Cold Fire

by Kate Elliott

  He tied a well-worn pagne around his hips. “Whatever he believes, he’s trying to intimidate you. He will use us against each other to get our cooperation. To me he’ll say: Ally with me, and I’ll spare her life and free your village. To you: Hand him over, or I’ll kill him.”

  Outside, he paused in the sun to brush drops of water from his hair. He looked very fetching, and certainly the glance he aimed at me, to see if I was admiring him, fetched me close. I pressed my face into his neck, his skin moist against my lips. The scent of ash clung to him, odd to smell on a cold mage.

  “Keep the ice lenses hidden, but take the cold steel in openly, Vai. He’ll respect that. And he won’t know your cold magic makes my sword bloom in daylight.”

  “Yes. They’ll be watching my sword, not one that appears to them a cane.”

  I rested my hands on his chest and looked up into his face. “The general will have crossbows as well as rifles. That’s what scares me.”

  He had a smile that was just for me, intimate and inviting. “You’ll have to watch my back. Like you were doing in the washroom just now.”

  Then after all we had to kiss, a slow sweet morning greeting. Obviously the bliss of love deafened me, because when a twig snapped, I was just as startled as he was.

  “Kofi!” He grinned with the laughing smile I had often seen on his face at Aunty’s when he was with his friends. He looked so relaxed and appealing I could scarcely breathe for being dazzled.

  Stepping away, I gripped the top of my pagne. Fortunately it covered the important bits.

  “Yee look like a village man now, Vai. Suits yee.” Kofi walked forward to clasp hands with Vai in the radical manner, after which they slapped each other on the shoulder in a manly way. “Or something have suited yee, that is for certain. Peace of the morning to yee, Cat.” His grin was just too wicked to endure.

  “I’ll just go get dressed,” I said in a choked voice, and I fled to the room.

  “Tamed her, have yee?” Kofi said in a jocular tone that made my ears burn.

  “Tamed her? Why would you want to tame a woman who defied the mansa with only her wits and her determination to live?”

  “Yee have it bad. I only mean, usually she is quick to scratch. Instead she ran off.”

  “To get dressed. She’s not working for the general.”

  “I’s not yet convinced of it, but—”

  “You ought to be convinced by my telling you it is so. If she meant to stab me, she’d have done it to my face while telling me why she was doing it and how I had brought it on myself.”

  “That is one thing I shall say in she favor: She don’ spare words. ’Tis not so lively at Aunty’s these evenings, I tell yee truly. But yee know, Vai—”

  I shut the door. He let Kofi tease and contradict him because he liked and trusted him. I remembered seeing Vai in the village of Haranwy with his age-mates, the ones he had been forced to leave behind when the mages had come for him. How easy he had seemed with those young men! The mage House had stripped that camaraderie away from Vai, leaving the arrogant magister who used his magic, his status, and his cutting words to intimidate. At first he had probably only used those things to protect himself as a youth bullied and scorned by his new age-mates in the mage House, but after long enough, such things become habit. The worst thing for Vai would be to return to Four Moons House and become the magister the mansa wanted him to be.

  When I appeared, Vai broke off in the middle of a sentence about not letting Aunty believe that about Cat. “Let me dress,” he said.

  He left me looking at Kofi. “I trust Kayleigh is well,” I said. “And your family. No trouble?”

  “We have peace in the house. Me thanks for asking. In yee own as well, I hope.”

  “My cousin is well, thank you.” I essayed the question I most wanted answered, no matter how much it hurt. “Aunty Djeneba and Luce and them. Are they well? No trouble?”

  “Certainly no one have spoken to the wardens of they part in Vai’s situation.” His gaze was not hostile, but it was wary and mistrustful. “Whatever else, I believe yee truly care for them.”

  I opened my mouth, and shut it, for my face had grown hot. A pause to check on Vai struck me as timely. I took a step back and looked in through the open door. He wore trousers and a thin lawn shirt. Standing in front of a chair, he was holding a dash jacket in each hand, clearly trying to decide which one to wear. “Blessed Tanit! Vai, is that a mirror you have set on the chair?”

