Cold Fire

21

To wait tables, you had to have a good memory, be quick on your feet, and know how to keep men laughing while you avoided hands touching you in places you weren’t keen on being touched. Whatever tips they gave me-small coins but solid-were mine to keep. And I needed money, for Aunty was paying me in room and board. So I worked long hours, every afternoon and evening from the first arrival to the last departure.

At first I stuck close to the boardinghouse, going out only with Aunty, Brenna, or Lucretia as I got to know Tailors’ Row, the local market, and the larger neighborhood. I needed to reconnoiter my ground. Above all, I did not want to stumble across James Drake.

The following Jovesday afternoon Vai returned from work carrying a pair of sandals. I delivered a tray of ginger beer to a table of men arguing over the results of a batey game and brought a cup of juice to Lucretia and her next youngest sister. Under the shade of the big tree, they were straining pimento-soaked rum through cheesecloth for liqueur. Luce accepted the cup with a smile, then glanced toward Vai, who was waiting by the stairs. I went over.

He held out the sandals. “Catherine, these are for you.”

“I can’t afford them. And I won’t accept gifts from you.”

He glanced up at the tapering, oblong leaves of the ceiba tree as if to find patience hiding in the lofty branches. “Don’t take them for your own sake. Do it for Aunty. You’re walking around here all day and night, and to the market and up and down Tailors’ Row-”

“How do you know what I’m doing during the day when you’re at work?”

His glance toward Lucretia betrayed him. “If you cut your feet, you can’t wait tables…” He paused.

I turned to see two trolls standing in the gate, looking around with predatory gazes. One was tall, drab, and likely female, and the other was short, brightly crested, and likely male. They wore the long cotton jackets commonly worn by men of business in Expedition, the cloth a plain dark green, smeared with soot and oil stains. The customers looked toward them with the same mild disinterest they showed when a street vendor appeared with a tray of cigarillos or taffy, and then at Vai.

He said in a low voice, “Catherine, don’t be an idiot. You’ve been walking around barefoot for over a week.”

“I can’t wear my winter boots.”

“I didn’t say you should. These are cheap sandals. Just take them. I have to go out.”

I took the sandals. He joined the trolls at the gate and left. Why would a cold mage be fraternizing with trolls?

“Oooh me stars!” Lucretia sidled up beside me, smelling of pimento, cinnamon, lime, and rum. After prying the sandals out of my hands, she found the maker’s mark on the sole. “These cost him a pretty bit of coin!”

“He said they were cheap sandals.”

She rolled her eyes as she handed them back to me. “Yee believe that if yee wish, Cat.”

I measured them against my dust-smeared feet. “How did he know my size? Luce? Did you sneak him my boots and then put them back? Are you telling him tales on me?”

She grabbed one of the sandals and whacked me on the hip with it. “Yee’s so stubborn. Just wear the sandals and be glad yee have such, since there is many who have no shoes.”

It was, I realized, a point of pride in Aunty’s household that all the children had shoes and could afford the fee for the district school. For however busy the courtyard was every night and however full the boardinghouse stayed, signs of economical living crept out everywhere, things I recognized from my own upbringing. Chastened, I washed my feet, put on the sandals, and went back to work.

“Sweet Cat, a round of beer! I see yee have new sandals.”

Sweet Cat was what the elderly regulars had decided to call me. “Nice of him to bring them round before he had to go off again.”

“Yes, he go every Jovesday with those two. Yee know them, I suppose.”

“The only trolls I ever knew were lawyers.” I cast my lure. “Are there many troll lawyers here?”

“Many troll lawyers! Yee’s such a maku, Sweet Cat! Now, yee listen.”

They liked to explain things to me, because I listened so well. Trolls loved the law the way batey players loved the game. They were known as specialists in scratching over the finer points of the law and pecking through every least step in the contractual procedures on which legal arrangements were created and implemented. Troll-owned law offices tended to congregate in areas by specialty; law houses that worked maritime law or that anchored branches gone overseas could be found in the harbor district just outside the old city.

