Cold Fire

by Kate Elliott

  She said, “If the Taino is one thing, they is holders of the law. In the First Treaty, the Taino caciques swore they shall never cross the border between Taino country and Expedition Territory. So by Taino way of thinking, to break the treaty is to dishonor the cemi. Yee know, they ancestors. By the by, Cat. When I speak of agreements, it remind me. Vai ask me last night about renting a hammock in the common hall. I thought he mean for Kayleigh, but he mean for he own self. Yee and she is to share the room, which he pay for, and he to sleep elsewhere.”

  The buttons were bronze and formed out of the same mold. In a household practicing economy, it was wise to buy plain buttons so they could be interchanged on various garments.

  “Not that ’tis any of me business,” she added in a tone that implied the opposite, “but peace in the house make peace in the heart.”

  The buttons stared back at me. Not that it was any of their business!

  “It’s not my place to speak of such intimate matters,” I said in a tone I hoped walked the fine line between being polite and absolutely crushing this subject into oblivion. “I was hoping to ask to borrow thread. I’ll pay you back, of course. I can salvage a great deal from my skirts and petticoats by piecing together one skirt from the remnants. I could manage a few work vests—singlets, I mean—from the scraps if your little lads have need of such. It’s quite good quality wool challis…” I trailed off, surprised to find my hands in fists, buttons biting into my palms.

  She gave me a measuring look. “Happen that young man ever hit yee?”

  “Hit me? Like, beat me?”

  “He don’ seem like that kind. But I reckon I best ask.”

  “No. That’s not what happened. Although he’s said some pretty awful things to me.”

  She smiled wryly. “I admit, that lad have a sharp tongue when he wish, not that he ever use it on he elders! And he think very well of he own self.”

  “That is a way of describing it,” I agreed.

  She chuckled. “Yee may use any of the thread in the copper tin. If yee’s feeling up to it, I reckon I shall set yee to serving food and drink in the evenings. Yee’s a pleasing gal to look on, and yee have a bold way of speaking. ’Tis hard to get help these days with the factories hiring so many.”

  “I can do that. Aunty, I’m grateful to you for taking me in. I mean to earn my keep.”

  “Seeing that look on Vai’s face when he brought yee back is keep enough, but fear not, gal. I shall see yee earn yee bed.” She laughed merrily at whatever expression blanched my face.

  I fetched my ruined skirts and borrowed scissors from one of the neighbor men. At a table in front of an interested audience of children and the regular customers who always came early, I began dismantling the ripped and torn remains while I spun a carefully worded tale that left out Salt Island, James Drake, and Prince Caonabo, and jumped straight from the watery attack to my beach rescue by buccaneers. The rains came through, as they did every afternoon, and more people gathered as folk left off work for the day and came to drink and relax.

  “Yee say yee was attacked by a shark? Describe what yee saw, gal.”

  “It was very large, and a nasty shiny gray, and it had dead flat eyes. I must say, I’ve never been so terrified in my life.” Except standing before the creature who sired me. “I punched it, and it swam off.”

  They laughed and whistled. Several began debating whether it was a carite or a cajaya, two different kinds of sharks known to attack people. I looked up to see Vai standing in the back with arms crossed, glowering as if I had personally offended him. By the evidence of sawdust dusting his skin, he had only recently come in and not yet washed; he’d tied a kerchief over his head today, making him look very buccaneer-ish, a man about to sail off in an airship except of course for the minor issue of his deflating the balloon and thereby causing a spectacular crash.

  “That shark is not the predator yee shall have been feared of, gal,” said Uncle Joe. “’Tis they buccaneers yee shall have feared more. Seem yee was rescued off the beach by the Barr Cousins. They is called Nick Blade for he knives and the Hyena Queen for the way she laugh.”

  “The Barr Cousins? Likely so. We were never formally introduced.”

  “Yee’s killing me, gal!” said some wit in the crowd. “‘Never formally introduced!’”

  “She said her grandmother was a Kena’ani woman. That makes us cousins of a sort. Maybe more, since I’m a Barahal. We might be truly cousins, if their ancestors shortened the Barahal name to Barr. That must be why we got along so well.”

