Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

by Kate Elliott

  “I’ll keep you as warm as you could ever hope to be,” he said with a provocative look. “But not right now, love. I’m sure this headache comes from thirst and hunger. You must be starving.”

  I tested the puffy, tender bruise where I’d bitten myself. “I’m so worried about Bee and Rory. We’ve got to get to Havery. The family won’t protect her from mages, princes, or generals, not if they’re offered an advantageous agreement in exchange for her person. Bee thinks she can scold powerful men into obeying her but that only makes them want her more… Noble Ba’al, Vai!”

  I told him about Amadou Barry.

  He whistled, shivering as he dressed in the damp clothes. “Washed away in the tide! What a fool! Anyway, we can’t go on until we’ve dried our clothes. You must light a fire. I’m going to see what’s in the shed. Maybe there’s something I can use to snare a rabbit or catch a fish.”

  “You could stun some poor unsuspecting beast with your magic, couldn’t you?”

  He kissed me on the forehead. “I already have.”

  Clearly I hadn’t yet recovered from yesterday’s travail, because my mind had barely managed to trudge past several bland retorts before he returned to inform me that he was headed out to hunt and there was meanwhile a treasure-house of provisions in the shed. Then he was gone.

  I gasped as I set my feet on the packed earth floor. The cold seared right through my skin. I ached all over, but I knew that would fade. With a blanket sewn of lusciously soft beaver pelts wrapped around me, I got the fire going and the kettle heating. The bench shoved right up against the brick of the hearth helped the clothes dry more quickly. Wool steamed, its scent rising. The worn cotton cloth I had stolen on Salt Island fluttered as the fire roared.

  Shivering in wet wool, I ventured out of the hut and ransacked the shed. Right inside the door I found a large tin tub and a pair of wooden buckets. From the evidence of the frames and troughs, I supposed the hut and shed to be a haven where winter trappers and hunters could deal with their kills. Since the winter pelts of animals were thickest, it made sense that winter was the best time to hunt and trap for furs, and if villagers came there every winter, they likely stocked it late in the autumn. Crocks and baskets sat on frames out of the reach of rats. Parsnips! Barley! Lentils and broad beans! Nuts in the shell, already dried! Withered bunches of dried nettle and hoarhound hung from the central beams. Dried vetch for animal fodder was bundled in sheaves. When I discovered a stoppered jar of linseed oil, I almost wept.

  Would the villagers who used this hut consider us thieves? It didn’t matter. Our canoe had hit the sand. We simply could go no farther right now.

  Quite some time later I had barleynut-cakes baking on the bricks, a pottage of parsnips, lentils, and barley simmering, and a pleasing tisane of nettle and hoarhound at brew. I made a place for the cacica’s skull at the back of the table, against the wall, and set before her a slice of parsnip garnished with a drop of the tisane. After this offering, I drank the first infusion of the tisane to soothe my raw throat and gobbled down two bowls of soup.

  Eating and drinking improved my mood and constitution immeasurably. I sorted out all our gear to repair later. It seemed prudent to carefully test the sheaths to make sure they hadn’t cracked from the cold, and to rub them with a little oil; if one was careful, perhaps they could be reused. I pinned up my braid and bathed using the lavender soap we had taken from our old home. Afterward, I washed out my filthy clothes, dumped the dirty water, and combed out my hair. The cotton from Expedition dried quickly, so I dressed in my bodice and a wrapped skirt. The tub was half filled with steaming water for Vai, and more was heating.

  I was contemplating a rock-hard slab of dried whitefish when the fire flickered. With a disgruntled sigh the flames went out on a puff of ash.

  I pulled on my boots and dashed outside. It took me a moment to spot him trudging along the shoreline with three dead grouse slung on a line. He was farther away than I would have expected, until I saw what trailed behind him.

  A mage House troop of turbaned riders pursued him. They wore gray wool winter coats cut for riding, and their heads were wrapped in bright green turbans. The horses picked their way over the uneven ground. My heart pounded as I cursed under my breath, rage and frustration exploding. How had the mansa found us so quickly?

