Cold Fire

by Kate Elliott

  After climbing down, I ventured into the brush beyond the stream to relieve myself. Back in the house, I washed, straightened my pagne and bodice, and took an accounting of my worldly possessions: a sword, a locket, a stone, a wool jacket and undervest, boots, and the slaughtered skirts.

  It was time to spy. Wrapped in shadow, I crept up to the biggest house and poured myself up the steps onto the porch as if I were the wind. The door was a curtain, roped aside. Inside, baskets hung from the ceiling. A sloped wooden chair was placed in the center back of the room, its back carved with an animal face. Another door, draped with a curtain, led into a second room whose interior I could not see. Since I guessed this to be Prince Caonabo’s exalted residence, I had no desire to penetrate its secrets.

  The next two houses lay empty except for mouse droppings and chickens squawking as they wandered in and out. In the fourth I found Drake asleep in a hammock, wearing no shirt, his pale torso as smooth as that of a man who labors with pen instead of axe.

  I crept into the next house only to find myself face to face with two Taino women, one young and one old enough to have a lined face and strands of silver in her black hair. Hale and strong, the older woman wore a sleeveless tent of a robe woven from white fabric that covered her to the ankles. Worst, she saw me right through my shadows. Her lips curled up.

  I let the threads fall. “Salvete. I am Catherine Bell Barahal. My apologies. I got lost.”

  Her half smile vanished and she surveyed me from top to toe as I bunched my hands into fists. I had forgotten Drake’s warning: Never speak to her unless she addresses you first.

  She grabbed my wrist just as Prince Caonabo entered the house with his doomed young relative tagging cheerfully after him. Without so much as a word, she pushed up my torn sleeve and pressed her lips to the wound. This was the kiss of life. Heat coursed up my veins and spread through my flesh, even to the stirring in my loins. Male or female, what did it matter, really, when the body yearned? As she straightened, still holding my arm, a corner of her lips lifted with unexpected humor and perhaps even sensual interest. Prince Caonabo made a comment in Taino, and the two catch-fires smiled. I snatched my arm out of her grasp, my face burning.

  She spoke in a slightly hoarse alto. The prince translated. “Your blood does not harbor the teeth of the ghouls.”

  “I know,” I said as evenly as I could. “James Drake healed me.”

  She laughed in a curt way that made me want to sink into the dirt floor. Instead, I stared at the printed fabric of my pagne, sure that the secret architecture of the universe could be discerned in its patterns of shells. When the silence dragged out, I looked up.

  The prince rubbed his forehead with a frown. “The maku did not heal you.”

  “I’m not healed?” The room went hot, and my pulse thundered in my ears as I swayed.

  “If a bitten person is brought quickly, then we can burn out the teeth before they infest the blood. But always the touch leaves a remnant. Like the ashes from wood that is burned. You have no ashes, Catherine Bell Barahal. There were never ghoul teeth in you.”

  “But how…?” Words evaporated like mist under the sun.

  “This mystery the behica also wonders at. You were bitten by one of the afflicted ones, that is certain. But there are no ashes and there are no teeth. No one healed you. You had nothing to heal because you are clean.”

  “But Drake told me I would die if I didn’t—!” Now and again, I had the unfortunate and unpleasant experience of blurting out words I immediately regretted.

  The prince’s brow creased in puzzlement, then lifted in enlightenment. “Did James Drake say that in order to heal you, he and you must mate?”

  The behica examined me with an expression blended of pity and disgust, just as offended as my once-beloved Aunt Tilly would have looked had I brazenly informed her I had married and abandoned one man and taken another as a lover. Which some people might say I had.

  I hope I am not a rude person. Bee and I learned good manners and proper deportment, and I am sure I value courtesy. But this was too much. I looked at the blameless catch-fires, then met the old woman’s gaze with a blazing fire of my own.

  “People who throw others to the wolves ought not to judge where they end up running.” I turned my back on her, pushed past the prince and the catch-fires, and walked out of the house.

  Blindly, furiously, I strode across the open space until, like a brain-rotted salter, I bumped into the tall iron fence and found myself staring through the narrow gaps between bars into the crystalline white eyes of a man.

