Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (28 page)

In a howling, chirping, chortling pack, the Hunt passed through the gate of the hurricane’s
eye. My sire galloped in their midst with a spear in one hand and fear in the other.

On a second thunderclap, the eye closed and the Hunt vanished.

The dark clouds cleared away. The city fell silent, as if holding its breath. But
it was not still. The boiling movement that spun along the bridges and balconies flowed
merrily along. Its constantly shifting pattern contracted and expanded like a flock
of birds in flight, spinning around and around the center like a whirlpool around
an unseen eddy.

My finger twitched. My arms were my own again. I rubbed my eyes to break free from
the trance.

Blessed Tanit! If the Wild Hunt rode into the mortal world, then Hallows’ Night had
come again. Months had passed in what had felt to me like a single day. Bee and I
had walked in Adurnam in late March. Now it was the end of October in the mortal world.
The Hunt would pursue a person whose blood hummed with the power and energy we humans
called magic. It would corner, kill, and dismember the hapless victim, and toss the
severed head down a well. Yet looking at the silent personages awaiting their feast
atop the ziggurat, I had to wonder: Was my sire the master, or a slave to others’
bidding?

This mystery lay beyond my grasp right now. I had to concentrate on what I had come
here for. If the crowning feast was the center of the city, then surely my sire would
hold his prisoner close to the celebration yet hidden from it. The spirit world did
not have shadows but it did have brighter places and places more gray and indistinct.
It had places that drew the eye, and places the eye slid away from as water slides
off a duck’s back.

I found it on the fourth staircase, the broken one. Along the outer rim of the towering
crack that split the staircase ran a narrow balcony like an outgrowth on a glassy
stone cliff. A figure sat there, unmoving. It was too small for me to see features
or even to discern the colors of the clothes it was wearing, although it looked a
lot like a dash jacket and he looked like a man. The only way to reach the spot was
to be lowered by rope, to climb by ladder, or to fly.

Could I fly? Wasn’t I an eru’s daughter?

I turned my thoughts inward, searching through my body for a
memory of wings, but I remained stubbornly Cat, locked into the mortal flesh my mother
had given birth to.

So I did the only thing I could: I plotted out a route and hastened toward the broken
stair. Once I reached its jagged steps, I raced up them to the point where the huge
gash like a notch made by a giant’s knife had cut through the stone into the interior
of the ziggurat. A bridge no wider than my hand spanned the gap between the sides
of the gash; the balcony lay on the other side of the crevice. I balanced across the
gulf of air until I reached a flight of floating steps, some of them missing because
they, too, were broken.

After clambering up, I paused to catch my breath on a tiny platform not even wide
enough to sit on. Above me rose the sheer face of a cliff, as ominous as a wall of
ice. A pretty balcony ornamented by ribbons lay above me, and above it rose more cliff.
Below me, the cleft fell away into darkness.

Even from halfway within the ziggurat, my doubled vision could still see the top of
the pyramid’s flat crown, as if part of me still stood inside one of the threads of
power and spirit that weave the worlds. Overhead a churning circle of brilliance swirled
in the sky. The eye of the gate opened. Howling and roaring, the Wild Hunt spilled
back into the spirit world in a boiling mass of turbulent beasts. The layers and levels
of the city emptied as all moving things converged on the height. Human-like presences
solidified in the eight chairs: four black as obsidian and four white as snow. They
had no faces as I recognized a face. Instead they surged with a force I could only
describe and feel as hunger.

The horseman reined his mount to a halt in front of the dais. My sire was glowing,
ruddy with a surfeit of blood. Slowly he bowed his head. Every line of his body was
tense and tight.

Certainty infused me like a bolt of hot anger through my flesh: He hated the creatures
who sat in those thrones. He wanted to slash his spear through every watching, waiting
presence but could not because eight chains bound him, one to each chair.

Those chains like whips snapped, bringing the horse to its knees.

A voice like a hammer blow cut through him, turning the mounted horseman into a kneeling
eru with wings furled as in pain. He knelt before them. Blood is power because blood
binds.

