Cold Fire

by Kate Elliott

  “I’d like that. Luce, how did Vai and Kayleigh get here?”

  Two of the little lads had begun bashing each other with broken branches. She chased them down, took the branches away, and returned to me. “Yee can ask him that question.”

  “I can, but I’m asking you instead of telling Aunty that you meant to sneak out.”

  She rolled her eyes in that way she had. “Yee just don’ want to ask him. I don’ know what yee and he fought over—”

  “Which is none of your business.”

  “Ooo! That is a sour face! Can yee make goat’s milk curdle with it?”

  I laughed, spotted the little lads digging for branches in the sweepings, and gave them the eye. They ran off giggling, without branches.

  “They came in on the fourth day of Martius.”

  “You remember exactly?”

  “Me father is a sailor. Of course I know all the shipping schedules.” She levered up a bench and I caught the end to help her carry it. “They two came here to the boardinghouse on the fifth of Martius. They came in on a vessel out of Porto Dumnos ’twas hauling barrels of salted fish. No chance of missing that, for they clothes stank of herring.”

  No wonder Vai had been unable to follow me into the spirit world. By Imbolc, at the beginning of Februarius, he had already been at sea, undoubtedly at the mansa’s command.

  “Do you know the exact date General Camjiata arrived?” When she gave me a curious look, I hurried on. “He is quite the villain in Europa. No wonder the Council isn’t happy he came.”

  “That man shall bring all kind of trouble,” she agreed. “He made landfall on the nineteenth day of Februarius on a schooner registered to a local shipping house.”

  Which meant his breakout had been planned long in advance.

  “He came looking for yee, Cat,” said Luce with a frown.

  “The general?” I asked with real alarm. I did not need that complication on top of all else!

  She rolled her eyes again. “Yee’s an escaped Amazon from he army?”

  “Can’t I have made a joke?” I said with a false smile as I realized what she had meant.

  “No joke to he who traveled so far to seek yee.”

  “Is that what Vai told you?” It was a foolish question, answered by the very fact of my asking it. Vai had told everyone he had come to the Antilles to look for the perdita, his lost woman.

  Which meant Kayleigh and I were the only ones who knew it for a lie.

  Why had he really come to Expedition? More importantly, why had the mansa allowed it? Commanded it?

  What did the mansa want that was also in the Antilles?

  There was only one thing I could think of: Camjiata.

  Vai had brought with him a sword forged of cold steel. Cold steel in the hand of a cold mage severs the soul from the body with a cut: They need only draw blood to kill you.

  The mansa had sent Vai out to do his dirty work before. Vai had destroyed a magnificent airship and then gloated over his triumph. “They were sure I was too inexperienced to manage it! ”

  Yet he was not a heartless killer. He had refused to kill me. Surely I was the one bred and raised to be a heartless killer, not him.

  “Cat, can yee help me with this table?”

  My thoughts slammed back to earth. “Where do you want it?”

  Because Venerday was Kayleigh’s usual half day off each week, she accompanied us to the batey match. Vendors had set up on the open ground outside Passaporte’s ball court, selling baked yams, roasted corn, and cassava bread, things that could be eaten with the fingers. A few sold kerchiefs in the colors and patterns by which a person advertised allegiance to one of Expedition’s teams. Some kerchiefs bore unusual sigils that marked teams from within the Taino kingdom.

  “Do Taino teams play here as well?” I asked.

  “Assuredly. And if there is a celebration in the Taino kingdom, like a noble marriage or birth, there shall be games at the border plaza.”

  Not for us the vendors’ expensive food; we’d eaten before we left the boardinghouse. In a jostling delight of girls of whom Luce at almost sixteen was the youngest and I at twenty was one of the eldest, we paid our entry fee for the cheap seats and climbed to the top row. I enjoyed the feeling of being half hidden among them, because the young women of Expedition were, on the whole, tall and big and healthy, quite unlike the frailer, sallower, shorter women of cold Adurnam. I was so accustomed to men and women seated separately in public venues that intermingling forcibly recalled to me how foreign a place Expedition was. Yet my companions felt no compunction about pushing their way through the ranks of young men, seeking a spot where we could all sit together. They were the boldest girls I had ever met, and I loved them for it, and for the way they took me in as if I were Luce’s cousin and treated me as if I were no different from one of their own.