  My gaze caught Kofi’s, and suddenly we were both snickering.

  Vai’s tone had a glacial scour. “Catherine, perhaps you and Kofi shall go over to the kitchen. I am sure you are hungry.” He tossed the more soberly patterned silver-gray one on the rumpled bed and began to pull on the purple jacket with stylized orange and black stones.

  “That one makes my eyes hurt,” I said to the sky. As Kofi and I walked along the brick path toward the dining patio, I decided to dispense with courtesies. “Did you ever trust me, Kofi? Before I was tamed, I mean.”

  He whistled appreciatively. “So yee heard that? Meant as a jest.”

  “Of course it was! I never doubted!”

  He chuckled. “As for the other, yee appeared so suddenly, and up from Cow Killer Beach. Even before, the way he talked about the perdita made me think him witched. It was harder to judge after yee came, for yee would push him away with one hand and draw him close with the other.”

  “Two-faced like a star-apple tree. It’s because the leaves are a different color on each side, isn’t it?” I paused at the dining patio, not wanting to take this conversation into the kitchen. “I was very confused. As for the witching, did it ever occur to you he might have set that on himself ?”

  “Talked he own self into believing he was in love with yee? Could be. Yee know, before the hurricane, I would have thrown yee overboard without a second thought. But when yee crawled under that boat for the sake of a man yee never met nor had reason to care for, I got to wondering. Cat, yee understand I’s concerned that yee shall treat Vai well and not betray him.”

  “I had no idea about the raid at Nance’s. As for the other, I shall answer honestly, Kofi, because you have been a good friend to him. I do mean to treat him well. I won’t betray him. But I’ll tell you truly, the best thing for Vai is not to return to the mage House.”

  People have all kinds of smiles. Kofi’s lips twitched in a way that made his scars flare. “Yee reckon he shall be better served by joining the general.”

  “I don’t trust the general at all. I favor the radicals, but I want to know how people talking around a table think they can win a war.”

  He crossed his arms in a way that emphasized how big and sturdy he was, the kind of man you wanted at your side when felling trees, or Councils. “Them with the armies and the coin, and these cold mages yee speak of, shall always have the weapons to crush us. Maybe words is a better weapon than yee think they is.”

  “Kofi, that time when Vai almost used his cold magic when that drunk man insulted him, what did you say to him to calm him down?”

  He slanted a gaze at the bellyache bush, as if checking for Vai, and then back at me. “I reckon I have had some practice calming that man down, for that was not the first time he almost got in a fight. This time, I just said, ‘If yee want that gal, yee shall not do this.’ It worked.”

  “I thought you didn’t like me. Why would you encourage him to keep thinking about me?”

  “Gal, yee defied the mansa who rule him and he people. Nothing I could ever say could turn that man’s mind from yee. I saved me breath.”

  Footsteps approached, and Vai came into view tugging on his cuffs. He had chosen a jacket of red, gold, and orange squares limned by black. A slim sword swayed from his belt like a bolt of lightning caught and sheathed. Cold steel in the hand of a cold mage. So be it. We would face the general and negotiate our next move together.

  His gaze flicked between Kofi and me, and he smiled as if our amity pleased him
.

  “Best we eat before we go,” he said, taking my hand.

  He and Kofi chattered about doings in the city, mostly Kofi telling the news of the huge retinue necessary to the cacica’s consequence: The Taino had reached the festival ground before they were expected, having been brought by a fleet of airships.

  “A fleet of airships?” Vai exclaimed as we came to the kitchen, covered by a roof but open to the air on three sides. “Lord of All! Do they mean to invade?”

  “The Taino have always said they would not break the First Treaty. So maybe ’tis just to honor the marriage of a prince who shall likely become cacique.”

  Kofi greeted the professora as if he knew her well. We sat down to bowls of warm rice porridge steamed in milk and garnished with cinnamon. I was so overtaken by the delicious smell and creamy texture of the porridge that I could only eat and listen.

  “No one had any idea the Taino have been building a fleet of airships.” The professora paused to study me. “Every cook must love you, Maestressa Barahal.”