A prince among slaves is still a slave.

He hadn’t been talking about Andevai. He had been talking about himself.

“Give us what is ours.” The eight personages spoke in one voice. “As you are required
to do, because you are bound with the blood of the last feast, and because we bind
you with the blood of this feast through the coming year.”

The Hunt was merely the conduit. The courts could not walk into the mortal world,
so only their servants could bring them the mortal blood they craved.

The blood of the sacrifice poured out of a hundred wounds. Through the chains of binding
they sucked the fresh blood of the kill out of his flesh and into theirs.

I licked the air. I tasted the blood of the kill, so rich and sweet, laced with the
spice of power, the salt of life. My hunger swelled together with the hunger of all
the many presences, the denizens of the spirit courts. The force of their ravenous
appetites built like the front of a storm. I took a step, thinking to race back across
the bridge that spanned the cleft and regain the staircase, for surely I could rush
up to the height and claw in to take my share before they had drained it all.

An unseen person coughed as though waking from a dusty and uneasy doze. The cough
startled me back to my own self as I remembered who I was and why I was here.

“Vai? Can you hear me? Is that you?”

“Catherine?” His voice was hoarse.

The ribbon-ornamented balcony above me could only be reached by a skeleton of what
had once been a stair-rail as delicate as crystalline branches. Rungs and railings
had been shattered by savage blows to make the stairs unusable. I didn’t need stairs.
I checked my sword to make sure it was secure, found a fingerhold on a jaggedly broken
rung, and scrambled up. The weight of the pack threw off my balance, but I was determined.
A presence loomed over me.

He said, “Give me your arm. Reach up.”

I did so blindly, slipping as I let go. A callused grip caught my wrist. He hauled
me over the side and to my feet. His hands on my waist were like fire, I felt them
so. His beard was a little unkempt. Streaks of powdery dust smeared his right cheek.

“Catherine.” His voice was balm on my yearning heart.

I dislodged his grasp and retreated to the edge of the balcony. The white rock wall
behind him was pitted with gouges and holes. A frail ladderlike stair, leading up
the cliff face to the next level, had also been smashed. From the far side of the
balcony, the cleft cut away deep into the heart of the massive structure, shearing
away into the inky depths.

It was strange he was so disheveled and dust-stained when we stood on a spotless white
balcony with ribbons streaming off the railing. His trousers were ripped at one knee.
A cuff on his dash jacket had torn, and ragged slashes raked through the fabric of
its left shoulder, although no blood stained the cloth. The smell of mortal blood
lay heavily on him, yet he might be my sire, flown down to confound me with blood
still coating his tongue.

“Show me your navel!”

He turned his back on me. “I’ll let you find it yourself, if you can tell me how many
buttons this jacket has.”

“Are you telling me all your jackets are cut to the same pattern? For if they are,
then that one has fourteen.”

He turned back with a suspicious frown that made him look a little like the mansa.
“After all, I am reminded you might have counted them. You’ve assaulted me before
in the guise of my wife.”

“Are you saying my sire has tried to seduce you more than that one time in the carriage?”

“How could you know about that?”

“Such secrets are best left unspoken within hearing of they who can see and hear all.”

He took a step back, halting beside an object I had mistaken for a boulder but that
I now realized was the bundle of stolen clothes, food, and leather bottles from Salt
Island. Such a bolt of joy flooded through me that I had to struggle to catch my heart
before it crashed right out of my chest. Only Vai would have thought to drag the bundle
with him out of the coach. His sword lay sheathed on the ground. I was almost certain
my sire could not touch cold steel.

He thought
I
was my sire.

I shrugged off the pack to ease my shoulders. “You claimed you would always know where
I was. So I would think you would know this is me, Vai. Who else can carry my sword?”

“There are many things I am no longer quite so sure of.” His wary gaze made me cautious,
and made me bitter, for I could see my sire’s abduction had injured him in an intangible
way.

“What was the first thing you said to me, when we first met?”

