresh cup. Another bowl of berries and cream.”

The mansa sat in my chair and Vai opposite him, leaving me to accept the new pot and cup when it was expeditiously brought. I squelched an urge to pour coffee over both their heads and instead poured for them and afterward for myself. I heaped my cup with two spoonfuls of the cream, after which I retreated to stand off to the side.

“There is news,” said the mansa, careful not to look at me, for although I was covered from neck to ankles in the dressing robe, his presence in the gazebo felt strangely intimate. “Camjiata’s skirmishers have been sighted in Cena. He may intend an assault on Lutetia.”

“He proclaimed his legal code here in Lutetia in the year 1818,” I said. “Twenty-two years ago. That must mean something to him.”

The mansa sipped thoughtfully at his coffee. “Indeed. Handbills and broadsheets and seditious pamphlets circulate in the streets. They claim to be the text of a declaration of rights. By this means he has deluded gullible villagers and illiterate laborers with an idea they will be better off with his imperial rule than with the rule of local lords and mages who know their people and are concerned for the health of their lands. Can you imagine?” He paused to give Vai a long look.

Vai would never stare down an elder, but his respectful manner was not meek. “I would not call them gullible, Mansa.”