Cold Fire (27 page)

Keer exuded an odor, like sun-dried grass, that made me think of a creature waiting for its prey to creep into view. “Tell me a story of Godwik.”

A cautious smile carried me forward. “He told me a tale about his fledging trip with his age cohort. Six to a boat and six boats in all, north to the shores of Lake Long-Water. They planned to battle into the teeth of the katabatic wind that sweeps down off the vast cliff face of the ice. But I never heard about that, for meanwhile, and before they even reached Lake Long-Water, he and his thirty-six companions were reduced to twenty-seven after battles with saber-toothed cats, foaming rapids, a marauding troo, gusting winds, and a party of young bucks from a territory whose boundaries they had violated. You may wonder how it all started!”

Keer chuffed, crest rising. “I hear his voice in yours. Therefore, I will help you. A sloop may be embarking this coming Venerday if the weather holds. Have me your letter before then, and I shall see it posted with we usual pouch.”

“How long will it take to get there, and an answer to return?”

“Who can know? A month each way, if the weather holds fair and the winds cooperate and the ship does not sink. So, likely it will be longer.”

A month each way! That would be barely enough time for me to hear back from her before Hallows’ Night at the end of the October, and then only if all went well. What choice did I have? I had to try. “In truth, Maestra, I am destitute. I have neither pen nor paper, nor payment for delivery costs.”

Keer bent forward, examining me in the same way, I imagined, that a bored and fed hawk considers a squirming mouse trapped within reach of its talons. “I can offer you work in our clutch’s corporation. In recompense for the employment you were not able to take up in Adurnam. The cost of letter and dispatch can come out of your earnings. You can nest in a room above our offices.”

The words hit me like a blow.
Employment. A room.
I need never see Vai until a year and a day were up and our marriage dissolved. Never again.

“Here is more tea,” said Keer.

I had to drink another cup, because I could not speak.

“My offer has surprised you,” Keer said at length.

I dredged for words. “I am unexpectedly overwhelmed, Maestra. But I already have employment and a room.” I could not bear to disappoint Aunty Djeneba. Surely it was easier to hear all the gossip at the boardinghouse than confined in an office.
Surely.
What if the wardens caught a glimpse of me so close to the gates? Where was Drake, anyway? “Let me start with a letter,” I finished weakly. “I’ll bring one before Venerday.”

“No one enters into an association without a great deal of negotiation and thought.”

“No, of course not.” My thoughts tangled and collided as if I stood in a maze of mirrors, staggering from Bee to Vai and back again, she whom I might not be able to save and he with whom I had no future.

Keer let out a hiss of breath like steam escaping from a kettle. “You rats. If you simply agree, without contesting, then I will always stand above you in the—as you call it—the pecking order. Really, where is the fun in that? You rats are too fond of your entrenched hierarchies.”

The words charmed me into a grin. “My apologies. I was preoccupied by another matter.” I roused the part of me accustomed to being sensible. “I assure you, I will return ready to duel.”

The teeth showed again. “That, I will enjoy. Now. You require paper, pen, and ink.” Was it my imagination, or had her way of speaking changed as she spoke to me, vowels shifting sound, cadence altering?

We began bargaining over the cost. The troll did not strike me as discourteous or greedy; if anything, I sensed that each transaction was a chance to play a game I could barely perceive whose rules I did not understand. Even after hard bargaining, the few coins I possessed did not suffice to buy a sheet of foolscap and a dram of ink, much less the dispatch service.

With polite words I took my leave, in my confusion turning the wrong way. The crowded shop fronts and offices debouched into a square on the north vault of the old city walls where rose a huge gate carved with a lion on one side and a buffalo on the other. A hulking palace sprawled along one side of the square, marked with the lamp and staff of the warden’s service. This edifice was Warden Hall. A tall, powerfully built young man with scarred cheeks was pushing a flat cart laden with baskets of fruit toward a side entrance. After a moment, I recognized Vai’s friend Kofi.

Wreathed in shadow, I followed him. Clouds were piling up in the east, heavy with rain and streaked with gray smoke rising from the factory district. I sneezed, grit in my eye. Kofi paused at the corner, wiping his forehead with a kerchief as he studied the clock tower of Warden Hall.

