Weary but unbowed, Vai frowned. “He yet lives. I am not mansa.”

“The hunter has already crept into the shadows of the House. Death stalks that place.”

I looked wildly around the open courtyard of the family’s compound, but I did not see my sire in light or in shadow. Then a crow fluttered down to perch on the roof.

“Do you intend to stay here?” Duvai held a stout staff as tall as his head, tipped with a fringe of feathers and beads. He shifted it now from his left hand to his right, as if making ready for an attack. “You and your people are eating out our winter stores. You claim you mean to change things, but you’re doing exactly what the mages have always done, living off our flesh.”

Vai was tired enough that he allowed himself to lean on me as he met his brother’s gaze without anger or malice. “What I mean to do, you will know when the mansa dies and I am free to act. But you may be sure that I intend to release every village from the clientage that binds it to Four Moons House. Until then, I ask you to remember what our father taught us.”

“Our father told us that a hero is loved only on troubled days. Otherwise he causes too much disruption for the village to find him a comfortable presence. Is that what you meant to remind me of, Andevai?”

“Are those words meant for me because you think I am the hero? Because if they are, then you have directed them at the wrong person. Although I do not think of Catherine as disruptive. Just precipitous sometimes.”

With a sigh Duvai handed his staff to his younger brother. No doubt Duvai felt it beneath the dignity of any man to have to lean on a woman, much less thank her for salvaging what she could out of a desperate situation.

Vai took the staff as if it were an offering of peace. “Brother, surely you do not forget that when I was a boy, I did nothing but follow after you.”

“You were a terrible nuisance, always underfoot,” agreed Duvai gravely.

I looked from one to the other, seeing the stamp of the father I had never met in their features but also in the way they both carried themselves as men. Strength can be used to harm, but it can also be used to build and to sustain. No doubt they had clashed in later years because they were so much alike. One had always known the place he meant to grow into. The other had hoped to follow, only to find himself completely uprooted and forced into unfriendly earth.

Vai rubbed the wood, approving the polish of the grain. “Father taught us that a man knows he is a man by the good he brings to his village.”