Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (8 page)

“We Taino have studied this matter for many generations. We have our own disciplines
of what the Romans name
scientia
. Who first observed the transit of the planet you call Venus? Who invented the steam
engine, which was then carried across the sea to Europa? Our scholars have spanned
earth and heavens with their investigations. It is known to our scholars through careful
investigation that dream walkers are barren. The sketch is a lie, not a dream. Is
it not, Beatrice?”

She released my hand. I winced as blood flowed back into my squashed fingers.

“My bride lied to me, deliberately and with forethought. She meant to mislead and
manipulate me into doing what she wanted.”

From the vivid flush in her cheeks and the tears streaking her face, it was obvious
she was both ashamed and defiant. “My other choice
was to tell you I would divorce you and not help you gain the throne. I will not stand
by and see Cat put on trial and executed.”

“Telling me the truth would have been honest.” That he did not look at her made his
words sound even more hurtful. He stared at me, as if daring me to look away and thus
prove my guilt. “Tell me, Catherine Bell Barahal, do you care that you are responsible
for the cacica’s death? If her exalted rank means nothing, for I believe you once
told me that Taino queens and princes mean little enough to you, then do you care
that you are responsible for a woman’s death?”

“How dare you speak to her like that!” Bee stepped between him and me with such an
aggressive movement that both catch-fires turned. “Cat did not murder the cacica!
It’s unjust of you to blame her just because you need someone to blame!”

I set Bee firmly to one side. “No, he deserves an answer.”

Prince Caonabo and I were the same height, so we matched, eye to eye. “I held no animosity
toward Queen Anacaona except that she conspired with General Camjiata to exile me
to Salt Island. At least her motives seemed disinterested in that regard. But at the
ballcourt on Hallows’ Night, she was going to kill me. You know it is true.”

“I heard her words. She called for the death of salters, as was her right and obligation
to protect the kingdom from illness.”

“She would have killed your twin brother, too, and other people as well, people whose
only crime was to have been bitten by salters and healed by fire mages like yourself.
As you once healed your brother. Isn’t that right?”

He hesitated, then frowned. “It is true.”

“Haübey would have died on Hallows’ Night, too?” Bee whispered. “You never told me
that!”

A flare of emotion blushed his cheeks.

I leaped into silence, for I wanted him to be angry at me instead of Bee. “I couldn’t
possibly kill a fire mage as powerful as Queen Anacaona. It seems to me you Taino
should direct your anger at the personage who wielded the power to kill the cacica.
We Europans call him the Master of the Wild Hunt. I suppose you Taino would call him
a spirit lord. But he’s beyond your reach, so you cast your spears of revenge at me.”

His eyes tightened at the corners as he glanced at Bee, then back at
me. “Even with the cacica alive, I would have needed the woman who walks the dreams
of dragons to strengthen my position when I travel to Sharagua to claim the cacique’s
duho. Haübey was the son my mother trained for the duho, not me. But he can never
set foot in our land again because, as you say, he was bitten by a salter. That I
healed him makes no difference to his exile. He has taken a foreign name, Juba, to
show he is dead in Taino country. He has already departed over the sea. Yet I would
dishonor my lineage if I allowed a different branch of the family to wrest the duho
from me. So you will travel to Sharagua with me, Beatrice. I have the right to ask
that of you. And the means to make you do it.”

He offered her the sketchbook. She hesitated to take it, for his gesture had an air
of finality that made my neck prickle.

He opened his hand. The book fell. Bee grabbed it before it hit the floor.

“When the duho has passed to me and I am proclaimed as cacique, you will leave Taino
country and never come back. You didn’t just lie. You made use of the pure and sacred
vision that is the treasure of dreams you guard, to try and cheat me and my people.”

“You forced me to choose between you and my cousin,” Bee said. “You accused her unfairly.
It looks to me as if you want to sacrifice her in order to gain the throne. I think
I am the one who may doubt the purity of your intentions!”

“You have no idea what my intentions are, or how I intended to thread this labyrinth,
to find a way to satisfy justice. We Taino do not sacrifice servants forced to obey
their master’s command. But you treat me as a foreigner who cannot be trusted. Yet
you were willing to exchange your body and your dreams for the wealth, security, and
knowledge my rank and my people offered you.”

