Cold Fire

31

The week dragged past, for all I could do was wonder if Vai would meet with me and if the troll town maze could save Bee. If all else failed I would offer up Drake, but I wasn’t sure my sire would take him. I found a measure of peace by preparing a distillation of Daniel’s extensive notes on the legal congress presided over by Camjiata. Daniel had been a knowledgeable and astute student of the law, careful to note how the new legal code improved the condition of the general populace of Europa, and the ways it imposed restrictions.

On Mercuriday, the day before Jovesday, I stayed at the fencing hall after Bee had to leave for her language and protocol lessons. The fencing master had to scold me twice for too aggressively pushing in on an opponent, but the exercise calmed my foul mood.

I met Professora Alhamrai at the front door as she was coming down and I was going up.

“Peace to you,” I said by way of greeting. “Have you been in conference with the general?”

“He is out. In fact, I came to see you.” She fanned herself with a copy of my pamphlet. “I thought to invite you and your cousin to dine with me this afternoon. I would enjoy discussing your monograph. You may be interested in hearing about my meeting with your father.”

“I would be honored and delighted,” I said. It might also help the weary day pass.

“Gaius Sanogo will escort you. He knows how to reach my house.”

Visions of cells buried beneath Warden Hall bloomed in my mind’s eye. “The commissioner?”

She chuckled. “He will not be arresting you. He particularly enjoys showing up at this door to remind General Camjiata that the general does not rule in Expedition.”

I smiled. “Very well, then.”

When Bee returned in mid-afternoon, she proved more skeptical. “The general is out all day at a military exercise with the new recruits. I wonder if Sanogo knows that?”

“Why do you ask me questions to which you already know the answer?”

She tapped me on the arm with her painted fan. “To annoy you, dearest.”

We dressed in bright pagnes and matching blouses, me with my hair braided back and Bee with her curls partly covered by a yellow scarf that complemented her sea-struck blue-and-green pagne with its schools of stylized fish. We might have been any two local gals walking with a pleasant uncle through the late afternoon heat, except, of course, that we weren’t. We conversed amiably on neutral subjects like batey, batey, batey, and batey. Sanogo did not ask about the cacica’s imminent arrival at the border or the great areito by which the Taino queen would celebrate her son’s marriage to a humble Kena’ani girl of no particular lineage or wealth. Maybe he had spies in Taino country tracking the progress of the cacica and her entourage. Maybe he had spies in the general’s household. Maybe this was just a social visit.

We crossed the harbor in a boat rowed by four silent men. The water was so greasy it was opaque. Bits of rubbish fetched up against the prow as we passed boats and ships tied to moorings. The university lay across the harbor on an artificial island, a vast stone plaza rising from the muddy brown shallows and further reinforced by stone walls. There was only one water gate by which boats could approach, and we waited in line to put in under an archway fitted with a portcullis drawn up and secured by chains. After passing under the archway, we pulled up at a stone pier under the watchful eye of friendly uniformed watchman smiling the way folk do when they know they have the right to bash your head in if you so much as look at them in a way they decide to take offense at.

“Commissioner, no need to ask yee errand. Who is these two pretty gals?”

“Nieces of Professora Habibah ibnah Alhamrai.”

They laughed as at a good joke but let us disembark and pass down the pier to a second gate, also manned by watchmen, who waved us through. Beyond the gate lay a public square paved in stone and inhabited by young men napping in the shade of trees.

“This is more like a fortress than an institution of learning,” said Bee. “Who is the university protecting themselves against?”

Sanogo smiled his most pleasant smile. “The Council. By a decree passed fifty years ago, the Council cannot interfere with the university. The university guards its independence.”

Dusk swirled down over us with a smattering of rain as lamplighters made their rounds. Cobo-hooded gas lamps lit the street at mathematical intervals gauged to provide maximum coverage. As in the old city, the buildings were packed together. We turned out of the built-up portion and onto a tongue of land appointed by fenced gardens and isolated workshop compounds.

A sudden pop shuddered the air. Sparks spun skyward. We turned down a dirt path toward the compound the sparks had come from. Overhead, half the sky ran gray with cloud and the other half shaded toward night, stars breaking through. The sea sighed beyond the breakwater. Sanogo indicated an open gate in a whitewashed wall that surrounded four long roofs.

The professora greeted us with a kiss on the cheek. “Peace to you. Come in. Come in.”

The courtyard was a verdant garden of fruit trees, flowering shrubs, and a spectacular latticed patio under a trellis that supported a sprawl of hibiscus. The scent of flowers drenched us, but that was not all I smelled.