  We crammed in shoulder to shoulder and thigh to thigh, and I found myself between two tall girls of about my age named Tanny and Diantha.

  “Yee husband is uncanny handsome,” said Tanny, taking my hand and using it to point toward a group of young men below and to our left, standing in dusty trousers and singlets as if they had just come from the carpentry yard. Vai was fake-boxing with Kofi, laughing, quite at his ease. “Good fortune for yee.”

  “And you wonder how it is he comes to think so well of himself !” said Kayleigh from the row behind me in a tone accompanied by a long-suffering sigh.

  Tanny was a heavyset, handsome young woman who had, I’d been told, cast off two husbands already although she was no older than I was. “Carpenters have the best tools.”

  I stared at my hands, which had evidently lost hold of my entire store of witty rejoinders.

  “Stop! Please!” exclaimed Kayleigh as the girls around her laughed.

  “Don’ tease Cat,” said Luce, popping forward from the row behind us.

  “If yee decide to rid yee own self of he, Cat,” said Tanny with a shrug, “I shall take a try.”

  “Good fortune to yee with that,” retorted Luce loyally. “He shall not bite. He is devoted to Cat.” She cast at me a baleful glare that made the other girls snicker all over again.

  “We were married by our families,” I said, choking out the words in the hope that some kind Fate would sever the conversation. “I barely know him. Indeed, I scarcely think of him at all.”

  Tanny buried her face in her hands, shoulders heaving. The other girls tried desperately not to laugh. I determinedly examined the seats opposite where well-to-do folk reclined on comfortable cushions beneath the shade of awnings while servants fetched them food and drink.

  “Yee don’ want that man’s trouble anyway, Tanny.” Lanky Diantha had features more Taino than Celtic or Afric and hair as straight and black as mine, cropped short because she had aspirations to play on the Rays’ women’s team. “He is in deep with they radicals.”

  “Exactly what radicals is that?” I asked.

  “That Kofi-lad was arrested two times for he radical associations. Those is not clan scars on he cheeks, yee know. The wardens tortured him, but he would not talk.”

  “Cat, close yee mouth,” said Luce. “I thought yee knew.”

  Kayleigh was staring into the crowd to where Kofi was singing and dancing with Vai and the lads to the beat of a hand drum. Those young men could dance! They had the crowd around them getting into a call and response led by Kofi’s strong voice: “Give the man yee money, and what do yee get?”

  “The wardens must act to keep the peace,” said Diantha. “If the radicals get their way, the whole city shall go up in flames.”

  Luce leaned over my shoulder. “The Council rule unjustly and for they own benefit!”

  “The Council was established at the founding to stop a king from taking over!” protested Diantha. “They did it for the best!”

  “Just because that was true then, Dee,” said Tanny as the other gals nodded in agreement with her as she went on, “don’ mean we cannot want to change t
he way things is now. What chance have we in the districts to be heard by the Council? They line they own pockets with money and we get nothing.”

  “Think of all the trouble that will come,” muttered Diantha.

  “Trouble is here already,” objected Tanny. “General Camjiata got angry when the Council refused he request for support. Now he is run to the Taino.”

  “Yee think if them radicals get in power with an Assembly, they will support the general and buy off the Taino?” cried Diantha. “The radicals don’ want a king either.”

  “But the general wants to be emperor in Europa, not here,” I said. “You would think the Council, and the radicals, would want to encourage him to go back home, not to hang around because he can’t afford to return.”

  “No one want him to hang around,” said Tanny. “There was one time already a man tried to kill the general.”

  “What happened?” I glanced at Kayleigh but she was whispering to a friend.

  “A man shot at the general when he went to Nance’s Tavern to meet with the local factory union people. The Council blamed the radicals. The radical leaders had broadsheets printed and blamed the Council. Truth is, the general was always a-meeting with both sides.”

