Cold Fire (19 page)

“Can’t you help me?” I whispered. I grabbed for the gourd of rum and drained the last of it.

“I can’t quite tell…but if I had your permission to try again…”

Why not? The last thing I wanted now was to be alone. When I nodded, he caught me close with another kiss. He was fire, and I burned into the core of me because I was being caressed by tendrils of sweet flame along my skin, and within my skin, and against my lips. Was this fire magic? For as it twined through my body, I wanted nothing more than to run my hands along his back and do more of this kissing; much more; much, much more. He broke off the kiss.

“Cat! Your claws are out.” He grinned. “Desire suits you. You’re all flushed.”

“I was bitten by a dying man with a rotted mind. Of course I’m flushed!” I was sure my bosom was heaving, because I still couldn’t catch my breath. “Can you really heal me? You’re not just saying that to take advantage of me? Offering me one chance to live before I die?”

His gaze narrowed, as if a spark of anger flared in his eyes. Drawing back, he released my arm. “Is that what you think this is? Let me tell you a few things about the salt plague. If a person is bitten by a salter, that person will become infested with what we call the teeth of the ghouls. They’re so tiny they are hidden from sight. At first, the bitten victim is harmless to others. But inside, they’re slowly deteriorating as the infestation grows within their blood. On the day the infestation flowers, they forget everything they ever knew except that they have to drink warm, living blood because their own is dried up. Now they bite. It’s all they live for. It’s all they know. In time, they become like salt, unmoving. Morbid. Worse than dead, for they crave and can never be satisfied, trapped in a pain-wracked, paralyzed body.”

“Stop! Please, stop!”

He softened. Pressing a finger under my chin, he held my gaze. “Cat, you have one chance. You’ve been bitten. But the teeth of the ghouls haven’t yet caught in your blood. If I can burn out all the teeth before they catch and hook in your blood, then you won’t become a salter. But we have to do it right now. It’s like a snake’s venom. I have to burn it out before it’s too late to stop it.”

The water he had set over the fire was boiling. I heard its burbling chatter, and the titter of birds in the trees, and the pulse of the sky like blood in my ears. My head floated as on clouds.

“Of course I want to be healed! Why are you waiting?”

His lips lifted into a faint smile as he brushed a hand lightly along my shoulder, pulling the fabric of my shift down just enough to expose the curve of a shoulder. Where his fingers touched my skin, desire purred into me. “A fire mage’s healing is called the kiss of life. I have to be much, much closer to manage it. My lips to your lips. My bare skin to your bare skin, all of it. For me to find and burn out all the teeth of the ghouls swimming your blood, there must be no barrier—none—between us. It’s the only way I can heal you.”

I could not think. But oh, Blessed Tanit! I wanted to live.

So I just said, “Yes.”

I woke with my bitten arm throbbing and my hair in my mouth. Sitting up, I wiped the strands plastered across my cheek off my face so I wasn’t chewing on them. The movement of my arm across my breasts made me realize I was stark naked.
My bare skin to your bare skin, all of it.

Blessed Tanit! I had really done it. And it had been pretty nice.

By the sour feeling in my stomach and the woozy way the world smiled on me, I was sure that not only had I been drunk but I was still a little drunk.

Proud Astarte! No wonder Rory behaved the way he did, wanting to be petted all the time!

I found my cane under the bench. My drawers, shift, bodice, and jacket lay discarded across the table. I sat on the ground on top of the remains of my overskirt and petticoats, spread open like unfurled wings to provide a blanket of a sort. The jagged tears in the fabric made me wonder what manner of teeth could shred tightly-woven wool challis and fine linen quite so spectacularly. I brushed a leaf off my bare hip and flicked an ant off my ankle. Despite the drink, I had a clear memory of how the clothes had come off and the rest of the events had proceeded. And although I was a little sore, I otherwise felt good.

Some would have said I ought to be shamed, but I could dredge up no shame in my heart. I had done what I needed to do to save my life. Anyway, to whom was I beholden? Andevai and I had already agreed to seek a dissolution. The Hassi Barahals had sacrificed me, and the mage House did not want me nor did I want a marriage I’d been forced into. According to the ancient rites, a young Kena’ani maiden had the right the offer up her first sexual encounter to Bold Astarte in the temple precincts. So be it. I had made the offering that was mine to give.

“You might want to wash before you dress.” James Drake looked up from where he crouched by the cheerful fire and the pot of hot water. I felt a blush creeping out on my skin, and he grinned. It was difficult not to smile back at a good-looking young man who admires you so openly. Especially when you’ve just had sexual congress with him. “Although no need to put on your clothes for my sake. Even half drowned with your hair all in tangles, you’re a remarkably pretty girl.”

“
You
put on clothes,” I said, for he had: He wore trousers with a white shirt hanging loose over it, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His hands were darker than his arms; his torso, for I remembered quite a bit about his torso, had been as pale as cream. “Am I healed?”

“Do you doubt me?” He seemed a little offended. “I washed. You’d best wash, too.”

I pulled on my shift and stepped out from under the shelter to consider the pool. Its sides were so round that the fathomless blue waters seemed like an eye staring heavenward.