“What are you cooking?” I asked, licking my lips as if I could lick the flavor of lamb, garlic, sweet potato, mango, and a stew of fine spices as a savor over all. “That smells amazing!”

She led us to a table illuminated by hanging lamps. “Tagines.”

“Habibi’s specialty,” said Sanogo.

Bee waggled her eyebrows suggestively as if to say, “How does he know, do you suppose?”

“Do sit.” Professora Alhamrai indicated the table, set with an embroidered tablecloth and serviceable ceramic plates of a red clay glazed with brown starbursts.

“Why are there five place settings?” asked Bee.

“Will you help me with the platters, Beatrice?” she asked. “The kitchen is this way.”

Bee looked at me, but I shrugged, so she followed the professora. I had of course brought my cane. The sword’s ghostly hilt had flowered with the dusk, and it pulsed, tasting magic. I looked up at the pair of glowing lamps and their twisting, flickering flame. Yet there was not a breath of wind. Nor did the lamps hiss.

“Really, ’tis impossible to tell, if yee don’ already know,” said Sanogo, sitting on one of the benches. He pointed down a brick path laid through a gap in a hedge. “Past the bellyache bush, yee might find somewhat of interest.”

My heart had begun to gallop like a reckless horse bearing for home on a storm-wracked night. “Why am I always the last to know or guess?”

“A rhetorical question, I assume. I shall pour the wine. Don’ feel yee must hurry back.”

Vestiges of daylight clung to the western sky. Far in the distance niggled the clug and clut of factory machines that, with gaslight, could run all night. Closer, smoke puffed lazily up from one of the buildings within the compound.

Past the hedge the path speared through columns of dwarf fruit trees trimmed into spheres and rectangles; it emerged like the mouth of a stream onto a brick pavement fronting a long whitewashed one-story building. Once, I thought, this wing had served as the living quarters of an extended family, each wife or widow or adult sister with her own room, her own bed, and her own children. Between each pair of doors stood a bench set against the wall. A thick vine had over the years been coaxed along the eaves, and falls of purple flowers adorned the expanse. I stared at a bench and wall and flowers just like the sketch I had seen in Bee’s sketchbook. Seeing it, I grew flushed, and then I grew cold, for the workings of a deeper force had spun this moment into being. Not the bench or the building, built by ordinary means, but the energy or will that had directed Bee’s hand. This was a meeting place. Or would have been, had the bench not sat empty between two closed doors.

However, there was another bench. On it sat a male figure wearing a dash jacket perfectly tailored to his well-proportioned frame. Eyes shut, he had his head tilted back to rest on the wall, one hand curled lightly on his lap and the other tapping a rhythm on a thigh. A folded paper with a broken wax seal rested on the bench beside him.

I sat at the opposite end of the bench, my heart as fragile as a trembling songbird cupped in sheltering hands.

“Ah,” he said, without opening his eyes. “My tormenter.”

No, after all, my heart was not a trembling songbird but a hissing, outraged goose in full rampage.

“What puzzles me is how a man willing to spend weeks courting a woman to convince her that she was really in love with him, or could be in love with him if she would just set aside her perfectly reasonable and pragmatical concerns about being in all essentials owned by a mage House…” I had to pause to take a breath and sort out my line of argument. “What puzzles me, is how he could spend weeks- weeks! -entrenching his plans and carrying out his campaign, and then in one instant be willing to think the worst of her without making any effort to let her explain.”

His drumming fingers stilled. “Was I to doubt the evidence of my eyes?”

“Am I meant to conduct my entire explanation in questions?”

“Can you do so?”

“Do you actually think I’m lying about the questions?”

“Can I know what to believe?”

“Did you read my pamphlet? Get my message?”

“Would you be sitting here if I hadn’t?”

“You arranged this?”

“Who do you suppose sent Professora Alhamrai to the general’s household in the first place over three weeks ago to see how a certain…person was doing?”

“Wouldn’t the esteemed professora be capable of sending herself??”

“Do you think she would have thought of you at all? Do you think you are the first person on everyone’s mind?”

I opened my mouth, and shut it. The hammering of my heart eased from an erratic cacophony to a mere pounding but no-less-?irritated clamor. “Might some vain young man’s pride have been hurt?”

“Why would a person trust a person who had lied to him?”

“Why do you think I lied?”

His eyes opened as his head raised. “Was the appearance of the general, his fire mage, and your cousin not reason enough? Not to mention the wardens?”

“What if a lost young woman had had no inkling of any machinations behind her abandonment on the jetty and was as surprised as anyone at the appearance of the general, his fire mage, and her cousin? Not to mention the wardens?”

