Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (86 page)

He had selected the sturdiest of his jackets to labor in, and they did get worn. I
had worked hard to get all the mending done to my liking, sitting at an old secondhand
table at the window in the corner room Vai had picked out for the mansa’s study. At
this table in the evenings, while I sewed and Bee drew or practiced declaiming and
while visitors came and went, he wrote letters, planned lessons, practiced illusions,
and had me read out loud to us from a recently published monograph by Professora Alhamrai
regarding accounts of how shrinkage in the ice sheets correlated with the creep of
hardy trees into the Barrens.

Besides the table and chairs, necessary for when the mansa wished to meet people,
the spacious chamber was furnished with his clothes chests, the chest with my father’s
journals in it, a copper basin and pitcher on a stand, and the rolled-up mat on which
he and I slept. Because Vai wasn’t there, I heated the air with a little brazier.
The hypocaust beneath the planks was blocked by old rubble and not yet cleared out
because the dormitories had to be readied for winter first. Fortunately it had been
an unusually mild autumn, with not a single snowfall.

“Cat!” Bee hurried in without knocking, as she always did when she knew Vai was elsewhere.
“I just heard Andevai tell Serena that she must sell all his dash jackets. He wants
them out of the house today, so he may begin the new year knowing he has sacrificed
like everyone else.”

“Gracious Melqart! I knew we had run low on funds for the kitchen, but I didn’t know
things had gotten this desperate!” I leaped up and, with Bee’s help, hid my six favorite
of his jackets in another chest, under the fur pelt blanket, together with the beautiful
dressing robes.

Bee frowned and grabbed out of my hands the dash jacket sewn from the fabric of flowers
bursting into fireworks. “I swear an oath to you, Cat, I just made up the pattern,
I didn’t dream it!”

I snatched the jacket out of her hands and folded it in paper just as the red coals
in the brazier dulled to ash.

Magister Serena sailed into the room beside Vai’s more clipped, impatient stride.
Sadly they looked very handsome together, but I liked her enough that if someday such
a suitable match were to be made because I was no longer there, I could bear the thought
of it.

Vai smiled so sweetly at me that my heart melted all over again. “It
will take another month to get a substantial carpentry shop up and running,” he was
saying to one of the stewards, “and meanwhile we’ve had all these expenses to make
the House livable. Take both chests. Sell everything. We must all begin the new year
with an understanding of our changed circumstances. Don’t argue with me, Catherine!”

“I said nothing! But besides the clothing you must have to wear every day, Andevai,
I insist you set aside two elegant dash jackets for when you go to court or are invited
to some lordly mansion for dinner. You cannot attend such functions wearing the clothes
you work in. It would not reflect well on the House, would it?”

“Indeed it would not,” said Serena in the manner of a woman who has lived all her
life with the highest expectations of her rank and station. “The mansa of Four Moons
House cannot appear looking as if he works as a common laborer.”

Bee coughed. “Even if he does.”

“In another year or two, everything will be different,” I said placatingly. I had
cleverly placed the two dash jackets I knew he would choose at the top of the chest:
the fireworks and a damask whose orange and brown evoked colors popular among radical
laborers. His decision to sell his beloved clothes had so agitated him that I was
able to set those two and yet two more aside before the steward took away the chest.

Fortunately we then were called to the front of the house to eat our dinner of porridge,
turnips, and a stew of fish, onion, and tomato. Afterward we helped settle the children
and elders into the wagons that would convey everyone to troll town for the Hallows
Festival. The household was going to spend the night and day within the maze of troll
town, hidden from the Wild Hunt. The children were as excited as hornets.

Bee took my hands. “It seems unfair you cannot shelter in the troll maze as the rest
of us do. I don’t like to leave you alone.” She bent a too-wary gaze on me, forehead
all a-wrinkle. “Are you sure you’re well, Cat? I swear to you there is a tone in your
voice that makes me wonder if something is wrong.”

I kissed her. “I do get to fretting on Hallows’ Night about you, Bee. Even though
I know you are safe in the troll maze, I can’t help but worry. Don’t be concerned
for me. I promised Rory I would spend the night teaching him how to cheat at cards.”

