Cold Fire

by Kate Elliott

  I thought of how I had given Vai my sword that night in Southbridge Londun. He had killed two men rather than let them kill us. Blood on his hands. He didn’t want to kill again.

  I thought of the two salters I had killed on the beach of Salt Island. Even as one begged for release. Even so. I would kill them all and more rather than let one bite me again.

  I set down the knife. Let out my held breath. “Go on.”

  He examined me as he sipped at his tea. “Yes, you do understand. Second, Beatrice has a most vivid dream of you and a man.” Briefly he looked so sympathetically amused, as if he had been caught kissing once, that I wanted to like him. But I knew better. “By the cobo hood gas lamp in the sketch, we were fairly certain we would find you in Expedition. Soon after this, Beatrice sketched you standing on a beach, little enough to go on. James approached me privately to tell me he recognized the beach, for he had been to Salt Island as part of his healer’s apprenticeship.”

  Bee looked up, mouth a grim line. “You never told me that beach was on Salt Island!”

  “I did not want you to worry, Beatrice. You can imagine our concern, Cat! Had you been bitten, you would have been doomed. We had to get you off the island as soon as you arrived. It was easy enough to arrange for James to go there and wait for you.” He took hold of my arm. He was a big man, and he had a strong grip. He slid my jacket sleeve up to uncover the scar. “But I was wrong. You were bitten.”

  “Cat!” Bee scrambled to her feet, to come over to me, but the general raised a hand, and she halted, eyes wide, hands gripping the fabric of her skirt.

  “Beatrice’s dream saved you, Cat. We saved you. Imagine what would have happened had James not been there to heal you!”

  I pulled my arm away and tugged down my sleeve. “He didn’t heal me. No matter what he may have told you.”

  “Then someone did. The salt plague is a terrible thing, as you now understand too well.”

  “Better than you do.” Horribly, the aroma of the salted bacon had begun to snake its way invitingly down my throat. I licked my lips. He was watching me, perhaps waiting for me to explain how I knew Drake hadn’t healed me, but I kept silent.

  He went on. “Nevertheless, I knew how to turn the situation to my advantage. Expedition is a city in ferment. Young men and women join radical circles and agitate against laws that vex them. People have new ideas about what rights communities ought to demand. Those outside the old city want assurance the laws will serve all equally. The story of this unusually powerful maku fire bane excited people’s interest. It’s a nice story, isn’t it? Having come to Expedition, the proud Europan lord is bitten by the local radical philosophies. Infested by them, he rebels against the chains that bind the unfortunate and chooses to join those who agitate against the privileges reserved for a few. He comes to see the justice in the complaints of the plebeians and propertyless and laborers. We knew he was here, waiting to strike at me, but we couldn’t find him.”

  He raised the cup to his lip. The tea smelled of flowers.

  Hands in fists, Drake muttered, “Dear Lady of Fire, must we hear this entire recital?”

  The general lifted his gaze to follow the pacing fire mage. “James.”

  With a look shot at me, Drake walked out to stand on the balcony.

  The general returned his attention to me. “No one knew what this cold mage looked like, except he was a man of noble station, like to a prince in bearing and disposition. Because of Bee’s dream—it was the jacket more than the kiss—we realized it was the cold mage you were married to.”

  “Bee knew what he looked like,” I said in a low voice.

  She wiped her nose with the back of a hand. “I’m so ashamed, Cat. I tried to draw him, but none of the sketches looked right. I thought you truly didn’t care for him.”

  “Because I would kiss someone like that if I didn’t care for them!”

  She glanced toward the balcony, and Drake’s slim back.

  “I didn’t kiss him like that!” I cried. “He got me drunk!”

  The general turned his cup once all the way around before he directed his gaze toward the balcony. “James? Are you telling me you took the liberty of your isolation on Salt Island and used it to seduce this innocent young woman by getting her drunk?”

