Cold Fire

by Kate Elliott

  “I can scarcely imagine what it must be like to sail the seas of a noble court, when any courtier is ready to stab you in the back or flatter shamelessly for a step up the ladder. I would far rather wait tables at Aunty Djeneba’s.”

  “Where the customers try to put their hands on your ass? How is that different? Do not worry for me. I shall crush my rivals with smiles and the axe blow of my indomitable will.”

  “I can’t bear it if they take you away from me, Bee.”

  “Dearest, we shall all return to Europa together like conquering heroes.”

  The other carriage rolled in, and the general emerged, followed by Vai wearing the dash jacket he had worn the night of the areito. He marked me with the smile that belonged to me alone.

  As the sun shimmered against the horizon, the central gate opened. A procession of women appeared. They were dressed in skirts that lapped their ankles and in bodices like wide belts woven with beads. Feathers adorned their long black hair, which they wore unbound. Two at the front walked with hands outstretched and fire—actual flame—rising from their palms as if they contained the oil that lit the lamps. The two fire mages were flanked by four women equally richly garbed, one of whom was not Taino but red-headed, pale, and freckled like a refugee from the Europan north. Were they catch-fires? Hard to tell. By the elaboration and richness of their clothing, they seemed equally honored. Behind walked three more women heavily draped with thick stone pendants and gold bracelets on their bare arms, their skin patterned with lines and dots. When they reached a raised circular platform in the middle of the plaza, they halted.

  My sword bloomed against my hand as day crossed twilight’s border.

  “Come, Cat,” Bee said regally, squaring her shoulders.

  “Aren’t we underdressed?”

  “You haven’t noticed that many of the Taino women are far more underdressed? I certainly have! I do not intend to emulate them!”

  “Beatrice.” The general offered his arm. She took it, thus allowing me to drop back next to Vai. I twined my fingers through his as we followed them toward the Taino noblewomen. Captain Tira paced at our backs. I saw no sign of Drake or Juba.

  “If you need anything, go to Keer at the law offices of Godwik and Clutch,” I murmured. “She’ll drive a hard bargain, but I can trust the trolls to like the game better than the prize.”

  “Tell me how you are feeling, Catherine.”

  “Well enough. I’m fine, Vai. I don’t know how I can bear being apart from you for twenty days.”

  His fingers tightened over mine. “It’s right that you go with your cousin. I’ll just hope you come back dressed like those Taino women out there.”

  “Vai!”

  When he smiled, I was so smitten by a rush of affection and desire that all I could do was stare at him in the most besotted manner imaginable. “My sweet Catherine, we won’t be apart for long. We are truly married now, love. Nothing can change that.”

  The gravity and formality of the occasion prevented a kiss, and I would not have tried anyway, not with some of those Taino women staring at me as if I had two faces. Night fell as we reached the platform. The general let go of Bee, and Vai had therefore to let go of me.

  The Taino women escorted us under the central arch and through a masonry tunnel across the border and into the country Bee had determined to take on. The smell of tobacco permeated the air. On the other side of the arch lay another huge plaza. From the ball courts rose the joyous sound of people singing and dancing with rattle and drum. Our party walked on a raised walkway to a single-story building. We entered a long room lit by what seemed a hundred lamps hissing as oil burned. Our attendants spoke to Beatrice.

  “They are asking if you are my cemi,” she said.

  “If I am your cemi?”

  “They want to see your hair unbound, and if you have a navel. Why would they think you didn’t have a navel?”

  “They think I’m a spirit of the dead.”

  “I won’t let them bully you. You need show them nothing. Otherwise Juba says they will think I can forever be pushed around.” Her reply to them, in Taino, was precise and slow.

  They merely shrugged, taking off their sandals and washing their feet before they escorted Bee up onto a carpet of reed mats. Under the heat and light shimmering out of the lamps, they stripped her naked, wiped her down with damp cloths, perfumed her with sweet-smelling oils, and painted her bare arms with lines that crawled up the curve of her flesh like serpents. Then they dressed her in a long wrap skirt of pure white cotton; red and gold feathers for her hair; a bodice woven of cotton and beads; a stone collar carved with turtles and frogs; and wreaths of bells for her ankles and wrists. When they had finished, I could believe she had become someone else, crossing into a new world.