“Are you sure, Cat? I just feel there’s something you’re not telling me.”

The Blessed Tanit was merciful. The wagons were ready to go, so I did not have to
answer. I kissed her again as my heart broke and my smile never wavered. Off they
went. I waved until I thought my arm would fall off.

“My sweet Catherine, you have avoided speaking to me all day.” He stepped up behind
me, slipping his arms around me.

“I thought you went with them!”

“Without a kiss? I think not. After all, love, I think perhaps I shall stay with you—”

“No!” My hard-won peace shattered. The boiling miasma of anger and terror and shame
erupted like an engine that, after steaming along in such a delicate balance for so
long, had at last overheated. “You have to go to troll town! He knows your blood!
He threatened you!”

“Love, love, that’s not what I meant. I will go to troll town and you will spend Hallows’
Night and Day at the law offices, as we agreed. I just thought how accustomed I am
becoming to falling asleep each night and waking up each morning with you in my arms.
It seems hard to face a night alone. So with everyone gone and nothing to do for the
rest of the afternoon…”

My pounding heart and ragged breathing slowly calmed. “Oh.”

He chased me with kisses all the way back to the mansa’s study.

Afterward we lay on the mat in the corner of the room in the corner of the quiet building,
and he kissed me so tenderly I almost wept.

“I know your secret, love,” he whispered against my ear.

My breath faltered. I pressed my face against his cheek, shuddering, for I had no
idea how I was going to get through this now.

His smile brushed like love against my skin. “How many of my dash jackets did you
hide?”

The air went out of me. I shut my eyes. “Only six besides the four I set aside already,”
I murmured hoarsely, as my mind whispered a prayer of thanks to the Blessed Tanit,
protector of women. “We’d better go, Vai.”

I dressed in the jacket I had made new out of what was torn. I buttoned on my spruce-green
skirt that was so good for striding in, laced up my sturdy boots that had carried
me through such a long journey,
and set on my head the jaunty Amazon’s shako I had picked up on the battlefield from
a fallen sister. I took only my locket and my sword. I twined my fingers intimately
through his and savored the pleasure of walking hand in hand with him through the
streets of Havery. A few people ran their final errands, but mostly the streets were
empty as all made ready to shut their doors and light their candles against Hallows’
Night.

“I do like it here,” I said. “Although Aunty Djeneba’s boardinghouse is still my favorite
place. You have some other scheme in mind, Vai. What is it?”

“We have two buildings,” he said, “so why not two schoolrooms? It seems wrong to me
that those poor young fire mages were killed precisely because James Drake offered
them a future they could not otherwise have. Cold mages were treated in the Antilles
something like fire mages are treated here, with scorn and suspicion. Surely mages
can work together as equals. What is to stop us from establishing an academy in which
we see what may come about if we act in concert rather than in antipathy?”

“People will fear the prospect of cold mages and fire mages acting in concert. They’ll
fear they will set themselves up as princes and lord it over all the people of the
land.”

“People do that anyway.”

“I did feel sorry for those young fire mages. Imagine thinking that the best choice
you have is to believe what James Drake is telling you! You’ll have to answer people’s
fears, though. Naturally some magisters will abuse the knowledge and power they gain.
I suppose that’s what you talked about with the blacksmith in that little village
when we were escaping down the river.”

He smiled to let me know that no word of the conversation he had had with the blacksmith
would pass his lips. “I also remember what the cacica told me. She said that the Taino
believe every person is born with a kernel of power. Some waken it, and some never
do. You were right to say that every child should have a chance to learn. Do you know,
love, Beatrice and I are talking all the time about the things we want to do. All
this work is going on for what she and I are hoping and planning for. But you never
talk about what you’re thinking about.
You must want something, Catherine. You can’t be happy merely to go along with our
schemes.”

“I do want something.” I smiled, for I loved him and Bee so much, and all the rest
of them, too. “Just don’t let Wasa get up to mischief. She has such a rascal spirit.
I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow night.”

It was almost twilight as we reached the gates of troll town. The mirrors and shards
of glass that surrounded the district flashed so agonizingly that I turned my back
before the pain ripped through me. I kissed him and sent him on his way. The drums
called him. They were already dancing, the strangest rhythm I had ever heard, for
it was shot through with the whistling and clicking of trolls. It was a new song being
born.