  I yelped, leaping back.

  He said nothing. He simply stood with face against the bars shifting ever so slightly as if some hours or days or months ago he had been walking this way and, having fetched up against the bars, did not know how to turn around. For all I knew, he would stand there until a strong rain dissolved him. His gaze had neither soul nor intelligence. He was an empty vessel.

  I caught my heel on the ground, and sat down so hard on my backside that I began to cry. What a fool I was!

  But tears get boring very quickly. I wiped my face on a sleeve and rose. Better to face the truth than run away.

  The high fence ringed an open area of shelters with thatched roofs but no walls. In some, clothed figures dozed in hammocks. Other figures lay on the ground or stood with slack faces and lax limbs staring at nothing. Closer stood actual cages whose prisoners paced and muttered and then, catching sight of me, began to gabble and claw at the bars that confined them. I recognized the man who had bitten me more by the rip in his singlet than by his features, which were smeared with dirt. Red rimmed his mouth; was that my blood? He rocked from one foot to the other, eyes shut, keening and moaning: “Kill me. Kill me before I rot.”

  How long did it take them to die? For how long did their minds hang on, screaming, as they slid inexorably into the claws of the plague?

  I saw Abby. Her hair was bound in a head wrap of brown-and-gold cloth. She was running a hand along the bars of an empty cage as if counting in time to the tune she was singing. “On a fine batey, do yee hear, me sissy-o? We want one of they, do yee hear, me sissy-o? Which one do yee want? Do yee hear, me sissy-o?”

  “Abby! It’s Cat’reen!”

  She looked at me without recognition and walked on.

  I fled back to the house and barred the door. I washed my face and hands once, then twice, and then a third time, but what I had seen and heard would not rinse away. I sank down on the mat and let the exhaustion of despair drag me down into sleep.

  “Cat?” James Drake’s voice woke me. “Here’s food and juice. I haven’t seen you all day.”

  I opened the door. Drake stood with a half smile on his face and his hair darkened by being sopping wet; his clothes stuck to him; he looked as if he had been swimming. He was not alone.

  “Abby!”

  She smiled awkwardly at me, as a friend might when caught in a situation where you can’t admit you know each other. She held a tray.

  “Go inside,” said Drake to her. “Set it down. Then come back outside. That’s right.”

  I stepped back as she lurched inside and set down the tray.

  “Pardon, gal. I just set dis down.” She again offered that awkward smile and limped out, holding her side, not looking back.

  “She doesn’t know me!” I hissed, my voice breaking.

  He gave off an odd scent: almost sweet and with a bite like a spark settling on the tongue. “Cursed bad luck for her. She could slip into the active phase tonight or tomorrow, and then it will be too late to help her. Bastards!” He was in the grip of a fever, words rising. “What high and mighty creatures they all are, so proud of their virtue! The truth they will never admit, none of them, is that a fire mage can burn out all the seedlings of the disease, all the teeth, just as long as an infested salter hasn’t yet entered the active phase.”

  “But then why don’t they?” I cried, thinking of her blank stare.

  “They d
on’t want to pay the price. Be on the beach by dusk with all your things.”

  He left.

  I forced down the griddle bread with its bitter aftertaste, drank the juice, and ate the strips of dried chicken. The gourd bottle still redolent with rum I filled with water and tied to my bundled skirts and boots. I walked to the deserted beach and dabbled my toes in the water. Cool feet make a cool head. Clouds had built up, sliding in from the northeast, and a squall swept through, soaking me to the skin and pounding across the bay in a sudden boil.

  Hair plastered to my body and my clothes utterly sodden, I laughed. I pressed a hand to my breast, the curve of the locket beneath my bodice shaped to the curve of my palm, and I thought:

  Vai.

  Vai? It was as if the cursed man would never stop plaguing me. And yet he had done his best to help me.

  Shadows darkened the sea as the sun lowered west behind the island’s ridge. A shape like a dark cloud floated against the sky in the east. Did a lamp flare over the water? A faint clut-clut-clut like the clatter of factory machinery teased the edge of my hearing, growing louder. The tang of burning wood and oil tingled in my nostrils.

