“Cat!” Bee hurried in without knocking, as she always did when she knew Vai was elsewhere. “I just heard Andevai tell Serena that she must sell all his dash jackets. He wants them out of the house today, so he may begin the new year knowing he has sacrificed like everyone else.”

“Gracious Melqart! I knew we had run low on funds for the kitchen, but I didn’t know things had gotten this desperate!” I leaped up and, with Bee’s help, hid my six favorite of his jackets in another chest, under the fur pelt blanket, together with the beautiful dressing robes.

Bee frowned and grabbed out of my hands the dash jacket sewn from the fabric of flowers bursting into fireworks. “I swear an oath to you, Cat, I just made up the pattern, I didn’t dream it!”

I snatched the jacket out of her hands and folded it in paper just as the red coals in the brazier dulled to ash.

Magister Serena sailed into the room beside Vai’s more clipped, impatient stride. Sadly they looked very handsome together, but I liked her enough that if someday such a suitable match were to be made because I was no longer there, I could bear the thought of it.

Vai smiled so sweetly at me that my heart melted all over again. “It will take another month to get a substantial carpentry shop up and running,” he was saying to one of the stewards, “and meanwhile we’ve had all these expenses to make the House livable. Take both chests. Sell everything. We must all begin the new year with an understanding of our changed circumstances. Don’t argue with me, Catherine!”

“I said nothing! But besides the clothing you must have to wear every day, Andevai, I insist you set aside two elegant dash jackets for when you go to court or are invited to some lordly mansion for dinner. You cannot attend such functions wearing the clothes you work in. It would not reflect well on the House, would it?”

“Indeed it would not,” said Serena in the manner of a woman who has lived all her life with the highest expectations of her rank and station. “The mansa of Four Moons House cannot appear looking as if he works as a common laborer.”

Bee coughed. “Even if he does.”

“In another year or two, everything will be different,” I said placatingly. I had cleverly placed the two dash jackets I knew he would choose at the top of the chest: the fireworks and a damask whose orange and brown evoked colors popular among radical laborers. His decision to sell his beloved clothes had so agitated him that I was able to set those two and yet two more aside before the steward took away the chest.