“A clever move on his part,” remarked the mansa as he paced the scorched grounds of a third staging post, later that afternoon. “All the local militias are in disarray from the campaign. Had we not this magical conveyance, his actions would have slowed down our pursuit so greatly there would have been no chance we could catch him.”

Seeing my distress, Bee ushered us back into the coach. As we headed into the gathering dusk, she talked to fill the silence. “Can the blacksmiths’ guild not be recruited to help us?”

“What can they do?” he retorted. “They have devised their own means to control and channel the destructive chain of fire magic, but they cannot combat this. I am come to appreciate General Camjiata’s devious mind. He raises a fire mage who can win his battles and discards him when he becomes too powerful, yet does so at no risk to himself. From what you’ve explained, Catherine, it seems to me the general pushed the man into embracing the worst of his anger without the man realizing he had been manipulated.”

“Yes, it does seem that way.”

I stared out the window at a rabbit racing across a meadow in fright for its life. A hawk stooped. With a gasp, I leaned to watch. In a flash of feathers the hawk thumped. Then we rocked around a corner and I never saw whether the hawk had caught its prey or the rabbit had escaped.

“Of course you would recognize such a stratagem, since you possess the same sort of devious mind,” said Bee. “For example, now we are thrown together as kinsfolk, allow me to commend you on your strikingly cunning ploy to elevate Andevai as your heir and thus bind him more tightly to the mage House. Considering everything I was told you said about him before, I would never have guessed you would do that.”

He brushed a finger along the unscarred side of his chin as if deciding whether to dignify her barbed teasing with a reply. “It was no ploy. The young man is the most rare and potent cold mage of his generation in Four Moons House and possibly in all of Europa, although I must request you never repeat to him that I said so.”

“Have no fear,” Bee reassured him. “I, too, would prefer to avoid any chance his already bloated conceit might yet expand, difficult as it is to imagine it could get any vaster.”

The mansa’s smile flashed so unexpectedly that for an instant I wondered if a different person had fallen into the coach with us. “The confluence of such powerful cold magic with the sort of unusually good looks that bring so much consequential attention to his person has certainly fed a temperament already prone to vanity and pride.”

Bee patted my hand, trying to get me to smile. “You see, Cat, this is where Andevai gets his pedantic way of speaking.”

I sighed.