Pressing my hands to my forehead, I breathed a soundless prayer to the blessed Tanit. “Blessed lady, let the righteous triumph and the wicked despair. Most of all, holy one, let me save his life and the lives of all those who do not deserve to suffer death at the hands of a man like James Drake. Not that any person deserves to suffer death in that wise, but you know what I mean.”

I sat with face buried in hands for a long time, in a daze of such weary anxiety that I felt rocked as in a boat crossing a rushing river. When my sire had stolen Andevai on Hallows’ Night, I had been more angry than fearful. My sire was not a creature of emotion. He was cruel in the way storms were cruel: They cared nothing for your vulnerability as they crashed through your life. If he wanted something, he had a reason for it that could be addressed.

But Drake’s reasons had melted in the fire of his resentment, the sense that what he had lost could be regained only through the pain and humiliation of others. He had turned in on himself until he had become a mirror that did nothing but reflect his grievances back into his own face. That made him dangerous, but it also made him vulnerable.

The coach slowed to a halt. The door was opened from the outside, and the eru set down the steps so we could get out. Gritty ash burned in my eyes. Sobs and screams billowed with the smoke. We had come to a stop in a hamlet of inns, stables, shelters, and outbuildings. Every building in the village as well as two flat-bottomed ferries were on fire, a roaring blaze whose heat blasted our faces.

“Get down,” said the mansa.

Bee had her head out of the coach, staring at local men who were beating at a fire as they tried to reach someone inside a house. They were so frantic they did not notice us.

“Sit down, Bee!” I dropped to my knees on the road.

The hammer of cold magic snuffed out every fire within sight, the flames sucked right out. The furnace heat turned in an eyeblink to the crackling of timbers buckling and the groan and smash of a wall toppling over. Every person in sight now lay on the ground. All except the eru. The mansa stared disbelievingly at the tall footman in his impeccable dress who appeared untouched by the impressive display. The eru offered a mocking servant’s bow that made the mansa frown.

“Dearest,” said Bee, clambering down, “are my eyes deceiving me, or have we crossed both rivers?”

Amazingly, we had reached the western bank.

Bee glanced up at the coachman, who sat upright and unruffled on the driver’s bench. “And yet why not? For it seems your goblin makers have their own secret magic.”