  Drake turned, chin lifted as if he had absorbed another blow. “She said yes! She wasn’t that innocent, if you ask me.”

  “There’s a tale you told yourself to justify your actions,” said the general in a disgusted way that made me understand why Bee liked him. He looked at me. “Cat, eat.”

  The two poached eggs stared at me as if begging to be devoured in all their exquisite flavor. My stomach growled. Vai would urge me to eat. I set spoon to eggs.

  “We realized you could lead us to the cold mage, if we laid our course properly. I thought if we could capture him, then we would persuade him that the mage Houses were mistaken in their goals—obviously he already thought so—and that he should join us.”

  “What if he said no?”

  “You have me there, Cat. I don’t intend to die. But I prefer allies to enemies.”

  “You used me. You might as well have thrown me into the sea not knowing whether I was going to drown.” I set to work on the potatoes and bacon.

  “We are not so careless. Whether or not James healed you, he did save you from Salt Island. For I assure you, you would not have left the island once you were bitten. The Taino are very strict about that law. We delivered you to Expedition. We didn’t realize none of the locals would talk. By then I had gone to Sharagua. We returned to Expedition only three nights ago.”

  Which Kayleigh had told Vai. In fact, the general appeared to know very little about Vai’s situation.

  “How did you track us down?” I asked.

  “Early on, Jasmeen told me the radical leadership had been informed that a maku fire bane wanted to meet with them to discuss his mission to end the threat I posed to Europa. They didn’t want to meet with him because the first assassination attempt was so crudely done that some suspected it was meant to fail in order to raise sympathies for me.”

  “So after all,” I muttered, spearing a piece of bacon as I contemplated Kofi’s suspicions, “they might have suspected the meeting with the maku fire bane was a trap. How odd!”

  A smile flashed on the general’s face. “Spoken like Daniel. But after I left for Taino country, the radicals began to discuss more seriously the need to meet with a man who claimed to have the ability to kill me. Jasmeen heard from one of the young women some trifling gossip about the maku’s lost woman. The gal had turned up unexpectedly. Jasmeen sewed the pieces together. With her help, I arranged the meeting and raid the moment I returned to Expedition.”

  I choked on the last of the bacon, but I forced it down. Then I picked up a roll, still warm from the oven, and I shredded it into tiny pieces.

  “The wardens were not going to kill him, Cat. They were simply going to take him into custody and bring him to me.”

  He returned my gaze with a clear, unguarded look. Either the man was a shameless liar, or he was so deluded that he believed everything he said. Or maybe, just maybe, he was telling the truth. “You make it sound as if the wardens are working for you.”

  He drained his cup and, turning in his chair, addressed Bee instead of answering me. “Beatrice, the world has not ended, dear girl. Your cousin still loves you. Both of you have been sorely used, and it is no wonder you are angry. May I have some more tea? Do come eat.”

  How any person could say these words and not sound condescending I am sure I did not know, but he did say them, and they were not condescending.

  Beatrice brought over the new pot and sat next to the general instead of me. Drake eyed the teapot with longing. Meeting his gaze, I licked egg yolk and bacon grease off my knife. He grimaced before turning back to his view of the garden.

  The general set down his cup, and Bee filled it.

  “All has been resolved. Once th
e necessary ships and troops are fitted, the Council will release the arrested radicals into my custody. I’ll take them with me to Europa. Otherwise they would be hanged. Everyone benefits.”

  “If that’s what you call benefit. Aren’t people afraid the Taino will invade Expedition?”

  “That hasn’t been announced yet,” he said. “We’re keeping it secret for now.”

  “What hasn’t been announced yet? An invasion?”

  Bee’s face flooded with color. She downed a cup of tea in one gulp as if she wished it were rum.

  “Our agreement with the Taino,” he said, as if such an alliance was foreordained and natural.

  “The Taino rule the Antilles! You’re nothing but a dispossessed general hoping for troops and money to fight a war in a land an ocean away! What can you have that they want?”

