Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (12 page)

“Where is the fire bane?” she asked. “I am surprised he is not with you. He possesses
something more valuable than power.”

“Good looks?”

She actually chuckled, and I was pleased I had made her laugh. “Young people are too
easily swayed by sex. Let them dance at
areitos
. It is best for elders to sort out marriages between clans. A shame he was wasted
on you.”

Her words pricked me like thorns. “Did he turn down an offer to become one of your
many husbands?”

Perhaps she did not hear the sarcasm in my tone, because her reply was as considered
as if mine had been a perfectly reasonable suggestion.
“He is an unusually powerful fire bane. For that reason a challenge I would have savored.”

“You told General Camjiata there was no fire bane you could not control.”

“Ah! You think I meant to enslave him. That is not what I meant. The people of Expedition
call such as me a fire mage.”

“Yes, I know that,” I retorted, for she had stung me by saying Vai was wasted on me.
“I’ve met other fire mages, like James Drake.”

“Fire mages are not like James Drake. He is a criminal, whatever you may have thought
of him.”

“I didn’t like him much, no matter what it may have seemed.”

“I could see the nature of your regret developing on Salt Island. You were foolish.”

“I was scared.”

“You were ignorant.”

“All right, then,” I replied grudgingly, because it seemed churlish to argue over
such a fine point with a woman who was dead because of a choice I had made. “I was
ignorant and scared and foolish. Maybe being all those things was also an excuse to
do something I was curious about but wasn’t honest enough to admit wanting.”

Birds fluttered in the trees, plumage flashing through patches of light. My feet crackled
on drying leaves. Rory’s breath warmed my back.

“All of those things,” she agreed, “but it appears you can learn. Yet you are not
my kinswoman to be offered to eat from the platter of my knowledge. However, I will
not allow you to think I meant to enslave the fire bane who is your husband. This
much I will tell you. When we weave, we are not weaving fire, we are weaving what
the Hellenes call energy and the Mande call
nyama
and others call the living force. One way it can manifest is as fire. Such dispersal
of living force will kill the fire weaver unless she has a way to cast it off.”

“That’s why you use fire banes as catch-fires. People sell them to you as slaves.”

If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was holding a severed head in my arms, I could
have believed myself talking in an ordinary manner with a woman who found me a little
tiresome.

“The fire banes who serve me are not slaves.”

“Prince Caonabo said murderers are sometimes punished by being forced to become catch-fires.
Anyway, why would anyone volunteer to do something so dangerous?”

“Fire banes can take into their bodies the energy I release. They throw it into Soraya,
which is the name we give to what you call the spirit world. Were I to pour the backlash
of my magic into a single fire bane, I should kill her. Even if she is only a funnel,
she cannot take all without some spilling into her flesh and burning her up. Over
many generations, my ancestors taught themselves how to split these wakes into more
than one thread and weave them through more than one fire bane. Thus, all are protected.”

“So the more powerful a fire mage, the more fire banes she needs? I saw the threads
of your magic that night on the ballcourt. You wove them through a dozen fire banes.
It seemed your net of magic spanned the entire island of Kiskeya and kept your dying
brother alive.”

“Interesting. You can see within both worlds, something few can do.”

“I never saw anything like what you could do. It was… impressive, and to be honest,
Your Highness, it was rather intimidating.”

This compliment she let pass without blinking. “It is not that other fire mages do
not have access to the lakes of energy which I can tap. Many stand at that shore but
cannot or will not wade into the deep. My particular skill lies in the quality and
precision of my weaving. There is no fire bane I cannot control, no matter how many
threads I weave into the whole. But let me assure you, your husband was at no risk
from me. I do not take what is not offered, and he did not offer himself. To be honest,
the man talked so much about you that at times he became tedious. I expect you would
have found his words gratifying.”

A strange, smoky feeling scorched my heart. It was not so easy to wave away responsibility
for her death when I was talking to her. It wasn’t that I regretted saving my life
or Vai’s life or Bee’s life. It was that I regretted the whole situation we had been
forced into. Regret has a way of creeping through flesh and mind the way blood returns
to frozen limbs and makes you hurt. If I’d known more or things had fallen out differently,
she might have become my ally.