By the end of the second week, I had begun to make friends with several of the tailors. Useful and pleasant of themselves, these acquaintances allowed me to have an excuse one morning to depart with apparent innocence on a stroll down Tailors’ Row, where I might chat the morning away over the intricacies of patterns, stitches, and the weight and tensile strength of threads.

As I walked away from the boardinghouse, I turned over in my mind the things I had learned. The old city was ringed by an old fortress wall, and these days only families eligible to serve on the Council were allowed to own property there. East and north of the city, along the river, lay the burgeoning factory district. West lay the sprawl of residential districts like Passaporte, where Aunty Djeneba had her boardinghouse. Beyond the city lay farming country, and beyond that the border with the Taino kingdom.

I made my way seaward. The jetty was both a stony barrier between land and sea, and a long avenue running along the shore. It linked the old city with the districts that had sprouted up outside the original walls. I set my path east past the squat clock tower and toward the airship towers and the ships in the main harbor, which lay perhaps a league away. It felt good to stride. Because it was early, the heat hadn’t grown too thick.

I bound threads of magic around me, not concealing myself so much that a cart might ram into me but shifting myself into that space of things no one much notices: I was nothing more than the cobbled street, or a dog curled up in the shade of a mango tree, or a burgeoning of weeds down a disused lane where four soldiers were taking a piss against a wall.

Trolls passed in small groups and never, ever alone. Often they glanced my way as if they could sense me, but I felt it safest to ignore their glances. I sidestepped a dog-cart whose driver had not seen me, and hurried out of the way of a wagon pulled by one of those sleekly astonishing dwarf mammoths. Its stubby trunk swayed in my direction, and the trunk’s lip delicately brushed me as it lumbered past. An earthy scent washed over me. I hurried on, heart pounding.

I crossed in front of a huge boardinghouse with an open deck and bar overlooking the bay. Beside it lay a raised plaza and a batey court whose length was lined with raised stone seats in the manner of a Roman amphitheater. A team of young women was practicing. They wore sleeveless bodices and short skirts dyed green to mark their affiliation. I drifted to the side of the road so I could watch, a wistful longing rising in my heart. They were astonishingly good, bouncing the ball off legs, arms, shoulders, and even their heads and never letting it touch hands or feet, as they sought to claim a goal through stone rings.

Onlookers sat in clumps on the stone seats, watching the practice. A slender man with flame-red hair and suntanned white skin stood toward the rear among a retinue. I lost track of my breath, clenched my hands, and backed up so quickly I almost collided with five trolls. They parted around me with admirable agility. One looked at me and said, as Caith had that long-ago day in Adurnam: “Ooh! Shiny!”

I tugged the edge of the pagne over my cane. When I glanced back toward the ball court seats, seeing the man from a different angle proved him to be not Drake at all. He sauntered down the risers with a coterie milling admiringly around him. The way he carried himself, expecting a degree of deference as cold mages did in Europa, reminded me of Vai.

“Whhh!” whistled a passing woman to her companion. “Isn’t that Jonas Bonsu?”

Her friend nodded. “They say the Greens shall pay the transfer fee to get him as striker. Them Anolis shall be called fools if they let him go.”

Bold Astarte! Surely I had done enough maudlin dwelling on my own troubles today.

Ahead, the boulevard ended in the old city gate, a lofty stone arch fitted with warden’s boxes on either side and lit, even in broad daylight, with eight lamps, four on each side. Traffic flowed through the gate unimpeded, but once a warden stepped forward to question a man pushing a cart heaped with cassava. The harbor’s stone piers and wooden wharves pushed beyond the walls along the river’s wide mouth.

Before I reached the gate I turned landward into the harbor district. Densely packed with three-story buildings, this commercial district filled the gap of land between the ball court and the city walls. Alongside sailors with their rolling gait and merchants briskly about errands, I walked down a street lined with a raised walkway on each side and gaslights awaiting nightfall. I perused the streets and peered into each side lane, mapping my ground and noting signs and businesses. Down one side lane hung a weathered sign with orange letters against a feathery brown background: GODWIK AND CLUTCH.

