Cold Fire

32

I woke at dawn with birds singing and the scent of flowers wafting in through the open shutters, which seemed a little much even considering my euphoric mood. Lying tucked in against him, my head resting on his shoulder, felt the most natural thing in the world. In case he was still asleep, I whispered.

“Vai?”

“Mmm.”

“I had no idea.”

Eyes shut, he smiled in a drowsy, contented way. “Of course you couldn’t have had. You weren’t with me.”

Silence allowed me to contemplate this astonishing statement for a while, during which I stroked my fingers up and down his admirable chest.

“Vai?”

“Mmm?”

“Are you really that conceited? Or are you having a bit of a joke with yourself at times?”

“Catherine, I promise you, no one will ever make you feel as good as I will.”

“As the djeli said, ‘Men act humble until they get what they want.’ Although obviously the djeli who said that hadn’t met you. Anyway, wouldn’t a person of scientific inclination say that to verify such a statement I would need to make a significant number of comparative tests with other subjects?”

His eyes opened as at a shot. “No!”

“Then I could never actually know.”

He pushed up onto one elbow, dislodging my head from its pleasant resting place, and brushed hair from my cheek. “You can’t possibly have any complaints.”

“But I do.”

His hand stilled. “Name one.”

“You’re talking.”

He smiled and bent to kiss me.

Things were proceeding in just the way I had planned when a series of hollow pops rattled the roof. He released me and rolled off the bed.

“Do you need me?” I asked as he quickly dressed in a pair of faded and clumsily mended workman’s trousers and a singlet he pulled off a shelf.

“Of course I need you, Catherine, but not in that workshop. You were fortunate yesterday. They’re obsessed with my ability to kill combustion. They keep lighting different combinations of things on fire and adjusting me for distance, angle, and substances placed between me and the fire. Eventually they’re going to burn the whole place down.”

He went out the door so fast he forgot to close it behind him. I used a foot to hook my pagne off the floor and tied it just above my breasts the way we women had at Aunty Djeneba’s when we went down to shower, the cloth covering me from armpits to knees. I stuck my head out the door, but the little courtyard was deserted since the professora slept on the other side of the compound and all the other rooms in this wing were empty.

I hurried to the outhouse set out from the compound’s outer wall, which Vai had shown me in the middle of the night. Built into the wall was a washroom furnished with a brass tub, and a sideboard on which sat a copper basin, three pitchers, and threadbare pagnes to use as towels. The water we had splashed all over in the middle of the night had dried up. I filled the pitchers from the pump outside. I combed out my hair with my fingers and braided it, then twisted the braid around a stick from the garden and pinned it up on my head so I could wash. Afterward, I refilled the pitchers and hung up the towels to dry.

Back in the room, I tidied up the bed and the precautionary sheaths Vai had been so prudent, and confident, as to obtain the night of the areito. Smiling like a besotted fool, I shook out and folded the clothes we’d strewn all over. In my haste to get off his dash jacket, I had accidentally torn two buttons off a cuff, so I draped the jacket over the back of the chair for mending later. A cedar traveling chest tucked in a corner caught my eye. Kneeling, I opened it. Gracious Melqart! How many fashionable dash jackets and waistcoats could a man own?

How could a woman who loved cloth resist stroking each neatly folded garment? He favored vivid colors: deep browns as dark as his skin, burnished golds, kingly reds, and warm bright oranges, one midnight purple as dark as ecstasy, and indigos so saturated they would drive a peacock to envy. The stronger the patterns the better: plaitwork and interlace, dyed damask beaten and pounded until the fabric was stiff, bold geometric designs, and some strange, crazy block prints. At the bottom, folded between sheets of paper as if to hide it, lay the spectacular red-and-gold-chained dash jacket he had worn the night of the areito.

The door shut. “I have soot all over me, and you look so clean and inviting. But close the chest first.”

I kept the lid open. “Don’t you dare!”

He didn’t shift from the door, but somehow his tone made me feel as if he were nuzzling the nape of my bare neck. “Then wash me like you did last night, my sweet Catherine.”

My grip wavered on the lid as my flesh began to melt.

“Oh, curse it.” He opened the door just as I realized someone was walking up outside, and he spoke in a changed and entirely polite voice. “Peace of the morning to you, Professora.”

“Peace of the morning. My apologies.” When he stepped back, she appeared in the door, wearing a loose floor-length robe of cotton dyed in an undulating purple. A four-winged messenger bird balanced on her arm. It had an alert gaze and startling barb-like talons on its forelimbs. What I had taken for the second pair of wings was better described as the feathery ornamentation of its hind limbs. Like her gown, its feathers shaded from a deep purple to a pale gray. “I’ve a message for you, Maestressa Barahal.” She handed me a scroll and, with an understanding smile, stepped back. “There is rice porridge if you are hungry. Just come to the kitchen.”

She left.

I unrolled the scrap of paper to see Bee’s distinctively grandiose handwriting. “I hope all is well because I must assume you either found a way or made one and I am sorry to write but I just got word that I am to be handed over to the cacica at dusk so please come.”

I handed it to Vai.

His gaze flicked over the words twice. “Tell me if you think she wrote this herself.”

“She wrote it. She quoted the great general Hanniba’al to let me know she wasn’t coerced. Had she quoted a Roman, she would have meant otherwise.”

“Then we have to go.” He went out.

We? I shut the lid and hurried after him to the washroom. “Vai, we can’t trust the general.”

“I know,” he said as he stripped and stepped into the brass tub. “But we can’t ignore him. We discussed all this last night, love. As I hope you remember.”

“That’s not what I remember about last night.” I poured a pitcher of cold water over his head; he didn’t even flinch. But in fact we had talked for a long time about our situation; it was remarkable how pleasing it was to converse with a man in the dark when he was holding you close and you were both quite naked and well sated. I smiled, watching as he soaped down: He was lean but not thin, not short but not particularly tall either, and the view from the back was simply so alluring I had to clamp my mind to Bee’s message and our circumstances.

I said, “It’s easy to talk noble philosophy at the table and then change your mind when you’re in the mud. Even if the general becomes emperor and abolishes clientage, it will take years of war. By then the mansa could have taken his revenge on you by destroying Haranwy.”

