Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (67 page)

Five gals peeled off from the column to gather beside Luce. They were strapping young
women who looked as if they’d gotten bored of working in the factories or out on the
farm and fancied adventure over marriage. I dug Rory’s clothes out of my satchel and
shook out a pagne as a screen. Behind the cotton cloth he changed and dressed, then
stepped into view to the exclamations of the gals. He offered them his most promiscuous
smiles.

“Rory, you can’t just smile like that at strangers,” I muttered.

“Why not? I saw you wink at that bell-playing woman!”

With a brilliant grin Luce took hold of his hand. “Here is Cat and Rory, the ones
I have spoken so much of. We’s to escort them to headquarters!”

She told us their names. The way the gals enthusiastically greeted us recalled me
to the free and easy manners of Expedition gals, and how much I had enjoyed their
friendship. We left the dead behind as crows descended to investigate.

Luce set a brisk pace as we walked along the verge, heading south. She had filled
out, as tall as me now and with broader shoulders. With her black hair cropped short
and a scar across one cheek, she had a piratical look that would have been at home
on the airship with Nick Blade and the Hyena Queen. Carrying rifle and kit, she looked
every bit the soldier, but I could not shake the girl from my mind. I could not stop
myself from scolding her.

“How could you break your family’s heart by running off?”

“Yee reckon yee get to have a heartsome beloved and run off to rescue him while the
rest of us shall bide at home waiting? And meanwhile
yee tell yee brother not to touch me so he say no to me while he go off with other
folk? I’s of age! Free to act as I wish! Especially after yee just left like that,
just vanished, telling not a single person goodbye!”

“The opia
stole
Rory! I had to go after him!”

“’Tis always yee, Cat.” She punched me so hard on the shoulder I staggered sideways
as her comrades laughed. I was startled by how strong she was. “Yee punch sharks.
Yee escape from Salt Island. Yee have a fine man to court yee despite the two-faced
way yee treated him. Yee attract the notice of the commissioner of the wardens and
of the infamous general, too! Young men came to drink at the boardinghouse because
yee was waiting tables and they all loved to flirt with yee, and women likewise, not
that yee ever noticed Diantha’s attentions in that way, did yee? Always, ’tis about
yee! What was left for the likes of me? Yee know I love yee, Cat. Yee know I love
me family. But I reckon I wasn’ about to spend the rest of me life in me grandma’s
boardinghouse! Now I shall not!”

“Is this the sweetheart yee left behind?” asked one of the gals. To my surprise she
indicated me.

“I’m Luce’s sweetheart,” cried Rory indignantly. “Aren’t I, Luce?”

Luce sighed as at an old jest. Her comrades laughed.

“Rory,” I said, “I believe that when a woman signs up to join the Amazon Corps, she
swears an oath to engage in no sexual congress with a man for the term of her service.”

“Oh!” He favored Luce with a sad smile that made her laugh with her old girlish delight,
but a bolder, wiser look creased her smile now. “Well, then, Cat, that means you can’t
join the general’s army, can you? For I’m certain you are not willing to give up—”

“Yes, yes, Rory. That’s enough of that.”

“If yee got Vai back, where is he, Cat?”

“He’s being held prisoner by his mage House.” I hated to lie to her, but I could not
risk the truth. “That’s why we’ve come. But tell me your story, Luce!”

The chance to tell her tale distracted her from my own. This grand and horrifying
narrative beguiled me for several hours as we walked south. Files of infantry passed
us in good order, mixed with cannon pulled by horses and the occasional baggage wagon.
A column of
Expeditioners called out to the gals in a familiar way. A company of Taino soldiers
marched in silence. Iberians strode along with a fierce demeanor, armed with rifles
and their famous falcatas, the short swords that had driven back the first Roman invasion
of Iberia two thousand years ago. Many tipped their caps to Luce and her cadre as
a sign of respect.

We passed a lively column of pale Celts with lime-whitened short-spiked hair and their
cousins and brothers of mixed and Mande blood wearing their dark hair in the same
spiky style. “Here’s to the heroines of Burdigala!” they called. “The drink’s on us
next time! And Rufus here wants his balls back!”

“We ate them already!” retorted one of the gals, to general shouts of laughter.

“Cooked or raw?” asked Rory, and they hooted and whistled in approval.

