by Kate Elliott
I licked my lips, trying to taste the air as my sire tasted it, trying to sense the land as he sensed it. The mortal world was an impenetrable shadow, here and there pierced by essences I had no other word for except light. Scattered across the city and land below shone the spirits of mages strong enough to scent. Some flickered within the mortal shadow like comforting candlelight or gleamed with the steady purpose of gaslight. Others smoldered like half-buried coals. A few flared like pitch torches set alight. One I recognized: Drake simmered in the general’s town house, and at first look it was easy to see his magic as nothing more than a sullen red glow of no particular strength. But Vai had been right, of course. That smolder was merely a cap for a vast reservoir of molten power barely tamped down and ready to erupt.
I marked him. But I turned my heart toward the enemy I sought.
“General Camjiata. Lion of war. Leonnorios Aemilius Keita.”
I closed my left hand at my waist as if I held the hilt of the sword Camjiata had stolen from me. As at my command, my kinsmen bolted on the paths that net the world: loping wolves, baying hounds, rippling cats, silent sharks, winged raptors. From the smallest to the largest, they raced on the scent I envisioned more as a face and a figure and a presence than as a smell.
My senses slammed up against the border between Expedition and Taino country as against a spirit rope strung with amulets and charms. The Taino had woven a barrier around their kingdom not just with wealth and weapons but with what Vai’s grandmother might have called the nyama of their behiques. Yet it took me, half mortal as I was, only a moment’s negotiation a tear a rip in the spirit barrier. I slipped through, and the hunt poured through after me.
The island of Kiskeya slumbered, as yet unaware of this invasion, but her beating heart pulsed in the rhythm of the wedding areito. I heard its chant and rattle but I could not see the plaza or the ball courts; I couldn’t see the people celebrating. They were hidden from me because they were wreathed in shadow. I knew Camjiata was close, but I could not find him.
Yet the world was lit. Flames like gas lamps marked each behique, some burning fierce and strong while others simmered with a fire humble or frail. Yet in truth the presence of all those fire mages was difficult to distinguish against the brightest blaze. Most were like candles held next to a bonfire. The cacica’s magic burned so brightly that she almost blinded all else. How she did not kindle into an inferno I did not at first understand. She ought to be dead. The backlash of her power ought to have consumed her long since, but it had not. Nor was she surrounded by the charred corpses of her catch-fires. She was surrounded by a net of magic that shone as a dew-moistened spider’s web might when the rising sun catches in the filaments and breathes light over them.
Threads pulsing as with the flow of energy stretched from the Taino plaza across great distances into the faraway masses of the huge ice sheets, through the spirit world, and back into the mortal world. These threads did not have color, precisely, nor did they glow as flame does. Like spirit, they were animate, or at least shot through with energy and force. Were these threads cold magic? Each led back to a different point, and those points were not flames but intangible wells of power that reminded me of the deep blue pool on Salt Island that Drake had told me was considered sacred by the Taino.
Those wells of power were cold mages. For at last, I understood what I was seeing. Her catch-fires were all fire banes. She was continually casting off heat into an entire troop of catch-fires linked to her as if they were knitted into one garment. She did not pour the backlash into a single catch-fire but divided the stream into many, so no single one was overwhelmed and thus consumed, as I had almost been killed by Drake. Anyway, the fire banes who were her catch-fires were not killing her combustion, or even absorbing it. Their bodies were conduits. The cool depths of their spirits like wells swallowed the constant pillowing outwash of the cacica’s fire magic and expelled it through glimmering threads into the spirit world.
The brilliance of her power obscured all scent or taste or sound of the general.
I could not find him.
But there was one spirit she did not obscure. Right next to the cacica, a well of dazzling purity plunged into the bottomless blue waters of the spirit world. Its play of welcoming light and restless energy beckoned like the surface of water seen from below when your lungs are almost out of air.
“Vai,” I whispered, but my lips made no sound.