  I counted forty men before I noticed Vai glance over his shoulder to measure the distance between them and him. A lance that had been nothing more than a long spear with a wicked steel point unfurled a banner marked with the four phases of the moon, the sigil of Four Moons House.

  The moment he saw me waiting, the soldiers vanished in a patter of sleet that doused my rage. My heart fluttered as his step quickened. He was disheveled, dirt smeared like paint down one side of his face. His once-elegant clothes looked like a beggar’s chance-met rags. He dazzled me.

  “I thought the soldiers were real!”

  His face shone, dark and beautiful. “My magic is unbelievably strong here.”

  “Didn’t Professora Alhamrai say cold magic is stronger when the mage is close to the ice?”

  “Cold mages have always known our power lies in the ice. There’s so much nyama. I could do anything, love.” He laughed again as he hung the grouse from the eaves.

  “Not that thinking poorly of yourself has ever been a problem for you,” I remarked.

  His eyes flared as he looked me up and down. He had the dizzy good humor of a man who is half drunk. “Not only do you look clean and fed, but you obviously have no idea how beautiful you are, especially with your hair down and that mouth of yours talking. Are we going in?”

  The interior seemed dim after the bright sky and the snowy landscape. The lingering heat warmed me right up, or maybe it was hearing him stamp about in the entry hall behind me. I tested the water in the tub. He came in, shedding his coat.

  I was not minded to be subtle. I helped him out of his clammy garments and wrapped him in a fur for long enough to make him drink the hot tisane and eat soup and barleycake, although he wasn’t much interested in the food. The tub interested him more, where I washed every bit of him with the sweet-smelling lavender soap. I managed to dry most of him with one of the pagnes before he picked me up.

  “The problem, Catherine, is that if you want a fire, I have to be outdoors away from the hearth. And if you want us to be together indoors, then”—he dumped me on the mattress—“we are going to have to spend most of our time in this bed.”

  He braced his body over mine, his arms on either side of me. He lowered himself to brush a kiss over my lips, then pushed back up. The feel of him a hand’s span above me made me wriggle. I had to put my hands all over him before finally pulling him down on top of me so we could kiss. When I was breathless, my heart racing and my body aflame, I broke off.

  “What I don’t understand is why you still have clothes on,” he murmured in a voice like honey.

  I nipped at the lobe of his ear. Did I have to inform the man of everything I wanted?

  He sat up, although he left a hand cupped over my right breast, fingers teasing absentmindedly through the cloth of my bodice in a way that made me squirm. “You can’t be waiting for me to undress you, can you? Perhaps there was something else you wanted to discuss? I had many long conversations in Expedition on the fascinating subject of the properties of heat, whether heat is dynamic or perhaps undulating a little bit like you are now.”

  “If you are going to do nothing but taunt me, then I am done speaking to you, Andevai.”

  His eyebrows arched. He leaned closer. “Not one more word?”

  I lifted my chin defiantly as I pinched my lips together.

  His lazy smile was more challenge than sweetness. “We’ll see about that.”

  23

  Much later, we lay quietly together. For the longest time I luxuriated in the feel of his arms around me. A light fall of snow drifted down outside, flakes dusting along the roof with a hiss.

  “Vai?”

  “M
mm?” He kissed my neck.

  “Our efforts have left me hungry.” I stuck a foot out from under the blankets, and sucked in a breath. “It’s cold out there. You’re such a nuisance, you fire banes.”

  Arms tensing, he stopped nuzzling. “I never got used to that name. It always seemed like mockery to me, even when none was meant.”

  I really was hungry, but his confession fell so unexpectedly that I thought of how Kofi had seemed to understand Vai in ways I had never glimpsed. “People in Expedition respected you.”

  “Because I worked hard and was a good carpenter. Not because I am a cold mage.”

  “How did you become such a good carpenter?”

  I felt his smile in the tilt of his head against my hair. “My father and uncle were carpenters. They were teaching me the trade. Remember, my magic didn’t bloom until I was sixteen.”

  “I thought your father and uncle were hunters.”