“What the fire bane has is the same way of thinking I have. He is precise. Methodical.
Meticulous. Disciplined. I was astounded that he
had the means to douse my weaving. I should like to ask him how he did it. Where is
he? For I would have thought he would stay with you.”

Now that she and I were so closely bound, I saw no reason to hide the truth. “The
Master of the Wild Hunt stole him from me.”

“The maku spirit lord drank my blood, and then stole the young man. An intriguing
strategy. You must ask yourself what the spirit lord wants.”

We came to a wide clearing. At its center rose a ceiba tree whose steepled roots flowed
like ridges from a massive trunk. Baskets hung from the big thorns that adorned the
lower roots. Some were filled with rotting fruit or with animal flesh turned green
and putrid with decay. Others gave off a pleasing scent of herbs and flowers. One
was filled to the brim with fresh yam pudding that smelled so sweet and tasty that
I licked my lips and barely restrained myself from scooping with my fingers and eating
it all up. In one, a tiny little creature with a downy coat of feathers slept, curled
up all cozy for a long eternity’s nap.

I found an empty basket and pulled it off the tree. “With your permission, Your Highness,
I’d like to place your head in this basket so I have my hands free to climb.”

To my surprise she smiled, not in a friendly way but in the way a rich woman smiles
when a servant brings her just the gown she wanted in the morning. “It is a proper
place for me to rest.”

I wove grasses to make a nest that would keep her face angled up, for it seemed undignified
to smash her facedown into the basket. A leather cord laced closed the lips of the
basket. I fixed its strap around my body alongside the two flasks. Rory licked his
foreleg.

I put a hand on the coarse fur of his neck. “Change into your man form as soon as
you can. That’s how we’ll know we’ve crossed back into the mortal world.”

He looked up the thorn-ridden bole of the tree as if to ask me how we were meant to
climb, with the lowest branches out of my reach and him with no hands able to grasp.

“We came in through the roots,” I said, “so we go out through the roots.”

I smeared the last moist dregs of his drying blood onto my fingers, then pricked my
forearm on one of the thorns. Its sting burned into
my skin. As we crept into the dark hollows beneath the vast architecture of roots,
I wiped our blood on the bark.

Deep in the pit of the tree the shadows melted away into steps ascending. He went
first. It quickly grew so dark I had to keep a hand against the curving trunk. My
shoulder ached, less sore than before. The grim implication dogged my steps: I could
never attack my sire with cold steel if it meant I would harm not just myself but
Rory and every other servant of the Hunt.

“Pah!” said Rory, as if he were spitting something out.

“Rory!” My fingers spread across the skin of a muscular back.

“Ouch!” he added. “Don’t you think it’s strange that it hurts so much when no blade
touched us?”

I carefully felt along his shoulder. Where he had been shot a scar had already formed.
“At least we’re back in the mortal world.”

He hissed. “Shh! I smell people. I hear them, too.”

We crept through a maze of shallow, stagnant pools, scum slicking our feet. The air
was thick with a scent similar to the one I imagined the ancient wrappings of Kemet
mummies would have if you were so unfortunate as to be forced to unwrap one in order
to clothe yourself. I probed with a foot, my sandal tapping rock.

He whispered, “I hate it when I have no shoes and the ground pokes my feet.”

“I brought sandals. Put them on.”

“You’re such a good sister. Always thinking of my comfort!”

“My comfort, too. Put on these trousers and singlet first!”

“Clothes are so confining. I understand why you wear them when it’s cold, but I see
no need for them in a warm place like here.”

“In human society you are meant to clothe yourself except when you are in private.”

“Yes, it would be difficult to pet if one had to wear clothes!” He pressed a hand
to my cheek. “Your skin is hot, Cat. Are you feverish?”

“It’s called blushing. Is the wound on your leg bleeding? No? Then put your trousers
on!”