Crows scattered on the vanguard of the storm. Their eyes belonged to the master of the hunt. Clothing myself in their wings, I flew so that I could see into the mortal world with their eyes.
The Taino had chosen this night, Hallows’ Night, to receive Expedition’s surrender.
Wardens and riflemen knelt in ranks on the main plaza, their faces masked with the anger and shame of the soldier who has had his sword removed by his own captain. I glimpsed Gaius Sanogo standing at the rear of the ranks, hands clasped behind his back as he surveyed the scene with his ominously bland smile. In the darkness beyond the light stood companies of Taino soldiers, but I could not judge their mood.
The crows flew onward to the central ball court, which was ringed by a hundred ordinary lamps. That so many lamps burned despite the presence of so many fire banes made the cacica’s power seem even more impressive. In the center of the ball court, the proud Council members, the wealthiest and most powerful of Expedition’s ruling families, knelt with heads bowed. Their families and households and kinfolk huddled at the base of the risers like a discouraged losing team. Behind them stood other Expeditioners notable enough to be forced to attend this ceremony. All looked crushed and defeated. I saw no trolls at all.
The Council was surrendering to Prince Caonabo. His fire magic was difficult to see under the glare of his mother’s power, and even so it was nothing more than a sober, quiet flame. He stood straight and somber, receiving a copy of a written document that I assumed was the First Treaty. On the stone risers, like spectators to the final game in a prestigious tournament, sat many Taino, both women and men. Some seemed skeptical, even disapproving, while others looked pleased and triumphant.
The cacica sat on a carved duho, her seat of power, placed on a raised wooden platform at one end of the ball court. Some of her catch-fires sat near her, while others were scattered around the ball court and some even outside it. The geometry of their placement was too convoluted for me to follow. Nor did it matter, for out of them all, only one caught my eye.
Vai sat cross-legged on a mat on the ground next to the cacica’s duho. With his hands relaxed on his thighs, he looked perfectly at ease as he turned to speak to the queen. I did not like the way she looked at him! Suddenly those rumors that she forced male fire banes to marry her did not seem far-fetched or scurrilous. What did she care about the marriage laws of Europans and the chains that bound him and me? I had a hankering for a chisel.
His demeanor I could not fault, for he displayed toward her the respect he always showed women. She was, I thought, pointing out to him the geometry of her catch-fires, dispersed in a pattern that extended farther than my crow’s eyes could see. Like lamps turned low, each visible fire bane was limned by a nimbus of silvery mist. No nimbus touched Vai. She was not diverting any of the backlash into him.
His eyes widened and his head cocked to one side as if he heard an unexpected sound. After a comment to the cacica, he rose, his gaze lifting to sweep the darkness beyond.
I was sure he had sensed me.
The crows swooped low over the ball court. Behind Caonabo, set between the prince and the platform where the cacica presided, rose six wooden posts. A person was lashed to each post as to a mast. One of the prisoners was Juba, who gazed over the assembly with the look of a man who knows he has been condemned and is not sorry for the crime that has brought him to this place of execution. Juba and Caonabo truly had uncannily identical features, but once you had seen them together, you could never mistake one for the other, for Caonabo was grave and self-contained while
Juba was impassioned and impatient.
The crow settled on top of one of the posts. To my utter horror, I recognized the woman tied there. Abby’s clothing was so humble and dirt-stained you could tell she had been snatched from the fields. She had her eyes shut. By the way her lips moved, she seemed to be singing.
Yet even she was not the person I needed to find.
The crow looked into the darkness and fixed on the great stone eye through which the players could score a goal. From the shadows, General Camjiata observed the proceedings, flanked by Captain Tira and the one-eyed proprietor of the Speckled Iguana.
On the ball court, Caonabo was speaking to the Expeditioners. He sounded weary but unswerving, a man who does not like the task he has been given but will carry it out to its fullest.
