Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (15 page)

Yet what if it referred to the same choice my mother had been forced to make? What
if my sire meant to force me to sleep with him to save Vai’s life, as he had forced
my mother to have sex with him to save the lives of Daniel and the other men in the
Baltic Ice Expedition?

“Cat, why are you shaking? I’m sorry I said anything.”

I swallowed a huge gulp of rum. Some things I refused to speak of even to Bee. “The
point is, James Drake has stayed alive this long by murdering unwilling people as
catch-fires. Beggars, the rootless poor, people no one will miss. Salters and dying
men. Meanwhile, the general means to allow Drake to go on killing people as long as
it helps him win the war he means to wage in Europa. That’s why Drake obeys him, because
he knows Camjiata will turn a blind eye to his crimes. Who will miss enemy soldiers
who perish in war? So how can we trust Camjiata, knowing he employs a criminal like
James Drake?”

“Listen! After Caonabo divorced me, I went to the general. I really didn’t have anywhere
else to go, as you can imagine. Of course I demanded to know what his intentions are
toward you. He promised me that you have nothing to fear from him. Your life is his
life. As long as you are alive, he knows he is alive. The general has offered us employment
as spies and couriers in his army.”

“I’m not spying for the general!”

“How do you plan to eat? In what bed do you plan to sleep with your handsome husband?
Do you have any money at all, Cat?”

“No,” I admitted sullenly. I groped for the flask, but Bee had hidden it. “Didn’t
Caonabo give you a dower, some pittance from the Taino treasury?”

“Why, yes, he rewarded me very generously. I was granted the right to collect taxes
from two towns on the northern coast of Kiskeya. It’s a fine income, but one I have
no access to. I received also several thousand cowrie shells, which make me quite
wealthy in the Taino kingdom but are worth nothing in Europa. A chest full of exceptionally
fine cloth, as well as several crates of excellent tobacco. All of which are on the
ship you and I were meant to sail on, together with Vai’s other chests. We’re destitute,
Cat. We haven’t a single sestertius to our name. All we have is the gear that is in
this chest, which fortunately is the one Luce packed for you.”

I crossed my arms fumingly. “I don’t even know how I’m going to rescue Vai.”

“I do have some gold jewelry I can sell,” she mused. “The dash jackets can be sold.
We won’t starve, not for a while. But those things will run out. At least hold the
general’s offer in reserve, just in case we need it.”

Every road led away into darkness, and while normally I could see unusually well in
the dark, my eyes could not penetrate the future. I yawned again, eyelids drooping.
The heat made me sleepy. Rory was sprawled out like a big warm comforting purr. He
snored in a catlike way with little huffs between times as if he was dreaming of chasing
down plump deer. Bee and I leaned against his belly. The rocking motion of the beast
had a soporific effect.

I rested my head against hers. “Whatever happens, I love you, Bee. Always.”

“Always,” she whispered, holding my hand.

My eyes closed. I sank into sleep.

As in a dream, I bucketed through the heavens on the back of a horse whose coat was
as black and sticky as tar. I braced the butt of a spear against my booted stirrup.
My arms were bare, the skin marked with blue coils like the ink-painting common among
the Celts. With a hawk’s sight I saw our prey running, a girl with long hair streaming
out behind her. Her blood smelled of smoke and dreams, and as we galloped up alongside
her, I thrust my spear into her back and brought her down. With my hands gripping
the spear, I swung off the horse. She was thrashing, trying to crawl, trying to live.
I pressed a foot onto her back to trap her and wiped my fingers through the blood
pumping out of the wound. Brought it to my lips.

The blood was redolent with the fragrant bloom of powerful cold magic as mouthwatering
as spice. But it was not mine to drink. I owed it to my masters. The chain that bound
me to them dragged me back toward their presence.

A voice was murmuring, honey words luring me away from the kill. Vai’s kisses sweetened
my lips and warmed my flesh. His hands measured the map of my body, fingers tracing
each curve as he rolled me over on the bed he had built for us.

I stirred, eyes opening as my hands reached for him.

The basket gaped open and empty across my lap. I blinked, trying to focus, for I was
back in the belly of the beast. Its comblike teeth shone with a phosphorescent gleam.

