More than a hundred people had taken shelter in the garden, many of them children, women, and elders. The djeli Bakary leaned on his cane, so stiff with age he had not been able to ride with the mansa to war. I waved Bee over to help him. The old steadied the young. The young assisted the old. I sought out Vai’s mother and sisters, almost lost in the midst of the crowd as the flight began. Vai’s mother was wracked by coughing.

“Bintou, help your mother. Wasa, that’s a very fine new crutch you have. Don’t let go of it. Yes, you can take the puppy, too. I’m going to carry you.” Wasa’s weight felt like nothing when I hoisted her into my arms. Fortunately the puppy was frightened enough that it did no more than whimper in her thin arms.

Other people led the way out. Bee stayed with Bakary and the slow-moving elders at the rear. The building creaked and moaned around us. Ice bloomed in feathered ridges. Thin blades of cloudy ice popped out from the walls.

“Move! Move!”

A booming roar shuddered through the fragile chambers as part of the building collapsed. The ice kept spreading. Glittering spires grew up from the floors. Clear branches snaked down from the broken ceilings.

We staggered out onto the portico and its terraced steps. The cold mages were beginning to shake themselves, to rise, to drag their unconscious and injured brethren away from the building. I helped Vai’s mother and his sisters down to the gravel driveway, then ran back up the steps.

Serena lay in a pool of blood, doubled over in pain.

“Blessed Tanit!” I cried. “What injury have you taken? Let me help you away.”

She grasped my hand with more strength than I would have expected. “No injury of the kind you mean. I fear this is a miscarriage. Where is my husband?”

The mansa was alive but unconscious and unresponsive. Blistering burns had bubbled up on his neck and arms. Ash rimed his mouth, a smear of blood caught at the corner. Serena knelt beside him and, with the tone of a woman used to command, called others to her.

Four Moons House was being inexorably trapped in ice. Amid the clamor of voices, an eerie grinding noise drowned all until the speech of humans was nothing more than the restless tickling of insects. Thick pillars of blue-green ice shot up alongside the doors, spearing all the way to the high roof above. Ice encased the great edifice, every span of it locked away in a transparent cage.

Within the disorganized spill of people along the lower terrace, I found Vai sprawled on the steps. It looked as if he had woken enough to start pulling himself away and then collapsed again. His eyes fluttered. A word formed on his lips but he hadn’t the strength to get it out.