  My bravado sent my audience into gales of laughter as I measured cloth against the waistband. As Vai’s gaze swept across my audience, they stepped back just as if he had pushed each one. Maybe he had, for the air had a sudden bite. All hastily moved away to other tables.

  He sat down opposite me, arms still crossed. “You’ll get sick again if you overdo it.”

  I kept my voice low as I pinned cloth to the waistband, for although the customers had gone to sit elsewhere that did not mean they weren’t watching. “I need to earn my keep, Vai, not as your kept woman. It does amaze me how you felt able to tell everyone the gripping tale of how you lost your darling wife and have searched for her ever since. How heartbreaking. How noble.”

  “It keeps away the women.”

  Irritation marred the features of most men, making them look small-minded or ill-tempered. Not Vai. Irritation sharpened his features, made a woman want to kiss him until he relented. I imagined hungry young women buzzing like bees to a succulently annoyed flower.

  He raised an eyebrow, in supercilious query.

  “How nice for you,” I said, since he was clearly expecting a response to a statement meant to provoke me. “Or not.”

  “Don’t change the subject, Catherine. I don’t see how the tale I told is much different than the one you just embroidered.”

  “It’s all true!”

  “I’m sure it is. If anyone could punch a shark in the eye and survive to tell of it, it would be you.”

  “I would thank you for the fine praise, except you looked so annoyed when I was telling that part of the story.”

  “Yes, annoyance was certainly my first reaction on hearing you had been attacked by a shark. I couldn’t possibly have been shocked or terrified on your behalf. Although you left out the part about exactly how you found yourself floating in the middle of the sea in the first place.”

  “Would you have turned me over to the wardens if I hadn’t been clean?”

  His chin raised as sharply as if I had slapped him. A breath of ice kissed my lips.

  Because I was suddenly, inexplicably furious, I pressed my attack, leaning closer with an aggressive whisper. “You would have been right to do so. I was on Salt Island.”

  He stood so quickly that all around the courtyard people jumped, and looked forcibly away. He grabbed my arm and dragged me closer, across the table. The table’s edge dug into my thighs.

  His voice emerged in a hoarse murmur. “You just dreamed that. You were never there.”

  “Let go,” I said, rigid beneath his hand. All I could see was Abby’s face.

  He released me. Sat down. Shut his eyes, breathing hard, as the cold eddy of air around us faded. I fought to recover my composure. As I straightened out the disturbed fabric, I wondered what people were making of all this. It would be an easy plate to garnish: The long-parted lovers quarrel over the circumstance that precipitated their separation.

  When his breathing had settled, he opened his eyes and considered me with the haughty arrogance I knew best. “Which explains the presence of the fire mage. Although I can’t quite figure how a fire mage might have come to be working with the notorious Barr Cousins.”

  I parried. “I don’t think the Barr Cousins liked the fire mage much.”

  “Good for them. I don’t like him much either.”

  “I didn’t ask you to like him. You don’t even know him.”

  He set his elbows on the table, h
eedless of the fabric I was neatly piecing back together. “There is where you are wrong. I met him in Adurnam. In the entryway of the law offices of Godwik and Clutch. Where I also found you. I remembered that when I saw him again today—”

  Jerking up, I stabbed myself with a pin. “Ah!”

  “—Wandering around the harbor with a ridiculous cap pulled down to cover his red hair and asking about a girl he had lost track of after he had rescued her from a shipwreck on a deserted islet. I’m surprised you forgot to mention the shipwreck in your otherwise flamboyant tale.”

  I licked a spot of blood from my finger.

  “I must wonder why he was in Adurnam then, and why he came here now,” he finished.

  Vai didn’t know General Camjiata had been in the law offices in Adurnam. And I wasn’t about to tell him since it was none of his cursed business and nothing to do with me anyway no matter what the Iberian Monster claimed.