He cut me a dagger-like glance from his lovely eyes. “Am I meant to believe anyone could be that naive?”

“Do you suppose I guessed this dinner was arranged by you?”

His brow furrowed in a way that suggested he was calculating my likely ability to be that naive.

I had had enough. “Is this meant to impress me with your cleverness, Andevai? Wasn’t it bad enough when you insinuated in that unpleasant way that I might have had other lovers besides Drake? Do you really think I’m pretending about the questions? Do you think I like having to answer questions with questions all the time? Do you? ?”

He exhaled as he pressed a hand to his forehead. “No, you’re right. My apologies.”

The sudden way he shifted ground took me entirely by surprise. I looked down at the fists I had made of my hands, let out a breath, and opened them.

“Please let me say what I have been thinking about for days, hoping to have a chance to say to you. I want to tell you the things I should have told you when you asked on the night of the areito. I did know Drake was associated with the general. I did know the general was in the law offices of Godwik and Clutch in Adurnam that morning you came to meet with Chartji. But Bee and I were not there to meet him. We would never have gone to the law offices had we known the most notorious man in Europa would arrive there right after we did. We went to the law offices to see if we could get work with the radicals.”

“That would be the enchanting Brennan Du,” he muttered, hands back to tapping on his thighs.

“It’s sweet when you’re jealous.”

His lips pinched together.

I fought down an urge to jab a little deeper into that soft spot. “We left the law offices because the general was there. You know what happened after that. Bee and I slipped through the well and…and then I washed up on Salt Island. A salter bit me. Drake found me.”

“You left out the shark.”

“The shark attacked before the salter bit me.”

“You traveled straight from the spirit world into the Sea of Antilles.”

“Yes! But it was the Barr Cousins who rescued us, right off the beach, which I have to admit was very adventurous and ever so exciting… Was that a smile?”

“No.” He looked away so I couldn’t see his face.

But it had been a tiny bit of a smile.

“I knew nothing about the plot until after the raid. I didn’t know the general was in the Antilles until Drake told me. I didn’t know Bee was with the general until I saw her at Nance’s that night. Camjiata used her dreams to find me on Salt Island. He worked out the whole scheme of rescuing me and dropping me on the jetty as a way to flush you out of hiding. But I didn’t know that’s why I had been dumped there. I didn’t even know you were in Expedition. Yet there you were, at the carpentry yard. And you wore me down. And they sprang their trap.”

He whipped around to face me. “I wore you down? Weeks of patient courtship of a woman I can after all already call my wife, and that is how you think of it? That I wore you down?”

He pushed to his feet to storm off but I grabbed his wrist and tugged. He was not quite up and not quite stable, so he sat back down hard.

“Am I not flattering you enough?” I was, as the poets said, incandescent with fury, or would have been, if I had not been sitting next to an angry cold mage. “Are you even listening to me?”

An explosion like a fusillade of gunfire shook every building in the compound. Vai leaped to his feet. I ran after him as he cut through an archway in the back of the courtyard and into a cobblestoned side yard that ran alongside a warehouse with shattered windows. At first I thought the explosion had blown them out, but I had heard no breaking glass. Although what glass remained in the windows had jagged edges, none littered the ground; it was cleanly swept. Then my mouth went dry, for I saw flames inside the building and heard whistling in tones of the greatest agitation.

Vai flung open a door and plunged in, undoing the top five buttons of the jacket as if he meant to strip off the fine garment before it could be ruined by smoke and ash. The tang of burning made my eyes water. A line of flames hissed down the center of the open space. Smoke billowed from a tabletop. A troll was bent over the table poking at something and apparently oblivious to the fire burning an arm’s length from the hem of its sober gray-and-black dash jacket and the tip of its thick tail. A second troll emerged from a cloud of ashy soot with a glass tube pinned in its talons. Seeing me and Vai, it whistled what sounded like mellifluous birdsong.

Then, with a jolting flash of teeth, it spoke. “No, not toward us. Away.”

Vai jerked a chain from beneath his jacket and ran to the table. I spotted a line of buckets at the wall, some filled with dust and others with water. I grabbed one with water and placed myself at the far end of the line of fire, swinging the bucket back to get the best spray.

Vai had turned at the opposite end of the line of flames, holding a ring within the circle of his thumb and forefinger. The two trolls were bent over the table. Gaius Sanogo and the professora appeared at the door.

Vai shouted, “Cat, no!”

The professora cried, “Not water!”