My pulse raced. I had not quite dared hope, but Gracious Melqart had smiled on me.

Two steps led to a shaded porch and a slatted door. A bell tinkled as I pushed into a chamber fitted out with so many mirrors set at angles that I gritted my teeth. Clerks labored at sloping desks set as haphazardly as though someone had shoved them in at haste and forgotten to tidy up. All looked up from their ledgers, then bent back to work. A troll appeared from behind a screen. Approaching me, it whistled.

Its height and the muted brown of its scale-like feathers decided me. “Greetings and good morning, Maestra.”

It bared fearsome teeth in what I desperately hoped was meant to be a smile. “This way, Maestressa. Yee’s a maku, I take it?”

“I am.” I followed her behind the screen to an area with a bench, three square high platforms cushioned with pillows, and a table set with a pitcher, basin, tray with cups, and platter heaped with nuts and fruit. “How did you know?”

She chuffed, which I took as the kind of laugh you make when you suppose the other person has made an obvious joke and you wish to be polite. “How may I help yee?”

This was not going to be easy. “Are you associated with the offices of Godwik and Clutch who have branches in both Havery and Adurnam?”

Her purple crest rose. “We is.”

I stuck out my hand in the radical’s manner. “I am Catherine Bell Barahal. I have met Maester Godwik. And Chartji. And Caith. That’s why I’m here.”

“I am Keer.” No feathers covered the palm of her taloned hand. The press of her skin against mine reminded me of summer in the north, when the long sun pulls the earth’s sweat up out of warm soil.

She released my hand and indicated the table.

“That’s right,” I murmured. “Wash, drink, and eat before beginning negotiations.”

I washed and dried my hands, after which Keer washed and dried her hands and rinsed her mouth, so I went back and copied the mouth rinsing. She settled on one of the high platforms. Her height and sleek predator’s muzzle made me feel I would be at a disadvantage if I sat lower, so I hopped up onto one of the other square platforms.

Her gaze flicked to my cane. “Shiny, that.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

She flashed me a view of sharp incisors, an intimidating gesture meant, I hoped, to express amusement at my laconic answer. I desperately wanted to know how trolls, like fire mages, could see my cold steel in daylight, but I sensed this was not the time to ask. A troll came in and poured us each a cup of a fragrant tea whose bitterness made my eyes water. We drank as the serving-troll peeled and cut fruit into ceramic bowls small enough to cup in the hand, and sprinkled it with nuts.

As we ate, I looked around. The office was fitted out with interior gaslight, which I had never seen in Adurnam. Slatted windows opened into a chamber where two trolls and a man wearing ink-?covered aprons were setting type in a press. Discarded sheets of paper with uneven printing advertised a citizens’ meeting: in support of the Proposal for an Assembly composed of Representatives elected from the entire Population of Expedition.

When we had finished eating and drinking, Keer cocked her head, looking at me first with one eye, then with the other, then full on, muzzle slightly pulled back to hint at teeth within.

I found my voice. “My business is this. I need to send an urgent message to two family members in care of the Adurnam office of Godwik and Clutch. Since your office must exchange dispatches with your Europan offices, I thought I might be able to include a letter with your post.”

“Yee shall have better fortune after hurricane season.”

“Hurricane? What is that?”

“ Hurricane is the local word for cyclone. The cyclone is a violent storm which forms over water. Hurricanes rise most commonly in July, August, and September. Elsewise the ocean waters is too cool to sustain them. Therefore few ships risk the voyage to Europa until late October.”

Beyond the screen, pens scratched across paper. Late October would be too late to warn Bee. “Is there no way to send a dispatch now?”

Keer shifted her shoulders in a sliding way that struck me as quite inhuman. She said, “How met yee with Godwik and Chartji?”

A shiver of alarm crawled up the skin of my back, for with a lunge she could rip off my face with her talons and then eat me neatly down with those teeth, as long as I didn’t fix my sword through her heart first, if I could even find her heart and if she only had a single one. Instinct urged me to trade information for information.

