Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (6 page)

“Protect me? You betrayed me!”

“The cacica was required by law to exile you to Salt Island. What you don’t understand
is that Salt Island was the safest place for you at that time.”

“That you can say so with a straight face and such sincerity is almost admirable!
Everything I did here in Expedition was machinated by you.”

“Perhaps not quite everything. Things are not as simple as you believe they are. But
this is not the place to discuss them.”

We crossed under the shadow of the gate and into the old city with
its encircling stone walls, legacy of an earlier time. For generations, only families
with Council ties and wealth were allowed to own property inside the walls, while
newer districts were built outside the walls. When the Council still ruled, the gates
were locked at dusk and even in the daytime any person entering the old city could
be searched. Now the toughs swarmed right in after us, dogging our heels. Their presence
heartened me.

I addressed Prince Caonabo. “Your Highness, did you know that the general believes
I am to be the instrument of his death? That is why he conspired with your mother
the honored cacica to have me permanently quarantined on Salt Island.”

“I want the truth,” said Caonabo.

We halted at the base of the wide steps that fronted Council Hall. I caught sight
of Luce pushing through the crowd. Idiot girl! Rory gestured to warn her off.

The prince’s attendants unfolded the carriage steps.

Before any of us could alight from the carriage, a young man descended the steps of
Council Hall with a mocking grin that I wanted to punch right off his face. His red-gold
hair seemed to blaze like flame and his blue eyes to kindle with heat, or maybe those
were sparks from his fire magic. Really, the last person I wanted to see in a situation
like this was James Drake. I curled my left hand into a fist as he came up.

“Why, Cat, I’ve been waiting all night for you to show up.” As an afterthought, he
acknowledged the prince with a careless wave. “Your Highness, my understanding of
Taino law is that murderers are sentenced to labor in the cane fields for life. Or
they are assigned as a catch-fire to a fire mage. We all know she’s responsible for
the Exalted Queen’s death. Once she is convicted, I will be happy to take her off
Taino hands. I could use a remarkably pretty catch-fire.”

Naturally Prince Caonabo had too much dignity to respond to this rude outburst.

But I didn’t!

“James Drake! Why are you standing here waiting for me like a lovesick but rejected
suitor?”

The general pulled firmly on the rope to keep me on the seat. “Don’t be rash, Cat,”
he murmured. “This is not the place or time for a pissing match.”

“I wasn’t waiting because I want you!” Drake’s gaze flicked around the crowd: the
Taino soldiers, the crowd held at a prudent distance by wardens, Camjiata’s retinue
of veterans, and the guards stationed at the Council Hall doors. He pitched his voice
louder. “I hope you finally understand that I slept with you only to show the cold
mage he wasn’t so high and mighty as he thought he was. Because there’s really nothing
a man hates more than knowing his wife is a
whore
.”

The word stung. “You lied to me and got me drunk.”

“The ease with which I got you to have sex ought to give any man pause, knowing how
easy it was to tip rum down your throat and coax the clothes off your admittedly attractive
body. Still, it scarcely matters now. I’m a magnanimous man. I’d never turn away a
pretty girl like you if you offered to warm my bed in exchange for better treatment
after the standing inquiry condemns you as a murderer.”

My face was burning, and my heart was pounding. “Fortunately, I only had sexual congress
with you twice. That’s all I needed, to know I needn’t bother if I want to take any
pleasure from the act.”

People in the crowd sniggered.

The prince was literally blinking in astonishment, mouth agape.

Drake laughed derisively, but anyone could see he was furious. “You keep ruining the
impression of your pretty face with that crass mouth of yours. Now that you’re an
accused murderer, I’d be careful about antagonizing the only person in this city who
might be persuaded to make your life more pleasant than it will be in the cane fields.”

When I shifted forward with fist cocked, the general tugged on the rope to pull me
up short.

“I’d have to be dead before I’d let you touch me,” I said as the hemp scraped my neck.

“Strange you should phrase it in quite that way.” Drake smiled as might a man who
is waiting to see your reaction when you realize the trap has closed over your foot.

“James, that is really enough,” Camjiata said without raising his voice.

“I will tell you what is enough!
Enough
is that my noble kinfolk stole my birthright and inheritance, and I let them because
I was too young and powerless to fight. But I’m not powerless now. I want her as
my catch-fire, so I’ll cursed well get her as my catch-fire. I’ll have the last word
after all, won’t I?”