  “Besides the spoils of victory to fill a treasury emptied by decades of expansionist wars? An opening of significant trade and export without too much risk to the cacica’s authority?” He walked to the sideboard to make another plate of food.

  “Is that enough to interest them?” I demanded.

  Bee set down the cup and stared at the polished tabletop. Never in my life had I seen her shy from anything. Never. She managed a tremulous smile. “I am to get married.”

  I sat back, hard, in the chair. “Married!”

  She glanced toward the general. He nodded exactly in the manner of a professor encouraging a favored student as she gropes her way toward the correct answer.

  She reached across the table to lay a hand atop one of mine. “If the price of hope is marriage, then so be it. To a man of high rank and good manners, so I am assured.”

  “You agreed to marry him sight unseen?”

  “Don’t be so naïve, Cat! That’s how such things work. You should know! They want me because I am a dream walker. Here in the Antilles, dream walkers are honored because they are so rare.”

  “I should think they are rare everywhere, given their likelihood of an untimely demise. If that’s the only reason you are marrying, you might as well have been handed off to Four Moons House to be their prisoner. What obligations will the Taino place on you?”

  She let out a gusty sigh. “Would you please listen for once? They have traditions here about the lore of walking the path of dreams. Once I am married, I will be allowed to learn.”

  “While you’re imprisoned in some hot, dusty palace. Couldn’t you have stayed with Brennan and Kehinde?”

  “I would have loved to do so, with their fine revolutionary notions and legendary fistfights and buckets of whiskey and beautifully written pamphlets filled with radical sentiments. But that doesn’t solve my other problem, does it? Perhaps you have a brilliant plan to stop the Wild Hunt from ripping off my head!”

  I jumped up, the chair tipping over to clatter to the floor behind me. “Yes! I do!”

  Drake stepped in off the balcony. The door opened and the Amazon captain appeared, sword drawn. The general gestured, and she retreated, closing the door.

  “I would be glad to hear your plan,” he said, walking over to place the plate in front of Bee.

  I dug my nails into my palms, but pain wasn’t enough to loosen my tongue. And it was a lie. I couldn’t protect her. Only my sire could, and then only for as long as it suited him to do so.

  Bee looked at me and blinked twice as a signal. “She’s just exaggerating in her usual way.”

  “Ah, I understand now.” He walked back to the sideboard, where he heaped bacon, potatoes, and eggs on a plate. “Helene told me never to ask questions of Tara Bell’s child because she dreamed the child was chained by some manner of magical binding.”

  The chains that bound me to my husband? Or the ones that bound me to my sire? He didn’t know everything! I righted the chair and sat with hands clasped in my lap as the general returned to the table with a plate for himself. Drake ventured to the end of the table farthest from me.

  “Anyway, Cat,” said Bee, barreling on like a fully laden rail car rolling downhill with no brakes, “you’re the one who will never be free of Four Moons House because you are married to one of its cold mages.”

  “I know what I know,” I muttered.

  “I can’t argue with that mulish truism! Anyway, the Taino won’t hold me prisoner. The general needs me for the war.” She went charmingly pink, like a rose blooming. “The prince is to travel with us. You see, the heir to the cacique’s duho, the king’s seat of power, is chosen from the cacique’s sister’s sons. This prince was never considered a favorite because there was a brother better suited for the task. But now he seems likely to inherit so it is felt he must gain worldly experience to prove his fitness and worth.”

  “What changed to make him worthy?”

  She glanced toward the general, and then at Drake. “For one thing, he’s a fire mage.”

  I laughed a little hysterically.

  Drake raised a cup of tea to his lips, watching me over the rim. The general ate methodically with only a lift of the eyes to show he had noticed my untimely levity.

  Bee scooped up an egg in her spoon and levered the spoon backwards, aiming its trajectory at me. “Tell me why you’re laughing, or you’ll get egg all over your face.”

