“That’s your plan? Do you think it will be easy to convince him to leave now that he’s heir? With his monumental vanity, he’ll believe he can change things from within. That the mansa made sure to bestow such an honor on Andevai’s mother makes me respect the man’s devious mind. Has Andevai been unkind to you? Is that what drove you away?”

“Not at all. If anything, he has been overly kind.”

“That being so, you might have chosen a more prudent and less dramatic and public way of expressing your discontent.”

“I did express my discontent! He said that my being there made ‘all the difference,’ to him.”

She laughed. “I can see how that would have rubbed you the wrong way. Yet even you must see Andevai will take this defection very ill.”

“I just had to get out of there.”

Rory slipped onto the bench beside me, winkled the spoon from my hand, and started eating my porridge.

“Are you really willing to kill James Drake?” Bee asked.

“You have no idea how willing I am.” My fingers clutched my cane so tightly that, had it been ordinary wood, I would have crushed it into splinters. “He means to kill Vai regardless, so I must do it to protect Vai. Even if I cannot live in the mage House and he cannot leave it and so we must be parted… at least I will know he lives and thrives in his chosen place.”

Bee clapped one hand to her chest and the other, palm out, to her brow. “How affecting these maudlin ramblings are! I shall expire in their wake!”

Rory pressed a hand to my forehead. “Are you feverish, Cat?”

“It’s not amusing!”

“What isn’t amusing?” Brennan strolled up, looking fresh and handsome without a trace of hangover-sodden eyes. No wonder he was famous for his ability to hold his liquor! He glanced at Bee, then at Kehinde coming down the stairs from the upper floor with spectacles in hand as she squinted shortsightedly across the courtyard. After ordering porridge and ale, he sat next to me. Chartji and Caith joined us at the table. We exchanged morning greetings. Caith began picking through a heaping platter of nuts and dried berries, looking for the hazelnuts.

“Chartji, I’m wondering if you could see that this letter is dispatched to Expedition.” I handed her the letter I had written to Kofi. “I know I have not a sestertius to my name, and that we must already be deeply in debt to the clutch—”

“I have an idea about that,” said Bee.

“—but if you can send it with your regular dispatches to the Expedition office of Godwik and Clutch, they will know how to get it to this person, because he knows your aunt and uncle.”