“You sound like a man who can’t let go of the knowledge that he lost and his rival
succeeded. As for you, Cat, this childish bickering insults His Noble Highness the
prince and indeed all of us forced to listen to it.”

Drake was livid. “I did not lose to him!”

Drake had the power to immolate me, but in doing so, he would burn himself up as well.
Unlike Prince Caonabo, he had no catch-fires to spill away the backlash of his magic.
I couldn’t help myself. I had to keep poking.

“Really? It’s never bothered you that you couldn’t spoil his love for me because he’s
a better man than you’ll ever be? That the moment I found him I never thought of you
again? That he’s killed your fire magic more than once and can do it again?”

Light pulsed as the forecourt’s gas lamps flared. A mist-like glamour writhed around
Drake’s body. “When next I meet Andevai Diarisso Haranwy, he will crawl at my feet
and admit I am stronger than he is. Fire always defeats ice in the end.”

Prince Caonabo spoke sharp words in Taino. Soldiers raised rifles. The murmuring crowd
pushed back, for no one wanted to stand close when a fire mage went rogue.

“I said
enough
!” snapped the general. “James, go back to the house.”

“Enough is right! I’ve had enough of this bitch!” His bright blue eyes really did
seem to blaze.

Heat flared in my chest, like fire kindling. I lunged, but the general yanked me down
so hard I hit my shoulder and banged a knee. In that eyeblink during which I was too
stunned to move, I saw what would happen by the stiffening of Rory’s shoulders, the
tremor in his eyes. Like me he thought with his body. He reacted to danger in an entirely
predictable way.

Rory
changed
as thoroughly as if the tide of a dragon’s dream washed over him to dissolve him
into his true form. His body melted and flowed, clothes ripping at the seams as his
shape shifted. A huge black saber-toothed cat leaped.

Reports rang out, guns going off, and the big cat stumbled and went down.

Heedless of claws and teeth, Luce threw her body across the thrashing cat. That was
the only reason the Taino soldiers did not finish him off.

I ripped the rope out of the general’s grasp and jumped from the carriage, brandishing
my cane as I ran to Rory’s side. “Call them off!”

The instant I pressed my cane against his head to make sure he didn’t bite anyone,
his body melted away to become a man lying naked and bleeding on the cobblestones.
He’d been hit in his right shoulder and left thigh. A liquid pulsed along his skin
like blood, although it was clear, not red. His eyes were open, questing back and
forth as if trying to fix on a moving target.

I grasped his hand.

“Is this death, Cat?” His voice was a whisper. “I feel my strength draining out of
me. Will my spirit pass back to my mother on the other side? Or will I just dissolve
into the wind?”

Soldiers blocked us in, facing the angry crowd. Caonabo came up with his catch-fires.

“Don’t touch him!” I snarled.

“Make your choice, Perdita. He may bleed out, or I can cauterize his wounds.”

His words punched the breath right out of my lungs. I shifted back to let him kneel.

“Rory, this fire mage will stop the bleeding. Allow him to touch you.”

Among Rory’s people—a pride of saber-toothed cats who roamed in the spirit world—a
male trusted his mother and aunts and sisters absolutely. He watched me with eyes
as amber as my own, for we had
inherited golden eyes and black hair from the creature who had sired us. Luce crept
to my side as the prince inspected the wounded leg. He wiped up a dab of the colorless
blood, sniffed it, and glanced at me but asked no questions. A man of his education
no doubt could draw his own conclusions. After assuring himself the shot had gone
clear through flesh, he placed a hand on either side of the thigh.

Caonabo’s two catch-fires lit as if they were gas lamps touched to flame.

I gasped. Luce’s grip on my arm tightened.

A skin of fire radiated from the prince’s hands. Four days ago, on Hallows’ Eve, standing
under the veil of my sire’s terrifying power, I had seen Prince Caonabo’s mother casting
off the backlash of her magic into a net of catch-fires. The lines drawn between the
cacica and her catch-fires had spanned the island of Kiskeya. She had created a woven
web through which the backwash of fire magic was drained out of her, through the catch-fires,
and into the seemingly bottomless well that was the spirit world. Shimmering threads
spun out of Caonabo and into his catch-fires. One catch-fire alone would have burst
into flame and died; two could split the backlash between them and pour it harmlessly
away.