“First, we were chance met at an inn. Later, my cousin and I went to the law offices because Chartji had told us to come to her if we needed legal services. We were offered employment. Not by Godwik himself, mind you, but by his associate, a professora named Kehinde Nayo Kuti.”

Keer exuded an odor, like sun-dried grass, that made me think of a creature waiting for its prey to creep into view. “Tell me a story of Godwik.”

A cautious smile carried me forward. “He told me a tale about his fledging trip with his age cohort. Six to a boat and six boats in all, north to the shores of Lake Long-Water. They planned to battle into the teeth of the katabatic wind that sweeps down off the vast cliff face of the ice. But I never heard about that, for meanwhile, and before they even reached Lake Long-Water, he and his thirty-six companions were reduced to twenty-seven after battles with saber-toothed cats, foaming rapids, a marauding troo, gusting winds, and a party of young bucks from a territory whose boundaries they had violated. You may wonder how it all started!”

Keer chuffed, crest rising. “I hear his voice in yours. Therefore, I will help you. A sloop may be embarking this coming Venerday if the weather holds. Have me your letter before then, and I shall see it posted with we usual pouch.”

“How long will it take to get there, and an answer to return?”

“Who can know? A month each way, if the weather holds fair and the winds cooperate and the ship does not sink. So, likely it will be longer.”

A month each way! That would be barely enough time for me to hear back from her before Hallows’ Night at the end of the October, and then only if all went well. What choice did I have? I had to try. “In truth, Maestra, I am destitute. I have neither pen nor paper, nor payment for delivery costs.”

Keer bent forward, examining me in the same way, I imagined, that a bored and fed hawk considers a squirming mouse trapped within reach of its talons. “I can offer you work in our clutch’s corporation. In recompense for the employment you were not able to take up in Adurnam. The cost of letter and dispatch can come out of your earnings. You can nest in a room above our offices.”

The words hit me like a blow. Employment. A room. I need never see Vai until a year and a day were up and our marriage dissolved. Never again.

“Here is more tea,” said Keer.

I had to drink another cup, because I could not speak.

“My offer has surprised you,” Keer said at length.

I dredged for words. “I am unexpectedly overwhelmed, Maestra. But I already have employment and a room.” I could not bear to disappoint Aunty Djeneba. Surely it was easier to hear all the gossip at the boardinghouse than confined in an office. Surely. What if the wardens caught a glimpse of me so close to the gates? Where was Drake, anyway? “Let me start with a letter,” I finished weakly. “I’ll bring one before Venerday.”

“No one enters into an association without a great deal of negotiation and thought.”

“No, of course not.” My thoughts tangled and collided as if I stood in a maze of mirrors, staggering from Bee to Vai and back again, she whom I might not be able to save and he with whom I had no future.

Keer let out a hiss of breath like steam escaping from a kettle. “You rats. If you simply agree, without contesting, then I will always stand above you in the-as you call it-the pecking order. Really, where is the fun in that? You rats are too fond of your entrenched hierarchies.”

The words charmed me into a grin. “My apologies. I was preoccupied by another matter.” I roused the part of me accustomed to being sensible. “I assure you, I will return ready to duel.”

The teeth showed again. “That, I will enjoy. Now. You require paper, pen, and ink.” Was it my imagination, or had her way of speaking changed as she spoke to me, vowels shifting sound, cadence altering?

We began bargaining over the cost. The troll did not strike me as discourteous or greedy; if anything, I sensed that each transaction was a chance to play a game I could barely perceive whose rules I did not understand. Even after hard bargaining, the few coins I possessed did not suffice to buy a sheet of foolscap and a dram of ink, much less the dispatch service.

With polite words I took my leave, in my confusion turning the wrong way. The crowded shop fronts and offices debouched into a square on the north vault of the old city walls where rose a huge gate carved with a lion on one side and a buffalo on the other. A hulking palace sprawled along one side of the square, marked with the lamp and staff of the warden’s service. This edifice was Warden Hall. A tall, powerfully built young man with scarred cheeks was pushing a flat cart laden with baskets of fruit toward a side entrance. After a moment, I recognized Vai’s friend Kofi.