  I needed a drink to settle my nerves. I got up and went over to the sideboard. The bottle had sherry in it. I jiggered out the cork, poured the deep red liquid to the brim of the last teacup, and gulped it down in one go. Turning, I saw Drake frown. I stuffed the cork back into the bottle.

  “Cat!” said Bee. “It’s still morning!”

  The general finished his potatoes.

  The liquor’s heat rushed through me, and subsided. “I met Prince Caonabo.” She gasped. “He seemed…pleasant. He was certainly inquisitive. And he’s good-looking, if not nearly as pretty as Legate Amadou Barry. No hardship there.” I wiped my brow, for it was already getting warm. “So, General, what exactly is it you want from me?”

  He patted his lips with a linen cloth. “That depends on what you want, Cat. Although your choices are constrained.”

  I wanted to be released from my sire’s rule, but I couldn’t say that. I wanted a chance to walk beside a man I was finally getting to know, but I refused to speak of that. Maybe the sherry had shortened my temper. Really, I had nothing left to lose except Bee’s life.

  “What I want to know is why I should trust you when you placed my mother under sentence of death and would have killed her if she hadn’t escaped.”

  “Why, Cat,” he said, and I could have sworn he was taken aback, “the matter is entirely different. She was a sworn lieutenant in my Amazon Corps and thus subject to the rules and regulations of that corps.”

  “Including imprisonment and execution should she become pregnant?”

  “The conditions and regulations of service were public knowledge. No woman took the oath of enlistment without fully understanding what was expected of her and where her responsibilities and loyalties lay. Those who serve in my army serve freely, but they are bound once they join to follow the code of conduct. As am I, and any person enlisting. For the Amazon Corps, that code included celibacy. Any woman who had served out her period of enlistment might apply for a discharge if she wished to have children, marry, or make some other change in life. A legal code is worthless if those who enforce it treat persons differently according to consequence, status, kinship, or wealth. All must be equal before the law, or the law is worth nothing.”

  “That’s what Daniel Hassi Barahal wrote.”

  “In fact, that is what I said when I addressed the committee gathered to write a comprehensive new legal code. Perhaps Daniel recorded my words, and you read them later and thought they were his.” An odd sort of smile animated his face, one I could not read. Anger? Amusement? Calculation? He was masked rather as my sire had been: I simply could not fathom what drove him. Except maybe irritation at remembering my mother had escaped the law.

  “Tell me what you meant when you said my path wi
ll change the course of the war.”

  “Those are not Helene’s precise words, nor did I say them that way.” He did not raise his voice, but I realized that something about the turn the conversation had taken was making him angry. “Find a way to win the cold mage to my side, Cat.”

  “I’m sure she’s found a way to prick the man’s interest,” muttered Drake.

  I fixed my gaze on Drake and stalked back to the table. He stared me down, gaze almost fevered.

  “Be calm,” murmured Bee.

  Camjiata said, “Enough!”

  Drake leaned back and propped his sandaled feet up on the table. I remained standing.

  “Now listen carefully, Cat,” the general went on. “A living cold mage serves me much better than a dead one. I would value the services of a powerful cold mage when I return to Europa.”

  “One like your wife?” I asked.

  “She was not a powerful cold mage. She had only a minor gift, enough to call a wisp of cold fire, which was ironic considering how poor her vision was. She was as close to a castoff as a child can be who is born into a mage House. Her House, and she, had no idea she walked the path of dreams. Everyone just thought she recited the most execrable poetry to get attention. But when she was about your age she heard her destiny in her own words.”

  Despite my irritation, I was drawn into his story. “What was her destiny?”

  “Why, I was. Or she was mine. Hard to say. Maybe I should say, we were meant to be together, being each other’s destiny.”

  “That’s very romantical,” I said caustically. Bee caught my eye, and I knew she was thinking, Didn’t that cold mage call you the other half of his soul? I narrowed my eyes to let her know that if she spoke one word I would make her life so miserable that dismemberment would seem a mercy.