Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

by Kate Elliott

  I knew that hunters held various proscriptions, as well as hanging amulets about their bodies before they entered the bush to hunt, so I felt it prudent not to listen to their secret business. Instead, Bee and I introduced ourselves to the women.

  In a village like this, still fixed in the traditional ways, women and men kept most aspects of their lives separate. The women took Bee and me to a little temple dedicated to Mother Faro, the name they gave the deity of the river, where we poured libations over the stone altar. Afterward we settled into a common room lined with pots made by the most prestigious woman in the village, a potter who had married the blacksmith. The potter was black in complexion, a woman of renown married in from another prosperous village. Food and drink she offered in plenty, although no beef, as that was reserved for the men at this time of year. Women and children wandered in and out to observe us. I brought out my sewing kit, and they exclaimed over my steel needles, commonplace in Expedition but precious here. I sewed while Bee talked.

  It was just so interesting to watch how Bee coaxed people into thinking about things in a new way. The women had never heard of Expedition or the Antilles, nor even of General Camjiata, although they had all heard of the Iberian Monster, known as a marauding general whose troops ate babies and who magicked women into men to make more soldiers for his army.

  “All this talk of an assembly in a far country makes little difference to us,” said the potter. “What I want to know is how a man can write a law code and suppose any mage or prince will care what it says? They can ignore it easily enough.”

  “Not if you do not ignore it!” said Bee.

  “Words scratched on paper do not a binding make. Only blood makes a binding.”

  “We are bound if we believe there is only one way things can be,” said Bee.

  “Do you think we can stand against their soldiers?” asked the potter as others nodded. “You are young and innocent to not know the way of things.”

  Regardless of how little agreement Bee fostered among the women who stayed up late to listen, she kept them listening, even if only for the novelty. She and I slept together in an alcove bed tucked into the wall, with a pair of dogs curled at our feet. In the morning I gave the potter a steel needle, and the women provisioned us with enough barley-cake, turnips, and beans to last three days.

  “What did you discuss?” I asked Vai once we were back out on the river.

  “I can’t speak of it.” To a man raised as he had been, such secrets were sacred. He was careful not to touch me. Even Rory was unusually solemn, in a mood I might have called brooding.

  Bee said, “I did not see you, Rory. Were you with the men?”

  “I don’t like temples. They make my skin itch.” He perused our faces as if he expected to uncover a rebuke. “I saw a terrible thing while you three were about your feasts and friendly talk! These people wish they were not bound to the mage House, but they bind people in their turn, don’t they? While they feast and sing and sleep, aren’t there people who serve?”

  “Everyone must work,” said Vai, with a shake of his head.

  The river’s voice almost drowned out Rory’s words, for he could barely choke them out. “I heard a noise in one of the byres as I was sniffing about as I like to do at dusk. There was a man handling a woman who did not want him. He pushed her down into the dirty straw and pulled up her skirt and shoved his part into her. She did not cry out for help or fight but I could smell her humiliation and shame. So I pulled him off. I told him I was the spirit of vengeance visited upon men who abuse helpless women. He laughed at me. He said the woman is a slave and thus a whore because slaves have no honor. So I showed him my true face. And he pissed himself and ran off. Then the woman reviled me. She said she was taken from her village by soldiers when she was young and sold months later to the blacksmith’s father. Any man in the village can use her as he wishes, just as he said. She will be punished now for what I have done. So I was ashamed for having done a thing to bring trouble on her. I told her she could escape with us.”

  “Lord of All,” muttered Vai.

  “But she refused! She said she has a healthy boy child who has been adopted as a son by a village man who has only daughters. He means the boy to marry one of the girls and inherit his cottage. If she runs, the boy will be turned out. She cannot let the chance go that he will have a good life. How can this be true? How can people live, with their spirits crushed day after day?”

  “Blessed Tanit protect her!” murmured Bee.

  Rory trembled with hissing fury. “I thought the radicals mean to free people who are bound to serve others. But what of people like her? I should have stolen the boy and made them both come with us, but I was a coward.”