“Always, we the Taino have held in every regard to the First Treaty, which our ancestors made with your ancestors. We respect the words and agreements of those who came before us as if they were our own, for they are our own. You have allowed the threat of salters to live among you. The bitten must be exiled to Salt Island, even if they are healed. They are dead. That is the law. We did not unearth this disease. You brought it on your ships. We allowed you to build your city as long as the agreement we made was honored. But it has not been honored—”
He broke off, raising a hand to test the air. He turned to address the cacica. “Most dignified and wise of mothers,” he said, “forgive my impetuous speech for I have not received permission to address you, but this wind is not natural. A spirit comes.”
The crow fluttered to the great stone eye and looked down. An expression very like fear pinched the general’s face as he looked at the night sky.
“I see him!” I cried, but by speaking I broke the wings that bound me into the crow’s eyes. I slammed hard onto the seat, knocking breath from my lungs. Rory steadied me.
“I see him,” said the Master of the Wild Hunt, with a smile.
Such simple words to herald death.
The world tipped beneath me as the coach banked sharply, plunging toward the ground. I fell against the latch, and my weight clicked it down with a spark of protest from the gremlin. The door swung out with me holding to it. The wind loosed my hair, and it streamed out behind me like the wings of the storm.
As the coach skated above the paving stones right down the center of the ball court, people scattered out of the way, shouting. They dragged companions with them, or shoved others aside in their scramble to escape. Some flung themselves down, cowering.
The coach rolled smoothly to a halt a hand’s height above the ground. The horses stamped and steamed. I released the latch to step down daintily onto the ball court.
Every gaze was turned to me. I would not have had it any other way.
As one, as in greeting or to show respect, the Taino rose.
I paused one breath, to acknowledge them. Then I sought and found my enemy beneath the stone eye.
“I do not like being betrayed, General Camjiata.” My voice carried easily, for the wind had ceased so utterly that the very atmosphere, like a rope, stretched taut. Yet my long black hair still rippled and flowed in the unseen tides of magic that washed around us. “Not once did you betray me. Not twice did you betray me. But with every promise or offer you have made to me, you betrayed me. Where are my husband and my sword, both of which you stole from me?”
Camjiata stepped out of the shadows. He was not a man to be beaten down. Whatever fears haunted him, no sign of fear marred his face now. He appealed to the crowd.
“An opia haunts us! In northern lands, we call this day Hallows’ Night, and know it for the day when the dead may cross into the land of the living. We cannot trust the shadows that walk out of the night on this night, of all nights.”
“I am no opia—” I retorted, but he cut me off.
“Yet she is no opia,” he cried, with an orator’s gesture that invited his audience to note how he had agreed. “She is a witch and a salter. She has used her witchcraft to escape from Salt Island and means to infest us all with the salt plague.”
A man who knew how to infest an orderly crowd with terror and strife could make the mob do his bidding. As startled and scared as the Expeditioners had been at the appearance of a coach riding down the wings of night, the salt plague frightened them far more. People pushed and shoved and began trying to climb up into the risers where the Taino, so collected and calm before, were now looking alarmed. Everyone seemed desperate to get away before I lurched over to bite them.
At Prince Caonabo’s order, Taino soldiers made a fence around the ball court’s exits, while others hurried onto the risers to restore order. But I wasn’t worried about them. Captain Tira was pushing through the surging crowd; she had a hand on her sword and her gaze on me, and I didn’t have to be my sire’s daughter or a Hassi Barahal spy to figure she had just been ordered to kill me.
Rory slipped down out of the coach with the grace of a prowling cat and handed me the machete I’d stolen from Salt Island. I stepped back, weighing the machete in my hand as I looked around for Camjiata. But it was Vai I saw. He shoved through the crowd with a naked blade of cold steel in his hand. He looked stunned and angry and oh so welcome as he placed himself beside me.
Captain Tira halted, too far away to lunge at me with her falcata.