  I followed, as ignored as a cane that hides a sword. Her attendants did not speak to me, and she indicated by occasional glances and nods that I was doing exactly as I should. We proceeded down a corridor on soft matting. Bee and the Taino women walked barefoot; I was the only one shod, in the sandals Vai had given me. We came to a porch that overlooked a courtyard crowded with men standing on one side and women seated on the other. Our escort moved aside to reveal Bee. I stayed at the back.

  The many elders and proud nobles examined Bee in her finery. The men had stern, striking features; most wore feathers and stone collars. Opposite, women looked us up and down with solemn gazes. They were beautifully adorned in feathers and beads and pure white beaded bodices and skirts. No overt hostility marred their expressions. Neither did they seem overawed by the presence of a woman who walked the dream of dragons. It was hard to judge.

  One face caught my eye among the women. I saw the very behica who had grasped my arm on Salt Island and informed me through Caonabo’s translation that Drake had not healed me because I had never been infested. Instinct jolted me. Hide. I caught a few threads of magic to obscure myself.

  Yet the behica saw me at once. She saw me, and she knew me. But she said nothing.

  The assembled people sang in call and response. The melody seemed familiar, a tune I heard whistled on Expedition’s streets, but the pulse and winding rhythm of the song made it seem like a proclamation. Only I did not know what for.

  When they finished, we proceeded along another walkway to a large wooden building raised on stilts and surrounded by a veranda lit by gas lamps. Bee strode toward the building as toward her destiny, head high. She was so beautiful.

  We climbed three stairs onto the porch and its carpet of matting. Past open doors lay a large room draped with fine netting over the furnishings, a lovingly lathed and polished table set with gold-plated dishes and shining silver utensils that was flanked by two Europan-style chairs, and a matched pair of plush Turanian couches suitable for conversation. On the far side of the chamber, hands clasped behind his back, Prince Caonabo stood looking out a window onto the night beyond. He turned, hearing us. He was so like to Juba in feature that it was only by the length of his hair that you could tell them apart. Incongruously, he wore trousers, and a dash jacket that had certainly been tailored in Europa—or on Tailors’ Row in the Passaporte District from a pattern off one of Vai’s jackets—out of sober sea-green cotton. One might think he was endeavoring to make his foreign bride comfortable with familiar things, although he was also, even more incongruously, barefoot.

  As we paused on the porch for Bee to catch her breath and steady her nerves, a woman came hurrying around from another side of the building. With a gesture at me, she explained something to the most senior of our escorts.

  Bee’s serene expression creased into confusion and then darkened to dismay. “They are saying you cannot enter with me. That you cannot stay at all, Cat. There’s a misunderstanding… They’ve changed their minds.” She took my hand, but her gaze was on the prince. “But it’s too late for me to retreat now. You have to go. I’ll be all right.”

  I shook my hand out of hers. “Wait just a moment.”

  I charge
d into the chamber and right up to him as he blinked in astonishment. “Prince Caonabo, I have brought your bride but I have two things to say to you first. If you harm her or let her come to harm, I will gouge out your eyes and then eat them. That is one. As for the other, she must go to troll town in Expedition before the sun sets on Hallows’ Night. Promise me you will see that she is taken safely there until a full day has passed.”

  “Perdita!” he exclaimed, eyes wide with astonishment.

  Soldiers swarmed out of the alcoves and herded me back to the porch without touching me.

  “That was rash,” said Bee, pulling me close as the soldiers melted away under the sting of her glare. “Cat, I shall be fine. I’m sorry to lose you, but Andevai will be glad to have you back.”

  I crushed her against me, murmuring, “You must be inside troll town before Hallows’ Night falls. The maze will hide you. Promise me.”

  She kissed me on each cheek and gently put me away from her. Her gaze was clear and her expression determined. “I promise you I will live.”