She flinched as if his rebuke had been a physical slap. “I have done what my heart
told me to do, Your Highness.”

“What of your duty?” His calm gaze and measured words fell more harshly than anger
would have.

I embraced her, resting my cheek on her hair as I whispered. “Kofi and Keer have a
plan for my defense. Kayleigh has money if we need it for berths on a ship. I will
support you whatever you choose, Bee. Do what you must.”

She took in a shuddering breath. “Hassi Barahals may be mercenaries and spies, but
we are never, ever cheats.”

“Then go. We can leave messages for each other at any of the law offices of Godwik
and Clutch, here or in Adurnam or Havery.”

She wiped her cheeks as she released me. Majestic in presence, she faced the man she
had agreed to marry believing his exalted position and powerful kingdom could protect
us. “I will do my duty toward you, Your Highness. Never think otherwise.”

I could not read the book of Caonabo’s emotions as I had learned to read Andevai.
Despite his vanity and arrogance, or perhaps because of them, Vai had far less restraint.
That he believed he had a great deal of self-control while having very little had
become one of the things that charmed me about him. Not so with Prince Caonabo. As
I watched him watch Bee walk with dignity to the door, I could not tell if he yearned
for what they had so quickly lost or if he was simply measuring the odds that he could
trust her to do the part he needed her to do.

At the door she glanced back. Her gaze caught mine. We said nothing, for we knew what
we needed to know of each other. Our love was our promise and our security. She left,
leaving the door open behind her for Caonabo to follow.

The prince paused, turning to give me a last look. “The blood of my mother lies between
us, Catherine Bell Barahal. But because I respect the law, I act as the law requires.
Do you? Will you take responsibility for your actions, or will you seek the chance
to escape what you have brought about without accepting your part in it?”

I had to trust in the plan hatched by Kofi and Keer. With Rory wounded, I had few
options.

We spent the rest of the afternoon quietly. When Rory woke up, he seemed far better
than he had any right to be, but he developed a sulky whine that Luce was better able
to tolerate than I was. She demanded that wash water be brought so I could bathe and
change my clothes. I sewed buttonholes on the two winter coats because the tailors
hadn’t had time to finish them. To pass the time, she and I discussed the chamber
murals. The paintings depicted the history of the First Fleet: the eruption of the
salt plague out of the salt mines of the Sahara Desert; the crossing of the Atlantic
Ocean by the multitudes fleeing with the Malian fleet; landfall on the southern shore
of the island of Kiskeya in the Sea of Antilles.

Luce traced the adventures of her ancestors with a look of dizzy excitement. “I shall
have an adventure, too. I shall come with yee to rescue Vai. I’s old enough to leave
home. I always wanted to travel, like me father!”

“No, you shall not!” Leaning my forehead against hers, I captured her gaze with mine
to bind her to my will. I was implacable; I had to be, because she was a sheltered
girl with a sunny good nature from having grown up in a loyal household whose family
members cared for each other. “We can’t afford your passage to Europa. You can’t walk
into the spirit world anyway.”

Her frown developed a stubborn kick.

“Rory and I can cross into the spirit world because of what we are. People aren’t
meant to walk there. Hunters apprentice for years to
learn the secret lore passed down among them. You will die, or be changed beyond recognition.”

Luce glared, trembling. “Everyone say I shall be a great help to me mother to run
the boardinghouse. But what if that is not what I want? I don’ want to work in them
factories neither. And the ships me father sails don’ accept women as sailors, for
that is the Roman way. I don’ have the connections nor the apprentice fee a gal need
to get a berth on a ship run by a troll consortium.”

“It would just kill your family if you left, Luce. They love you!”

Her dark gaze accused me, as if I had betrayed her.

Rory stirred. “I’m thirsty,” he whimpered. She went to him.

At nightfall I went to the doors that looked over the courtyard. Kofi joined me.

“How old is that ceiba tree?” In the night breeze stirring its branches I was sure
I felt the breath of the spirit world. Its scent wound through my bones.