When the hour tolled nine, he pushed his cart to the kitchen entrance. Kayleigh came down steps hauling a bin of rubbish, which she set beside a stinking wagon hitched to a sleepy donkey. Pretending to be nothing more than chance-met servants, they exchanged murmured words.

“Word has come by bird that the cacica and the general have concluded their negotiations. He and his people will set out on the next auspicious day to return to Expedition.”

“What manner of deal have the general struck with the Taino?” he asked.

“No one knows. But everyone is very nervous. The five Council members who voted to support the general are scolding the twelve who voted to reject him. The five say that by refusing to aid him, the Council has driven the general into Taino arms.”

“I wonder what other services the cacica demanded of him.”

“That’s very rude.”

“Rude? She have taken more than twenty husbands, and sent eight to they deaths.”

“I won’t gossip, for it is wrong to do so. There was another thing I overheard. The Commissioner was talking to one of his deputies. Two salters, both women, escaped from Salt Island. The wardens fear riots if the news leaks out.”

As my heart stuttered, Kofi whistled, then bent to rearrange the baskets as an older woman came out to examine the fruit. He turned his whistle to a merry tune, while Kayleigh dumped the bucket into the rubbish wagon as if she had just this moment come out.

The woman scolded her. “Get on then, maku. Yee’s so slow. Housekeeper say yee have not even finished the grates yet today.”

Kayleigh went in just as the wagon’s driver came out munching on a roll. Between bites, the wagoner engaged in a peppershot round of casual batey team gossip with Kofi: so many Blues, Greens, Barracudas, Cajayas, Anolis, Rays, and Guinchos that my head reeled. After the older woman picked through the fruit, Kofi trundled off. I shadowed him along the jetty to the Passaporte market, where he delivered the cart to a compound whose family rented out transport. By the way they treated Kofi, he seemed to be a son of the house.

Aunty Djeneba looked up when I came in, nose wrinkling as if I’d brought a whiff of rubbish. “Yee was gone so long I sent Luce out to look for yee. Never could she find yee.”

My parents had drowned when I was six. My father had left behind his journals, which I had read over and over again, but there were only five words I remembered my mother saying to me:

Tell no one. Not ever.

My expression must have changed, for Aunty set aside the bread she was slapping into shape and came over to me. “Is yee well, gal?”

“Do you suppose I’m tired, or is it just the heat?”

Yet I
was
tired, after my duel with Keer. A nap with one of the toddlers tucked alongside refreshed me, and I went down as the early regulars came in to start on their ginger beer. Vai appeared with a net bag of guava. After getting Aunty’s permission, he distributed them to the children before sitting at a table and smiling at me until I sat down opposite.

“Papaya is good for the digestion,” he said, cutting in half a large yellow-orange fruit to reveal round black seeds clustered moistly in orange flesh. “Aunty said you were tired.”

I could not decide whether he was irritating or sweet. “You’ll share it with me?”

“Of course.” He scooped out the seeds, took a bite with evident pleasure, then handed me the spoon.

I could never resist food. “It’s delicious! Vai…”

He looked a question, but did not ask it.

“I should have said something sooner. The sandals are comfortable and sturdy. Luce scolded me into accepting them. Thank you. But she says they weren’t cheap.”

He scraped seeds out of the other half of the papaya, his mouth turned in a faintly mocking grimace. “If you spent the coin I have become accustomed to on clothing, you would have thought them inexpensive.”

The confession made me smile. Blessed Tanit knew it was not in my nature to struggle alone, for I had always had Bee. I wanted to give him something in return for the sandals. “The truth is, I went to see about sending a letter to Beatrice in Adurnam. To let her know where I am.”

“Because she does not know where you are.”

A masked face glimmered where the light sliced down through the trellis roof and across the table. Mumbling, I forced out the words. “‘Because she does not know where you are.’”

He sat in surprised silence. Then he handed me a spoon laden with moist papaya and watched as I savored it. “I must suppose your cousin’s whereabouts have something to do with the spirit world and your bound tongue. Well. I won’t press you. But meanwhile, Catherine, you must be cautious about traveling around Expedition. I heard a rumor today that the wardens are on the lookout for two salters, both women, who escaped Salt Island.”

The sun’s angle shifted, and the vise was released from my tongue. “That’s a rumor I should think the wardens wouldn’t want to get out.”