“I’m not the only one in Haranwy willing to risk the struggle. Other people in the village have skills as useful in their own way as mine for a radical sort of enterprise.”

“Like your brother Duvai? Is he a radical now, too?”

“Perhaps. Rinse me off and hand me a towel, if it pleases you.” I emptied the other two pitchers over him and offered to dry him off, but he shook his head and took the faded pagne. “Start that, and we’ll never leave. Anyway, I’m not as concerned for myself.”

“You should be!” I folded his dirtied work clothes to be washed later.

“I’m simply too valuable to him alive and as an ally. I have to play that drum. But as long as the general believes you’re going to have something to do with his death, he’s a danger to you.”

“No. I truly believe he truly believes in his destiny. So as long as I’m alive, he’s alive.”

He tied a well-worn pagne around his hips. “Whatever he believes, he’s trying to intimidate you. He will use us against each other to get our cooperation. To me he’ll say: Ally with me, and I’ll spare her life and free your village. To you: Hand him over, or I’ll kill him.”

Outside, he paused in the sun to brush drops of water from his hair. He looked very fetching, and certainly the glance he aimed at me, to see if I was admiring him, fetched me close. I pressed my face into his neck, his skin moist against my lips. The scent of ash clung to him, odd to smell on a cold mage.

“Keep the ice lenses hidden, but take the cold steel in openly, Vai. He’ll respect that. And he won’t know your cold magic makes my sword bloom in daylight.”

“Yes. They’ll be watching my sword, not one that appears to them a cane.”

I rested my hands on his chest and looked up into his face. “The general will have crossbows as well as rifles. That’s what scares me.”

He had a smile that was just for me, intimate and inviting. “You’ll have to watch my back. Like you were doing in the washroom just now.”

Then after all we had to kiss, a slow sweet morning greeting. Obviously the bliss of love deafened me, because when a twig snapped, I was just as startled as he was.

“Kofi!” He grinned with the laughing smile I had often seen on his face at Aunty’s when he was with his friends. He looked so relaxed and appealing I could scarcely breathe for being dazzled.

Stepping away, I gripped the top of my pagne. Fortunately it covered the important bits.

“Yee look like a village man now, Vai. Suits yee.” Kofi walked forward to clasp hands with Vai in the radical manner, after which they slapped each other on the shoulder in a manly way. “Or something have suited yee, that is for certain. Peace of the morning to yee, Cat.” His grin was just too wicked to endure.

“I’ll just go get dressed,” I said in a choked voice, and I fled to the room.

“Tamed her, have yee?” Kofi said in a jocular tone that made my ears burn.

“Tamed her? Why would you want to tame a woman who defied the mansa with only her wits and her determination to live?”

“Yee have it bad. I only mean, usually she is quick to scratch. Instead she ran off.”

“To get dressed. She’s not working for the general.”

“I’s not yet convinced of it, but-”

“You ought to be convinced by my telling you it is so. If she meant to stab me, she’d have done it to my face while telling me why she was doing it and how I had brought it on myself.”

“That is one thing I shall say in she favor: She don’ spare words. ’Tis not so lively at Aunty’s these evenings, I tell yee truly. But yee know, Vai-”

I shut the door. He let Kofi tease and contradict him because he liked and trusted him. I remembered seeing Vai in the village of Haranwy with his age-mates, the ones he had been forced to leave behind when the mages had come for him. How easy he had seemed with those young men! The mage House had stripped that camaraderie away from Vai, leaving the arrogant magister who used his magic, his status, and his cutting words to intimidate. At first he had probably only used those things to protect himself as a youth bullied and scorned by his new age-mates in the mage House, but after long enough, such things become habit. The worst thing for Vai would be to return to Four Moons House and become the magister the mansa wanted him to be.

When I appeared, Vai broke off in the middle of a sentence about not letting Aunty believe that about Cat. “Let me dress,” he said.

He left me looking at Kofi. “I trust Kayleigh is well,” I said. “And your family. No trouble?”

“We have peace in the house. Me thanks for asking. In yee own as well, I hope.”

“My cousin is well, thank you.” I essayed the question I most wanted answered, no matter how much it hurt. “Aunty Djeneba and Luce and them. Are they well? No trouble?”

“Certainly no one have spoken to the wardens of they part in Vai’s situation.” His gaze was not hostile, but it was wary and mistrustful. “Whatever else, I believe yee truly care for them.”

I opened my mouth, and shut it, for my face had grown hot. A pause to check on Vai struck me as timely. I took a step back and looked in through the open door. He wore trousers and a thin lawn shirt. Standing in front of a chair, he was holding a dash jacket in each hand, clearly trying to decide which one to wear. “Blessed Tanit! Vai, is that a mirror you have set on the chair?”

My gaze caught Kofi’s, and suddenly we were both snickering.

Vai’s tone had a glacial scour. “Catherine, perhaps you and Kofi shall go over to the kitchen. I am sure you are hungry.” He tossed the more soberly patterned silver-gray one on the rumpled bed and began to pull on the purple jacket with stylized orange and black stones.

“That one makes my eyes hurt,” I said to the sky. As Kofi and I walked along the brick path toward the dining patio, I decided to dispense with courtesies. “Did you ever trust me, Kofi? Before I was tamed, I mean.”

He whistled appreciatively. “So yee heard that? Meant as a jest.”

“Of course it was! I never doubted!”

He chuckled. “As for the other, yee appeared so suddenly, and up from Cow Killer Beach. Even before, the way he talked about the perdita made me think him witched. It was harder to judge after yee came, for yee would push him away with one hand and draw him close with the other.”

“Two-faced like a star-apple tree. It’s because the leaves are a different color on each side, isn’t it?” I paused at the dining patio, not wanting to take this conversation into the kitchen. “I was very confused. As for the witching, did it ever occur to you he might have set that on himself??”

“Talked he own self into believing he was in love with yee? Could be. Yee know, before the hurricane, I would have thrown yee overboard without a second thought. But when yee crawled under that boat for the sake of a man yee never met nor had reason to care for, I got to wondering. Cat, yee understand I’s concerned that yee shall treat Vai well and not betray him.”

