Cold Fire (49 page)

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 charged 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 feebly 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.

The airship descended, and the anchor was dropped, the prow swinging clockwise as they lowered me down.

To Salt Island.

First they placed me in an enclosure with stout wooden bars, packed earth as a floor, an awning to protect me against rain and sun, and a bucket for waste. But after a day of kicking, prying, digging, chewing, and climbing, I was clouted over the head. While I was stunned, they locked me in a metal cage set on stone with no protection from sun or rain and nowhere to relieve myself except where I crouched. The cage was so small I could not stand straight nor stretch out.

My head ached, and I vomited all down my front.

“Don’ fight it, gal,” said a woman from behind me. “Yee only harm yee own self.”

The ground reeled, only it was me and not the ground reeling. I leaned against the outer wall of the enclosure and shut my eyes as the sun set.

The sun rose. A hand poked me. A cup swam in front of my face. I was so thirsty I drank without thinking, but it was guava juice with lime and pineapple, my favorite that Vai had so often brought me. Such a riptide of longing and fury and fear dragged through me that it was all I could do not to fling the cup at the bars in the hope it would shatter into as many pieces as my broken dreams. Instead, I choked down my rage and said, “Might I have more, please?”

My voice scraped horribly. But they gave me more. They pulled a length of canvas over the bars so the sun did not cook me. I swallowed as much as I could of the yam pudding my captors offered. My stomach churned, but nothing came back up. In my stinking clothes, I rested to gather my strength. The enclosure sat in a clearing surrounded by trees and backed by a rocky ridge. I saw no sign of habitation. Yet from the distance, sounds remarkably like those of the commonplace work of a village floated on the breeze: grain being pounded with women singing in accompaniment; wood being chopped; a strap being stropped.

The next day they allowed me back into the first enclosure. A crow landed on the palisade, measuring me as if to remind me to measure once again the height of the walls. Then it flew off.

About midday, three shackled women were shoved into the enclosure, one weeping copiously, one stunned, and one with the resigned air of the condemned whose reprieve has run out. They sat as far from me as possible.

“Are you from Expedition?” I asked.

The resigned one called to the man fastening the locks on the gate. “That one stink. Can yee wash her, or put her elsewhere?”

“We got no other cage,” said the man. “Women come to this side of the island shall stay in the cage ’til we see if they’s pregnant.”

“What happens if they’re pregnant?” I called, but he was already walking away.

“How did you come here?” I asked the others in a voice I hoped was mild.

After eyeing me suspiciously, one answered. “The Taino arrested us.”

“Did the Taino occupy Expedition?”

“That talk of a wedding areito was nothing but an excuse to bring in they army. On the Council steps they read out a proclamation. It say Expedition’s Council broke the First Treaty because folk bitten and healed were let stay in the city, not sent to Salt Island. The Taino behiques and soldiers hunted down all them who was bitten and healed. Like us. ’Tis how we come here.”

I thought of the way the occupying soldiers had looked at Luce in my dream, and such a spear of killing rage pierced my heart at the thought of the liberties soldiers might take when they had the right of arms, that the three women shrank away from me as if I had snarled.

So I did. “Give me your pagnes. You do not want me to get angry.”

I tied the lengths of cloth into a makeshift rope as they cowered in the corner. I dumped out the contents of the bucket and tied the cloth to the handle. It took me six tries to get the bucket over the palisade and properly hooked to take my weight. Though I was shaky, it was not so difficult to climb the rope of pagnes and heave myself over the wall. They began yelling as I lowered myself to the limit of my hands and dropped the rest of the way. I landed on my feet.

Shadows drawn around me, I ran down the path. I had not seen this side of the island before. I was surprised to find a pretty community with fenced compounds strung alongside stands of fruit trees and mounded fields. Flower and vegetable gardens offered a fine view over the sea. Fish and meat dried on racks, but I saw no fishing boats. A plaza, small batey court, and thatched-roof assembly house linked together the sprawling wings of the village. I could, just barely, hear the captive women shouting, but no one here seemed to notice. In the village, folk napped in the heat of the day. Crows fought over a slip of silver ribbon. A woman grated cassava root, chatting with a companion who was plaiting a basket out of reeds. The one thing I did not see was children.

I slipped through the village, stole two pagnes and a blouse from a clothesline, a knife and a machete, a stack of cassava bread, dried fish, and gourds that I filled with fresh water from a cistern. I stashed my bundle in the crook of a tree at the forest’s edge. Then I crept to the field farthest from the village, where four men with hoes and machetes sat amid cassava mounds and drank maize beer.

I said, “Know yee of a man named Haübey, or Juba?” They leaped up in consternation, for they could not see me. “Don’ bother seeking me, for I’s an opia. He made promises to me cousin.”

Three of the men looked Taino, and although it was clear they could barely understand me, they set down their machetes. One held out a ripe guava. My mouth watered, but I did not take it.

The fourth man had a shaved head and a bushy beard. “You don’ scare us, opia. We who live here is dead to we other life, just as yee is. That Haübey came here on the boat two years back. We knew he was noble-born, but even they nobles is treated the same under Taino law.”

“Where is Haübey now?”

“He is gone.”

“How could he leave the island?”

“I reckon that question is one we all shall wish an answer for.”

“Me thanks.” I snatched the guava, startling them. “I crave yam pudding and rice porridge. Just set a big bowl out every night in the ball court, and I shall be no bother at all.”

Soon after I reached my stash, a bell began to ring. They had discovered my escape. Yet with no dogs on the island, how could they track me? I walked west toward a rocky out-runner of the ridge that rose like the spine of the island’s back. In a tiny cove, I rinsed and wrung out my pagne and blouse. Where a rivulet of fresh water trickled down through a set of rocky pools, I scrubbed my face and hands. The rocks offered a route to the promontory, whose narrow headland broke the waters like the prow of a ship.

I climbed. The wind rippled through my clothes; the sun beat down on my back; the sea shone. White-winged birds sailed above me, riding the currents of air. From that height I could see the contours of the island, with the village on one side and the quarantine pens on the bay on the opposite side: As with life and death, it was a short walk from one shore to the other.

Yet my spirits lifted with the swooping play of the birds. Let them come. They would not catch me.

As the sun set I made my way down. Dusk smeared gold onto the waters. I found a sheltered beach, and there I stripped and waded in. In the sea, I washed fear and doubt from my heart and emerged with the water streaming off me.

So much for Camjiata’s promises. Had his wife truly told him I would be the instrument of his death or had he just said that to intimidate and fluster me? Had he been plotting to get rid of me all along, after he had used me to flush out Vai? Was that why he had thrown me into the path of the cacica? She had exiled her own son to Salt Island, and I could not know whether she had engineered Juba’s rescue or if another person had. Maybe she had truly acted in the cause of justice, that the law apply in equal measure to all. I did not know her, so I could not be sure.

But I was sure of this: The general had betrayed us. Vai thought I was with Bee, and Bee would think I was back with Vai. They had walked straight into the trap. And while Bee had gone in as a willing pawn with the intent to become a queen, Vai had followed merely to stay near me.

“There is no fire bane I cannot control.”

The memory of the cacica’s words burrowed into my heart. First they scoured me with despair. Then I got angry.

So be it. My enemies had no idea what anger they had woken. Hard to imagine I would ever be glad to have an opportunity to say it:

My sire is the Master of the Wild Hunt. And Hallows’ Night is coming.