  For a long while we floated downstream in silence.

  At last I said, “You’re not a coward, Rory.”

  “Such a woman would fare worse as a stranger in a town with a child in tow and no family to protect her,” added Vai. “That the child may flourish gives her hope each day.”

  Bee said, “You can’t save every mistreated person, not alone and with the law against you.”

  Rory shifted onto the bench beside Vai. “I want to row now. I’m too angry to talk.”

  Though our hearts felt wintry, signs of spring had crept into the landscape: buds greening on trees, violets in patches of color beneath the stark woodland, birds flocking north as they honked or trilled. In this flat country the river split into channels separated by long, flat islands. We passed several villages. At midday we saw riders on the eastern shore. Later in the afternoon a man with a spear watched us pass. Sheep worked their way over a greening pasture still damp with yesterday’s rain. As we swept around a wide bend, the sun peeped out from behind a patchwork of clouds.

  Open land breached by a canal spread away from the eastern bank. Through this grassy expanse a troop of mage House soldiers picked their way toward the water’s edge.

  “Curse it,” said Vai. “Bee, you’ve the steadiest hand. Keep the prow in line with the current. Rory. Catherine. You two sit close in the middle.”

  He shifted up to kneel at the prow as Bee settled to the oars. Rory and I weighted the bench at the stern. My cane flowered into a sword as two boats exactly like ours appeared alongside us. It was an impossible illusion to hold through every shift and nuance, and Vai meanwhile kept glancing up at the sky. Thunder rolled although the sky hadn’t the weight of storm clouds.

  The soldiers parted to let through a man on a horse. In his flowing robes and with his height and hair, I knew him at once as the mansa of Four Moons House. Soldiers with crossbows knelt to take aim.

  “How could the mansa have come after us so quickly?” muttered Vai.

  “The dragon betrayed us,” muttered Rory.

  “Kemal never would!” Bee glared, but her steady rowing and skillful piloting did not slacken.

  A force both terrible and strong was grinding within the clouds drifting innocently above. On the shore the mansa raised his gaze heavenward as snow began to fall. Vai was going to hide us in a blizzard. All we needed to do was get beyond the range of their bows.

  More soldiers rode into view. They were wearing three different uniforms: the black-on-white squares of Five Mirrors House, the four phases of the moon of Four Moons House, and the strung bow of White Bow House. Mansa Viridor trotted up to greet the mansa and look across the water toward us. I was too shocked to utter a word.

  “I should have known better than to trust friendship offered by cold mages,” Vai muttered.

  Snow began to fall in earnest.

  Soldiers bundled two slight figures to the shoreline, making sure we could see the swords held to their throats. Vai’s hands gripped the gunnel. The illusions of the other rowboats dissolved.

  “Who are those terrified girls?” said Rory. “Do the soldiers mean to kill them?”

  “Those are my little sisters,” said Vai in a voice I scarcely recognized because it was flat with fear and rage. “Lord of All,
he will kill them. They are nothing to him. Love, go on to Havery. I will find a way back to you, but I cannot abandon them.”

  He cast me a desperate look, shed his coat, and plunged into the river with his sword.

  A crossbow bolt plopped into the river near him. A captain shouted at the troops to stop shooting because the man they wanted was in the water. The girls could not have been more than thirteen or fourteen. They clung to each other as swords caged them. I looked at Bee, and she looked at me. I knew what she would say before she said it.

  “Cat, you have to go after him while he’s still in the water so they can’t shoot you.”

  “I have to stay with you to protect you, Bee.”

  Her gaze held me. “Rory and I can protect ourselves. Look how frightened the girls are. Together, you and he can manage an escape with them. You know where to meet us. Go!”

  I shed my cloak. This river had drowned my parents, but I plunged in anyway. Fear drove all thought from my mind as I came up floundering and gasping to the surface.

  Rory called, “Swim! Don’t paddle like a dog!”