Wreathed in shadow, I followed him. Clouds were piling up in the east, heavy with rain and streaked with gray smoke rising from the factory district. I sneezed, grit in my eye. Kofi paused at the corner, wiping his forehead with a kerchief as he studied the clock tower of Warden Hall.

When the hour tolled nine, he pushed his cart to the kitchen entrance. Kayleigh came down steps hauling a bin of rubbish, which she set beside a stinking wagon hitched to a sleepy donkey. Pretending to be nothing more than chance-met servants, they exchanged murmured words.

“Word has come by bird that the cacica and the general have concluded their negotiations. He and his people will set out on the next auspicious day to return to Expedition.”

“What manner of deal have the general struck with the Taino?” he asked.

“No one knows. But everyone is very nervous. The five Council members who voted to support the general are scolding the twelve who voted to reject him. The five say that by refusing to aid him, the Council has driven the general into Taino arms.”

“I wonder what other services the cacica demanded of him.”

“That’s very rude.”

“Rude? She have taken more than twenty husbands, and sent eight to they deaths.”

“I won’t gossip, for it is wrong to do so. There was another thing I overheard. The Commissioner was talking to one of his deputies. Two salters, both women, escaped from Salt Island. The wardens fear riots if the news leaks out.”

As my heart stuttered, Kofi whistled, then bent to rearrange the baskets as an older woman came out to examine the fruit. He turned his whistle to a merry tune, while Kayleigh dumped the bucket into the rubbish wagon as if she had just this moment come out.

The woman scolded her. “Get on then, maku. Yee’s so slow. Housekeeper say yee have not even finished the grates yet today.”

Kayleigh went in just as the wagon’s driver came out munching on a roll. Between bites, the wagoner engaged in a peppershot round of casual batey team gossip with Kofi: so many Blues, Greens, Barracudas, Cajayas, Anolis, Rays, and Guinchos that my head reeled. After the older woman picked through the fruit, Kofi trundled off. I shadowed him along the jetty to the Passaporte market, where he delivered the cart to a compound whose family rented out transport. By the way they treated Kofi, he seemed to be a son of the house.

Aunty Djeneba looked up when I came in, nose wrinkling as if I’d brought a whiff of rubbish. “Yee was gone so long I sent Luce out to look for yee. Never could she find yee.”

My parents had drowned when I was six. My father had left behind his journals, which I had read over and over again, but there were only five words I remembered my mother saying to me:

Tell no one. Not ever.

My expression must have changed, for Aunty set aside the bread she was slapping into shape and came over to me. “Is yee well, gal?”

“Do you suppose I’m tired, or is it just the heat?”

Yet I was tired, after my duel with Keer. A nap with one of the toddlers tucked alongside refreshed me, and I went down as the early regulars came in to start on their ginger beer. Vai appeared with a net bag of guava. After getting Aunty’s permission, he distributed them to the children before sitting at a table and smiling at me until I sat down opposite.

“Papaya is good for the digestion,” he said, cutting in half a large yellow-orange fruit to reveal round black seeds clustered moistly in orange flesh. “Aunty said you were tired.”

I could not decide whether he was irritating or sweet. “You’ll share it with me?”

“Of course.” He scooped out the seeds, took a bite with evident pleasure, then handed me the spoon.

I could never resist food. “It’s delicious! Vai…”

He looked a question, but did not ask it.

“I should have said something sooner. The sandals are comfortable and sturdy. Luce scolded me into accepting them. Thank you. But she says they weren’t cheap.”

He scraped seeds out of the other half of the papaya, his mouth turned in a faintly mocking grimace. “If you spent the coin I have become accustomed to on clothing, you would have thought them inexpensive.”

The confession made me smile. Blessed Tanit knew it was not in my nature to struggle alone, for I had always had Bee. I wanted to give him something in return for the sandals. “The truth is, I went to see about sending a letter to Beatrice in Adurnam. To let her know where I am.”

“Because she does not know where you are.”

A masked face glimmered where the light sliced down through the trellis roof and across the table. Mumbling, I forced out the words. “‘Because she does not know where you are.’”