Rory exhaled sharply. His eyes rolled up, and he passed out.

“Blessed Tanit!” I touched his throat.

His pulse stirred, weak but steady, as pale blood leaked along the curve of his neck.
Unthinkingly, I licked his blood off my fingers. It was so sweet, not harsh at all.

Prince Caonabo draped linen over Rory’s genitals to give him a scrap of dignity. An
elderly woman with feathers and beads woven into her white hair approached, carrying
a basket. She produced a pair of tweezers. He probed Rory’s shoulder and pulled out
a bloody bullet. He then pressed a hand over the wound and cauterized it as well.

Luce sat beside me, clutching my other arm. I scrubbed at my lips but the taste of
Rory’s blood lingered. I began to shake.

Caonabo rose. “Now we go to Council Hall.”

“Yee shall not go with them, Cat!” Luce cried. “They shan’t kill yee!”

“Hush, Luce.” I grabbed her. “Help Kofi bring our gear. Quickly! Now go!”

She kissed Rory’s cheek in a way that brought tears to my eyes. She was free to choose
what pleasure and affection she desired. If he died, who was I or anyone to say it
would have been better if they had not shared love?

Proudly she rose. At a gesture from Caonabo, the Taino soldiers parted to let her
leave. I yanked off the noose over my neck and only then did I think to look for James
Drake.

He had vanished. Caonabo was wiping his hands with a cloth, surrounded by concerned
attendants.

Camjiata took hold of my elbow. “Don’t be a fool, Cat. Drake has guessed the cold
mage is still alive, for it is obvious whenever you speak of him. Your plan on Hallows’
Night to kill me went badly wrong. Still, I hold no ill will against you. Our lives—yours
and mine—are bound by destiny. We are meant to be allies in the struggle for liberation.”

I shook off his grip. “I’m not putting that noose back on.”

Wardens carried Rory up the steps, through the entryway, and along a corridor. The
chamber we entered was furnished with tables and benches. The men settled Rory atop
one of the tables and set up guard at both sets of doors. I asked them to bring a
basin, water, and cloth, as well as a behique who was a healer.

One door let onto the main corridor. A set of glass-paned doors opened onto a large
central courtyard that was completely boxed in by the wings of the Council Hall complex.
In the courtyard a monument depicted a buffalo and lion, and a covered cistern provided
water. But the most striking object in the courtyard was a majestic ceiba tree, with
a wide canopy and ridge-like roots grown out from the trunk.

I paced, one hand on the ghost-sword the Taino believed held my mother’s spirit and
the other cupped around the locket I wore that contained a portrait of Daniel Hassi
Barahal, the man who had called himself my father even though he had not sired me.
The locket also held strands of hair from my husband. In the warmth of the locket
I felt the pulse of the thread that bound the heart of Andevai Diarisso Haranwy to
my own. Somewhere in the spirit world, Vai was alive.

A local healer arrived, an older woman with a fire mage’s crackling touch. After helping
me wash Rory she coaxed a sweet-smelling syrup down his throat to help him sleep.
After she left I sat beside him for
the longest time, combing out his hair with my fingers because I had no other way
to relieve the churn of my emotions. I’d been a fool to provoke Drake, but it had
felt so good! Yet he had wanted me to lose my temper, so I had played into his hands.
The fire I’d felt was my anger, not his magic. My rashness had hurt Rory, not me.

I rested my head on my arms on the table. Rory’s breathing whispered in my ear. I
had to make a plan, but the general’s words kept trampling through my thoughts: “
Our lives are bound by destiny.
” Chains draped me everywhere I looked.

My night’s broken sleep caught up to me. I dozed, then drifted awake to the sound
of voices outside. Groggily, I raised my head to look out into the courtyard. Judging
by the lack of shadows, it was almost midday. Rory still slept. I jumped to my feet
as the door to the main corridor opened.

A troll entered. Prince Caonabo called them
the feathered people
, which was a more respectful and accurate description than the Europan appellation
of
trolls
. What they called themselves involved whistling and song, an intricate language whose
nuances we rats—as trolls called humans—could not imitate except at the simplest level.