  I churned my arms through the current and did not gulp down more than four or five mouthfuls of water before my feet scraped on river bottom. I crawled onto the bank, trying to hack out the water I’d swallowed. A crow flapped down from the sky and landed so close to me, watching me with its black eyes, that I shrank back. Then it fluttered off, cawing. Soldiers surrounded me as though I were a cornered boar, their spears ready to pierce me through.

  I leaped up, fumbling for my sword. A whistling hiss spat past my ear. Something pushed hard on my shoulder, spinning me backward.

  A crossbow bolt stuck out of my flesh, right below the collarbone. Where had that come from?

  I toppled to my knees. The world filled with a whirl of snow. An imposing man loomed before me out of the blizzard. His voluminous robes rippled across my sight like the wings of death.

  “Don’t kill her,” the mansa said.

  I fainted.

  33

  I woke to a warm cloth wiping my face. Opening my eyes, I looked up at a woman with gaunt cheeks and short wiry hair more gray than black.

  “Do not speak,” she said in a raspy voice, careful not to jostle the crossbow bolt sticking out of my body. Stabs of pain pulsed through my right shoulder. “Here comes the surgeon.”

  Over her shoulder I caught a glimpse of a man in a traditional boubou, carrying a leather bag and a small drum. I lay on a cot in a hospital tent spacious enough to house a dozen soldiers, although I was the only patient. Before the doctor could reach me, a soldier cut him off.

  “Catherine Barahal. I have been looking for you.” Lord Marius stared down at me with such loathing that I whimpered. “Where is Legate Amadou Barry?”

  My nurse looked up with no sign of servility. “My lord, she will do better once the arrow is out and the wound cleaned.”

  “Ah.” He cut away my clothes and probed the wound in a way that made me almost stop breathing as I struggled not to cry out. “It’s hit the bone, but the bolt must have been at the end of its range. Nothing I haven’t dealt with on the battlefield.”

  He fixed a hand around the shaft and pulled it out. The pain made me go blind and deaf for the longest time, oblivious to everything except the pulse of my heart, or the earth, or a drum: I was not sure what I felt. Nor did the pain ease as my body was washed and handled, wet clothes stripped from me, and a stinging poultice laid atop the red-hot center of the wound.

  After an agony of time I sought with my mind along the length of my body and found my right foot. Focusing on the foot, which did not hurt, I opened my eyes. The roof of the tent billowed with odd patterns of light that made my eyes water. I was naked, a blanket tucked modestly around my body and folded under my armpits. My right shoulder had been bandaged. When I shifted, a wave of pain spilled outward from the shoulder, and I whimpered.

  “Here you are,” said the gaunt woman, still seated beside me.

  Two girls stood behind her with huge dark eyes a-goggle. Their striking resemblance to Vai snapped me into full wakefulness. One girl was a head shorter than her sister and as thin as a reed; she leaned on a crutch. The taller girl was robust.

  The woman leaned forward. “Drink this. It will ease the pain.”

  Again Lord Marius appeared, a god out of a Greek tale, ready to smite. He snatched away the cup before it could touch my lips. “I want an answer to my question.”

  She nodded calmly. “Of course, my lord. But it is hard for the young woman to speak with dry lips.”

  I could speak!

  “The Legate Amadou Barry is responsible for his own death.” My voice emerged as more of a hoarse croak. “It was his choice to follow us into a dangerous place. He thought he had the right to possess Bee simply because he wanted her. Yet he didn’t respect her enough to trust her when she tried to save him. He was swept out of the spirit world by the tide of a dragon’s dream. I don’t know what happened to him after that.”

  “My lord, if you will allow her to take willowbark tea to ease the pain, she will come to her senses.”

  “She is not delirious.” White-lipped, Lord Marius glared at me. “The punishment for murdering a Roman legate is death. The punishment for murdering my beloved brother is that I will hound you until you show me his grave and then I will water it with your blood.”

  From outside I heard men shouting angrily. Lord Marius turned to look at the tent’s entrance, where two soldiers in the colors of the Tarrant militia stood guard.