He sat in surprised silence. Then he handed me a spoon laden with moist papaya and watched as I savored it. “I must suppose your cousin’s whereabouts have something to do with the spirit world and your bound tongue. Well. I won’t press you. But meanwhile, Catherine, you must be cautious about traveling around Expedition. I heard a rumor today that the wardens are on the lookout for two salters, both women, who escaped Salt Island.”

The sun’s angle shifted, and the vise was released from my tongue. “That’s a rumor I should think the wardens wouldn’t want to get out.”

“Exactly. There would be panic. And anger. Because everyone knows the wardens look the other way if a person who was bitten and healed has the right connections or enough money. While poor people, and maku, take their chances. The people of Expedition are very angry, and the Council fears their anger.”

“What is this ‘Assembly’?”

He cut open a second papaya. “An assembly is like a council, only with more members. An assembly makes laws and governs. These representatives would be chosen from any adult who is a citizen, and would be voted on by the entire adult population.”

I blinked. “Really? Anyone?”

“The mechanics remain to be worked out. There is intense debate over who would qualify for election, and who for voting rights, and who would not. Meanwhile, the Council has called for the arrest of all radicals who propose replacing the Council with an Assembly. But since half the territory sympathizes with the radicals and no one knows the names of the leaders of the radical party, the wardens can’t act on the Council’s order. Still, you must be very cautious.”

“Please don’t tell me I have to stay like a prisoner in the compound.”

He handed me the spoon so I could scoop more papaya. “That would look more suspicious. Establish a routine. Don’t stray from it in obvious ways. Luce can dispatch the letter for you.”

“That’s not the problem, Vai. I can take the letter myself without the wardens seeing me.”

“I suppose you can.” He waited for elucidation.

“The problem is I don’t have money for paper and ink, much less the cost of dispatch.”

“I have enough.”

His bland assumption annoyed me. “The sandals were plenty. I prefer not to be beholden to you.”

He leaned closer. “Then I must suppose you are not desperate to get word to your cousin.”

“Yes, I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.”

He grinned. “I like it when you scratch.” I smiled. He slipped the spoon from my fingers in a way that made my ears burn. “You might try the branch office of the law firm of Godwik and Clutch in the harbor district… Ah. That’s where you went.”

I glanced down at the emptied papaya skins and back at him. “Bee and I were to take employment there. That was how we were going to keep ourselves in Adurnam.”

“Were you, now?” He sat back with a narrowed gaze.

I was sure he was thinking of James Drake, whom he had after all seen at the law offices in Adurnam. Despite my best intentions, I brushed a hand over my belly, and he saw me do it. The collapsed papaya skin next to his hands crackled over with a delicate net of frost.

“What makes you think it has anything to do with him?” I muttered.

“I said nothing. You’re the one who said something.”

“I don’t have to be here, Vai. The troll I spoke to today offered me employment. Yet here I am, still working for Aunty Djeneba.”

“Aunty Djeneba says you’re doing well.” His stiff smile grated on my already jangled nerves. “I hear you’re learning to play batey.”

“Yes, the children are teaching me before they go to school in the mornings.”

“Here are Kofi and the lads.” He rose as if relieved to be shed of our conversation.

I grabbed my work apron and made my escape.

Yet the next day, Vai called me over when he returned at the end of the day to show me a pale green fruit with little spines. He set it down beside a small package wrapped in a length of burlap. “I brought paper, ink, and a pen. This is soursop. It’s not my favorite, but maybe you’ll like it.” He cut it in half in a bowl. “Go on. Write your letter.”

I unrolled the cloth to find two folded sheets of foolscap, and a quill pen and tiny bottle of ink, nothing fancy. “It’s what you do, isn’t it?”

“You’ll have to tell me what you mean by that cryptic statement,” he said, not looking up as he pulled off the skin to reveal a white pulpy interior. I liked watching his hands work.

“You’re an unregistered fire bane. You can’t afford to get arrested. So you’ve established a routine and don’t stray from it. Work. The Jovesday trolls. Moonday and Saturnday gatherings.”