  The song swept up the risers as the gals joined in: “Give the man yee money, and what do yee get? Yee don’ get nothing, not even a kiss!”

  A roar rose from the crowd, drowning out the song. Folk leaped to their feet as the two teams trotted out onto the ball court. Three women dressed in white tabards stood as arbitrators for the game, overseen by an umpire seated on a pedestal. Captains accepted the stone belts that marked their status; flags rose. Today, Rays played Cajayas, and the singing of team chants became deafening as the lead arbitrator tossed the ball into the air to launch the game.

  At first, I stood with the others, swaying and shouting, yelping when the ball hit dirt, whooping when a well-placed elbow or knee kept play afloat, for teams lost points if a bad play caused the ball to touch the ground. Diantha offered a running commentary on the players.

  Yet a disquieting murmur tugged at my ears. A whiff of burning tickled my nostrils. I pushed to the top of the stone edifice to look over the back wall to the ground below. A troop of wardens had gathered, some carrying lamps and the rest carrying staves and pistols.

  I dropped down. Vai was easy to find, not because he was particularly tall but because I immediately recognized the shape of his head and the cut of his shoulders. He swung around to look at me, as if I’d spoken. I lifted my chin. He nodded and, with Kofi to cut a path, started up.

  I pushed down through the dancing, chanting throngs as the game surged forward, one player making a shot for the hurricane’s eye—the stone ring—and just missing to a great shout from the crowd, relief and disappointment woven into a single cry.

  On the cry’s dying, Vai shoved into view. “Tell me.”

  “Wardens! With lamps.”

  The flash of destructive glee that flared in Kofi’s face made me wonder how much he hated the wardens and their masters, the Council. “Just what we have been waiting for,” he said in a tone that made me shiver.

  Vai pulled me close. “Catherine. Go back to your friends. Stay high until the riot starts. Let the gals hide you. Don’t break away alone.”

  “I am not helpless—!”

  “Of course you aren’t!” His arm tightened around my back. “That’s not what I mean. It’s going to get ugly. I need you to make sure Kayleigh and Luce get home safely.”

  I was momentarily taken aback by the realization that he had just entrusted his sister’s welfare to me, and that he was half embracing me. “Oh. Of course. What about you?”

  “Come on,” said Kofi, and Vai released me as if startled to find himself holding me. They took off into the crowd. A hornet’s nest of angry buzzing rose in the trail of their passing. Anxious excitement crawled like mice along my skin. I climbed back to the gals.

  “There’s going to be a riot,” I said as I reached them. “Stick close to each other, and we’ll get out safely.” They were smart gals. They listened. “Dee, you and me in the front. Luce, you right behind me with the others. Kayleigh and Tanny, you two use your size in the rear to make sure no one gets left behind. We have to get off the risers and through the crowd. No splitting up.”

  A phalanx of wardens had appeared at either end of the long stone risers, on our cheap-seats side only. Not a one inflicted his lit lamp on the wealthy folk avidly watching the game on the other side of the court. The ball arced, struck dirt, bounced, and was sent on its way by a header.

  Corncobs, coconut shell bowls, hanks of cassava bread, fruit peelings, and even fragments of broken ceramic cups began to fly. Voices sang out: “Ask for the wardens and what do yee get? Here to bully us, and never a kiss! Who do yee come to arrest? One law for the rich and one for the rest!”

  “They shall not trample us today!” Whose voice it was that boomed over the clamor I did not know, but it sounded like Kofi.

  Young men shoved forward in a wave. In a tide of linked arms the crowd mowed down the wardens entering at the northern end of the risers. A fight broke out at the southern end, staffs cracking down on unprotected heads but met by fists and knives. People flooded away from the disturbance, many hopping onto the ball court into the middle of the play. In the seats opposite, angry spectators bellowed for order as wardens took up stations to protect them from the crowd.

  “The field is clearest!” Diantha quivered beside me like a hound ready to bolt its leash.

  “No!” I cried. “We’re going straight through the fight.”

  “But Cat—!” Luce’s face washed gray with fear.

  “Trust me. In rows, Luce in the center. Link arms. Don’t get separated.”

