The coach jolted to a halt.

The mansa flung open the door, then sucked in a harsh breath. “We are too late.”

I scrambled out after him.

The turnpike from Audui to Cantiacorum was built atop the old Roman road in layers of crushed stone. South of the road a high stone wall demarcated the perimeter of the main estate of Four Moons House. A wide fan driveway fronted four arches, each ornamented with a phase of the moon. Between turnpike and wall lay a garden and the gatehouse supervised by the women magisters who tended the purification baths and gave or revoked permission for visitors to enter.

Ruin engulfed the gatehouse and the stables behind it. The carefully pruned hedges poured a greasy smoke into the air. Every tree was on fire. A dead woman sprawled on the steps, her face turned away from us and her bare back a grotesque fabric of savage burns.

When a magister powerful enough to rule as the head of a mage House is struck rigid with fury and he is standing not ten paces from you, you will be glad he is fighting on your side.

A powerfully cold wind rocked the coach. As the mansa started walking to the gatehouse, icy sleet began to fall. I drew my sword.

“How did they get past the gate?” I asked. “Is it not protected by a cold magic binding?”

“She who holds the keys to the gates must be alive to close or open them.” His right hand clenched as he looked toward the body on the steps. He let out the hard exhalation of a man determined to get on with the painful task that has to be done.

“Was she your kinswoman?” I asked, for she had hair the same color as his.

“My sister,” he said curtly. “Let Rory scout in his cat form. Go around to the back. I think they will not think to use a cat as a catch-fire. Go on.”

Rory shed his clothes and turned from man to cat. He nudged my hands, licked Bee, yawned assertively at the mansa, and loped off. We got in the carriage.

The shadow of the arch passed over us as we entered the estate.

“Here is a riddle,” the mansa said as we rolled down the wide avenue past black pine and a reed-choked pond. “Fire will burn as long as it has fuel and is not doused by water. If this man Drake uses Andevai as a catch-fire yet cannot fathom the well of Andevai’s power, what then?”

“I told Vai once that the potency of his cold magic is the inverse of his modesty,” I said.