Gaze cast down, he smiled as he trimmed out seeds. The man did have lovely eyes, finely formed and thickly lashed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were watching me.”

I fixed my gaze on the blank paper. “I was raised in a household of spies and intelligencers. It’s second nature for me. I watch everything.” Gracious Melqart! What ought I to write to Bee? Dear Cousin, please find a place to hide until Hallows Night is over. You’ll know I succeeded in finding a sacrifice to kill in your place if you’re still alive on the second of November. Would the mansa of Four Moons House protect her? No. Cold mages had no power over the Wild Hunt. And the mansa had only wanted her so as to keep her away from Camjiata. If the mansa sacrificed her to the Wild Hunt, then Camjiata could never make use of her dreams for his war.

“Catherine, what an expression you have on your face!” he said softly. “Please tell me what I can help you with.”

I looked up. He had cleared the bowl of skin and seeds and core, leaving a creamy pulp to eat, but it was me he was considering.

I shook my head. “I just miss my cousin. And my half brother, who’s probably getting into all sorts of trouble. Don’t you have two sisters younger than Kayleigh? Do you miss them?”

He smiled wryly. “The little lasses. They’re a bit saucy and impudent, those two. I do miss them. Here. Try it.”

“Impudent toward you? Now you simply must tell me about them. Oh, and give me the spoon while you’re talking.”

But later, I wrote what I had to write: “I am safe but I can’t come yet as I must find a way or make one to save you. Meanwhile, throw yourself on the mercy of the headmaster. If he saved his assistant, then we must pray and hope he can protect you.”

I accepted Vai’s money and made the delivery. I established a routine: batey practice before the children went to school, sewing and visiting in the morning, the afternoon nap, and an evening of serving and listening to the answers to the cautious questions I asked. Each passing day brought me farther from Salt Island, together with the unpleasant thought that I might be pregnant, and closer to Hallows’ Night. I had arrived on Salt Island on August second, and now August was drawing to a close.

“I hear the cacica has twenty husbands,” I said one evening as I arranged empty mugs on the tray. “Why would the cacica send her husbands to their deaths? Are they soldiers, sent to die in battle? Maybe that’s why she’s negotiating with General Camjiata, so he can fight for her. Or maybe men are married to her so they can serve the powerful court behiques as catch-fires-”

“Hush with that talk!” snapped Brenna.

All within earshot glanced toward the gate, as if expecting trouble might burst in like sharks to the taste of blood in the water. Heat boiled in my cheeks.

“My apologies,” I said in a choked voice, “if I said something I oughtn’t.”

“Here, gal,” called Uncle Joe from the counter, “cups to serve.”

I hurried over and set down my tray, my hands trembling and my belly in knots.

As he replaced empty cups with filled ones on the tray, he spoke without looking at me. “Speak no careless word about fire mages and behiques, Cat. They guide a dreadful power. Best not speak of them at all, any more than we speak of the unseen spirits who trouble the world.”

“Are there powerful fire mages at the cacique’s court?” I whispered, for the ugly little hope would not die. Was Prince Caonabo strong enough to interest my sire? What about the behica who was training him? What about Drake? It seemed my sire had caught the scent of a powerful mage, and I had to figure out who it was.

Uncle Joe shook his head as a warning. The regulars had gone strenuously back to their cups. At a table too far away to have heard the exchange, four young men with the corded arms of laborers bent together, whispering as they cast glances my way.

“What?” said the youngest of the four. “The Sweet Cat and she man not living as husband and wife? Might there be a chance for me with she?”

The thin one snorted. “Sure, if yee want to risk a chisel through yee eye. None of us reckon ’tis that maku being stubborn. He used to go out every night, he and he radical friends. He don’ hang around here for the conversation.”

The third, his hair bound back in a dusty kerchief, chimed in. “He bring she a present of fruit every day, like he is courting she, if yee want me opinion on it. I don’ fancy she, me own self. Did yee hear she scold that sailor yesterday who put he hand on she ass? Yee want a wife who shall talk to yee like that?”

“She talk to me that way and I shall do she a rudeness,” said the fourth and largest, with a crude laugh.