“I had no idea about the raid at Nance’s. As for the other, I shall answer honestly, Kofi, because you have been a good friend to him. I do mean to treat him well. I won’t betray him. But I’ll tell you truly, the best thing for Vai is not to return to the mage House.”

People have all kinds of smiles. Kofi’s lips twitched in a way that made his scars flare. “Yee reckon he shall be better served by joining the general.”

“I don’t trust the general at all. I favor the radicals, but I want to know how people talking around a table think they can win a war.”

He crossed his arms in a way that emphasized how big and sturdy he was, the kind of man you wanted at your side when felling trees, or Councils. “Them with the armies and the coin, and these cold mages yee speak of, shall always have the weapons to crush us. Maybe words is a better weapon than yee think they is.”

“Kofi, that time when Vai almost used his cold magic when that drunk man insulted him, what did you say to him to calm him down?”

He slanted a gaze at the bellyache bush, as if checking for Vai, and then back at me. “I reckon I have had some practice calming that man down, for that was not the first time he almost got in a fight. This time, I just said, ‘If yee want that gal, yee shall not do this.’ It worked.”

“I thought you didn’t like me. Why would you encourage him to keep thinking about me?”

“Gal, yee defied the mansa who rule him and he people. Nothing I could ever say could turn that man’s mind from yee. I saved me breath.”

Footsteps approached, and Vai came into view tugging on his cuffs. He had chosen a jacket of red, gold, and orange squares limned by black. A slim sword swayed from his belt like a bolt of lightning caught and sheathed. Cold steel in the hand of a cold mage. So be it. We would face the general and negotiate our next move together.

His gaze flicked between Kofi and me, and he smiled as if our amity pleased him.

“Best we eat before we go,” he said, taking my hand.

He and Kofi chattered about doings in the city, mostly Kofi telling the news of the huge retinue necessary to the cacica’s consequence: The Taino had reached the festival ground before they were expected, having been brought by a fleet of airships.

“A fleet of airships?” Vai exclaimed as we came to the kitchen, covered by a roof but open to the air on three sides. “Lord of All! Do they mean to invade?”

“The Taino have always said they would not break the First Treaty. So maybe ’tis just to honor the marriage of a prince who shall likely become cacique.”

Kofi greeted the professora as if he knew her well. We sat down to bowls of warm rice porridge steamed in milk and garnished with cinnamon. I was so overtaken by the delicious smell and creamy texture of the porridge that I could only eat and listen.

“No one had any idea the Taino have been building a fleet of airships.” The professora paused to study me. “Every cook must love you, Maestressa Barahal.”

“’Tis good when a gal like to eat,” remarked Kofi.

I looked up to see Vai fail to not look pleased with himself. Flushed, I felt it wiser to set back to the porridge than respond.

“Have they manufactories we have not heard mention of??” Kofi asked.

“So we must hope,” she said, “otherwise they have sealed a contract with a troll consortium in the north. That would not bode well for peace among the trolls. Or maybe the Purepecha kingdom has a hand in it, for Prince Caonabo is son to a Purepecha prince who was at one time married to the cacica. Unlikely, for the kingdoms are rivals.”

Kofi shook his head. “I reckon if the Taino have such a fleet, ’tis hard to see how Expedition can survive.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “a little free territory like Expedition serves like one of those valves where you let steam escape from an engine where the pressure is getting too high. Criminals and agitators can be driven there rather than imprisoning or executing them. Left free, they’ll fight among themselves rather than be seen as sacrifices. Competing mercantile interests will stay bogged down. Dangerous technologies can be floated where they won’t do harm to the Taino if they fail. If there is trouble, it can be blamed on Expedition rather than the Taino court.”

Spoons at rest, they stared at me as if I had sprouted a second head.

“I heard a lot of talk when I was waiting tables. Kofi, why did you happen to come today?”

“I make deliveries every morning to the university.”

“I thought you worked at the carpentry yard.”

“I work there when they have a big order and I can spare the time. Vai, I can row yee across if yee wish.”

The professora fetched a squat ceramic jar packed with straw and ice, from which she drew a pair of ice lenses strung on chains. “These are the last two I have. They are working on more over in the troll town refrigerium.”

“Do Chartji’s aunt and uncle live in troll town, or here?”

“Their workshop is in troll town. They came here because Vai couldn’t move about the city.”

Vai slipped the chains over his neck and slid the lenses under his jacket. We gave our thanks to the professora and walked to the pier. Kofi shifted a barrel and crate to the bow so Vai and I could share the stern bench. Vai had brought along one of the faded old pagnes, which he folded over the bench so his jacket would not have to touch the weathered and stained wood. I made a great show of getting into the boat in an effort to not touch anything that might sully my humble but pretty pagne. He leaned enough to rock the boat so I almost lost my balance and he had an excuse to pull me close on the bench with his arm around me.

“This shall be painful, I fear,” said Kofi as he unshipped the oars and pushed off. “For I have to sit facing yee two in order to row.”

“I was just thinking of leaning here against Vai with my eyes shut and my mouth closed quite tamely for the whole of the voyage.”

They seemed happy to ignore me. It struck me how much they genuinely liked each other, how their talk flowed with the ease of people who have spent a lot of time conversing together. That ease, the motion of the boat, Vai’s arm around me and his shoulder against my cheek, and the sun’s warmth on my head so relaxed me that I dozed off.

The boat’s bumping against a pier roused me.

“Good luck to yee,” Kofi was saying softly, “for I can see how much she matter to yee.”

I felt him kiss my hair. “She’s awake. Aren’t you, Catherine?”

I opened my eyes to bask in Vai’s smile. He gathered up the coiled rope with the arm that wasn’t fixed around me. A thin man with sun-lightened hair and the splotched and freckled sun-weathered skin of a man born in northern climes loped over to help us tie up.

“Ja, Kofi-lad,” said the fellow, with a polite nod at me and Vai. “I’s looking for work today. Yee got anything?”

Kofi and Vai exchanged a glance, and Vai lowered his chin enough to signal agreement.