I smelled liquor, and the fresh fragrance of the traditional crossing buns filled
with plum jam or yam custard. A rollicking party was already under way, as the sailors
would have it.

Another sound rose out of the earth like mist and filtered down from the sky like
rain: the horn calling the Wild Hunt to ride.

I ran the short distance to the harbor office of Godwik and Clutch, for I had promised
Bee and Vai I would sit in a room with four mirrors until the danger had passed. Rory
sulked on the stoop, seated on the stairs with a morose eye turned on me as I came
up.

“I can’t believe you never told them,” he said. “Even Chartji left for troll town
without knowing. How could you, Cat? And making me go along with it, too. It’s not
right.”

“What good would it have done? You know them, Rory. They would have insisted on trying
to hide me, or fighting the Wild Hunt, or something equally foolish and pointless.
They would have spent the last two months so unhappy and grief-stricken and miserable.
It’s better this way.”

“I’m not sure you have the right to choose for them.”

The horn’s cry rose a second time, gaining strength.

I sat next to him, holding his hand. “It’s done now. Rory, this is your last chance
to cross back over in your own body, for once I am gone you will only cross over by
means of death. Do you want to return to the spirit world?”

He pressed his face into my shoulder, then shook himself, and
tugged on my braid, and pushed me as a brother teases his sister. “No. My home is
here now.”

The third call licked the air like fire and breathed all the way into my bones. I
heard the clip-clop of hooves and the scrape of wheels on cobblestones.

Rising, I pulled four letters from inside my jacket. “This is for Bee, this for Vai,
this for Doctor Asante, and the last is for Aunt Tilly and Uncle Jonatan. You know
what to say to Chartji. Now you’d better go before he sees you.”

His lips were curled into the beginnings of a snarl as he snatched the letters out
of my hand. “I’ll see you off. Someone ought to.”

Along the avenue, the lit Hallows’ candles set in windows went out one by one. The
coach rolled out of the gloom, the four horses gleaming like moonlight. The coachman
tipped his hat in greeting. The eru leaped down from the back of the coach. Clouds
scudded over the bright stars and thunder rumbled like the feet of the leashed Hunt
troubling the sky as it waited to be released.

I glanced at the heavens, and then at the door as the eru opened it and bumped down
the steps so I could climb in. She nodded, a spark of blue flashing on her forehead.

“I take it that a willing sacrifice need not be torn to pieces and have its head thrown
down a well,” I remarked as I entered the coach.

“No reason to do that unless they try to escape or fight back.” My sire sat at his
ease, one leg crossed elegantly. He looked past me at Rory, on the stoop. “Is that
your brother? I do lose track, for there are so many of you.”

The door closing cut off the view, but regardless my gaze had been caught by the large,
gleaming object on the bench next to my sire. I had last seen the bronze cauldron
in the temple of Carnonos watched over by my grandfather. The face of a horned man
shone in the polished surface.

“Not a very good likeness, if you ask me,” said my sire, noticing the direction of
my gaze. “Imagine! He had the effrontery to pour water into it and watch me every
Hallows’ Night. I put a stop to that!”

“Did you kill him?”

“Kill him? Of course not! On Hallows’ Night, the Hunt gathers up the spirits of those
fated to die in the coming year. We don’t kill them.
You mortals kill each other, or you die of other causes. I only kill one mortal a
year, and I do that because I am commanded to do so by my masters.”

Strangely, the moment the coach arrived, all my fear had melted away like ice under
heat. The coachman cracked his whip. I pulled the shutter back in time to wave at
Rory as we rolled away down the street.

“Then what did you do in the mortal world all these weeks?” I demanded.

“Your mother piqued my curiosity. Tara had all sorts of interesting stories. She told
me tales of what the mortal world is truly like, for of course I normally only catch
a glimpse of it when I pass through.” He ran a hand along the curve of the cauldron,
tracing the figure meant to be him. Like a cat, he rather relished himself. “So besides
wanting to get hold of this cauldron, I had a hankering, a curiosity if you will,
to make one grand tour.”