“Catherine, they told me you were sequestered with Beatrice!”
“They lied. I was kidnapped and sent to Salt Island.”
As if to reassure himself that I was real and not illusion, he reached for my hand.
A searingly cold wind swept across the ball court. An icy sleet began to drizzle. My sire stepped down out of the coach as into a fine summer’s balm.
His gaze met mine just as Vai’s fingers brushed my hand.
The Master of the Wild Hunt smiled. It was nothing more than a slight upward quirk of the lips and an infinitesimal narrowing of the eyes, but it was the most horrifying expression I had ever seen. I snatched my betraying touch back from Vai’s, but it was too late.
My sire licked his lips, as if tasting the most delicious food.
“Strong and sweet!” His smile mocked me, for he understood perfectly my look of horror. “You are truly my daughter, to have sought and bound such rich blood as this.”
“No!” At last I spotted Camjiata making his way toward the end of the ball court, hoping to escape Vai’s cold steel and my anger. “That’s your prey!”
“The fire weaver?” His gaze lifted to the cacica. “So rare it is to find one such as her. I knew there was tremendous power hiding behind their spirit fence. But I couldn’t get through it to find out. Yet after all, the smell of the cold mage’s blood delights me far more.”
“No! No!” Camjiata was almost out of sight. “Him! Over there!”
My sire stared right where I pointed. “I see only darkness. There is no one there. Do not try to deceive me.”
The Master of the Wild Hunt was blind in the mortal world except to the flare of those who channeled the energies that bind the worlds, that weave life to death and death to life, order and disorder. He could not see Camjiata to take him, even if he could be bothered to want to.
“Stand away!” The cacica’s voice cracked over the night like thunder. Fire flared in every lamp. Light blazed to reveal the Taino soldiers restoring order. The coach, with the coachman and footman, appeared as a perfectly ordinary coach at rest except for the fact its wheels did not touch the ground. What looked like low-hanging dark clouds churned above, chased by flashes of light like fireflies. The pack of hunters had not yet been released.
“Stand away, fire bane,” she called, addressing Vai before she commanded the assembled crowd. “Opia travel at their will. We have no quarrel with them, even if they invite in the spirit lords who are not welcome here. But the salt dead may never walk in Taino land lest we all be poisoned. Those who will not stay on the other shore must be destroyed by fire.”
Her gaze touched Juba’s. In that exchange I saw h
er sorrow and his defiance: She had favored him over his brother, and I could not tell whether he had never forgiven her for her weakness in loving him more than Caonabo, or if she would never forgive herself.
“That is the law,” she proclaimed.
Sparks shimmered to life on a hot gust of wind as she struck.
“Not my Cat.” Vai pulled me hard against him while yanking the last ice lens out from under his jacket.
Fire kindled in my heart. Abby, and the other prisoners, screamed. Prince Caonabo shouted in protest, but there was nothing he could do. The cacica was a fire mage of unimaginable power with a net of fire banes to absorb the conflagration.
Vai’s ice lens bloomed as he channeled his magic and his anger and his fear for me into it; the curve of the lens amplified its power. The cacica’s fire was vast and complex; its tendrils spanned the ball court and the plaza and farther yet, for the net of her fire magic spanned the island itself. Its threads reached as far as a sick man’s bed in distant Sharagua halfway across Kiskeya, where the constant pulse of her magic kept her dying brother alive.
All that fire, the fire bane and his ice lens killed.
Every lamp snapped out.
In far Sharagua, the heart of the cacique stopped beating. Lips parted to release his spirit into the night.
Snow spun down in a beautiful shower of sparkling white, dusting the ground.
“Catherine!” Vai pressed his mouth to mine, just a touch, to mark that I still breathed.
Darkness and silence settled over the land.
Yet out of that darkness, the cacica spoke, unmoved and unperturbed. “I will enforce the law as I must to protect the people. There can be no exception. And I will not be defied.”