The water splashed down, and the flames flashed huge. Heat slapped into me. I stumbled back; the hammer of Vai’s cold magic slammed me to the floor as my sword pulsed. The fireball vanished as if pulled into an unseen pocket. A dusting of snow swirled and faded.

Gaius Sanogo reached me first. “Is yee all right?”

My lips were dry and my eyes wept a few stinging tears, but nothing seemed broken. “I think so.”

Vai pushed past him and knelt to rest a hand on my cheek. “Catherine! Speak to me!”

I fluttered my eyelids, and pressed a hand to my forehead in the hope I appeared wan and fragile. “I…I think I…don’t feel well. Are you worried about me?”

He recoiled. “I would be, if you seemed at all hurt, which you do not.” He rose, running a hand over his head. “You ruined their experiment,” he added, then strode to the door, where he stopped dead.

Bee blocked it. “Blessed Tanit! Cat, are you hurt?” Her gaze axed him. She spoke in a caustic tone that would surely have burned out anyone else’s tongue had they attempted it. “Magister, did you do this to her?”

“ Me? I am the one she refuses to trust! The one she keeps crucial information from! The one she doesn’t respect-!”

“Stop that,” said one of the trolls.

Looking startled, he broke off.

“Yee have killed the combustion.”

In the silence following this unexpected declaration, I let the warden help me to my feet.

“Proud young men is prone to nursing wounded feelings,” Sanogo observed softly, “as I know from me own experience as one of that very type.”

My pagne needed brushing off and straightening, because I dared not meet the warden’s gaze. The professora ventured to the table as the first troll rose out of the smoking cloud, crest raised, its feathers smeared with soot and ash. Its old-fashioned knee-length dash jacket was not, I realized, of a gray-and-black splotchy pattern; it was layered with the detritus of countless experiments.

“The ice lens focused the first undulation away,” said the troll in a tone I had to perceive as excitement. “That is not what killed this combustion, then. Emotion must also focus and amplify the effect. Or is it only anger? What think yee, Bibi?” It cocked its head, addressing the professora. The tip of its tail lashed twice and stilled.

“He seem unusually high-strung, though,” murmured Sanogo. “He would make an ineffective conspirator, but he surely is a cursed impressive fire bane.”

“Why haven’t you arrested him?” I asked.

He took my hand in an avuncular way. “Maestressa, yee already know everything about me that I can tell yee at this time.”

“You can’t even tell me who you support?”

With a wink, he released my hand as the professora came up. “The Anolis.”

I pounced. “If the Anolis lose Jonas Bonsu, they shall never win the Territory Cup.”

The professora appeared beside us to take my arm. “How long have you lived here, gal? They that support the Anolis are radicals. That is why no matter how much the Greens offer Jonas Bonsu, he shall never leave the Anolis. Shall we go to our supper? We need two more settings, for my associates have had their experiment terminated for the night and will be dining with us after all.”

“What happened with the water?”

“Certain chemicals react explosively with water. Rather like young men who feel they have lost face in public in front of people whose respect they wish to have.”

“Oh.”

At the door, only Bee and her gloating remained. She said, “He stormed off. Gracious Melqart, Cat, but that man has a high opinion of his own consequence. Still, it’s clear he’s madly in love with you. So if you want him-”

“I really do not wish to discuss this right now, Bee.” Embarrassment had singed me more than flames could.

“You’re not hurt, are you?” she asked more solicitously.

“Weren’t we talking about batey?” I said to the universe at large.

We had no sooner reached the archway than Vai appeared with the letter in hand. “If I might…your pardon, Professora…we shall be right there…”

With a look like that, fixed on me, I knew we had to have it out now. I did not look at the others as the professora released me. Sure that this would end badly, I strode over to the bench and sat down at one end. He sat at the other end. The talking of the others faded as they walked past the hedge and the fruit trees toward the dining patio.

He extended the folded paper, which was clearly a letter. “I read your pamphlet.”

I said nothing, for it was obvious Bee, the professora, and the warden were right. Vai was as in love with me as ever. And he looked pretty angry about it.

Whistling and clicking, the trolls strode out of the archway and off along the path, so quaintly oblivious that I realized they were not politely ignoring us.

Still holding the letter, Vai went on in a carefully level voice. “You wrote the pamphlet in the hope I would read it and draw conclusions from the way you strung together the village tales and anecdotes. You have no other way to communicate with me about matters pertaining to the spirit world because of the binding on your tongue.”

A weight cold and grim seized my limbs, but I managed one word. “Yes.”