When he had dressed, we moved on. A salt-sea smell tinged with smoke tickled my nose.
Light filtered in, too constant to be torchlight and too bright to be candles. We
groped along a rock wall on which figures had been drawn in poses of dancing and eating
as at one of the
festivals the locals called an areito. It was at such a festival with its dancing
and food that Vai had won my heart. I could almost hear the ghost of that night’s
music in my ears, until I realized I was hearing singing, drums, and the rattle of
shaken gourds. A rocky incline dusted with drifting sand gave way to a cave mouth.
Its ledge overlooked a massive hollow fitted out with gaslights. From the height of
the ledge we gazed across the hollow and through a monumental arch built from massive
beams of wood. Through the archway could be seen a magnificent city whose major thoroughfares
were illuminated by gas lamps. Right in the center of the city lay the straight lines
of a ballcourt and next to it a plaza with high-roofed buildings like administrative
offices and palaces. Beyond the city, a full moon glimmered over a flat sea. Masts
filled a harbor, and bloated shadows moored to short towers marked airships. The distant
jetty was strung with globes, their golden light awash over the dark waters. The entire
city seemed to be out celebrating.

It was the view Bee had drawn in her sketchbook, only without us in it.

In the hollow below, an areito let loose in full rhythm. People stamped out a dance
in lines of men or of women. Revelers stared as we descended into the hollow. A few
offered drink or food as if to see if we were solid. I tested several smiles, trying
to seem friendly and harmless. We made our way around the edge beneath the gleam of
gas lamps. The hollow had once been a cavern, but its roof had long since collapsed.
We struggled through the crowded celebration. I grabbed hold of Rory’s jacket and
tugged him to a halt as I searched for a route up the other side.

Away across the crowd, I saw the man wearing a terribly dashing dash jacket in a gold-and-orange
brick pattern. He smiled in that aggravating way that made my heart melt, the way
he’d smiled when he had said, “
How could you not want me, Catherine?
”

My limbs turned to stone as he arrowed toward me. Even when a surge of laughing people
cut off my view, freeing me from the chain that linked our gazes, I could not move.

Then there he was, standing right in front of me, looking exactly like Vai except
that he was not wearing shoes or even sandals. The bare feet were a dead giveaway.

“Who are you?” I demanded. “What do you want?”

“Rory, is that our sire?” I asked.

“Our sire?” Rory took several deep sniffs. All I could smell was the bloom of ripe
guava and a whiff of tobacco. “No. That’s not his smell. It couldn’t be him anyway.
Our sire can only cross into the mortal world on Hallows’ Night.”

The opia’s lips quirked up. “Yee’s caused a deal of trouble for me, gal. I know what
yee carry in that basket. I shall make it worth yee while if yee don’ deliver the
head of the cacica to the Honored Caonabo, he who is now cacique over all the Taino
people.”

“Caonabo is cacique already?”

“This is his coronation areito, here and everywhere in Taino land.”

“But I promised I would deliver her head to her son.”

“So yee shall. Yee shall deliver her head to Haübey, not to Caonabo.”

“Haübey was exiled after he was bitten by a salter. He can never return to the Taino
kingdom.”

“Yee don’ know everything.” He slid an arm around my waist and pulled me close. Cursedly,
he felt exactly like Vai as he murmured in my ear, “Nevertheless, I’s willing to make
yee a deal. For ’tis certain Haübey is gone over the ocean where I cannot reach him.”

“Cat,” said Rory.

“How long ago did the general and his army leave?” I cried with alarm. “How long have
we been in the spirit world?”

“The reckoning of days and months mean little enough to me.”

“Cat,” said Rory.

I pulled out of the opia’s appealing grasp. “I promised to deliver the
head. Then my cousin can help me get back to Expedition. I have to get a ship to Europa.”

“What if I could get yee to Europa? Right now? If yee do as I ask and promise to take
the cacica’s head to Haübey?”

“Cat!”

I was hallucinating Bee’s voice.

Rory tugged on my arm. I looked round to see Bee plowing through the crowd. She was
hauling the smaller of Vai’s wooden travel chests with the aid of a grinning Taino
man who was wearing an embroidered loincloth, bronze anklets and bracelets, a beaded
necklace, a feathered cap, and nothing more. His friends followed along, dressed in
a similarly appealing style. Like me, Bee wore an amply cut Europan skirt, good for
striding, but a sleeveless bodice in the Expedition manner because, although it was
night, it was plenty warm. She, Rory, and I stuck out like the maku we were, but no
one seemed to mind.