“Ja, maku,” said Kofi. “But here, hold the boat while I get out.”

Kofi leaped up to the pier with the ease of a man accustomed to the harbor and made a show of helping me out, which I understood as an attempt to make up for his suspicion of me. Vai shook out the pagne and followed. Folk on the jetty did notice him, and his clothes, and his good looks, and I supposed that, like Bee, he desired and perhaps even enjoyed the attention. But he did not seem to notice it as he walked a short way with Kofi.

Kofi spoke in a low voice. “As for the other, yee must promise me yee shall do nothing rash. Don’ let yee pride get in the way of yee thinking.”

Vai grabbed my hand to pull me up alongside him. “I can keep a level head.”

“’Twould be the first time,” said Kofi, “but listen, maku. Yee can be the net we throw across the ocean to the radicals in Europa.”

“I think it is our best choice, for I’m sure there’s no other way to force the mage Houses and princes to change.”

“If any man know what power these mage Houses have, it shall be yee, Vai.”

“Yes, it shall be. They will not go down without an ugly fight.”

Shaking hands, they looked each other in the eye with such grim smiles, like two men about to ride into battle, that a swell of fear surged up from the pit of my stomach.

I knew then I would do anything to protect him, as my mother had once done to protect the man she loved. When I rested a hand on the top of my cane, the sense that my mother stood beside me, in understanding and support, bloomed so strongly in my spirit that for an instant I was sure I felt her touch on my shoulder. She had been a soldier, and now I must be one.

Kofi offered me a hand in the radical manner. He seemed about to say something but instead he slapped Vai on the shoulder and went back to his boat.

Vai took my hand and we walked along the jetty toward the main gate. Sailors reeled drunkenly toward a ship. A man tacked up a broadsheet with the bold headline BOYCOTT on a public board as people clustered around to read the radicals’ call to boycott the wedding areito.

“Why did he look at you and you nod? When that man asked for a day’s hire?”

“Kofi’s household is poor, Catherine.”

“It is?”

“No one in that house goes hungry, so I suppose they are wealthy in that way. The mansa sent a bank draft with me, so I am quite well situated because he assumed I would be living in a manner suited to the consequence of a magister of Four Moons House. I was therefore able to settle a significant sum on Kayleigh as her marriage portion. Because she is not yet legally an adult I am her guardian. If Kofi hires a day laborer, he is using her money, so that’s why he was asking my permission. If you want to know, Kofi tried to argue me out of the dowry being quite so large. It does not make it easy for Kayleigh to come into a household as a rich maku bride.”

“No, I can see it would not.”

“I had a long talk with his mother and aunts. I would trust Kofi with my life, and they raised him to be that man I trust. Kayleigh’s a smart girl. She’ll find a way to use the mansa’s money to help the household prosper.”

“Did I miss something when I slept on the boat? What did Kofi mean about you being the net thrown across the ocean?”

“I’ll join the general’s army but work secretly for the radical cause.”

“‘Risks must be taken if we mean to get what we want.’”

“I wonder who said those words.”

“I just did. But I am quoting Brennan Du.” I tightened my grip to make his eyes flare at the pressure. “My next husband.”

A pair of wagons sat unattended, loaded with bricks. Vai dragged me to the other side of the harnessed mules where two might pretend to have a little privacy. There, he kissed me until I was breathless.

“You will not be needing a next husband.”

“You’re so easy to bait. Anyway, you’re being jealous of a man you’ve never even seen.”

“Of course I’ve seen him, twice, which I know you know perfectly well. I saw the way you smiled at him at the Griffin Inn.”

I fluttered my lashes. “I was wondering what it would be like to be kissed by a handsome man.”

“Wonder no more.” He cupped my chin in a hand as he kissed me again.

“Here, now,” said the young wagoner, coming up, “none of that. Yee’s scaring the mules. Nice jacket, though. Where get yee such tailoring?”

Vai released me and checked his jacket to make sure it wasn’t askew or rumpled. “Europa.”

“Ah, yee’s a maku. No cause to go stealing Expedition gals with yee fine clothes and fat purse.”

“In fact, she is my wife.”

The wagoner did not look one bit impressed, and as he was a stocky, muscular man, his grin had an air of confidence. “Gal, yee don’ want a man who dress he own self better than he dress yee. If yee get tired of that one, come climb me mango tree. I shall buy yee pretty finery and as many ribbons and beads and baubles as yee desire.”

“Shall yee?” I asked with interest and in a pretty fair imitation of the local speech. “How many? Shall they come from Avenue Kolonkan?”

“That way, is it?” he said with a roll of his eyes.

“In fact,” said Vai, “it is not that way. I am buying her nothing from Avenue Kolonkan.”

“Is yee not?” said the wagoner with a look at me to see how I would take this proclamation.

“Shall yee not?” I asked with unfeigned surprise.

“To do so would offend my radical principles. Nor are the mules scared. And by the way, half the tailors on Tailors’ Row in Passaporte have taken patterns from this very jacket. So you will not offend your radical principles by purchasing from them.”

“See why I love he?” I said, simpering as I batted my eyelids again. “Some men court me with baubles, but he court me with radical principles.”

Unfortunately, the wagoner was far more interested in Vai’s dash jackets than my wit. “Tailors’ Row in Passaporte District. Truly?”

“At a tenth of the price a man would pay on Avenue Kolonkan. And the money goes into the pocket of the tailor who made it and not into the purse of the fancy shopkeeper who pays least wages to workers who are little better than indentured servants.”

“I like that talk!” said the other fellow. He and Vai shook hands and had a moment of deep connection with firm, masculine smiles and fiery comments about the corrupt Council, last month’s infamous raid at Nance’s, and whether the poor of Expedition would boycott the wedding areito despite the bounty of free food sure to be available there. I had to drag Vai away or I would have been left conversing with the mules.

“I hope you have not been spending money on Avenue Kolonkan,” he said, taking my hand.

“Looking is not spending! Anyway, the tips I earned at Aunty Djeneba’s aren’t enough to buy a single ribbon in any of those shops.”

“Kofi is going to set Aunty straight about what happened. I hope you don’t blame them.”