“What happened at Burdigala?” I asked.

“I must tell the tale in the order it happened so yee can comprehend the whole!” Luce
said with a laugh, enjoying my rapt attention.

At a humble crossroads we turned east. Luce was finally telling me about the tumultuous
siege of Burdigala. She had just related the thrilling episode of how Elephant Barca’s
skirmishers had arrived in the dark of night to take the Coalition from the rear—a
source of crude joking among the gals that even made Rory blush—when we came into
sight of the town of Stampae.

The town crawled with soldiers. What a flood of cannon and rifles and troops! A large
encampment was coming down even though it was very late afternoon. Out beyond the
camp lay freshly dug graves. Wounded soldiers leaning on crutches or with bandages
wrapped around chests or heads waited stoically outside canvas tents marked with a
caduceus.

Luce led us past an inn crowded with soldiers taking a drink or a piss, for the smell
of urine penetrated everywhere. The town market hall had a marble façade and Roman-style
pillars, while a low wall set off a dusty area where an outdoor market could be held.
This expanse boiled with young women at exercises conducted with sticks the length
of rifles.

Local men loitered at the fence. No one uttered a single teasing
word or taunting call, although now and again a comment brushed up between them.

“Look at those shoulders! She must have wrestled bulls back on the farm!”

“Everyone knows women are a cursed sight meaner than men. I heard at Lemovis they
plowed down a division of the crack Arverni militia, just crushed ’em. Cut their balls
right off.”

“We go around back,” said Luce, rolling her eyes as her cadre hurried ahead. “If I
shall have to hear one more idiot babbling about Amazons cutting off men’s balls,
I shall cut off his eggs just to prove ’tis no empty tale! I have heard that story
a hundred times since I joined up! I wish they would just leave it be.”

“It sounds very painful,” observed Rory.

“’Tis not
true
!” she cried.

He frowned. “You don’t love me like you used to, Luce. You used to purr at the sight
of me.”

She patted his arm. “That was a long time ago, Rory, and don’ think yee kisses weren’t
delicious. But I’ve a sweetheart now, and anyway no time for men.”

“How can anyone have no time for men?” he muttered, looking a bit peevish.

“Where is the general?” I asked.

“Why, this is the headquarters. The Amazon Corps is seconded to the command division.
We’s not regular army like the rest.”

A woman dressed in the Amazon uniform and armed with sword and pistol emerged from
the market hall with a brisk gait I recognized. Captain Tira changed course to intercept
us. Luce and her cadre halted to salute.

“Washed up, did yee?” Captain Tira looked me up and down. She was a maku even by Europan
standards, with sun-worn skin, hair as black as my own, and eyes that spoke of ancestors
in far Cathay where, legend had it, a dragon emperor ruled. Maybe the stories were
true! Whatever her origins, she was Camjiata’s loyal soldier through and through.
“Is the gal brought as a prisoner, or of she own wish?” she said to Luce.

“Of my own wish,” I said.

“Yee shall come with me, then. Trooper, yee lot shall return to yee company. Dismissed.”

Just like that, we were parted. Under Captain Tira’s stern eye we dared not even embrace.

“Take care, Luce,” I said, hoping my look spoke my heart.

“I shall find yee,” she promised. They loped off, settling into a brisk jog.

The captain led us into the long, lofty market hall. By a tiled stove, the general
sat in a chair receiving reports and visitors. Five clerks occupied a table, writing
busily without looking up. A striking group they were: a Taino woman, a feathered
person, an old Iberian man, a thin Celt, and a curly-haired Kena’ani scribe.

Seeing me, Camjiata rose in surprise. “Catherine Bell Barahal! One account had you
eaten by wolves, while another said the opia had stolen you. Yet here you are, looking
hale and hearty and in company with your mysterious brother. I am glad of it, for
I would be sorry to know you were gone. But I see no cold mage, as I had thought to
do. Nor is Beatrice with you.” He examined me with a compassionate gaze that made
me want to punch him. “Be sure you will always have a home with me if you are lost
or bereaved or abandoned.”

I had never met a man who could speak in such sentimental platitudes and yet have
it sound so genuine and unforced. It was one of the most irritating things about him.
Indeed, it irritated me so much that all the clever, cunning wiles I’d meant to weave
fled straight out of my mind. “Do you have my father’s journals? You stole them, just
as you stole Bee’s sketchbook!”