  “I never met Drake before that day in Adurnam,” I said quite truthfully, “and then not again until that which we won’t speak of.” But I sat down, resting my head in my hands because otherwise I was going to touch my belly. “Blessed Tanit! Did anyone tell him where I’d gone?”

  “No one did in the carpentry yard. I did find out you can leave a message for him at the Speckled Iguana. Shall we go over there now?”

  I found the courage to look at him. “Can’t I just stay here?”

  He exhaled sharply. Then the self-satisfied lift of his mouth betrayed him. “You can, if that’s what you want.”

  I began to tremble. “You couldn’t just come straight out and ask me what you really want to know, which I must suppose is whether I want to go back to James Drake. At least the infamous murderer Nick Blade was honest with me!”

  That made him sit up straight. “Do enlighten me!”

  “He scolded me. He said, ‘Don’t you go getting drunk around men. What do you think will happen?’”

  “Did he, now?” said the arrogant cold mage thoughtfully, drawing forefinger and thumb down the line of his jaw in a way that dragged my gaze toward his lips.

  “Do you think I’m lying about that?” I snapped.

  “Did I say I thought you were lying?”

  “Are you going to ask me questions to annoy me?” I considered stabbing him with a pin.

  “Who do you think can keep this up longer?” he said with an aggravating smirk. He rose, snagged a cup from a tray being carried past by Brenna—who smiled on him as if wishing him good fortune!—and handed it to me. “Have a drink?”

  “Are you trying to get me drunk?”

  “Why would I want to get you drunk, Catherine?”

  “Isn’t that a way men seduce women—?” I broke off, so flustered and ashamed that all I could do was take a drink. It was juice, sweet and pure.

  “I’ve heard it is the only way some men can manage to seduce women.” He took the cup from my hand, drained it, and mercifully changed the subject. “I wish I could know how you are able to stand hidden in plain sight in a chamber where I can see you but others cannot.”

  I leaned toward him confidingly, and he caught in a breath.

  In a low voice, I said, “The secret belongs to those who remain silent.”

  He laughed quite charmingly, curse him, for it was the laugh of a man willing to be amused at his own expense. “How long have you been waiting to say that to me?”

  “How long do you think I’ve been waiting?”

  “I would suppose, since the very first time you heard me say it. Well, Catherine, I am nothing if not persistent. I also wish I could know if you sailed from Europa to the Antilles, or if you made the journey here while still in the spirit world.”

  “And I wish I could know why you and your sister are here. I don’t believe the mansa is generous enough to let go of a girl who might be bred for the hope of more potent cold mages.”

  He smiled in a way that made me wary. “There show the cat’s claws. It’s a fair assessment. I will not lie to you, Catherine. Like you, I have things I am not free to speak of. Let me know what I can do to help you with settling in.”

  I bundled up the skirts. “I’ll sew in the mornings and serve in the evenings. I start tonight.”

  I challenged him with a glare to protest that I needed to rest another day. He merely smiled a soft smile that made my heart turn over, an anatomically impossible maneuver that had the unexpected consequence of heating my blood to a boil.

  I had been bound into marriage against my will and chained by magic in ways I did not understand. If the head of the poet Bran Cof had told the truth, I could be released from the marriage as long as I did not succumb to an inconvenient attraction to his physical form. I had a dreadful task assigned me. I could not afford sentiment, or distraction. The master of the Wild Hunt was not interested in sentiment, nor would he be distracted. Bee had already called me heartless, and years of living in an impoverished household had taught me how to be sensible.

  Taking a deep breath, I began folding up the fabric. Having to be careful with the pins was good practice. Pins drew blood if they pricked you hard enough.

  “Just so you understand, Vai. I am grateful for your help. But nothing has changed between us that we have not already discussed.”

  I glanced up to see how he was taking my implacable declaration, only to surprise a look on his face which I could only describe as calculating.

  “What?” I demanded. “You look like you’re plotting a crime.”

  He looked away so quickly it was as good as a confession.

  “We’re finished here.” I pressed cloth to my chest like a shield and stepped back from the table. Around the courtyard, people were pretending not to watch, but they were watching.

  He let me go without saying one more word.