“I admire their loyalty to you. What an awful moment that was, though-”

I broke off as Vai halted. Ahead rose the gate and its watch lamps. A red-haired man stood beside wardens in the shadow of the gate, looking at us. The guard lamps flared as in a gust of oily wind. Vai released my hand and raised his. A slap of heat made the air snap. Vai closed his hand, and the sting vanished as though swallowed. The hilt of my sword trembled, tasting cold magic.

“Stay next to me,” he said. With a brisk stride he closed the gap, me beside him. The lamp flames shrank as if losing fuel.

Drake wore the half smile of a man anticipating a long-awaited treat. “Andevai Diarisso Haranwy, you are under arrest-”

“I am a representative of Four Moons House, a magister of the Diarisso lineage. You have no grounds nor means to arrest me.”

“We’ll see about that.” The lamp flames leaped as the air crackled with heat.

Vai curled both hands into fists, and the lamps guttered out. “If you can’t do better than that, you shouldn’t even try.”

Drake took a step toward him. “You’re under arrest as an unregistered fire bane. Which you’ve just let every warden here see. How do you like that, you bastard?”

“I am not a bastard,” said Vai so icily I knew Drake’s words had truly angered him, “and I will give you one chance to apologize to my mother for even suggesting it. Then you’ll know why you should not try to play these games with me.”

Drake’s grin flashed with a burst of fury. “Fucking arrogant bastard. See how you like fire.”

A furnace heat shimmered out of nowhere like a blast of scalding wind. Flames caught on a passing wagon. The poor mules harnessed to it-Blessed Tanit! the very mules who had hidden our kiss!-began to kick and buck in the harness as the wagoner leaped off the driver’s bench with a string of panicked curses. How did Drake dare release so much fire?

A fiery glow writhed around Vai’s form.

Blessed Tanit! Drake was using Vai as a catch-fire to fuel the flames. He was going to burn him up alive! I leaped forward and punched Drake right up under the jaw with the handle of my cane. He went down hard.

“Vai, douse the wagon!” I cried as I jabbed the blunt end of my cane against Drake’s chest.

Onlookers had already run to try to help the frantic wagoner unhitch the mules, but the wild kicking of the beasts forced them back. My sword’s blade pulsed as cold magic bloomed. Flames vanished into thready smoke. I twisted the hilt and drew the blade. As Drake pushed up, I caught the tip in the cloth of his jacket.

I would have stabbed him. I almost ran him through, thinking of the way that glow had lit Vai’s body. But Vai had said Drake was an unusually powerful fire mage. So I had to spare him in case I needed him to save Bee.

Yet Drake must have seen the killing lust in my expression, because he flopped back down.

Vai appeared beside me, seemingly untouched by the backlash of Drake’s magic. His brown gaze met Drake’s blue one.

Men can have a way of looking at each other that is itself a surge of heat and cold warring.

Noble Ba’al! I had been quite mistaken: Drake had never been specifically interested in me, had he? Through me, he had taken a petty but predictable revenge on the cold mage who had treated him so scornfully, man to man, in the entry hall of the law offices of Godwik and Clutch.

Remarkably pretty. Had I really fallen for that line? Twice?

“I am still waiting for that apology,” said Vai.

Despite my blade pressed against his shoulder, Drake did not bother to look at me. He sneered at Vai. “You shall be waiting for that apology just as long as you shall be waiting to find out your wife is not a whore.”

Vai drew his sword so quickly it took a breath for a satisfying expression of fear to sweep Drake’s face. I would have enjoyed his fear longer, but I had to speak fast.

“Vai, don’t do it. We need him alive.”

Vai exhaled as he closed a fist around his emotions and choked them down.

“You’re right, love,” he said coolly, sheathing his blade. “His apology would be worthless anyway. Come. I know General Camjiata is eager to meet with a mage who is actually trained and effective. Just as my wife was eager to bed a man who could actually give her pleasure.”

Lips pinched and eyes narrowed, Drake raised a hand. “Now I take you down.”

Too late I heard the click and release of crossbows from the gate walk above. I slammed into Vai, driving him sideways. A bolt flashed past my cheek. A jolt stung my upper right arm. Then I slammed Vai down onto the ground, my body on top of his and both of us sprawled across the cobblestones.

“Here, now, lads!” shouted the wagoner. “The dogs who serve the Council are attacking we own. Who shall come to the maku’s defense?”

Hearts paused and minds considered. Men gathered about the burned wagon. Wardens bristled, raising their staves as they called for the riflemen. From up on the gate walk, crossbows clicked as they were reloaded. I rolled off Vai and grabbed a fistful of Drake’s shirt. With a burst of pain in my arm, I hauled him to his feet and yanked him to a halt between the crossbows above and Vai, behind me, who was just now shaking off the shock of the impact.

I shouted. “Have yee had enough of the Council stealing yee own kin? Can we not put a stop to it? If all are not equal before the law, then what is the law worth?”

Pushing up to his knees, Vai pulled at the chains around his neck to drag out an ice lens.

“Stand down! Go about yee business!” cried a warden.

The wagoner called, “They have shot the gal! Look! She arm is bleeding! I say we roust them, lads! Enough!”

Drake spoke. “You bitch. Catch this.”

Heat screamed along my skin like the rake of fiery coals. I sucked for a breath as my lungs burned and my tongue withered. My grip on Drake’s shirt gave way as the backwash of his fire magic poured into my body as flames. Pain seared me.

Blessed Tanit. Let this agony pass quickly.

“Cat!” Vai shouted.

Cold magic hit like a hammer. First I was standing, about to burst into flame, and then I crumpled to hands and knees, washed cold but alive. My tears fell as ice, shattering on the cobblestones. My belly cramped; I coughed out a drop of blood. But I would be cursed if I would let Drake strike while I was down. I crawled toward my sword, its blade shining as cold magic fed its heart. Drake kicked the sword away. But he was not looking at me but at Vai.

“I guess I’m stronger than you thought, Magister. Because I’m still standing and you’re on your knees. You’ve made a fatal mistake. You’ve revealed that she’s your weakness. This is so easy. You doused me once. But next time you won’t be fast enough to save her. Beg for her life, bastard.”