His lips curled into the scornful sneer I had seen too often in the first days of
our acquaintance. “Easy enough to tell. When I saw you that night coming down the
stairs, I thought it was the other half of my soul coming to greet me. But I’ve spoken
those words aloud more than once. You might have overheard them.”

I raised an eyebrow, trying to mimic his disdain. “Yes, that’s lovely and romantical,
Vai, but that isn’t the first thing you actually said to me.”

“Ah. Something about the theater, then.” He ran a finger down the line of his beard.
“That you’re not cut out to be an actress.”

“If I’m no actress, then surely you should know I must be me. Yet you stand there
with no welcoming embrace! Since you cannot recall your exact words, let me remind
you. You said that I might have the looks to be in theater, but not the skill.”

“Did I? A truthful statement, you must admit.”

I had meant to tease him into recognizing me, but his comment chased all thoughts
of teasing from my mind as curiosity burned instead. “Why did you praise my looks?
With Bee around, it’s a compliment no young man ever threw my way. Bee always dazzled
them all.”

His rigid posture relaxed. He closed the distance between us and cupped my face in
his hands. His fingers had the roughness of a laborer’s, but his touch was gentle.
He examined my windblown hair and dirt-smudged skin.

“All the better for me that they were blind.”

I tried not to look gratified—certainly this was not the place for it—but a blush
warmed my cheeks regardless.

“I’ve always wondered what you thought when you first saw me.” His hands slipped down
to grasp my hands as he preened just a little with the lift of his chin and the squaring
of his shoulders.

I felt obliged to prod him. “I thought you weren’t as handsome as you so obviously
thought you were.”

A laugh crinkled at the corners of his eyes without quite making it to his mouth.
“How quickly did you realize you were mistaken?”

“Oh, Vai,” I breathed. “I was so afraid I wouldn’t find you.”

I threw my arms around him just as he crushed my body against his. At first I simply
held on, letting my heart beat into the rhythm of his. It felt so good to embrace
him. When I tilted back my head to look at him, he pressed kisses on my eyes. I pressed
my mouth to his throat. Hot blood pulsed beneath my lips, so close I could have ripped
through to it with a single bite and joined in the feast now consuming the thoughts
and attention of the spirit courts. I shook myself away, pulling out of his arms.

“We have to go,” I said. “The courts will finish feasting and remember you. And what
if the tide of a dream washes through and catches us?”

“We’re safe from tides here. The walls ward the pit.”

“What pit?”

The mocking curve of his lips made me shudder. “Your sire threw me into this pit.
The creatures swarmed after me, too many for me to fight off. I climbed up here just
ahead of them and smashed both stairs with my cold steel. Since they can’t climb,
they can’t reach me. I would be dead if I had not grabbed that bundle of provisions
out of the coach.”

“I stole all that when I was imprisoned on Salt Island.”

“That’s what kept me alive. But I’ve consumed all the food and drink.” He knelt to
rummage through my pack. Opening one of the flasks, he took a thirsty swig, then a
more measured swallow. After, he offered it to me.

I shook my head. “I drank my fill at the gate.”

“No food?”

“None. The mansa found us before we had made all our preparations.”

“When did you encounter the mansa? I suppose that is a tale to be told later.” He
emptied the pack, nodding with approval when he found my sewing kit and some of his
carpentry tools. But it was his shaving kit and the little box that held sheaths that
made him stare. “Lord of All, Catherine, I must say you are well prepared for adventure
of one sort or another.”

It is an odd thing to know you stand close to death and yet laugh.

What part of my thoughts he read from my expression I did not know, but his gaze softened.
“You never give up, do you, my sweet Catherine?”

“Never. While the courts are busy with their feast, we can go back the way I came,
across the bridges and balconies to the ledge, and then back through the jade gate.”

“We can’t escape by their own paths. Some will scent me and come after me. They are
faster than I am. The only reason I’m alive is that they can’t climb, and I got up
here before they caught me.”

“They weren’t saving you for Hallows’ Night? Maybe after the feast they won’t be hungry
for a while.”