  21

  To wait tables, you had to have a good memory, be quick on your feet, and know how to keep men laughing while you avoided hands touching you in places you weren’t keen on being touched. Whatever tips they gave me—small coins but solid—were mine to keep. And I needed money, for Aunty was paying me in room and board. So I worked long hours, every afternoon and evening from the first arrival to the last departure.

  At first I stuck close to the boardinghouse, going out only with Aunty, Brenna, or Lucretia as I got to know Tailors’ Row, the local market, and the larger neighborhood. I needed to reconnoiter my ground. Above all, I did not want to stumble across James Drake.

  The following Jovesday afternoon Vai returned from work carrying a pair of sandals. I delivered a tray of ginger beer to a table of men arguing over the results of a batey game and brought a cup of juice to Lucretia and her next youngest sister. Under the shade of the big tree, they were straining pimento-soaked rum through cheesecloth for liqueur. Luce accepted the cup with a smile, then glanced toward Vai, who was waiting by the stairs. I went over.

  He held out the sandals. “Catherine, these are for you.”

  “I can’t afford them. And I won’t accept gifts from you.”

  He glanced up at the tapering, oblong leaves of the ceiba tree as if to find patience hiding in the lofty branches. “Don’t take them for your own sake. Do it for Aunty. You’re walking around here all day and night, and to the market and up and down Tailors’ Row—”

  “How do you know what I’m doing during the day when you’re at work?”

  His glance toward Lucretia betrayed him. “If you cut your feet, you can’t wait tables…” He paused.

  I turned to see two trolls standing in the gate, looking around with predatory gazes. One was tall, drab, and likely female, and the other was short, brightly crested, and likely male. They wore the long cotton jackets commonly worn by men of business in Expedition, the cloth a plain dark green, smeared with soot and oil stains. The customers looked toward them with the same mild disinterest they showed when a street vendor appeared with a tray of cigarillos or taffy, and then at Vai.

  He said in a low voice, “Catherine, don’t be an idi
ot. You’ve been walking around barefoot for over a week.”

  “I can’t wear my winter boots.”

  “I didn’t say you should. These are cheap sandals. Just take them. I have to go out.”

  I took the sandals. He joined the trolls at the gate and left. Why would a cold mage be fraternizing with trolls?

  “Oooh me stars!” Lucretia sidled up beside me, smelling of pimento, cinnamon, lime, and rum. After prying the sandals out of my hands, she found the maker’s mark on the sole. “These cost him a pretty bit of coin!”

  “He said they were cheap sandals.”

  She rolled her eyes as she handed them back to me. “Yee believe that if yee wish, Cat.”

  I measured them against my dust-smeared feet. “How did he know my size? Luce? Did you sneak him my boots and then put them back? Are you telling him tales on me?”

  She grabbed one of the sandals and whacked me on the hip with it. “Yee’s so stubborn. Just wear the sandals and be glad yee have such, since there is many who have no shoes.”

  It was, I realized, a point of pride in Aunty’s household that all the children had shoes and could afford the fee for the district school. For however busy the courtyard was every night and however full the boardinghouse stayed, signs of economical living crept out everywhere, things I recognized from my own upbringing. Chastened, I washed my feet, put on the sandals, and went back to work.

  “Sweet Cat, a round of beer! I see yee have new sandals.”

  Sweet Cat was what the elderly regulars had decided to call me. “Nice of him to bring them round before he had to go off again.”

  “Yes, he go every Jovesday with those two. Yee know them, I suppose.”

  “The only trolls I ever knew were lawyers.” I cast my lure. “Are there many troll lawyers here?”

  “Many troll lawyers! Yee’s such a maku, Sweet Cat! Now, yee listen.”

  They liked to explain things to me, because I listened so well. Trolls loved the law the way batey players loved the game. They were known as specialists in scratching over the finer points of the law and pecking through every least step in the contractual procedures on which legal arrangements were created and implemented. Troll-owned law offices tended to congregate in areas by specialty; law houses that worked maritime law or that anchored branches gone overseas could be found in the harbor district just outside the old city.