  “They were also hunters. But a person must have a trade. Before she became ill, my mother was renowned for her basketry. Did I ever tell you that?” He did not wait for my answer. “When things got bad for me in the youth hall at Four Moons House, I started sneaking out to the carpentry barn. The mansa’s uncle let me work there.” He began stroking my belly with a motion similar, I supposed, to that he might delicately use to plane a surface.

  “The mansa’s uncle was a carpenter?”

  “An architect. He was educated in Camlun and had studied with learned masters across Europa. He said knowing the carpenter’s craft helped him understand how to build. In a mage House, many sons and daughters have no magic, so they serve the House in some other way. Because he was the uncle of the mansa he was willing to defy the mansa by teaching me, since it was seen as lowborn of me to wish to work with my hands. But the work helped me concentrate on my studies. I couldn’t be angry or fighting if I was working with my hands.” His stroking hand clenched.

  “How did things get bad for you in the youth hall?”

  He pushed to sit. “Can you heat enough water to scald and pluck the grouse? The sooner we can leave here and get away from the ice, the better. Next Hallows’ Night your sire will come after us. I can hide from the Hunt in a troll maze, but you can’t. We must find a way to protect you from him.”

  His sudden change of subject forced me to ask a question whose answer I feared. “Did my sire harm you?”

  He gave a curt laugh leavened by a self-mocking smile that reassured me that he had not been hurt. “He did an injury to my pride, that is certain. My magic counts for nothing in comparison to the magic he wields as easily as breathing.”

  “Yet you had the courage to stab him. Even knowing how strong he is.”

  He pulled down the blankets to expose my right shoulder. I had once thought him the pampered, privileged son of a mage House, as highborn as he was arrogant. The callused touch of his fingers, however coaxing and sensual, reminded me that he had been born to a very different life. With kisses, he traced the two seamed scars on my shoulder. “I hurt you instead. How could you know that horrible thing your sire threatened you with?”

  “The latch of the coach conceals two gremlin spirits, one inside and one outside. They can see and talk. When I was climbing up the tree in the spirit world, I saw through its eyes.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember you talking about the latch.”

  “Are you saying you don’t believe me about the latch?”

  He kissed my forehead. “Love, why did you try to kill your sire? You would only have killed yourself.”

  I brushed my fingers across his lips. “I was so angry and afraid that I forgot.” I swung out of bed and padded over to the table to dress. “Although now that I think of it, if you hadn’t stabbed him the first time and he hadn’t boasted that the injury would fall on his children, then you wouldn’t have known to stop me from trying to kill him.”

  “That is convoluted logic even for you.” Sitting up, he shaped four globes of cold fire as easily as I might inhale. “Love, how did your mother get pregnant by the Master of the Wild Hunt?”

  I got into my undergarments. “He threatened to kill Daniel, and the other survivors, unless she allowed him to impregnate her.”

  He nodded gravely. “The women in my village suffered much the same. My grandmother was sent up to the mage House to work in the hall. One of the men fancied her. Village girls like her weren’t allowed to say no. He kept her as his mistress until he got her pregnant and discarded her.”

  “Is that why you bloomed with cold magic? Because your grandsire was a magister?”

  He smiled as at an old joke. “The man who sired my father on my grandmother was a clerk, not a mage. He was sent to Four Moons House as part of the retinue of a woman from another mage House when she married the mansa’s father. Who’s to say the magic came from his breeding? It might have bloomed from an unknown seed. It might have come from my grandmother.”

  “The same place you got your looks? From your grandmother?”

  “My mother did once say my father was the handsomest man she had ever seen. Of all his children, I resembled him the most.” He looked very appealing, sitting naked on the bedding. The light cast a sheen on his skin that made me want to rub my hands all over him all over again. The curve of his knee drew my eye to the line of his thigh. He had a way of looking at me that meant he knew I knew he knew I was admiring him, and that he was perfectly happy to be admired. He was like Bee in that way: That people enjoyed looking at him gave him satisfaction.