He dropped his gaze to the floor with a smile that made me instantly suspicious, as
if he guessed the entirety of my plan. Then he looked up. “Have you come to demand
them back? Or were you captured by my soldiers? What scheme have you in mind?”

“My husband has been taken prisoner by his own mage House. Rory and I escaped and
have fled in the hope you will take us in and help us rescue him.” As I spoke the
words, I felt how false they sounded.

“What of Beatrice?”

“Her honeyed voice is raised on your behalf among the radicals.”

“Raised on my behalf, but not in my presence. You would think she no longer trusts
me with her dreams.”

Never let it be said I could not think on my feet! “Her words prepare the way for
you better than dreams!”

“It’s true the Gallic towns and villages have proven more amenable than I had dared
hope. I am sure it is due to the efforts of my radical allies agitating among the
farmers and craftsmen and householders who will benefit the most once my legal code
is proclaimed.”

“To say laws are in place is not the same as having them enforced.”

“Indeed, and thus our current conflict, no?” His Iberian lilt had gotten stronger.

“And another thing,” I added. “Is Prince Haübey with you?”

“I would prefer to continue this conversation in a more private setting before—too
late.”

A frown darkened his face so quickly that as it smoothed into a neutral expression
I wondered if I had mistaken it. I turned. Rory put a hand on my arm to hold me back
as James Drake sauntered up the center of the hall.

“I couldn’t believe what I just heard, and yet it is true. Cat Barahal! Washed up
where she’s not wanted.”

He had a lovely woman on his arm. She wore a lemon-yellow gown trimmed with ribbons
that looked fabulously well on her voluptuous figure, for she had the same sort of
curves as Bee. Six soldiers wearing uniforms marked with the ship’s mast of Armorica
attended as an honor guard. Behind them swaggered four youths garbed in red dash jackets
meant to look bold; two were girls, wearing skirts, reminding me of the girl who had
died in the forest. Behind them shuffled six men weighted with heavy iron cuffs; they
were uniformed in ugly jackets tailored out of a ghastly red-and-white fabric so ill
cut that they made Drake look like quite the most fashionable man in the hall. Which
of course he was, because he was wearing one of Vai’s dash jackets, a gold damask
that shone like flame. It was one of the garments Bee had been forced to leave behind
when she’d fled the general’s fleet in Sharagua.

I only realized I had taken a step forward when Rory yanked me to a halt.

In a murmur Camjiata said, “Not for that, Cat. Choose your blows wisely.”

“That’s an exceptionally lovely dash jacket, Drake,” I said. “Too bad it doesn’t fit
you.”

“This isn’t the last thing that belongs to him I’ll soon be slipping inside.” He released
his inamorata without a backward glance and had the gall to pace once around us, looking
me over as if I were livestock for sale in the market. “You didn’t appear at the standing
inquiry in Expedition. So you were found guilty in absentia of the murder of the honored
cacica. The sentence for murderers is life servitude in the cane fields or as a catch-fire.”

A glamour of light pulsed as the unlit lamps along the walls flared. Folk murmured
in awe and fear. They would have been even more frightened had they seen what I could
see. A mist-like glamour writhed around Drake’s body. Wisps like threads of spun light
poured off him and created a lacework pattern through the lofty hall and into the
six iron-cuffed men. One flinched, one cowered, one wept, and three stared with dull
resentment. They all glowed as they channeled the backlash of his fire magic and poured
it out of harm’s way. In truth it was impressive to see how skillfully Drake parted
the flood of his magic into six smaller streams, no one of them strong enough to overwhelm
any single man.

My skin prickled. My heart beat faster.

“That’s right, Cat,” said Drake. “I now weave multiple fire banes as catch-fires.
But I can still use you in the old-fashioned way, burning you up like kindling. No
one will stop me because you’re a condemned murderer. It would as easy for me to kill
you as to take in my next breath.”

The whisper of their magic stirred my blade. “I’m not unarmed.”

Instead of stepping back prudently, he leaned closer. His unruly hair brushed my cheek
as he whispered in my ear. “Neither am I. I’m training up an entire company of fire
mages loyal only to me. Think of that before you taunt me. But if you kiss me, I’ll
consider allowing you to become my concubine instead of my catch-fire.”