Cold Fire

15

I woke with my bitten arm throbbing and my hair in my mouth. Sitting up, I wiped the strands plastered across my cheek off my face so I wasn’t chewing on them. The movement of my arm across my breasts made me realize I was stark naked. My bare skin to your bare skin, all of it.

Blessed Tanit! I had really done it. And it had been pretty nice.

By the sour feeling in my stomach and the woozy way the world smiled on me, I was sure that not only had I been drunk but I was still a little drunk.

Proud Astarte! No wonder Rory behaved the way he did, wanting to be petted all the time!

I found my cane under the bench. My drawers, shift, bodice, and jacket lay discarded across the table. I sat on the ground on top of the remains of my overskirt and petticoats, spread open like unfurled wings to provide a blanket of a sort. The jagged tears in the fabric made me wonder what manner of teeth could shred tightly-woven wool challis and fine linen quite so spectacularly. I brushed a leaf off my bare hip and flicked an ant off my ankle. Despite the drink, I had a clear memory of how the clothes had come off and the rest of the events had proceeded. And although I was a little sore, I otherwise felt good.

Some would have said I ought to be shamed, but I could dredge up no shame in my heart. I had done what I needed to do to save my life. Anyway, to whom was I beholden? Andevai and I had already agreed to seek a dissolution. The Hassi Barahals had sacrificed me, and the mage House did not want me nor did I want a marriage I’d been forced into. According to the ancient rites, a young Kena’ani maiden had the right the offer up her first sexual encounter to Bold Astarte in the temple precincts. So be it. I had made the offering that was mine to give.

“You might want to wash before you dress.” James Drake looked up from where he crouched by the cheerful fire and the pot of hot water. I felt a blush creeping out on my skin, and he grinned. It was difficult not to smile back at a good-looking young man who admires you so openly. Especially when you’ve just had sexual congress with him. “Although no need to put on your clothes for my sake. Even half drowned with your hair all in tangles, you’re a remarkably pretty girl.”

“ You put on clothes,” I said, for he had: He wore trousers with a white shirt hanging loose over it, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His hands were darker than his arms; his torso, for I remembered quite a bit about his torso, had been as pale as cream. “Am I healed?”

“Do you doubt me?” He seemed a little offended. “I washed. You’d best wash, too.”

I pulled on my shift and stepped out from under the shelter to consider the pool. Its sides were so round that the fathomless blue waters seemed like an eye staring heavenward.

“How deep is this pool?” I asked.

“It’s a sinkhole. Around here, they say it goes down forever, into the subterranean world that is not this world but another world linked to ours.”

I jumped back from the edge. Into the spirit world.

“You can’t wash there,” he added as he pulled a length of wet linen from the pot. He wrung it out as he walked over to me. “The Taino call it a sacred place.”

Trembling, I accepted the blessedly hot, damp rag and washed my face and, more gingerly, the skin around the bite. “Did you really heal me?”

He took my arm and pressed his lips to the bite. A tickle of heat spread through my body.

Maybe I gasped. Maybe I sighed.

He released me with a chuckle. “You’re not one bit shy. Alas, I have duties I must return to, or I assure you we’d linger awhile in the shade. However, you fell asleep and I’m in trouble already. They don’t like me because I’m a maku. A foreigner. They despise us foreigners. You’ll see.”

I handed him the cloth. “But did you heal me?”

He took my chin in a hand and met my gaze with a serious one. “No taint of the plague, no teeth of the ghouls, runs in your blood. That’s the truth. Avoid the pens, and don’t get bitten again.”

“What are pens? Where are we?”

“We’re on Salt Island. Under Taino law, all salters must be held in quarantine here.”

“Who are the Taino?”

“The Taino are the people who rule this entire region, all the islands of the Antilles. I’ll answer the rest of your questions later at the behica ’s table.”

“What’s a behica?”

“A fire mage. Like me. I warn you, she’ll want to know how you got here. Don’t tell her anything. She’s an impatient, grasping sort of woman. Like all Taino nobles, she has a great sense of her self-?importance. Do me a favor and don’t mention we met in Adurnam. I promise to explain why later. Now I really have to go. Here is Abby. She’ll find you a pagne and a blouse.”