A brick flew out of the air and struck him on the shoulder. A piece of charred wood clattered at his feet. Another brick shattered an arm’s length from my head, and a fragment spat up to gouge my chin.

“Wardens! Arrest these rioters!”

A well-aimed brick hit Drake a glancing blow on the side of the head, and he reeled back as shouts of triumph rose from the wagons. Our friends advanced brandishing bricks, shovels, knives, and axes. Wardens and riflemen pounded up, the captain calling for them to line up. Gouts of shimmering heat surged off Drake as he struggled to control himself. I saw it now through eyes clogged with drifting matter as I blinked, trying to clear them. He was trapped by the power of his fire magic; no wonder he hated Vai, who was fed by his magic, not harmed by it.

“Catherine, speak to me.” Vai was groping at the other chain as he got to his feet.

“Don’t do it, Vai,” I said, my lips stinging and my voice as husky as if I were parched. “He knows if he kills me in public, he’ll become a criminal. If you kill him, you’ll be arrested.”

“I’m taking no chances with you.”

I staggered up and found him, pressing my face into his beautiful dash jacket, which was smeared with the slimy churn of the streets. “I’m thinking with my feet. I have more powerful kinfolk than anyone knows. Let him think he’s won for now.”

“He will not think he has won by the time I’m done with him,” he said in that way men have when they have decided their position on Triumph Spire is at stake.

Bricks thudded down, the crowd growing in boldness as Drake did nothing and the militia did not fire. The rippling heat of Drake fumed at my back, like a man wanting more gloat and less stymie. Yet a surly undercurrent dragged on the wind. The city’s anger had woken like a beast prodded until it lashed out to bite. I was having a hard time staying on my feet.

“Storm the walls now, brothers! ’Tis time for the Council to dissolve.”

A rifle clicked, not firing. A rumble like thunder rose out of the old city.

“Make way! Make way!”

A procession emerged from the gate. Three carriages jolted to a halt as their drivers surveyed the massing crowd and the street blocked by men ready to fight.

Drake took a step toward us. Vai shifted me to one side and again drew his sword.

Drake’s fear sparked beneath his anger. “I can kill her faster than you can kill me.”

“But you’ll still be dead,” said Vai.

The door of the front carriage banged open and a man climbed out and strode over to us, expression as thunderous as a looming storm cloud.

“What in the pox-ridden hells is this?” demanded the general in a ringing voice that carried like the boom of artillery.

He marked Drake; he marked me; last of all, he marked Vai and the glittering cold steel that could cut the life out of a man merely by drawing blood. So naturally he planted himself in the path of Vai’s blade, between the two mages.

“I’m waiting. What is meant by this disturbance?”

“Besides the insult to my mother, he called my wife a bitch and a whore.”

“Yet who could say they were false words?” said Drake with a smirk.

Even I didn’t see it coming.

Camjiata backhanded Drake across the face so hard the fire mage staggered back, tripped on his own feet, and dropped on his ass. The wardens and riflemen hissed as in sympathy, and the crowd actually cheered.

“My mother taught me more respect for women than that,” remarked the general.

He raised a hand; the crossbowmen on the walls, the wardens, and the riflemen all lowered their weapons. He surveyed Vai’s fixed stare and steady hand. I could practically see the mansa standing as if with shadowy voice urging Vai forward. Not one person could stop Vai from killing the Iberian Monster and ridding Europa of him and the threat he posed forever. Not even me.

“I take it,” said the general in the tone he would use to a man he had chanced into conversation with at Nance’s over a friendly drink, “that you were coming along either to meet with me or to kill me. I should guess the former, but I am willing to entertain the idea it was the latter.” He looked at me, brows knit down. “Jupiter Magnus, Cat. Your shoulder is bleeding.”

The point of Vai’s sword dropped as he took a step toward me, gaze flashing to my face, then to my shoulder.

The general addressed the restless but notably surprised crowd. “My friends, your generosity is noted. Your courage in standing up for a comrade is evident. But I fear this has been an unexpectedly dramatic altercation between rivals. You know the sort of arseness I mean.”

There is a damper that an older man’s pointed jocularity can put on a younger man’s self-important flash, as unseen as magic but just as effective. That shrank what had just happened down to manageable size, and made Drake look like a man who had lost at love and Vai a hothead who ought to know better than to rub his rival’s face in the fact.

“Magister, I suggest we talk after her wounds are tended.”

“Where is Bee?” I was startled to hear how hoarse my voice sounded and how much it hurt to swallow. A wave of dizziness rent me top to toe. I was going to have to swallow again and I dreaded it, the raw scrape of pain about to rip through me…

“Catherine.” Vai sheathed his sword and swept me into his arms. He looked past me at the general. “She needs to lie down.”

The general beckoned. I hadn’t noticed Captain Tira and Juba, who stood at the horses’ heads. Juba sheathed two knives up his sleeves and walked over to us.

“I have a meeting. Beatrice remains at the house, preparing for her departure. Juba will escort you there. He knows something of medicine. You may rely on him. I shall return at midday.” He shot yet one more frowning look of evident concern at me, and headed for the carriage. “James.”

The look that sparked between Drake and Vai might have been combustion or it might have been hatred or it might have been the vestiges of unspent magic bursting and melting in the air.

“James! With me. ”

Drake followed, staring at the general’s back with a look I dared not interpret, for men might look so when they are thinking of kissing or of killing or of a sudden change of heart betwixt the two.

“Vai,” I said, “Put me down. I need my sword.”

“I am not putting you down until I see you to a safe place,” said Vai in a tone that reminded me that as far as he knew, Drake had gotten to his feet first and unaided.

Why by the starry brow of Noble Ba’al had I so stupidly said, Let him think he’s won?

Fortunately, Juba arrived and spoke to Vai. “You are the fire bane. I am called Juba.”

The two men measured each other and determined on a truce. Juba looked over the crowd, then gestured. A Taino man appeared with a wagon hitched to a donkey. He rearranged baskets of ginger and chilies, and Vai set me in the wagon bed. He had them wait while he fetched my sword, again appearing as a cane; strangely, he was able to pick it up as if it were his own cold steel.