Really, this spying business wasn’t so difficult, as long as you could control your betraying blushes and vexed grimaces. Like he is courting she! I sashayed over to the table, enjoying their consternation as I closed in. Even the big, crude fellow looked unsure of how to react.

“Not done with those drinks yet? I’ve never seen men drink so slow .” I offered a cutting smile to the big man, who smiled sourly.

“Drink with us, Sweet Cat, and we shall drink faster,” said the nice one who admired me.

“What? While I’m working? I’d like to keep my job.”

“If yee fancy going to a batey match, I’s yee man for it. I play on the Anoli third team. I know moves yee have never been taught.”

“There’s a bold boast.” I could not help but smile, for besides being an amusing flirt, he was very well built, clearly a young man who knew how to use his body.

His friends glanced toward the table where Vai was drinking and talking with friends. By not a flicker of his gaze did Vai show interest in my doings. Yet Kofi, sitting beside Vai with arms crossed, looked at me with a frown that made me feel queasy, as if he thought I was deliberately making a scene. What had I ever done to Kofi? I wasn’t obliged to never even smile at another man just because Vai had found me on the jetty. Everything tonight was making my belly ache.

“I’ll bring yee back a round,” I said quickly to the table, gathering the cups and taking them to the two women who washed up. Then I kept going to the washhouse because something was going on to upset my stomach. Just inside, I leaned against the wall, stricken by cramping and a sudden feeling I ought to at least respect Vai’s kindness by not flirting with other men until after Hallows’ Night, when I would be free, and Bee would be safe or she would be dead.

Even at this distance I could still hear them talking, more belligerently now, louder, fueled by too much drink and too much male posturing.

I recognized crude man’s voice. “If the gal don’ want him, why shall she not be free to go with another man? Everyone know that maku never went walking out with other gals. Like he figure Expedition gals not fine enough for the likes of him. Me, I reckon he got nothing in his rifle to shoot.”

“No need for this talk,” said my nice admirer. “Let’s just have another drink.”

“Yee reckon I fear him?” Crude man raised his voice another notch. “He got a smart mouth and a pretty face and fancy clothes on festival nights, and what else? For he surely don’ got that gal in he bed! Maku! Ja, maku! Yee reckon yee scare me?”

“I reckon either you’re very drunk,” said Vai, “or you’re an ass, or likely both, if this is your best attempt to start a fight. Let’s go, lads. I’m of a mind to drink elsewhere tonight.”

Was he? I peered out past the washhouse curtain just in time to see Vai, Kofi, and the lads rising from their table. But the moment Vai took a step toward the gate, the crude fellow deliberately placed himself in his path. He topped Vai by half a head, and he was considerably bulkier, with meaty hands and a sneering face.

“Best if yee run, maku,” he said. “I shall just give yee a pat on the ass as yee go.”

The air changed, charged with a spike of cold that made everyone in the courtyard shiver and look around in surprise.

“Vai, don’ do it,” said Kofi suddenly. “Yee know why yee shall not.”

But he was going to do it. The set of his shoulders, the lift of his chin, and the arrogant curl of his lips betrayed him: He had lost his temper, and now the prideful fury of a roused and exceedingly powerful cold mage was about to hit.

My nice admirer and his friend with the kerchief grabbed their companion and hauled him back. With a confidence that astonished me, Kofi propelled Vai in the opposite direction, murmuring in his ear. Uncle Joe stepped out from behind the counter. Before any of the men could look my way, if they even meant to, which I doubted, I let the curtain drop, my heart pounding.

A moment later, Aunty pulled the curtain aside and looked in. A pale light in the form of a lamp hung from a hook on the wall, but it was not real fire; it was an illusion shaped to resemble it.

Aunty was frowning. “I’s telling yee right now, gal, don’ come out ’til this blow over. Joe shall take care of this arseness. Bless, gal! Yee reckon this is somewhat to laugh at?”

For I was laughing softly. I was staring at the inside of my ankle, at the smear of blood oozing down the skin. I hadn’t been made pregnant with James Drake’s seed.

It was like feeling the first chain slip off my body.