Kofi rocked from toe to heel and back. “’Twas a sapling planted here on that very
day the Taino caciques and the captains of the fleet met to seal the First Treaty.
The story go that they who ruled chose one beautiful gal who did come over with the
Malian fleet and one handsome lad who was Taino-born upon this island. They two were
sacrificed and their blood and bones set in the earth to feed the tree and bind the
treaty.”

I pressed a cheek into the glass. I tasted on the air the ancient power of blood to
bind the living and the dead.

He put a hand on my forearm. “The Taino believe the ancestors hold them to the right
and proper way of living. There was never one thing to stop the Taino all these years
from invading Expedition except so far as they held to the law.”

“No, I suppose not. The Taino kingdom is so powerful, and Expedition Territory is
tiny in comparison. But I must say, Kofi, I really think their greatest strength is
their fire mages. If I’m found guilty, will the provisional Assembly allow the prince
to take me away into Taino country? Will they hand me over to James Drake? Will they
support me or sacrifice me?”

The scars on his cheeks made him seem forbidding until he smiled. “They shall have
to find yee guilty first. I tell yee, gal, I have heard
yee scold men before, but to watch yee tear into that fire mage Drake made me skin
turn cold.”

“I know I shouldn’t have spoken like that. I’ll keep my mouth shut from now on.”

He laughed.

I leaned my head against Kofi’s shoulder, so broad and solid, but I wished it were
Vai I was leaning against. The shock of Caonabo repudiating Bee and her departure
with him on a journey sure to be miserable and unpleasant had torn away my shield
of determination. All my ugliest fears surfaced like Leviathan breaching the waves.

“Vai’s so accustomed to being the most powerful magister, to winning. What if my sire
breaks him? What kind of man will he be? And will I still love him?”

“Peradventure Vai shall not survive this. But I reckon I have never met a man with
such a high opinion of he own consequence. In such a dark place, a man’s vanity and
arrogance can be what save him.”

I sniveled out something meant to be a chuckle. “If any man’s conceit can survive
captivity by the Master of the Wild Hunt, it would be his.”

“There. Yee have brought yee fear out into the light. I reckon yee have been fretting.”

I sniffled, wiping my eyes. “Now Bee’s thrown away her future trying to save me.”

A windblown branch tapped on one of the glass doors that led out to the courtyard.

“Cat, she done no different a thing than yee did for her. Chance it shall even be
for the best. The Taino nobles is a high and mighty people who look down on folk like
us. Maybe she would fancy a life in their court, or maybe she would find she own self
in a cage that squeeze like a trap. Vai told me one time that the day he was brought
up from the village to Four Moons House and taken before the mansa, he reckoned he
was the most fortunate lad alive to have such a chance. He came to find they did not
want him but dared not turn him away. They treated him like the worst kind of mangy
cur. So he decided to become better at being one of them than any of them was at it.
Yee said to me one time that the worst thing for Vai shall be if he go back to the
mage House and become a cold mage like to what he was when yee two first met. I see
now what yee meant. ’Twas no good home for
him at the mage House. So why is yee so sure the Taino court would be a good home
for yee cousin?”

“Do you think they could crush her?”

He chuckled. “That gal? I reckon not. But that don’ mean she shall for a surety live
a happy life there. Had she married a Taino man of the common run I reckon she should
have as good a chance as any to have a good life, for the Taino live as well and justly
as any folk do. But I’s not a man to choose a palace of gold and precious shells over
a humble room if the first come with a knife in the back and a foot on me heart and
the second come with a smile and a kiss. I don’ know what yee cousin wish for above
all else. She may be glad later to have another choice.”

When I thought about it, wondering what Bee would really want, I realized I wasn’t
sure. If anyone had asked me a year ago if I hoped and dreamed a handsome, wealthy,
and well-connected young man would fall in love with me at first sight, I would have
laughed and said yes because it was the sort of thing a young woman was supposed to
say yes to. But it wouldn’t have been true. Bee was the one who dreamed of a romantic
story in which she figured as the principal heroine. I had wanted nothing more than
to have a chance to follow in my father Daniel’s footsteps, to travel the length and
breadth of Europa seeing new places and, if I was fortunate, have adventures as he
had had. I would have wanted a romantic interlude… at some unspecified later date.