  As twilight poured into night, the sword flowered to life. A crash shivered, felt through the soles of my bare feet. A shout rang out, followed by the clang of an alarm bell. I turned.

  Flames glowered in the pens. Smoke streamed skyward. Someone had set the cages on fire.

  People yelled from the roof of the prince’s house. Were they waving at me? Or trying to attract the attention of the figures moving through the houses? Where had they all come from?

  In the red gloom, the figures swarmed into view, moving toward the beach. I saw them clearly.

  A mob of salters staggered toward me like a pack of rabid dogs.

  Running seemed the stupidest thing to do, trapped as I was against the sea. I drew my sword. The flat white eyes of the salters glinted in its light. The forward edge of a wave shushed up the beach to kiss my toes and slide away again.

  Legate Amadou Barry and his sisters and aunt had escaped the salt plague by boat. I had once mocked his story because I hadn’t understood how salters could reach an island, but I knew now that all you had to do was to be bitten. Invisible teeth would gnaw away at you with no sign of the disease showing until it was too late.

  I ripped off my pagne and wrapped it around my neck to keep it out of the way as I backed into the water. Could the monster that had attacked me in the deeps swim so close? Did it matter? The salters halted at the limit of the waves, and there they licked their teeth and grasped with unwashed hands. The man who had bitten me stood among them, saying, “Kill me, kill me,” as he strained to the edge of the salty brine and retreated as foam tickled up the sand.

  A weight knocked into my legs, bumping me sideways. I shrieked as a huge shape surfaced and a round head blinked solemnly beneath my gleaming blade. The world stilled and the wind hushed. For an instant I stood poised between the mortal world and the spirit world, feet in one and head in another and my heart shoved so hard up into my throat I could not breathe.

  It was a cursed turtle. Watching me like a messenger come to remind me that the Master of the Wild Hunt had his spies everywhere: You belong to me, Daughter.

  Or maybe it was just a sea turtle, as surprised as I was.

  From the roof, Prince Caonabo called. “Perdita! Wade to the point! Wait on the rocks!”

  An oblong shape blotted out stars and clouds alike. Lamplight flared overhead.

  “Cat! Don’t come out of the water!” Drake shouted, but I could not see him.

  A thread slithered down from the sky to slap the water. It was a rope ladder, lowered as by Ba’al’s heavenly messengers. I stared at it as if it were a serpent sliding close to strike, for its swaying bounce hypnotized me. Two figures scrambled down. The first gripped a lamp’s hook in strong white teeth. As he turned to take in the scene on the dark shore, he spotted me, let go one hand from the ladder, and drew a very impressive knife from a harness crossed on a dark chest.

  I brandished my sword to make sure he knew I had it. I could take a cursed knife, but I wasn’t so sure about taking him, for he had the posture of a man who knew how to fight and kill. Although his willingness to raid a plague island filled with brain-rotted dying people who could easily infest him did not inspire confidence in his intelligence.

  The person above, the one without a lamp held in his mouth, spoke. “Gal! Yee hear me?”

  “I’m just a lost woman, no threat to you,” I cried. “Can you get me out of here?”

  “No salter, she.” By the voice it was a woman. She seemed to be explaining things to the man with the lamp and the knife, thus giving me even less faith in his wit. “She be in the water, see? Therewise not a salter.”

  I kept my guard up although he sheathed the knife and swung around to peer at the beach.

  “Cat! Get on the ship! Go up now!” Definitely that was Drake’s impatient voice.

  He pushed down through the salters without fear, dragging Abby. She lurched like a broken toy, sobbing in fear. He led her to the edge of the water. A wave brushed up over her bare feet and she whimpered with a horrible hurt dog sound. The salters backed away from Drake as from poison, but yet they so yearned for my blood that they kept coming back and retreating, all in time to the sough of the waves.