  “’Tis good when a gal like to eat,” remarked Kofi.

  I looked up to see Vai fail to not look pleased with himself. Flushed, I felt it wiser to set back to the porridge than respond.

  “Have they manufactories we have not heard mention of ?” Kofi asked.

  “So we must hope,” she said, “otherwise they have sealed a contract with a troll consortium in the north. That would not bode well for peace among the trolls. Or maybe the Purépecha kingdom has a hand in it, for Prince Caonabo is son to a Purépecha prince who was at one time married to the cacica. Unlikely, for the kingdoms are rivals.”

  Kofi shook his head. “I reckon if the Taino have such a fleet, ’tis hard to see how Expedition can survive.”

  “Sometimes,” I said, “a little free territory like Expedition serves like one of those valves where you let steam escape from an engine where the pressure is getting too high. Criminals and agitators can be driven there rather than imprisoning or executing them. Left free, they’ll fight among themselves rather than be seen as sacrifices. Competing mercantile interests will stay bogged down. Dangerous technologies can be floated where they won’t do harm to the Taino if they fail. If there is trouble, it can be blamed on Expedition rather than the Taino court.”

  Spoons at rest, they stared at me as if I had sprouted a second head.

  “I heard a lot of talk when I was waiting tables. Kofi, why did you happen to come today?”

  “I make deliveries every morning to the university.”

  “I thought you worked at the carpentry yard.”

  “I work there when they have a big order and I can spare the time. Vai, I can row yee across if yee wish.”

  The professora fetched a squat ceramic jar packed with straw and ice, from which she drew a pair of ice lenses strung on chains. “These are the last two I have. They are working on more over in the troll town refrigerium.”

  “Do Chartji’s aunt and uncle live in troll town, or here?”

  “Their workshop is in troll town. They came here because Vai couldn’t move about the city.”

  Vai slipped the chains over his neck and slid the lenses under his jacket. We gave our thanks to the professora and walked to the pier. Kofi shifted a barrel and crate to the bow so Vai and I could share the stern bench. Vai had brought along one of the faded old pagnes, which he folded over the bench so his jacket would not have to touch the weathered and stained wood. I made a great show of getting into the boat in an effort to not touch anything that might sully my humble but pretty pagne. He leaned enough to rock the boat so I almost lost my balance and he had an excuse to pull me close on the bench with his arm around me.

  “This shall be painful, I fear,” said Kofi as he unshipped the oars and pushed off. “For I have to sit facing yee two in order to row.”

  “I was just thinking of leaning here against Vai with my eyes shut and my mouth closed quite tamely for the whole of the voyage.”

  They seemed happy to ignore me. It struck me how much they genuinely liked each other, how their talk flowed with the ease of people who have spent a lot of time conversing together. That ease, the motion of the boat, Vai’s arm around me and his shoulder against my cheek, and the sun’s warmth on my head so relaxed me that I dozed off.

  The boat’s bumping against a pier roused me.

  “Good luck to yee,” Kofi was saying softly, “for I can see how much she matter to yee.”

  I felt him kiss my hair. “She’s awake. Aren’t you, Catherine?”

  I opened my eyes to bask in Vai’s smile. He gathered up the coiled rope with the arm that wasn’t fixed around me. A thin man with sun-lightened hair and the splotched and freckled sun-weathered skin of a man born in northern climes loped over to help us tie up.

  “Ja, Kofi-lad,” said the fellow, with a polite nod at me and Vai. “I’s looking for work today. Yee got anything?”

  Kofi and Vai exchanged a glance, and Vai lowered his chin enough to signal agreement.

  “Ja, maku,” said Kofi. “But here, hold the boat while I get out.”

  Kofi leaped up to the pier with the ease of a man accustomed to the harbor and made a show of helping me out, which I understood as an attempt to make up for his suspicion of me. Vai shook out the pagne and followed. Folk on the jetty did notice him, and his clothes, and his good looks, and I supposed that, like Bee, he desired and perhaps even enjoyed the attention. But he did not seem to notice it as he walked a short way with Kofi.

  Kofi spoke in a low voice. “As for the other, yee must promise me yee shall do nothing rash. Don’ let yee pride get in the way of yee thinking.”