“What’s a pagne?” I saw the girl from the beach lurching toward us through the trees along the sandy path. I was being abandoned to the care of a stranger. “Can’t I come with you, James?”

With his gear in his arms, he kissed me on the cheek. “We’ll be together later. Call me Drake. Everyone does.”

He set off down the path. Passing the girl, he spoke phrases that sounded like a forgotten tartan of Celtic, Mande, and Latin, the cadences a different music from the melody I was used to.

The girl limped up. She ventured an awkward smile, as if she wasn’t used to smiling and thought perhaps she had forgotten how. “Yee want a bath and cloth.”

“Is your name Abby?”

“I have dat name Abby. Yee have dat name Cat’reen?” A dapple of sunlight through leaves caught on her face to give her dark eyes an odd gleam as she looked down the path to make sure Drake was out of earshot. “Dat maku heal yee?”

“Can he really heal people?” I held my breath.

She wheezed in a breath, as if at a stab of pain, and let it out. “All behiques have dat power. He one, even if he a maku.”

“A maku is a foreigner. A behique or a behica is a fire mage. Is that right?”

She scratched her nose, sorting through my foreign way of speaking. “Dat right. Na. ” Come.

She limped away down the path. I drew on my drawers and laced up my bodice, then gathered everything else and hurried after her. It was not, I reasoned, that she was unfriendly. But even the most generous soul might envy a gift of priceless worth granted to a stranger that has, even if by chance, been denied to a friend, if the man on the beach was indeed her friend.

“Drake told me we’re on Salt Island. In the Sea of Antilles, which is the sea that lies between North and South Amerike. Is that right?” She threw a bewildered glance at me, and a knife cut my heart, for I felt I was bullying her without knowing why. “It doesn’t matter. How pretty it is here!”

The shadows drew long as we emerged from the trees and walked along a shoreline where vegetation met a sandy white beach. It was really quite beautiful, and it would have been even more beautiful if it had not been so cursedly hot. I was sweating even though dressed only in undergarments that, in Adurnam, would embarrass a prostitute to be seen wearing in a public venue. The path wound up a headland. Birds dove in squalls. A turtle flipped sideways and skimmed away. The water was so clear I could see every stone and fish beneath the surface against shimmering stretches of sand.

In my boots, my feet felt swollen. Abby walked barefoot. An iron-gray lizard with a lacy frill and a pouchy throat sunned itself atop a rock, watching me with the grave disinterest of an elder.

“I’m going to melt,” I informed it as I trudged past. “I have never been so hot in my life. How do you stand it?”

It did not blink. Nor did it answer.

The bell rang as we crested the prow of the headland. I walked in Abby’s wake down into a pretty half-moon bay with a fine curved beach that faced east. A ring of houses set on low stilts formed a circle around a grassy central plaza distinguished by a circular earth platform. North of the plaza lay a long dirt field fenced by straight stone walls on either side. To the west, in the shadow of a forested ridge, sat roofed cages surrounded by an impressively tall iron fence.

Kitchen gardens stretched between the houses; there a few figures toiled, in no hurry. Beyond, the forest ruled except for several clearings marked by mounds planted with dusty green vines and young fruit trees. A stream sparkled down from the ridge to spill into the bay.

My thoughts scattered every which way as I slapped down the steep path into the settlement. What would Bee say when I told her? “ Really, Cat, did you fall for that tired excuse? ‘Fornicate with me and you will be healed’? Or was he so irresistible??”

But I smiled anyway. I felt cut loose from my old moorings. I might be frightened, miserable, and overheated, but I was also unbound.

My smile vanished. Never unbound. My sire’s command was the noose around my neck. His magic had thrown me onto a shore where fire mages dwelled. That was surely no coincidence. Was this why he had wanted me to come to the Sea of Antilles where the Taino ruled? How powerful were these fire mages called behiques? Did the sea hide them from him? Or was it possible that on an island in a hot climate there was no ice from which he could launch his spies?

Abby halted at the verge of a garden plot and kneaded her feet in newly-turned earth. She took my hand in a sisterly way. “Yee safe now, Cat’reen. No need for such a frown.”

“Are those the pens?” I asked, indicating the cages. Their thatched roofs and lattice walls made it difficult to see inside. Figures shifted like animals in stalls.