Juba and Vai walking behind, we jolted through the gate with its iron tripods twisted into freakish shapes by the power of Vai’s cold magic, and their lamps completely drained. Swept, quiet streets took us to the general’s town house. Juba paid the Taino man and sent him on his way.

I said to Juba, “You became an exile, for refusing to become what almost killed me.”

His gaze met mine, and I decided I liked him.

“Cat must lie down,” said Vai.

“I return with medicine,” said Juba.

He left Vai and me to go up alone. I had to lean on Vai on the stairs. When we reached the bedchamber I realized Vai was shaking. I shut the door as he collapsed over the bed.

“Vai? Blessed Tanit! Drake used you as a catch-fire for longer than he did me. I didn’t stop him fast enough.”

“I’m not burned,” he whispered. “It was so strange…the fire pouring through me like I was the conduit into another place…I can’t keep my eyes open.”

I pulled off his boots and unbuttoned his dirtied jacket and pried him out of it as he made a faint protest and promptly passed out. I pressed my cheek against his. His breathing remained even and steady, so I stepped back and let him sleep. I scarcely noticed that I handled both my cane and his cold steel until I propped them against the wardrobe and realized his sword had not stung me.

The door opened and Bee appeared. “Blessed Tanit! There’s blood on your sleeve!” She ran to me, but stopped before embracing me. “Your skin looks flushed.”

“Drake used me as a catch-fire.” The words were strangely easy to say, as if I were speaking of someone else. “Vai, too, but it didn’t burn him.”

She swayed, and it was I who maneuvered her to the bed, where she sat with a look of stunned horror. “What happened to Andevai, then?” she whispered.

“He drained himself to stop Drake. He just fell hard asleep.”

She grasped my hands convulsively. When I whimpered, she released me. “How bad is it?”

“I feel like I came up one spit short of being cooked. But it’s not too bad, more the shock.”

“I should never have sent that note. I mentioned it in front of Drake. I will kill him myself?!”

“Leave Drake alone, Bee. I’ll take care of him. Believe me, I can.”

She had left the door open. Juba appeared at the threshold. He carried a tray with a pitcher and basin, a vial, a ceramic jar stoppered with a bit of cork, strips of linen, and a small glass bottle. With a surgeon’s knife he cut away the blood-soaked cloth, careful of my modesty, and washed the wound, which was more of a gouge along the skin. I had been fortunate. Just below my elbow, he paused as a swipe of the cloth cleaned a smear of blood off to reveal the bite scar. He looked up, meeting my gaze although I could not guess what he was thinking. He glanced at Bee and, without a word, finished his nursing. After painting the gash with a white salve, he bound it with linen.

“For the skin,” he said, indicating the ceramic jar. He picked up the bottle. “A cup eases the inflammation. Maybe it makes her drowsy or gives her vivid dreams.”

He and Bee stood together like lovers who mean to argue. Bee glanced at me and back at him from under hooded eyes, and he nodded and left.

“Did you?” I asked.

“I did not.” She turned the key in the lock.

I stripped. The jar contained a sticky clear ointment that cooled my skin gloriously. Bee rubbed it on my back and then combed a light layer of olive oil through my hair, glancing at Vai all the while. “For if he were to wake up and catch you naked, it would embarrass me beyond belief.”

“He’s clothed!”

“Yes, but it is one thing for you and me to bathe and change together, and another for there to be a stranger in the room with one or both of us in that condition.”

“He is no stranger,” I murmured. He looked like a man who ought to be woken with a kiss.

“I take it by that cryptic utterance and unrelentingly fatuous expression that you and he are reconciled. Be sure I wish to know no details whatsoever.” She filled a cup from the bottle and handed it to me. “Nap for a few hours. I’ll wake you. We leave mid-afternoon to take a carriage to the festival gate. The cacica has declared she must undertake my final instruction herself.”

“In Sharagua?”

“No. There is a palace at the border, where the areito will be held. It isn’t far, but I have to stay there. Cat, you must nap. You look exhausted and stunned. But I must selfishly ask…I can have one attendant with me for the twenty days. I know that you two…it’s a long time to be away from him…”

“Of course I will go with you! I have to stay with you until after Hallows’ Night no matter what, with or without Vai. But you’ll have to tell me what I need to do and not do.”

“Don’t worry. You know how I love to boss you about. And to show you how much I love you for coming with me, let me take that jacket of his downstairs so the laundresses can clean it.”

She departed with the jacket, and I locked the door. After braiding my hair and drinking the liquid with its sweetly chalky taste, I lay down. An attempt to clasp the sleeping Vai met with success: The lotion had soothed my inflamed skin enough that the touch of cloth did not chafe. But when I closed my eyes, I remembered the fire bursting in my heart.

I slept, and I dreamed I was waking Vai with passionate kisses, and he said we can’t it will hurt you and I said we have to because what if I’m dead tomorrow and he gave way cautiously and tenderly, and then I woke up. To discover Vai asleep beside me and yet somehow his clothes had come off, which forced me to revisit my memories of what had been dream and what had been real. A sound of clicking and rustling had woken me. The key in the lock was being jiggled from the other side of the door. I slipped out from under the thin cotton blanket and dashed for the wardrobe to grab Vai’s sword. Then I picked up my rumpled pagne and tied it hastily over torso and hips as the key worked loose and dropped with a clunk to the floor. Vai stirred. The latch turned, and the general came in.

He closed the door, taking in the scene. “The vigor of youth never fails to amaze.”

Vai blinked several times as in confusion, and then recollection settled his expression. Sitting, he caught sight of Camjiata, realized he was uncovered from the hips up, and, after a moment, smiled with the comfortable bravado of the man who knows he looks well in any outfit.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” he said, making no effort to cover his bare torso or the two chains and rings, one ice lens clear and one cloudy.

The general smiled. “Which you may suppose is deliberate. I must use what advantage I can make for myself, for I am not a cold mage of rare and unexpected potency.” I flushed, not that one could tell, as I was already pinked. “As for you, Cat, I trust you are not too badly injured.”