  Vai grabbed my hand to pull me up alongside him. “I can keep a level head.”

  “’Twould be the first time,” said Kofi, “but listen, maku. Yee can be the net we throw across the ocean to the radicals in Europa.”

  “I think it is our best choice, for I’m sure there’s no other way to force the mage Houses and princes to change.”

  “If any man know what power these mage Houses have, it shall be yee, Vai.”

  “Yes, it shall be. They will not go down without an ugly fight.”

  Shaking hands, they looked each other in the eye with such grim smiles, like two men about to ride into battle, that a swell of fear surged up from the pit of my stomach.

  I knew then I would do anything to protect him, as my mother had once done to protect the man she loved. When I rested a hand on the top of my cane, the sense that my mother stood beside me, in understanding and support, bloomed so strongly in my spirit that for an instant I was sure I felt her touch on my shoulder. She had been a soldier, and now I must be one.

  Kofi offered me a hand in the radical manner. He seemed about to say something but instead he slapped Vai on the shoulder and went back to his boat.

  Vai took my hand and we walked along the jetty toward the main gate. Sailors reeled drunkenly toward a ship. A man tacked up a broadsheet with the bold headline BOYCOTT on a public board as people clustered around to read the radicals’ call to boycott the wedding areito.

  “Why did he look at you and you nod? When that man asked for a day’s hire?”

  “Kofi’s household is poor, Catherine.”

  “It is?”

  “No one in that house goes hungry, so I suppose they are wealthy in that way. The mansa sent a bank draft with me, so I am quite well situated because he assumed I would be living in a manner suited to the consequence of a magister of Four Moons House. I was therefore able to settle a significant sum on Kayleigh as her marriage portion. Because she is not yet legally an adult I am her guardian. If Kofi hires a day laborer, he is using her money, so that’s why he was asking my permission. If you want to know, Kofi tried to argue me out of the dowry being quite so large. It does not make it easy for Kayleigh to come into a household as a rich maku bride.”

  “No, I can see it would not.”

  “I had a long talk with his mother and aunts. I would trust
Kofi with my life, and they raised him to be that man I trust. Kayleigh’s a smart girl. She’ll find a way to use the mansa’s money to help the household prosper.”

  “Did I miss something when I slept on the boat? What did Kofi mean about you being the net thrown across the ocean?”

  “I’ll join the general’s army but work secretly for the radical cause.”

  “‘Risks must be taken if we mean to get what we want.’”

  “I wonder who said those words.”

  “I just did. But I am quoting Brennan Du.” I tightened my grip to make his eyes flare at the pressure. “My next husband.”

  A pair of wagons sat unattended, loaded with bricks. Vai dragged me to the other side of the harnessed mules where two might pretend to have a little privacy. There, he kissed me until I was breathless.

  “You will not be needing a next husband.”

  “You’re so easy to bait. Anyway, you’re being jealous of a man you’ve never even seen.”

  “Of course I’ve seen him, twice, which I know you know perfectly well. I saw the way you smiled at him at the Griffin Inn.”

  I fluttered my lashes. “I was wondering what it would be like to be kissed by a handsome man.”

  “Wonder no more.” He cupped my chin in a hand as he kissed me again.

  “Here, now,” said the young wagoner, coming up, “none of that. Yee’s scaring the mules. Nice jacket, though. Where get yee such tailoring?”

  Vai released me and checked his jacket to make sure it wasn’t askew or rumpled. “Europa.”

  “Ah, yee’s a maku. No cause to go stealing Expedition gals with yee fine clothes and fat purse.”

  “In fact, she is my wife.”

  The wagoner did not look one bit impressed, and as he was a stocky, muscular man, his grin had an air of confidence. “Gal, yee don’ want a man who dress he own self better than he dress yee. If yee get tired of that one, come climb me mango tree. I shall buy yee pretty finery and as many ribbons and beads and baubles as yee desire.”

  “Shall yee?” I asked with interest and in a pretty fair imitation of the local speech. “How many? Shall they come from Avenue Kolonkan?”