  I forged forward with Diantha as we shoved down the steps. I steered us to where the melee was like a churning tidal catchwater, current and swell and wind all slapping together to make a deadly confluence. But where the fight was worst, we had least chance of being marked out. The air pressure changed. My ears popped. Lamps shattered; rifles and pistols clicked, combustion was killed. The crowd roared and pushed hard into the collapsing line of wardens.

  Luce was gulping down sobs, desperately trying to be brave, but Diantha showed no fear as she and I lanced like a spear through any gap we could see. I used my cane ruthlessly to thwack and thrust and trip. Diantha used her knees, elbows, and hips to make way. Tanny, at the rear, levered her weight against any rioter or warden who crashed against us. Kayleigh had the strength of a big-boned girl accustomed to fieldwork.

  I ducked a blow and dragged Diantha sideways as a grasping hand caught at a corner of her kerchief. The other girls shoved us forward into an eddy of open ground where carts lay overturned. Liquid from kettles splashed everywhere, meat pies crushed and leaking their innards.

  A pair of wardens spotted me. “Stop, there! We is to detain all maku gals—”

  I drew gentle shadows over me, becoming nothing more than the flutter of a skirt and a scuff of dust. The wardens let us pass. Diantha hailed a cluster of huddled batey players in smeared and torn skirts marking them as Rays.

  “Hey, gals! Come on!” she cried. “Let us get out of this hurricane.”

  “Wardens told us to wait until all is cleared,” said their shaken captain.

  A pistol went off, the report sharp and stunning. What had happened to Vai’s magic? If I ran back, I could help him, but Luce was crying and Kayleigh was trying to soothe her in a voice not much calmer than Luce’s tears, and Tanny was hauling along another girl who was in hysterics.

  “Let them see what we do to them we thought was we brothers,” cried a male voice. “Will they fire on us? Or join us?”

  A huge surge flooded as men came running and the fight thundered back into chaos.

  “Move!” I shouted, startling my gals and the straggle of batey players alike.

  We moved.

  With the Rays we flowed onto streets hazy with the smoke of l
ate afternoon cook fires. The noise from the ball court rose and fell like a cyclone’s winds, and now a drumming hammered into life, hands beating on skin, on thighs, like the beating heart of anger. We made our way first to Diantha’s compound, and then to Tanny’s, leaving off the girls until there was only me and Kayleigh and Luce to make our way home.

  A different sort of drumming rose in counterpoint to the rhythm voiced by the angry demonstrators: the rumbling tread of booted feet, presaging the arrival of armed men from the direction of the old city. We came to an intersection obscured by dusk and smoke. A dozen wardens came running out of the haze. Without thinking, I drew shadows tight around me.

  The wardens barely slowed, but as long as Kayleigh didn’t speak, there was no reason by looks or dress to think her anything except a local gal. They jogged on.

  “Get yee to yee home,” called the one at the rear gruffly. “Don’ be foolish gals. Move it!”

  As they trotted into darkness, Luce began sobbing. “Where is Cat? How did we lose she?”

  While their backs were to me, I released the shadows.

  Luce turned, saw me, and screamed. “Stay back, spirit!”

  “Luce, it’s just me.”

  “Yee’s an opia,” she croaked out between sobs. “Yee have come to haunt yee husband. Please, don’ harm me. I shall never tell!”

  “What is an opia?”

  “An opia is the spirit of a dead person,” said Kayleigh, staring at me with a flat gaze I could not read. “That’s what they call them here.”

  “Why would you think I am dead, or a spirit?”

  “How else could yee vanish like that?” said Luce in a choked voice.

  I did not want her to look at me as if I had just lumbered down a white sand beach and tried to bite her. But I could not answer her question even with a question.

  Kayleigh sighed. “Show her your navel, Cat. Then she’ll know you for a living person. Vai’s an idiot where you’re concerned, but our uncle taught him too well to be fooled by that.”

  I tugged up my blouse, already pulled askew by our headlong flight. “Luce has seen it often enough when we shower! Touch it! I was born from a human woman just as you were!”