“You’re not a mage, yet you conceal yourself as if by magic. My uncle said you have the same human flesh and blood as I do but that the spirit world is knit into your blood and bone. The djeli you and I met in the spirit world said you have a spirit mantle close against your flesh.”

Ice prickled along my skin, but I did not think Vai was the cause of it. “Yes.”

“As impossible as it sounds, it seems likely your sire is a creature of the spirit world who had sexual congress with your mother while he was in the form of a human man. Considering your ability to cross into the spirit world at any time and be blooded by cold steel without dying, it seems the only explanation.”

A strange thick clotting swelled to seal my throat. I could not speak, but I held his gaze.

He scooted partway down the bench and tapped my arm with the letter. “The problem, Cat, is that you do not trust me. If you had bothered to write out something when you first arrived in Expedition, I could have worked it out then. If you had told me everything about James Drake, the general, and the Adurnam radicals, this whole situation would have been averted. The radicals could have escaped the raid, and people would not be in prison. You would not have put Aunty Djeneba and her household in danger. Kofi wouldn’t have felt obliged to marry Kayleigh-”

“They were courting already!”

“They were flirts. He liked her. She admired him. They married for my sake.”

“Everything is not about you! Maybe they were looking for an excuse and this was it. I saw them together. They looked happy to me.”

“I looked happy once. For about one hour.”

“Spare me your self-pity. That is the one thing I cannot endure from you.” I snatched the letter out of his hand and unfolded it, squinting to pull the neatly formed letters out of the darkness. A glow winked to life at my shoulder to aid my reading.

“It’s from Chartji,” I said, more in breath than in word. In dense legal detail that quoted obscure ancient bardic sources, the letter explained how to dissolve a chained marriage. The head of the poet Bran Cof had declared it more succinctly: “ Has the young man had sex with you yet??”

Vai had descended to pure incendiary disdain. “‘A year and a day.’ You said those words to me the night of the batey riot, although of course I couldn’t know what you meant at the time. You knew all this time, but you didn’t tell me. And yet I am the other person bound into this marriage. You didn’t respect me enough to trust me, not even about that.”

How I hated my sire.

Crossing his arms, he looked away, toward the hedge. “A marriage chained by magic. Your tongue bound by the night court. It even makes sense that perhaps you couldn’t speak of the chained marriage. The two bindings are related if only because they both are chained by magic drawn out of the spirit world. But it wasn’t only the marriage and the spirit world you didn’t tell me. It was everything. How can we walk a path together if you do not respect me enough to tell me the things we both need to know? The things that mean we are partners?”

A mist mizzled through, not even enough to wet the brick pavement.

He had not buttoned up his jacket, and the flat collar parted to reveal the curve of his throat. I wanted to press my lips just there, where I could inhale his pulse.

“I don’t know what your plan was, Catherine, or if you even had a plan. Maybe you meant to wait until the year and a day was up. Maybe you changed your mind that night at the areito. I can’t know what the truth is when you never offered me truth or trust.”

“Please stop, Vai,” I whispered, for Bee was wrong. I wasn’t heartless.

Softly, he said, “But I have lasted this long. I can last another nineteen days. Then the year and a day is up, and our chained marriage will dissolve.”

My cheeks felt the sting of the flames that had not quite touched me in the workshop.

It was so hard to speak that my voice came out as a husky whisper. “Growing up in the Hassi Barahal household, I was taught to keep silence. About anything and everything, really. It’s the only thing I remember my mother telling me.”

He uncrossed his arms and shifted back to gaze at me, waiting. Cautious. Reserved. But he had not closed me off yet, for I would know it when he did.

“‘Tell no one, not ever.’ The words I grew up by.”

The widening of his eyes was so brief I would have missed it if I was not staring at him as if his expression held every truth that mattered.

My voice gained strength with surety. “You’re right, Vai. I didn’t trust you, not the way I should have. So I said nothing except what I thought I had to, to pay my way and tell my story. But I should have told you. And I’m sorry for it. I’m especially sorry for it if it made you think I don’t respect you. Because it was wrong.”

The sounds of conversation and laughter drifted from the patio. Night eased the heat just a little, and the breeze lifted the intoxicating scent of night-blooming jasmine.

“That’s the first time I’ve understood why you say things the way you say them,” he said in so low a voice it might have been the wind muttering over the roofs. He looked toward the clipped hedge of bellyache bush as might a man surprised to see secrets woven into the branches. “Being cruel while being clever was how I learned to endure Four Moons House. Before I could crush them all, that is. But it was wrong to do it to you tonight. I just…” He shook his head impatiently, still not looking at me. “The truth is, I suppose I wanted to know I could hurt you as badly as I felt hurt. And yet I’m the one who thought for one awful day that I had to kill you. I’m sorry, Catherine.”