She winced, let go of my hand, and began walking. We skirted the central plaza, kicking up sand. Gracious Melqart, but there was sand everywhere in this place! Its grit rubbed my neck. Grains rubbed between my toes.

Abby led me to one of the round houses. Behind it, tall screens woven of reeds shielded a copper tub, four empty buckets, and soap. We hauled water from the stream to fill the tub, by which time I was sweating so foully I was glad to immerse myself in cold water. I scrubbed my skin, washed my hair, and rinsed myself off with water Abby kept bringing, for she seemed tireless. After I washed my clothes, I hung the clothing over the screens to dry.

“As I thought, you clean up wonderfully.” Drake stepped within the screens, looking me up and down so boldly I was not sure whether to be flattered or shocked. I had never been admired so brazenly before, for men in Adurnam would flirt with women but not maul them with their gaze. Andevai, who had after all claimed to have fallen in love with me at first sight, had certainly stared rudely at me and said things to me in the most arrogant way imaginable, but I could not help but think he would never look me over the way a hungry dog eyes a slab of meat.

“I would think a man would ask permission first before stepping into a woman’s bathing chamber,” I said, lifting my chin. I refused to humiliate myself by trying to cover bits of my body with my hands, especially since he had seen all of me anyway.

“My apologies. You just can’t know how unexpected this all is for me. You here, like this.” A smile played on his lips. “Anyway, out in the Taino kingdom, outside Expedition Territory, young unmarried women commonly go about their daily business wearing little more than you are right now. Here.” He tossed me a rolled-up piece of cloth.

“But I’m naked!” I shook out a piece of bright yellow fabric printed with orange and red shell patterns, and wrapped it around my breasts and hips like a shield of modesty. “What am I to do with this? If you’ve sewing scissors and a needle and thread I can fashion a-”

“That’s your pagne. The women of Expedition wear it as a skirt, with a blouse. You definitely need to cover yourself. You’re darker than I am, but the sun can still burn you.”

“Expedition is a famous trading and technological city in the Sea of Antilles. This village can’t be Expedition.”

“As I told you, this is Salt Island. Where salters are quarantined.”

“How soon can I leave, now that I’m healed?”

He met my gaze and, oddly, looked away. He had a pleasing profile, with a narrow chin and sharp features. He wore a cap to shade his face, but even so his nose and cheeks were freckled from the sun. “We’ll talk later. Abby will bring you supper.”

“No supper at the behica’s table, with you?” My voice faltered.

“I’m sorry, Cat. I shouldn’t have mentioned that before. You’re not allowed to eat with her and especially you’re not allowed to eat with the cacique ’s nephew.”

“What’s a cacique?”

“The cacique is the ruler-we might say king-of the Taino. The Taino have very strict laws. For instance, all fire mages in the Taino kingdom are required to serve periodically on Salt Island. So are any fire mages who live in Expedition Territory.”

“Wait. Does that mean Expedition Territory is part of the Taino kingdom?”

“No. Expedition is a free territory, on the island of Kiskeya. The rest of the island is part of the Taino kingdom. Expedition’s Council requires all local fire mages to serve here for a season every few years. We’re the only people who can live with and guard salters without risk of getting infested with the plague. That’s why I’m here. While we’re on Salt Island, we serve under the command of whichever Taino behique is eldest. In this case, a woman.”

“So behique is male and behica is female.”

“Yes. Listen, Cat, if you run into her, there are a few things you must know. Never speak to her unless she addresses you first. Don’t speak to the cacique’s nephew at all. He is a fire mage newly kindled and thus frightfully dangerous because he can’t control his power. And he’s terribly highborn. He is one of the possible heirs to the cacique’s honorable duho, the seat of power. The throne.”

“That means he could be cacique someday.”

“That’s right. The old bitch has come here to train him. Bear all that in mind. I’m off to supper. I’ll come by after. That is, if you’re minded to speak to me. The truth is”-his startlingly blue gaze bored into me-“you were irresistible beyond any question of healing you.”

I could not resist his smile. “Well, if that’s what you call ‘speaking.’”

He chuckled. “I never quite expect pretty girls to possess wit as well.”

By the time I had decided I could not tell if he was teasing me or insulting me, he had walked away. Abby stepped into view, watching him go with a frown. But when she turned to see me trying to tie the cloth, she laughed in a delightful way and showed me how to tuck and fix the fabric to make an ankle-length skirt. I pulled on my damp shift as a blouse.