  “No! They’re saying one of them was shot! I will see my sisters!” The voice was Vai’s.

  A second male voice replied in the loud and mocking tone of a highborn man who means to be heard by as many people as possible. “Your sisters, or your daughters? I know how your kind are. Everyone sleeps in the same bed.”

  “I’ll kill you,” said Vai in a raw, ugly tone I had heard only in his nightmares. The smack of a fist hitting flesh was followed by the thud of a body hitting dirt.

  The other man shrieked, “Get the stinking goat off me!”

  A commanding voice I recognized as the mansa’s spoke. “Enough! Tie his arms back if he can’t control his fists.” The grunts and curses of a scuffle faded to silence.

  Vai burst into the tent. His arms were trussed up behind his back with rope bound around a stout stick that could be twisted to control him. The brawny soldier who had hold of the stick brought him up short as he saw the girls.

  “Bintou! Wasa!”

  The bigger girl bolted to him and pressed her face against his shoulder. He kissed her hair, then looked with a frown toward the other girl who, with her too-short crutch, hadn’t tried to move. His glance skipped from the invalid girl to the woman. His lips parted. A jolt of stunned shock rolled through his body. But he recovered quickly. In a cunning move worthy of a sly Barahal, he slammed back into the soldier, jostling the stick. With a wrench, he freed himself and staggered forward to drop to his knees before the woman.

  “Mother.” He rested his forehead on her knees. “Forgive me for bringing this trouble on you and the girls.”

  “Son.” She laid a hand on his head in a blessing. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but her tone was implacable, even a little aloof. “You will be strong, as I taught you. I am told this woman is your wife and thus my daughter.”

  His head and shoulders came up as if yanked. With an intake of breath, he stared into her face to read the truth of the words. Then he turned and saw me.

  “Catherine!” He leaped to his feet. “What can you have been thinking? You weren’t to follow me… did they capture…?” I recognized the moment he saw the bandage because of how his entire body shuddered. He was not speechless. He spoke through his magic. A grinding roar of noise rumbled far above as masses of air crashed and cooled. A waterfall of illusions spilled around us like deformed creatures writhing as they were twisted inside out.

  “Andevai, this is not the behavior I expect from you.” H
is mother did not raise her voice, yet her tone cut right through the fury of his emotions.

  He fought down from the storm, but it was a hard descent. He was so passionate about things. My shoulder hurt horribly, but I had my wits tucked about me like the blankets. He needed a task to take the edge off the surge of frustrated feelings of impotence and wounded pride.

  My voice scraped out a whisper. “I thought you would need someone to help take care of the girls. They looked so frightened. But honestly, Vai, I wish you would get Lord Marius to stop threatening me. Bee and I truly did try to save Amadou Barry in the spirit world, but he wouldn’t listen to us. She wept buckets of tears when he was swept away in the tide. Now Lord Marius says he means to kill me to get satisfaction. But it was the legate’s foolish choice and not any scheme of ours. And he won’t let me drink my willowbark tea.”

  Illusions vanished. Even with his arms tied behind him, Andevai could draw himself up with the arrogance of an exceedingly powerful cold mage who does not expect to be crossed.

  “Lord Marius, my wife is not to be bullied or threatened. The legate should never have believed he could walk into the bush as if it were a country garden. Even those who have studied its secrets and passed down this lore know how dangerous it is to walk there. He was a fool twice over. Once to rush after them. Twice to not heed them.”

  “Were you there, Magister, to see how it all transpired?” Lord Marius asked. “How can I even believe such a wild tale?”

  “I have told you the truth. Give me the tea so I can give my wife relief from the pain of her injury.”

  As angry as Lord Marius was, he also had a sense of the absurd. “How will you manage that, I wonder, with your hands bound behind you?”

  Vai’s mother rose. That she scarcely had the strength to stand was evident by the tension in her frail frame, but to look at the stately lift of her head and the pressure of her gaze, one might never guess she was anything but a woman of power.

  “I will take the cup, my lord, and minister to the young woman, as was my intention.” She held out her hand.