  She went in as Prince Caonabo stepped forward to greet her. Women blocked the doors with screens of translucent muslin and lowered beaded curtains to close off the view.

  I put up no fuss as the two fire mages and their four attendants ushered me to an adjoining building whose limbs and wings made it resemble a sleeping frog. We entered a small chamber meant, I thought, to be humble, but fitted with wall hangings encrusted with priceless shell and pearl beads. They left me there alone. Baskets and gourds hung from the ceiling, interspersed with unlit lamps. I sat on a mat beside a low table. A woman brought a tray with two cups and a steaming pot of pungent herbs. She did not pour but left me in darkness except for my cat’s sight that even in darkness could discern the angles and corners of the room. My skin felt inflamed, and it itched. I was tired and thirsty and hungry, and I had eaten nothing since midday and was coming to the unpleasant conclusion that while Bee enjoyed a feast with the prince, I might be held here all night in disgrace. I hesitated to sneak out since my disappearance could cause trouble for Bee. I wondered where Vai was.

  The door opened. Four women entered, one sitting at each corner of the room. Their presence made my sword tremble with a pulse of cold magic. Flames leaped, and the women—north, south, east, and west—shimmered with a glow like the gilding of moonrise on still waters.

  The behica entered the room.

  “Blessed Tanit,” I said, more to myself than to anyone, “they are all fire banes, and you are using them as catch-fires.”

  The behica measured me as Vai’s boss at the carpentry yard had once done: marked and tallied. Sitting, she poured two cups, sipped at both, and offered one to me. She lifted to her lips a cigarillo. With an intake of breath, embers gleamed red and smoke curled up. She sucked twice, the smoke quite pungent, then offered the cigarillo to me.

  It seemed dangerously rude not to accept. I set the unlit end to my mouth and inhaled. The jolt went straight to my eyes, and I racked out a spasm of coughing as smoke swirled around my face. The room tilted and, as I put out a hand to catch myself on the table, settled upright once. She took the cigarillo back. I gulped down the drink to rinse the harsh taste from my mouth.

  “Why have you to Taino country come?” she asked in serviceable Latin.

  “Isn’t it obvious I came for my cousin’s sake? For her only?”

  Licking my lips, I tasted too late the chalky flavor of the drink Juba had given me to ease the burn. Was she intending to drug me? I grasped at the shadows and pulled them tight.

  But as she drew in the cigarillo’s smoke, she merely watched with interest as a cat watches the struggles of a trapped mouse. “That you came surprises me. Your feet rest on Taino earth, Perdita. Thus you are subject to Taino law.”

  I tried to rise, but my legs had turned to stone. I would have dragged myself out of the room with my arms, but a tall, broad-shouldered, black-haired man blocked the door.

  I knew him. He was Camjiata.

  My mind produced words, but my lips remained silent.

  Watching me, the behica spoke to him. “Was it your intention to send this one across the border when you know the law would compel me to arrest her? The same law that forced me to bury my son when he was bitten by a salter?”

  “It was my intention, Your Majesty. I regret it, but it was necessary.”

  I could not find the hilt of my sword.

  “Do you truly regret it? I must wonder, given your action. I regret losing the son best suited to inherit the duho, for a day will come soon when my brother will walk to the other side of the island. My son Haübey was meant to sit in the seat of power after him.”

  “You have not lost Juba. I spoke to him this morning.”

  “You spoke to an opia, not to my son. My son was killed by the bite of a salter.”

  “Is he dead? I thought Prince Caonabo had healed Juba. I thought the brothers put it about that Juba fled because he refused to become his brother’s catch-fire. For Prince Caonabo came late to the fire, did he not? Juba told me no one thought the twin brothers had any mage craft in them at all.”

  “You misunderstood the opia’s words. Easy enough to do. Among my people it is understood that all people have the seed in them, but the seed does not flower in all people.”

  “You think all people could become cold mages or fire mages if they wished?”