“How deep is this pool?” I asked.

“It’s a sinkhole. Around here, they say it goes down forever, into the subterranean world that is not this world but another world linked to ours.”

I jumped back from the edge.
Into the spirit world.

“You can’t wash there,” he added as he pulled a length of wet linen from the pot. He wrung it out as he walked over to me. “The Taino call it a sacred place.”

Trembling, I accepted the blessedly hot, damp rag and washed my face and, more gingerly, the skin around the bite. “Did you really heal me?”

He took my arm and pressed his lips to the bite. A tickle of heat spread through my body.

Maybe I gasped. Maybe I sighed.

He released me with a chuckle. “You’re not one bit shy. Alas, I have duties I must return to, or I assure you we’d linger awhile in the shade. However, you fell asleep and I’m in trouble already. They don’t like me because I’m a
maku
. A foreigner. They despise us foreigners. You’ll see.”

I handed him the cloth. “But did you heal me?”

He took my chin in a hand and met my gaze with a serious one. “No taint of the plague, no teeth of the ghouls, runs in your blood. That’s the truth. Avoid the pens, and don’t get bitten again.”

“What are pens? Where are we?”

“We’re on Salt Island. Under Taino law, all salters must be held in quarantine here.”

“Who are the Taino?”

“The Taino are the people who rule this entire region, all the islands of the Antilles. I’ll answer the rest of your questions later at the
behica
’s table.”

“What’s a behica?”

“A fire mage. Like me. I warn you, she’ll want to know how you got here. Don’t tell her anything. She’s an impatient, grasping sort of woman. Like all Taino nobles, she has a great sense of her self-importance. Do me a favor and don’t mention we met in Adurnam. I promise to explain why later. Now I really have to go. Here is Abby. She’ll find you a pagne and a blouse.”

“What’s a pagne?” I saw the girl from the beach lurching toward us through the trees along the sandy path. I was being abandoned to the care of a stranger. “Can’t I come with you, James?”

With his gear in his arms, he kissed me on the cheek. “We’ll be together later. Call me Drake. Everyone does.”

He set off down the path. Passing the girl, he spoke phrases that sounded like a forgotten tartan of Celtic, Mande, and Latin, the cadences a different music from the melody I was used to.

The girl limped up. She ventured an awkward smile, as if she wasn’t used to smiling and thought perhaps she had forgotten how. “Yee want a bath and cloth.”

“Is your name Abby?”

“I have dat name Abby. Yee have dat name Cat’reen?” A dapple of sunlight through leaves caught on her face to give her dark eyes an odd gleam as she looked down the path to make sure Drake was out of earshot. “Dat maku heal yee?”

“Can he really heal people?” I held my breath.

She wheezed in a breath, as if at a stab of pain, and let it out. “All
behiques
have dat power. He one, even if he a maku.”

“A maku is a foreigner. A behique or a behica is a fire mage. Is that right?”

She scratched her nose, sorting through my foreign way of speaking. “Dat right.
Na.
” Come.

She limped away down the path. I drew on my drawers and laced up my bodice, then gathered everything else and hurried after her. It was not, I reasoned, that she was unfriendly. But even the most generous soul might envy a gift of priceless worth granted to a stranger that has, even if by chance, been denied to a friend, if the man on the beach was indeed her friend.

“Drake told me we’re on Salt Island. In the Sea of Antilles, which is the sea that lies between North and South Amerike. Is that right?” She threw a bewildered glance at me, and a knife cut my heart, for I felt I was bullying her without knowing why. “It doesn’t matter. How pretty it is here!”

The shadows drew long as we emerged from the trees and walked along a shoreline where vegetation met a sandy white beach. It was really quite beautiful, and it would have been even more beautiful if it had not been so cursedly hot. I was sweating even though dressed only in undergarments that, in Adurnam, would embarrass a prostitute to be seen wearing in a public venue. The path wound up a headland. Birds dove in squalls. A turtle flipped sideways and skimmed away. The water was so clear I could see every stone and fish beneath the surface against shimmering stretches of sand.

In my boots, my feet felt swollen. Abby walked barefoot. An iron-gray lizard with a lacy frill and a pouchy throat sunned itself atop a rock, watching me with the grave disinterest of an elder.

“I’m going to melt,” I informed it as I trudged past. “I have never been so hot in my life. How do you stand it?”

It did not blink. Nor did it answer.

The bell rang as we crested the prow of the headland. I walked in Abby’s wake down into a pretty half-moon bay with a fine curved beach that faced east. A ring of houses set on low stilts formed a circle around a grassy central plaza distinguished by a circular earth platform. North of the plaza lay a long dirt field fenced by straight stone walls on either side. To the west, in the shadow of a forested ridge, sat roofed cages surrounded by an impressively tall iron fence.

Kitchen gardens stretched between the houses; there a few figures toiled, in no hurry. Beyond, the forest ruled except for several clearings marked by mounds planted with dusty green vines and young fruit trees. A stream sparkled down from the ridge to spill into the bay.