“Do you? Drake tried to kill Vai, too.” I placed the sword on the bed next to a startled Vai before I stalked to the wardrobe to get a blouse, pagne, and clean bodice and drawers.

“He will not do that again.”

“How can you possibly be sure?” I demanded as I took the clothes, and the ceramic jar of ointment, behind the screen for privacy. Vai kept his gaze fixed on the general.

“I hold the power of life and death over James Drake in ways I am not about to share.”

“You’ll excuse us,” said Vai, “if that seems a slender reed on which to cross this river.”

“‘ Us,’” murmured the general as I poured water into a pitcher. “How interesting to phrase it that way. I should like to know how you managed to kill Drake’s fire and save Cat. You should not have been able to do that.” A chair scraped along the floor and I heard him settle onto it.

“I should like to get dressed,” said Vai, “but in all honesty, General, I’m not going to do it in front of you.”

“I don’t like to have a sword held to my throat, Magister, so I admit to enjoying placing you in a position of discomfort. We’ll have the talk here. You may dress, or not.”

“Bastard,” said Vai, perhaps appreciatively.

“I was very close to my mother,” replied the general in a tone so genial it made me pause.

“Then we have a thing in common. My apologies. No offense was meant to your mother.”

I began dabbing again; the ointment worked quickly; my skin was already better.

“Understood. So, thanks to the mothers who raised us, here we are, Magister. Why did you not kill me when you had the chance?”

“I am not that man.”

“Yet you could have been that man. Any reasoned assessment of the situation suggests I will bring war to Europa and many will die in blood and fire. You could have stopped that.”

“People already die. There will be a conflagration sooner or later.”

“You are the rich and privileged son of one of the most powerful mage Houses. Are you willing to give that up?”

“I am one of their weapons, rather as James Drake seems to be one of yours. I haven’t finished discussing the man who tried to murder my wife.”

“What do you want, Magister?”

“I want to kill him.”

“But not me?”

“You have something I want. The means to abolish clientage.”

“A legal code is not the means to abolish clientage. One must have the means to enforce such a code. I can say or write anything I want, and that does not make it happen, or make it true. Why should princes and mage Houses abolish clientage? Whatever your origins, Magister, you have benefited by your association with Four Moons House. You, and your people as well.”

“I may have. But they have gained material benefit, nothing else.”

“I would not call material benefit ‘nothing.’ I have seen a man holding his dying child, the one he could not feed because his crops failed and the share for his lord must be met regardless. I have seen a wife hold the broken ruin of her husband crushed in a fall of rock in a mine whose bounty enriches the mine’s owner but not those who work in it. Sometimes the gods are cruel, but more often it is the cruelty and greed of men that kills us. You stand in a high place with the waters rising. I would not be so quick to give it up merely for principles.”

“Are you a radical, General? Or just an ambitious man who plans to use the blood of others to wash his hands at the altar of victory?”

“As you say, there will be a conflagration sooner or later. Which do you want, Magister? I will bring it sooner, and before the old order is quite ready to combat it.”

“They are ready,” said Vai. “They will fight you to the last drop of their blood.”

“I would expect nothing less. Yet it is long past time for the old order to be strangled in its amply feathered bed of unspeakable luxury.”

“You live well,” said Vai.

“And I am given to understand that you tailor well. Don’t trouble me with the tired old argument that a radical must be poor to be pure. Nothing bores me more than the man who makes a parade of his austerity. You do not trust me, Magister. Yet I have something you want which the mansa will not give you. Since you are talking to me instead of killing me, for I see you keep your cold steel close at hand, I must assume you have already made your choice.”

“I have made my choice,” said Vai.

I had finished smearing myself with ointment and wielded a cloth fan to dry. From behind my screen, I asked, “General, did you know that Juba and Prince Caonabo are twins?”

“Why, yes, Cat, I do happen to know that.”

“Why not marry Bee to Juba? He could come back from exile and take the cacique’s seat of power with Bee at his side. Why marry Bee to a fire mage, when she might be caught in the conflagration? Can you imagine I would wish even the chance of this on Bee?”

“Do not think every fire mage is like Drake. Juba’s exile is permanent. That is the Taino law. As for Caonabo, recall that he has a catch-fire. More importantly, he is now the cacica’s only other living son. But he is said to have the temperament of an unworldly scholar. You see, Juba was the one meant for the throne. Now the cacica fears an attempt by factions within her court to install a different claimant. That is why Caonabo needs the alliance with a dragon dreamer.”

Juba’s interest in Bee suddenly took on a much more ominous cast. Did he support his brother, or hope to undermine him? I pulled on my blouse and tied my pagne around my hips. “How providential for you, General, that you stumbled upon my cousin so early in your campaign.”

“Providential? Never forget that I am an accomplished campaigner.” When I stepped out from behind the screen, the general walked to the door and opened it. “Cat, we leave in an hour. I hope you are fit for it.”

“I will stand beside Bee for as long as she needs me. But you must promise me, General, that no harm will come to my husband in the twenty days I am with her.”

“I promise on my mother’s grave that no harm will come to your husband by any intent, plot, knowledge, conspiracy, or neglect of mine. He is too valuable. Magister, will you stay? Ah. I see by your wounded look it was a foolish question. Naturally you will be remaining where you can most quickly be reunited with your wife. Just as well, since I took the liberty of sending for your things.”

From the hall came the sound of footsteps. Captain Tira appeared, casting a doubtful glance at Vai and an interested one at me. She ushered in men who were carrying Vai’s chest, several baskets, and the bed. Vai and I must have appeared like academy students flummoxed by an unexpected exam they had not prepared for. The four soldiers retreated with disciplined haste and poorly suppressed grins.

“Did someone betray Vai?” I demanded.

“No. I took the liberty of looking through Beatrice’s sketchbook. On a page with four phases of the moon, which clearly represent Four Moons House and thus the cold mage, I recognized the bench.”

“Bastard!” I said. “That’s put us in our place.”

“Now, Cat,” he said with a smile as sharp as a splinter, digging deep, “were I you, I would not be precipitous in throwing around that particular word. One hour. Captain, shall we go?”