We stowed tub and buckets in a lean-to. Inside the single room of the house, baskets hung from the rafters and what looked like a pair of fishing nets were strung lengthwise under beams. A bronze pot half filled with water sat in a wire stand, with a pitcher hanging from a hook and a basin tucked beneath. Otherwise, there was no furniture. She unrolled a mat woven from rushes and, after a hesitation, I sat on it.

“Yee wait. I get food.” She went out.

Waiting, hungry, I brooded with my cane across my crossed legs, fingering my locket. Where was Bee? Had she returned safely to Adurnam? Had she found Rory? Touching the locket made me think of Andevai, who had returned it to me. I still had the sard stone. In a strange way, I felt I was saving it for him, and yet the likelihood I would see him again seemed small. I could not be sure if I was relieved or sad at the thought.

From nearby, voices erupted into an argument. It took no great acumen to guess it was Drake at odds with the behica and her noble pupil. Fire mages, all. Including one newly kindled. Was the cacique’s nephew the power my sire had spoken of?? Was he, highborn and superior and a foreigner, a man I might hand over in place of Bee without feeling the shame of treachery? Yet fire mages could not become truly powerful, not like cold mages. Wake too much fire, and the fire consumed you.

I hated my sire all over again. To save Bee, I was going to have to hand someone else over in her place. Just as my aunt and uncle had done, when they had given me to Four Moons House. For the first time, I felt a tremor of sympathy for their dilemma.

“Cat’reen?”

My eyes flew open. Abby set down a tray.

“Will you eat with me?” I asked, but she lifted her chin to indicate the negative.

I was ravenous. I choked down four flat grilled rounds that were more cracker than bread. Succulent yams had been baked to perfection with tiny red vegetables whose taste turned my mouth to fire. I gulped down the entire cup of smoky brown liquid, which proved to be a mistake, because it was rum. Slow down, I told myself.

All this time, Abby watched me. My hazy memory of my arrival on the beach cleared like clouds parting to reveal the sun. “Are you a fire mage, Abby?”

“Ayi.” No.

“How can you be safe from the salters if you’re not a fire mage?”

Gracious Melqart did not spare me from being a complete ass who could not think before she spoke. There could only be one reason. Quite by instinct, I scooted away from her.

She looked down, shoulders slumping.

“Oh, Blessed Tanit,” I muttered. “I’m such an idiot. I’m so sorry.”

Lamplight spilled through the door. Drake entered, a lamp in one hand and a gourd bottle in the other. “Is something wrong, Cat?”

“Does Abby have the salt plague?”

Maybe it was the way the lamplight lanced through the room, but for an instant the girl looked like a dead thing, skin the wrong color, lacking the blood that gives life. She sucked in a sob.

“That was rude,” Drake said. “I thought better of you, Cat. Abby’s no danger to you.”

“Cat’reen mean no rudeness,” Abby said quickly.

I clamped my lips tight over excuses. “I was rude and thoughtless. My apologies.”

He hung the lamp from a hook, caught Abby’s arm, and pressed a kiss on her forehead as a father might kiss a child. “Be patient a day longer, Abby.”

“I so scared,” she said, and my heart cracked.

“I gave you my promise, Abby. Now go.”

She shuffled out with the tray. Drake sat down beside me, unsealed the round bottle, and filled my cup with liquor. He drained the cup, then filled it again and offered it to me.

I gulped it all down, the rum smooth in my throat. “It’s so horrible.”

“More horrible than you know. The salt plague drove out tens of thousands of refugees from the Malian Empire and other parts of West Africa. I’m sure many died as they fled. Most went north to make new lives among Celts and Romans, for the salt plague is rare in Europa. Some say winter kills it. Some in Europa even say the plague was a good thing.” He filled the cup with more rum.

“How could they say that?”

“The salt plague brought the West African Mande and the northwestern Celts together. The mages and sorcerers among the Mande and the Celts found they had a great deal in common, and thus the mage Houses were created. As these cold mages amassed power, they bound more and more villages into clientage until with the power of their magic and the power of the law, they rule like princes.”