By this light I saw Bee talking to Queen Anacaona. The dead flat shine of the cacica’s
eyes had deepened to a warm brown.

“I’m not sure I understand, Your Highness. Is the Great Smoke the ocean of dreams
through which I walk in my dreams?”

“Yes. The Great Smoke is the ocean of all existence. The currents which we call past,
present, and future mingle together in the sea of mist.”

I was so hungry and hot. I was not meant to journey through the ocean of dreams. My
senses rebelled at the stink and the threat.

The dragon’s smoky breath trawled me under, back into sleep. I plunged into the slippery
dance of the old ones, the most ancient Taninim. Their intertwining movements created
currents that streamed through the smoke like rivers. A ripple caught me, pulling
me into a dream so vivid it did not seem like a vision but rather like my body and
sight cast into another time and place.

General Camjiata stood with his hand on a door latch. Behind him, the view out an
attic window overlooked a town square and a stone castle tower rising above green
trees. His hair was tied back with an incongruously bright-green ribbon that matched
the old-fashioned bottle-green dash jacket he wore, its cuffs trimmed with lace. He
addressed me with a serious look that quite disarmed me. Who would offer such a direct
and confiding gaze to an enemy?

“I need you to kill him. You’re the only one who can.”

Golden spears of late-afternoon sunlight lanced into my eyes, blinding me as he opened
the door into a lamplit chamber beyond. Darkness smoked up on all sides.

I did not want to be a killer. If only the Master of the Wild Hunt had not been my
sire, I would not have had such dreams. Yet if he had not sired me, I would not be
what I was. If I had not been what I was, I would not have escaped the mansa. I would
have been dead long before I had been forced to make the choice that had killed the
cacica. We are bound to our ancestors and to those who made us, whether we want to
be or not. What matters is what we make of what we are.

I opened my eyes, back in the belly of the beast. Bee and the cacica were still conversing.

“Do you wish Caonabo had thrown away his honor merely to please you?” Queen Anacaona
spoke not with anger, not with pity, but as if pressing Bee to find the answer to
a riddle.

“I didn’t say that! But he ought not to have gone after Cat in that way. He shouldn’t
have cooperated with James Drake and the general.”

“Open your eyes, selfish girl. It isn’t about you. There are greater battles awakening
in the world. Those who have developed a thirst for blood cannot easily be turned
aside from their insatiable appetites, no matter whom they harm. The old ones move
slowly, but they fight to protect their young.”

“You speak in riddles,” Bee said. “What does that all mean?”

I slid into the fog of dreams as if in the belly of Leviathan I, too, became a dragon
dreamer. Streaming rivers of mist welled up from the deep, currents flowing in vast
circles that penetrated close to the gleaming surface before pouring away into darker,
smokier depths. Swimming shapes brushed me, hot and cold by turns, rough to the touch
and then slickly smooth like eels slithering in coils around and around me.

I startled awake, shuddering, to find myself lying in Vai’s arms on the bed he had
built for us. His embrace was so strong and comforting that I could have reclined
in its orbit forever and not missed the world.

“Catherine,” he murmured in a drowsy, contented voice. “You were dreaming and mumbling.
It sounded like ‘There are greater battles awakening in the world.’ What is it, love?”

The feel of his body stretched the length of mine, his skin to my skin, made me want
to purr with simple pleasure. “I dreamed I was swallowed by a dragon. And now I have
to pee. Do you think those two things are related?”

Chuckling, he kissed me on the lips. After stroking a hand along the length of my
torso, he kissed me again, and then longer and with more concentration, until I really
did have to get up even though he clearly had other activities on his mind. He rose
with me.

“We’ll go the washroom,” he said, swinging me up into his arms. My hip pressed against
his belly. “We both need a wash.”

I giggled, for the night was warm and the room stuffy despite an open window, and
we were both sweaty. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“All the better. No one to disturb us.” A pinch of light sparked into existence. Cold
fire swelled to a fist-size bubble whose light dappled the clothes strewn over the
floor beside the bed.

I brushed my cheek against his short-shorn beard, the hair just long
enough to tickle instead of scratch. “You must spend hours getting your beard to look
just this decorative way.”