My tongue was lead, but I got it to work. “Thank you for saying it. As for the mansa commanding you to kill me, when I said before I forgave you for that, I meant it.”

We sat in awkward silence.

I had to ask. “Vai, what would happen to you if our marriage dissolved? Would the mansa know? Or could you keep it a secret?”

“The mansa would know because the djeli who chained our marriage would know, and would send him word.”

“What would the mansa do? Would he be very angry?”

“Angry?” He glanced at me and quickly away. “No. More likely he’d be relieved. Before I was sent to marry you, he’d had at least ten advantageous offers to marry me. They might look down on me, but no one can ignore what I am. So I’m accounted a valuable catch for mage House women both inside and outside Four Moons House.”

“Is such an advantageous marriage…what you would want?”

That other face, the face of the arrogant magister, settled on his features: proud, aloof, and cold. But his voice remained absolutely level. “The mansa won’t consult me. He’ll seal whatever alliance he wishes in my name and then inform me afterward to whom I am now married. You should know that, Catherine.”

“Oh.” I did not know what else to say, and maybe neither did he.

He rose. “I was taught never to insult a woman by refusing to eat the meal she had cooked. We should join them at the table.”

I folded the letter and handed it to him. He tossed it carelessly on the bench, as if he cared not if a rainstorm pounded it into so much pulp. We walked to the dining patio where the others were already digging into bowls whose contents smelled so delectable my mouth watered. Never let it be said I could not eat. The professora had left a place for me beside Gaius Sanogo and one for Vai opposite, between the two trolls. They were brother and sister, Chartji’s aunt and uncle by some arcane measure of kinship I did not understand. Mostly they remembered to speak human language but then they would forget and ascend into flights of trollish that were intriguing to listen to but quite meaningless, lacking words as I knew them. When they remembered to speak human words, they and the professora debated the properties of heat, whether heat was dynamical or undulating, and Bee asked them questions. I ascertained that the caloric theory of heat had been discredited. Vai picked at his food, scarcely touched his wine, and replied with scrupulous courtesy when spoken to.

I, on the other hand, launched into a jocular evisceration of the prospects of the Anolis in the upcoming cup that got the warden laughing even as he vociferously defended his team.

Bee said, “I’d be curious to know where you learned all this about batey, Cat.”

Vai glanced at me as if to warn me that to speak of waiting tables might condemn Aunty Djeneba. After all, Sanogo had told me the wardens had never known where I was.

“Batey and politics is all anyone talks about in this city. Might I have another helping, Professora? It’s absolutely delicious.”

No cook can resist an enthusiastic eater. The way to a cook’s heart seemed simple.

She smiled. “I was going to tell you about meeting Daniel Hassi Barahal. It was in Qart Hadast, of all places. I was very young, in my first year at the university.”

“You’re not Kena’ani.”

“I am from the Naqab Desert. But I chose to study in Qart Hadast because of my interest in chemistry. And because they admitted women. And because I had family there, so my parents allowed me to travel so far since I could live with cousins. Your father had beautiful eyes, and hair just like Beatrice, those thick black curls. In fact, Beatrice looks something like him. I suppose you must resemble your mother.”

Vai looked at me, then away.

“So people who knew them both say,” I said. “I never knew my father went to Qart Hadast. Not all his journals survived. What was he doing there?”

“He had come to see a well-known scholar who at that time was involved in an early attempt to construct a navigable balloon that could cross open water.”

“He must already have been planning for the First Baltic Ice Expedition,” I said as I leaned forward, trembling. “Go on, please.”

Vai’s gaze drifted to me, its pressure both bitter and so very sweet.

“I was able to attach myself to a group of students and researchers who went to the caupona for the evening’s drinking and meal. At the end of the evening one of the women students made it clear he could share her bed that night. He said he was flattered and honored but he could not. I shall never forget what he said, for I admit in my experience”-here she glanced at the warden with an amused smile, which he answered with an ironic twist to his lips-“it is not a common refrain from the lips of men. He said he had contracted a secret engagement with an Amazon in the army of General Camjiata, and that as long as she must remain celibate so he had pledged likewise. I thought it admirable, which is why I recall him so well.”

“Thank you,” I muttered, blinking back tears. My gaze strayed to Vai, who was still watching me. “I do believe he loved my mother very much. And she him.”

After a moment, we both looked away.

The warden rose. “Alas, my friends, it is late and I have to report to work at dawn. If the maestressas will accompany me, I will escort them home.”