  “You’re sitting there hoping to tempt me back into bed, aren’t you? But if we want to dry out your clothes, I have to light a fire.” I glanced at the skin nailed over the window. “It will be dark soon, so I won’t make you stay out for long.”

  “How can you dry out my clothes? To go outside, I must have something to wear.”

  “You can wear the clothes I brought for Rory. They’ve dried out—”

  “Rory?” The courting Vai who had sat patiently through many evenings at the boardinghouse while I flirted with customers had never spoken quite this sharply to me.

  “One of my sire’s other children. The saber-toothed cat. You met him in the spirit world, at the hearth of the djelimuso Lucia Kante.”

  He lifted his chin, gone a little prickly as if embarrassed he had revealed a spark of jealousy. “I remember the cats. The male is your half brother?”

  “Yes. My sire can change form as he wishes.”

  “I can guess the details.”

  “I can understand why my sire would breed children in the spirit world. Not all of the predators in the Wild Hunt are his children, but at least some are, and he can bind all of us whenever he wishes, as he did Rory. But why did he want Tara Bell?”

  “Perhaps he is one of those men who delight in knowing they can take a person who does not want them.”

  “I’m not sure we can call him a man. I don’t think he feels what we feel. He must have had some other reason. Think how useful I proved because I was able to cut a fence for him into Taino country.” I told him about the way my sire had enfolded me in his wings, the words he had whispered, and how I had thought at first that he had been speaking of Vai. “But now I think he was talking about himself. Mortal blood feeds the spirit courts and gives them the power to bind their servants to them. He’s bound to the courts, just as I’m bound to him. Just as you and your village are bound to Four Moons House. Why tell me that a prince among slaves is still a slave if he does not chafe at his chains?”

  As he considered my words, I could not help but note what a decorative thinker he was, with his chiseled shoulders and those inventive fingers splayed along his chin. “So ‘the palace where those without blood cannot walk’ was the pit. Our ancestors whose spirits walk in the spirit world can’t cross into the palace—the pit—because they have no blood.”

  “Yes. That’s why the cacica couldn’t cross and I had to leave her hanging…” I trailed off as I realized I had positioned the skull with a full view of
the bed.

  Vai followed the line of my gaze. “Catherine, why is there a skull on the table?”

  My cheeks burned.

  “I don’t remember seeing a skull when we arrived here yesterday,” he added.

  “Blessed Tanit,” I murmured, blushing even more scaldingly as I turned the skull to face away from the bed and toward the hearth.

  “I thought you were telling one of your jesting tales to entertain me, like you do. I didn’t think the basket really had a head in it.”

  Was her vision confined to the spirit world? Could skulls see? Could a skull close its eyes if it had no eyelids? Or would it be forced to watch everything?

  “Why would you even have the head of the cacica if the Wild Hunt killed her?” he asked.

  “The Taino ancestors put me on trial for her murder but I talked my way out of it.”

  “Naturally.”

  “The council of elders recognized the merit in my arguments!”

  His shoulders tensed. “You mean it. It’s really the head of Queen Anacaona.”

  “Of course it is! Why would I say so otherwise? I have spoken more to her after she was dead than I ever did while she was living. She admires your good manners and your… attractive disposition. She told me that an unusually powerful fire bane like yourself would have been a challenge she would have savored.”

  His jaw tightened. He pulled the fur blanket around his torso and stood, primly covered from armpits to calves.

  “Gracious Melqart, Vai. Are you embarrassed that the skull has seen you naked?”

  “You’re the one who turned her to look away from the bed.” His look of offended hauteur only emphasized his grip on the blanket.

  I laughed so hard that I cried. With a mumbled apology to the cacica, I draped cloth over the skull to cover the eye sockets.

  “Oh, Vai,” I said, wiping tears off my cheeks. “I adore you when you’re indignant.”

  He was looking very smoky and irritated in a way that made me bite my lower lip lest I laugh again. The man looked delectable when he had been driven up the pinnacle of disdain by feeling his pride and dignity had been slighted. Without a word of warning, he hauled me to the bed and strenuously, if very quietly, worked through his wounded feelings with my full cooperation.