When he looked at me with a smile of tenderness and mischief mixed so sweetly, I could
scarcely breathe, much less think. “Why, Catherine, you
were
watching me all that time, weren’t you?”

The currents ripped me away from him just as I realized I was dreaming the night we
had consummated our marriage. I flailed and kicked, for I was determined to get back
to him, but a whirlpool dragged me down into the crushing abyssal deeps.

Like a gull hovering in the wind, I floated over a rocky path strewn with boulders
and pocked with ice. A towering cliff of ice studded with rocks filled the horizon:
It was the wall of a vast ice shelf. A gray sea lapped a narrow strand of stony beach.
In the shelter of a shallow cave, two longboats had been overturned out of reach of
the waves and covered with canvas staked to the earth. Three men with ragged gloves
fumbled with stakes and canvas, uncovering one of the beached boats and its treasure
of oars and oilcloth. The wind was coarse and unforgivingly cold. They worked frantically
as the howls of approaching wolves grew in volume.

On the path that led up a steep incline to the crumbling foot of the glacial shelf
stood a hatless woman. She wore a rumpled, dirty uniform and grasped a bloody falcata
in her gloved left hand. Her dark red hair was pulled back into a braid and pinned
in a coil at the back of her head. Fresh red welts marked a sun-weathered face brushed
with freckles. Blood oozed down her cheek and neck. Someone else’s blood was splashed
across the front of her uniform coat, and drying blood soaked her knees, as if she’d
knelt in blood. Her right sleeve was torn to ribbons, exposing a bleeding shoulder
and arm. Her ragged breath came in gouts of mist in the freezing air.

Behind her a man with curly black hair as lush and thick as Bee’s knelt to crank back
the ratchet of a crossbow. He had two bolts remaining in his quiver but no other visible
weapon. Four dead dire wolves littered the path, marking the trail of a pursuit. About
fifty steps above lay a dead man in a soldier’s kit. His corpse was mottled crimson,
his belly slashed open and spilling guts. A dying wolf twitched beside him, pink spume
riming its muzzle. A falcata had been thrust up to the hilt into its right eye, the
tip sticking out through the back of its neck.

High up on the path, three shaggy wolves nosed into view, sniffing the air.

The woman spoke. “More are coming.”

The man looked first at her and then higher, up the trail, to the wolves. Both had
muzzles smeared with viscera, as if they’d been eating. With the loaded crossbow,
he rose to stand beside her. She was tall, big-boned, and confident in her strength
even in the face of snarling death. He was a little shorter, with a build meant to
be stocky but made lean by privation.

I recognized them. His youthful, smiling face adorned the portrait in my locket: Daniel
Hassi Barahal, the man who considered himself my father. I had never seen any likeness
of Tara Bell, but despite the dark red hair and blue eyes, she looked so like me that
I knew she had to be my mother.

“If it’s necessary to hold a last rear guard to get the boat out, you and the others
must leave me.” She spoke as a shopping woman with many more errands ahead might remark
that the family could afford fish for supper but not beef.

“I think it unlikely we shall do so.” I admired the warmth of his laugh. He had deep
lines at his eyes, the mark of a man who would rather joke than scowl. “Who will mend
our clothes if we don’t have you to do it for us?”

She actually rolled her eyes, and her lips twitched even as her gaze tracked the wolves.
“You must be tired, for that’s not your cleverest jest. As if you cared one jot about
your clothes, except that they not fall off and expose your shapely arse.”

“So you did notice! I thought you were asleep.” He added, with a laugh more reckless
than amused, “You’ll not shake me loose. If you’re pregnant, we will face it together.”

When she caught his gaze, my child’s heart wept. Was that love in her expression?
Loyalty? Exasperation? I knew so little about my mother, but right then I knew she
trusted him.

“If we escape, I will return to my regiment. I honor my obligations. My oath belongs
to my commander. I cannot abandon my comrades. You know you are not the only one I
love.”

“I do not ask you to abandon anyone, Tara, nor to choose me above any other. I only
ask you to remember the oath I make to you now.”

He stole a kiss, pressed lightly at the corner of her mouth. Briefly she caught him
with an answering kiss, then she pushed him away, and he stepped back with a smile.