  Drake tugged Abby against him as in an embrace. He ripped away her blouse, uncovering her torso and breasts. The gleam of my sword and the light of the ladder man’s lamp illuminated a suppurating wound gouged into her side. The wound oozed with a slime that glittered like phosphorous. Drake pressed a hand against it, fingers smeared into the oily mess. She cried out, then stilled as abruptly as if he had stabbed her. I yelled a protest and splashed forward to save her.

  A salter grabbed at me. My training snapped me into a lunge, weight and force thrusting the blade’s tip into his shoulder.

  His gaze met mine, unreadable. Blank and dead.

  Cold and hot together, blood racing, I rotated my elbow out and yanked free the blade, able to think only that it hadn’t been a killing blow. The salter dropped at my feet. A wave spilled over the body, and it turned white and began to dissolve like a ridge of salt crumbling away.

  Maybe I screamed in sheer shocked surprise. Someone screamed.

  The salters scattered, stumbling away from me. The two closest to Drake began to croon in a moaning whoop whose rise and fall made my skin crawl. A glow like fireflies winked along their skin until their complexions shone as if they were turning alchemically into burnished gold. Flames licked along their ragged clothing. Sparks spun in their eyes.

  Furious shouts and curses rose from the rooftops.

  A fourth salter limped toward me, his white gaze fixed purposefully on me. He was the one who had bitten me. As he licked his teeth and smacked his lips with the obsession of hunger, he looked me right in the eye with what I knew, like a knife to the gut, was the dregs of the mind that had once dwelt happily in a youthful, healthy body.

  “Kill me. Kill me.”

  I thrust. My blade caught him just below the ribs. Then I pulled free.

  He toppled into the sea, and the crystalline remains of what had once been a man hissed away in the swells.

  I fell back as a wave of heat blasted off James Drake. The two glowing salters burned in earnest. A third joined them. Their greasy, bitter smell gagged me.

  A hand caught my arm. I jerked around to stare straight at a muscled and very bare black chest wrapped with knives. Two old, ropy scars drew a starburst pattern over his left shoulder and across his heart. Once, he had taken the worst of a bad knife fight. Or perhaps he was the one who had won.

  “Up! Hurry, Perdita!” With a disturbing shriek of a laugh, the woman leaped off the ladder and landed with a resounding splash next to me.

  The burning men weren’t even screaming because the flames were consuming them so quickly. The reek of singed flesh dizzied me. I sheathed and fastened my sword, gra
bbed a stiff rung, and began to climb. I had to work around the knife man, and as I passed he spread a hand across my backside most invasively. But he merely shoved, with astonishing strength, to help me on my way.

  Up!

  My mind had shut down. Keep climbing. One foot. The next foot. One hand. The next hand. My shoulders strained and my fingers cramped, so I concentrated on pushing up with my legs. One more, and one more again. Keep climbing.

  Hands grabbed me from above and hauled me up. I half hung over the rim of a huge basket. Below, fire roared through the pens. A figure stood in the flames, not moving. If you were dead already in every way that counted, wouldn’t true death come as a blessing?

  Kill me.

  I collapsed onto a swaying floor, wet, exhausted, and numb.

  18

  Clut-clut-clut.

  The sound penetrated my dulled mind the way Bee’s little sister Astraea’s whining complaints in time pierced even the most heartlessly impervious. Not because you cared, but because you just wanted it to stop.

  The basket pitched. I grasped at the rope railing, clinging as my rescuers hauled in the rest of their catch. First came Abby, then Drake. Was he glowing slightly?

  I shut my eyes. Glittering salt crystals poured onto the sand in the shape of a man’s body, hissing away as the sea dissolved them. I had killed two men. Yet were they still men if their minds and maybe their souls had been eaten?

  As the basket rocked again, I looked up. The knife man and the woman who had laughed swung easily into the basket and rolled up the ladder behind them. Abby was led toward the stern by a young man who had his arm around her. A seventh individual, small and agile, clambered in the rigging to investigate the bloated creature above us. An eighth person fiddling at the stern of the basket worked a crank. As the clut-clut-clut increased its clamor, the creature under which we labored began ponderously to part the currents of air. Heat rose from a metal cylinder like the breath of a dragon, pouring upward into the oblong whale with its thrumming skin.