My thoughts scattered every which way as I slapped down the steep path into the settlement. What would Bee say when I told her? “
Really, Cat, did you fall for that tired excuse? ‘Fornicate with me and you will be healed’? Or was he so irresistible?
 ”

But I smiled anyway. I felt cut loose from my old moorings. I might be frightened, miserable, and overheated, but I was also unbound.

My smile vanished. Never unbound. My sire’s command was the noose around my neck. His magic had thrown me onto a shore where fire mages dwelled. That was surely no coincidence. Was this why he had wanted me to come to the Sea of Antilles where the Taino ruled? How powerful were these fire mages called behiques? Did the sea hide them from him? Or was it possible that on an island in a hot climate there was no ice from which he could launch his spies?

Abby halted at the verge of a garden plot and kneaded her feet in newly-turned earth. She took my hand in a sisterly way. “Yee safe now, Cat’reen. No need for such a frown.”

“Are those the pens?” I asked, indicating the cages. Their thatched roofs and lattice walls made it difficult to see inside. Figures shifted like animals in stalls.

She winced, let go of my hand, and began walking. We skirted the central plaza, kicking up sand. Gracious Melqart, but there was sand everywhere in this place! Its grit rubbed my neck. Grains rubbed between my toes.

Abby led me to one of the round houses. Behind it, tall screens woven of reeds shielded a copper tub, four empty buckets, and soap. We hauled water from the stream to fill the tub, by which time I was sweating so foully I was glad to immerse myself in cold water. I scrubbed my skin, washed my hair, and rinsed myself off with water Abby kept bringing, for she seemed tireless. After I washed my clothes, I hung the clothing over the screens to dry.

“As I thought, you clean up wonderfully.” Drake stepped within the screens, looking me up and down so boldly I was not sure whether to be flattered or shocked. I had never been admired so brazenly before, for men in Adurnam would flirt with women but not maul them with their gaze. Andevai, who had after all claimed to have fallen in love with me at first sight, had certainly stared rudely at me and said things to me in the most arrogant way imaginable, but I could not help but think he would never look me over the way a hungry dog eyes a slab of meat.

“I would think a man would ask permission first before stepping into a woman’s bathing chamber,” I said, lifting my chin. I refused to humiliate myself by trying to cover bits of my body with my hands, especially since he had seen all of me anyway.

“My apologies. You just can’t know how unexpected this all is for me. You here, like this.” A smile played on his lips. “Anyway, out in the Taino kingdom, outside Expedition Territory, young unmarried women commonly go about their daily business wearing little more than you are right now. Here.” He tossed me a rolled-up piece of cloth.

“But I’m naked!” I shook out a piece of bright yellow fabric printed with orange and red shell patterns, and wrapped it around my breasts and hips like a shield of modesty. “What am I to do with this? If you’ve sewing scissors and a needle and thread I can fashion a—”

“That’s your pagne. The women of Expedition wear it as a skirt, with a blouse. You definitely need to cover yourself. You’re darker than I am, but the sun can still burn you.”

“Expedition is a famous trading and technological city in the Sea of Antilles. This village can’t be Expedition.”

“As I told you, this is Salt Island. Where salters are quarantined.”

“How soon can I leave, now that I’m healed?”

He met my gaze and, oddly, looked away. He had a pleasing profile, with a narrow chin and sharp features. He wore a cap to shade his face, but even so his nose and cheeks were freckled from the sun. “We’ll talk later. Abby will bring you supper.”

“No supper at the behica’s table, with you?” My voice faltered.

“I’m sorry, Cat. I shouldn’t have mentioned that before. You’re not allowed to eat with her and especially you’re not allowed to eat with the
cacique
’s nephew.”

“What’s a cacique?”

“The cacique is the ruler—we might say king—of the Taino. The Taino have very strict laws. For instance, all fire mages in the Taino kingdom are required to serve periodically on Salt Island. So are any fire mages who live in Expedition Territory.”

“Wait. Does that mean Expedition Territory is part of the Taino kingdom?”

“No. Expedition is a free territory, on the island of Kiskeya. The rest of the island is part of the Taino kingdom. Expedition’s Council requires all local fire mages to serve here for a season every few years. We’re the only people who can live with and guard salters without risk of getting infested with the plague. That’s why I’m here. While we’re on Salt Island, we serve under the command of whichever Taino behique is eldest. In this case, a woman.”

“So behique is male and behica is female.”

“Yes. Listen, Cat, if you run into her, there are a few things you must know. Never speak to her unless she addresses you first. Don’t speak to the cacique’s nephew at all. He is a fire mage newly kindled and thus frightfully dangerous because he can’t control his power. And he’s terribly highborn. He is one of the possible heirs to the cacique’s honorable duho, the seat of power. The throne.”

“That means he could be cacique someday.”

“That’s right. The old bitch has come here to train him. Bear all that in mind. I’m off to supper. I’ll come by after. That is, if you’re minded to speak to me. The truth is”—his startlingly blue gaze bored into me—“you were irresistible beyond any question of healing you.”

I could not resist his smile. “Well, if that’s what you call ‘speaking.’”