I made polite farewells to the trolls and an exceedingly formal goodbye to Vai and walked to the gate with Bee and Sanogo and the professora.

There I stopped. “I’m not coming with you.”

Bee examined me as if to make sure I was really her Cat. At length, she kissed me. “Good fortune to you, dearest.” She led the warden away, chatting merrily about her sea voyage in a way that made her life-threatening seasickness seem like the running joke in a comedic spectacle.

“You can go around the back way by that path there,” said the professora in a matter-of-fact manner that made me grateful, for I was so nervous it seemed impossible to speak one more word.

I cut through the night-shadowed garden and turned each latch until I found the chamber with the bed. There were also shelves, a chest, and a tiny altar with a wreath of fresh flowers and a sard stone on a platter. In the unlit room, I sat on the bed he had built for us. It seemed sturdy.

Mice had made a nest in the eaves, their cozy scrabbling punctuated by the rattling of leaves heard when the wind gusted. His footfalls neared, and halted at the door. I sucked in a nervous breath.

He opened the door. Cold fire ghosted along the backs of his hands like phosphorous. He had the same expression as on the evening I had first seen him, coming up the stairs of my aunt’s and uncle’s house, but I knew better now how to interpret it. He had been stricken by hope on a night he had expected only an unpleasant and soul-wearying duty. And yet, fearing more of the mockery and condescension he had endured in his seven years at Four Moons House, he had chosen to confront the encounter behind a screen of arrogance.

I spoke before he could. “Vai, the year turns. Hallows’ Night comes.”

He closed the door. “Beatrice! How could I have not thought of that! She walks the dreams of dragons. The Wild Hunt will come for her.”

“Dismembered and her head thrown into a well.”

“You want to protect her.”

“I can save her.”

He sat down next to me, as one might who must utter terrible news to a listener innocent of a heartbreaking truth. “Catherine, even the mansa is not powerful enough to drive off the Wild Hunt. Even with the ice lens to amplify the energy, it’s hard to see how it could be done.”

“What is an ice lens?”

Drawing out the chain, he showed me a metal ring whose diameter was no greater than the length of my thumb. At first I thought it was empty, but by the light of cold fire it gleamed. When I ventured to touch it, and he nodded to indicate I could, its slick surface chilled my skin.

Startled, I drew back my hand. “It’s actually ice! How can they even have ice here?”

“Professora Alhamrai has devised a cunningly engineered cold room. A kind of an icehouse, created with coils that condense vapors.”

“What does the lens do?”

“Cold magic is weak here. A lens focuses and amplifies the magic. It has to be made out of ice because other substances like a lens ground of glass don’t absorb or transfer the magic. I can keep it cool for a while against my skin.”

“That’s what you’ve been doing with the Jovesday trolls.”

“The Jovesday…? Ah. Yes.” He slipped the chain back under his jacket.

My hands twitched, wishing to trace its path down his chest. “That’s how you froze that wave and saved me during the hurricane.”

“Yes. Otherwise I couldn’t have done it. Not here in the Antilles.” He caught my hands in his. “What possessed you to climb into that boat? Trap yourself, knowing the flood was coming?”

“Should I have left that man to die?”

His fingers stroked mine. “No, of course you would never. Give me a moment to work this through. The Wild Hunt will ride on Hallows’ Night. You fear they will track down and kill Beatrice. The Hunt must shed blood to be put to rest. I trust you do not mean to sacrifice yourself.”

I shook my head. The touch of his hands made me ache.

“It’s likely you are not of interest to the Wild Hunt. I can’t think of any reasons you would threaten them as dragon dreamers or powerful mages do.”

I tried to speak but only an exhalation came out.

“I trust you are not planning to throw me into their path,” he added.

“That’s not amusing!”

He considered more narrowly. “We’d be well rid of that fire mage. He’s very powerful.”

“He is? I’m amazed to hear you say it.”

“I’m amazed he hasn’t burned himself up yet. The only thing stopping him from torching this whole city is the fact, unfortunate only for him, that he would die.”

For the first time, it occurred to me to wonder what it would be like to hold so much power and know you could never use it. To know it could kill you at any moment. “If cold mages are fire banes, then couldn’t a cold mage act as a catch-fire for a fire mage? By extinguishing the fire?”

“Catch-fires don’t extinguish fires. As far as I can tell, they take the fire into them. Or I should more properly say, the backwash of fire magic floods into them instead of into the mage.”