“Exactly. There would be panic. And anger. Because everyone knows the wardens look the other way if a person who was bitten and healed has the right connections or enough money. While poor people, and maku, take their chances. The people of Expedition are very angry, and the Council fears their anger.”

“What is this ‘Assembly’?”

He cut open a second papaya. “An assembly is like a council, only with more members. An assembly makes laws and governs. These representatives would be chosen from any adult who is a citizen, and would be voted on by the entire adult population.”

I blinked. “Really? Anyone?”

“The mechanics remain to be worked out. There is intense debate over who would qualify for election, and who for voting rights, and who would not. Meanwhile, the Council has called for the arrest of all radicals who propose replacing the Council with an Assembly. But since half the territory sympathizes with the radicals and no one knows the names of the leaders of the radical party, the wardens can’t act on the Council’s order. Still, you must be very cautious.”

“Please don’t tell me I have to stay like a prisoner in the compound.”

He handed me the spoon so I could scoop more papaya. “That would look more suspicious. Establish a routine. Don’t stray from it in obvious ways. Luce can dispatch the letter for you.”

“That’s not the problem, Vai. I can take the letter myself without the wardens seeing me.”

“I suppose you can.” He waited for elucidation.

“The problem is I don’t have money for paper and ink, much less the cost of dispatch.”

“I have enough.”

His bland assumption annoyed me. “The sandals were plenty. I prefer not to be beholden to you.”

He leaned closer. “Then I must suppose you are not desperate to get word to your cousin.”

“Yes, I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.”

He grinned. “I like it when you scratch.” I smiled. He slipped the spoon from my fingers in a way that made my ears burn. “You might try the branch office of the law firm of Godwik and Clutch in the harbor district… Ah. That’s where you went.”

I glanced down at the emptied papaya skins and back at him. “Bee and I were to take employment there. That was how we were going to keep ourselves in Adurnam.”

“Were you, now?” He sat back with a narrowed gaze.

I was sure he was thinking of James Drake, whom he had after all seen at the law offices in Adurnam. Despite my best intentions, I brushed a hand over my belly, and he saw me do it. The collapsed papaya skin next to his hands crackled over with a delicate net of frost.

“What makes you think it has anything to do with him?” I muttered.

“I said nothing. You’re the one who said something.”

“I don’t have to be here, Vai. The troll I spoke to today offered me employment. Yet here I am, still working for Aunty Djeneba.”

“Aunty Djeneba says you’re doing well.” His stiff smile grated on my already jangled nerves. “I hear you’re learning to play batey.”

“Yes, the children are teaching me before they go to school in the mornings.”

“Here are Kofi and the lads.” He rose as if relieved to be shed of our conversation.

I grabbed my work apron and made my escape.

Yet the next day, Vai called me over when he returned at the end of the day to show me a pale green fruit with little spines. He set it down beside a small package wrapped in a length of burlap. “I brought paper, ink, and a pen. This is soursop. It’s not my favorite, but maybe you’ll like it.” He cut it in half in a bowl. “Go on. Write your letter.”

I unrolled the cloth to find two folded sheets of foolscap, and a quill pen and tiny bottle of ink, nothing fancy. “It’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“You’ll have to tell me what you mean by that cryptic statement,” he said, not looking up as he pulled off the skin to reveal a white pulpy interior. I liked watching his hands work.

“You’re an unregistered fire bane. You can’t afford to get arrested. So you’ve established a routine and don’t stray from it. Work. The Jovesday trolls. Moonday and Saturnday gatherings.”

Gaze cast down, he smiled as he trimmed out seeds. The man did have lovely eyes, finely formed and thickly lashed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were watching me.”

I fixed my gaze on the blank paper. “I was raised in a household of spies and intelligencers. It’s second nature for me. I watch everything.” Gracious Melqart! What ought I to write to Bee?
Dear Cousin, please find a place to hide until Hallows Night is over. You’ll know I succeeded in finding a sacrifice to kill in your place if you’re still alive on the second of November.
Would the mansa of Four Moons House protect her? No. Cold mages had no power over the Wild Hunt. And the mansa had only wanted her so as to keep her away from Camjiata. If the mansa sacrificed her to the Wild Hunt, then Camjiata could never make use of her dreams for his war.