I did not want to discuss cold mages, clientage, and the law. “Drake, Abby seemed surprised when that salter bit me. Does that mean he was in the harmless phase before and not yet biting?”

Judging by the upward quirk of his lips and eyebrows, I had surprised him. “Yes. Had you spoken to him yesterday, he would have seemed as normal as you or me except halting in speech and lame. Something kicked him into the active phase. Maybe your blood.”

“I did not!” I drained the cup as if the taste could drive out the memory of the bite.

“I’m not blaming you! It’s unpredictable. The harmless phase, more properly known as the infestation phase, can last days or months or in rare cases years. Yet between one breath and the next, the border is crossed. Poor Abby knows the disease is eating away at her mind and body-”

“Stop!” I grabbed the bottle out of his hand and took a slug. I had drunk too much too quickly, but I was exhausted and disoriented and hot. To think of Abby made me sick at heart.

He took the bottle with a shake of his head. “You have a tender heart.”

“Much good my tears do for her! Why haven’t you healed her?”

“Abby’s family are plantation workers in the cane fields. It took too long to get her to a behique. Her blood was infested before they got there.”

“But if a behique could do nothing, what do you think you could do now?”

Passion makes a man attractive, so the poets say, and he blazed with purpose in a way that seemed attractively admirable. “Something they don’t want me to do.”

“Why would they not want you to save her?”

“Do you know how dangerous fire magic is, Cat? To the fire mage, I mean.”

“I’m no fire mage, but I’ve read that fire mages usually are consumed by their own fire.” I met his gaze, realizing how close he sat beside me. “Did you risk your life to heal mine?”

He considered me in silence. Then his mouth turned down in a way that sparked my interest. He leaned back onto an elbow. “I suppose I did. I didn’t think about it at the time. Anyway, under Taino law, any person bitten by a salter must be quarantined on Salt Island.”

“Unless they’re healed. That’s what you told me.”

He poured more rum. “No. Any person bitten by a salter, whether healed or infested. The law dates from the arrival of people from Europa and Africa. It was part of the original treaty that allowed the Malian fleet to set up the independent territory and city of Expedition on the island of Kiskeya. By ruthlessly enforcing the quarantine, the caciques stopped the disease-and other diseases that came with the fleet-from spreading as much as they would otherwise have done.”

“Are you telling me I can’t ever leave this island?”

“No, I’m telling you I have plans to get you off this island. You must keep your mouth shut about this conversation and especially about my association with Camjiata. Don’t tell anyone. Be patient, like Abby. When I tell you to act, act immediately, no questions. Can you promise me that?”

“What choice do I have? Drake, what day is it?”

“The second of Augustus. As we Celts say, Lughnasad.”

Seven full months had passed while I had floundered in the spirit world. Lughnasad was one of the cross-quarter days. Was that why I’d been drawn back at just this time?

“How did you get here, that you don’t know what day it is?” he asked.

With a racing heart and a stab of fear, I suddenly realized I could not answer the question even had I wanted to. “How do you think people commonly arrive in the Antilles?”

He took a swig from the bottle and offered it to me. When I hesitated, he lifted it to my lips. He had a delicate touch, and the rum did calm me. “Come now, Cat. There can be no reason I could have expected to see you ever again, much less on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean from Adurnam.”

I felt like a cornered rat, but I had to say something. “I was kidnapped. I ended up here.”

“Floating in the sea?” He laughed. “Did you get thrown off the ship or did you jump?”

“Since I can’t swim and I am terrified of water, why would you think I would jump?”

“Since I don’t know, you have to tell me.” He glanced heavenward and then back to me. “That’s why I asked.”

The secret belongs to those who remain silent, as Andevai had once said to me. “It’s too painful. I’m not ready.”

An expression brushed by a glimmer of impatience creased his face and vanished into a gentler smile. “When do you think you might be ready, Cat?”

Sitting in the dark house with him reclining so close beside me made the memory of our sexual congress by the pool very strong. I was adrift and restless, and I just did not want to be alone.

“Did you think it was nice?” I whispered.

For a few anxious, embarrassed breaths, I wasn’t sure he had understood me.

“Ah!” A warmer smile softened his mouth.

He leaned in to kiss my lips, his moist with liquor and mine no different. I needed someone to cling to, and anyway it felt so good, even on a mat on a floor.