I remembered the way Drake’s fire had limned the skin of the dying man at the inn. As the backlash of his fire magic had consumed the dying man, Drake had healed one who could live. “I just thought if a cold mage could act as a catch-fire, that maybe working in concert with a fire mage they might be powerful enough to…to…”

He pressed a finger to my lips.

“To defy the Wild Hunt and save your cousin.” By no means did he look astonished. “There you have the real question, Catherine. What purpose does the Wild Hunt serve? Everyone is taught that the Hunt gathers the souls of those who will die in the coming year. A few people know it also hunts down and kills the women who walk the dreams of dragons. But only mages know that any mage who becomes too powerful will be killed by the Hunt. Why would the courts fear us? Do they fear what we might discover? Or what we might become?”

I could not resist gently biting his finger. That was a kind of question, wasn’t it? What might he and I become?

He inhaled sharply, but he did not otherwise move.

I had him now.

I released his finger, and he splayed his hand across my cheek. His touch was firm, promising strength, but also precise in being a question rather than a claim.

“Tell me what you want, Catherine. For the worst of it has been wondering if you really meant the way you looked at me, the words you said, on the night of the areito.”

I studied the planes of his face and the precise stubble of his beard. How much time had he taken this afternoon in shaving, trimming, washing, and dressing, knowing I was coming? I considered his eyes, so dark a brown they seemed black, and his lips so full and inviting. Ought a man be allowed to be so handsome? How was a gal to think in the face of such looks?

I put a hand on each shoulder. The damask weave of his dash jacket caressed my palms.

“I want this chain off my tongue, Vai. Just as you want the chains off your village, just as Bee wants to live. I want not to live at the mercy of Four Moons House, or a prince’s militia, or the general’s schemes. Surely it’s the same thing most people want. Health and vigor. A refuge which is not a cage but those who care for us and whom we care for. Like Luce’s giggle. Aunt Tilly’s smile. Rory’s loyalty. Bee’s happiness. You. ”

I pushed him onto the bed and pinned him there with my body stretched atop the length of his. His was a fine body to borrow as a mattress, not one bit soft. He lay beneath me, his dark gaze steady. I drew my fingers down his throat, then spread my hand so fingers and thumb spanned his collarbone, for his jacket was unbuttoned just that far. To measure my skin against his in so simple a way made me almost dizzy. Really, it was provoking how quiet the man could be.

“Vai, I made my choice the night of the areito. I can’t walk free and leave you behind. So I choose the path I walk with you, whatever it brings. Anyhow, I’m not going to let some mage House woman steal you from me.”

I brushed my mouth over his. His eyes fluttered as his lips parted and chin lifted to receive a full kiss. But I drew back and slowly counted down the buttons until I got to the sixth. He watched me, not quite smiling. If anything, he looked a bit dazed.

“I’ve changed my mind,” I said as I unbuttoned the sixth and slid my fingers to the seventh. “I am going to take off?”-the eighth and the ninth slipped free-“this beautiful jacket… Unless by that quiver of your eyebrows you mean to indicate there is something you want to say first.”

“Yes,” he said, in quite the hoarsest voice I had ever heard out of him.

“Gracious Melqart, Vai, how many buttons does this garment have?”

He breathed, if you could call that breathing when in fact it sounded more as if he had been running most of the way across Expedition.

“Fourteen?” I demanded as I sat back to undo the last buttons. I spread the jacket to either side to expose not a vest and linen shirt beneath or even a singlet, as I had expected, but only bare chest. “Oh,” I said, intelligently. “ Well. Let me not pretend I haven’t been thinking about doing this.”

I explored the muscled curve of his shoulders, fondled the necklace chain and, briefly, his nipples, and stroked along the contours of his chest. My hands halted at the line of buttons that fastened the waistband of his trousers. At which point, stricken by the first onslaught of shyness I had ever experienced in my entire life, I lost my voice.

He found his. “If I had stayed in the village, my grandmother would have found a hard-working, placid, quiet young woman for me. I would have married her without expectation of anything except a hard-working, placid, quiet affection that might have arisen after years of going on together. Everyone knows that is the best way. The one least disruptive to the harmonious peace of the community. Not to mention a man’s peace of mind.”

I bit back a smile and, instead, drew down my brows to indicate vexed consideration. “Is there a point to this pedantic speech? As you know, I’m very hard-working.”

He slid his hands caressingly up my hips, and by the tensing of his arms and back, my Barahal training and cat’s instincts warned me he was about to attempt an abrupt reversal.

“I don’t think you should try that, Vai,” I murmured, bracing myself.

“But are you truly hard-working, Catherine? I suppose we’re about to find out.”