  “You simplify. The seed may be buried deep. It may be too weak to germinate. There are many reasons some bloom and others never do. My sons showed no such power. Sometimes people close that gate of their own will. I was glad of it. Then they went hunting, as young men will do, deep in the forest in the mountains. Haübey was bitten. Sparked by the love that binds the brothers, Caonabo woke the seed in himself and healed his brother. But Haübey is still dead. That is the law.”

  Slowly, slowly, I braced a hand on the table, but my torso had gone numb. I slumped against the wall, but even that was better than tipping over facedown onto the mat.

  “That is the law,” Camjiata agreed. “I have delivered your exiled son as I promised. This girl likewise. Together, they provide the legal excuse you need to occupy Expedition because Expedition has broken the terms of the First Treaty by harboring people bitten by salters.”

  “I acknowledge that you have met your part of our bargain. I will meet mine.”

  “By the way, I want the cane she carries. It is a sword.”

  “It is a cemi. It is bound to her. Why do you want it?”

  “I think her mother’s spirit inhabits it. Her mother was bound to me also. I want the cane.”

  “You will have a difficult time leashing a cemi that does not wish to be bound to you,” she said with a hard smile.

  A knife flashed in his hand. He stepped past her and bent over me. Nothing I could do, no furious diatribe in my mind, no phantom assault by my paralyzed limbs, could stop him from slicing the loop and allowing my sword to roll away from my body out of my reach. He did not try to pick it up. He merely stepped back to address the cacica.

  “We leash as we must. By the way, I have an exceptionally powerful fire bane you will be very interested in. If you can control him.”

  “I should like to see this. There is no fire bane I cannot control.”

  She rose, and they departed together. I grunted under my breath, straining, but I could not move. Women came in to truss, tie, and gag me. My thoughts plowed a sluggish furrow. To blink took all my effort and concentration.

  A shadowy crow settled on my face, talons digging into my cheeks. I could not fight or even scream as it pecked out my eyes and ate them, leaving me blind with nothing but the sting of my fire-burned skin to tell me tales of the world. Hands lifted me into a sling. Rope abraded me as I was jostled along. The close still air within the building melted into the cling of a steamy breeze outside. As through muffling cloth, I heard a clamor of voices as drums rattled a call to battle and men cried out to weigh anchor. Alarm horns sounded far away and too f
eebly to matter. Then came silence.

  Smoke curled up my nose and pooled in the aching hollows where once had been my eyes. In these swirling pools I saw as with the crow’s vision from high above. Somehow it was daylight, and Bee and Caonabo sat in a courtyard sharing a large hammock under the shade of a tree, he now dressed in white cotton in the Taino way. He had one leg crossed under him and one on the ground rocking the hammock. Not quite touching him, Bee reclined at her ease, casual in a blouse and pagne. She was talking quite intently and, to my surprise, listened equally intently as he replied. They looked up as the shadows of airships rippled over the ground. Up and up my eyes flew, as airships crossed the border between the Taino kingdom and Expedition Territory. Far below, soldiers marched in neat ranks down the roads and paths that led through the outlying pastures, fields, and orchards toward the city. Wardens shouted down the streets calling for peace and order while brash young men raged in alleys holding machetes and axes and adzes. Luce stood at the gate, staring, as a column of Taino soldiers passed down the street; a few looked her up and down although none broke ranks; Aunty Djeneba yanked her inside and barred the gate.

  I woke up, buzzing and swaying with the wind in my face and soldiers behind me speaking Taino so rapidly its lilt was music. I heard the fluttering roar of the airship’s propeller. Empty air surrounded me, a chasm whose winds dizzied me. But I could see with my own eyes.

  Pale pink light rimmed the east like a rose’s unfurling. Below lay briny waters still dark in slumber. I was bound into a large sling and suspended off the prow of an airship, dangling in the air far above the sea. The scream I wanted to make spilled into a torrent of trembling that shook through my whole body. I breathed down my panic as I considered my situation. Rope bound my wrists. I worked my fingers to turn my wrists back and forth, trying to get play in the rope.

  But it was already too late. As the sun rose, so a shore rose before us, a band of white beach lapped by blue water. Below, a signal flag was raised from within a familiar half circle of houses.