Cold Steel

11

“Rory, is that our sire?” I asked.

“Our sire?” Rory took several deep sniffs. All I could smell was the bloom of ripe guava and a whiff of tobacco. “No. That’s not his smell. It couldn’t be him anyway. Our sire can only cross into the mortal world on Hallows’ Night.”

The opia’s lips quirked up. “Yee’s caused a deal of trouble for me, gal. I know what yee carry in that basket. I shall make it worth yee while if yee don’ deliver the head of the cacica to the Honored Caonabo, he who is now cacique over all the Taino people.”

“Caonabo is cacique already?”

“This is his coronation areito, here and everywhere in Taino land.”

“But I promised I would deliver her head to her son.”

“So yee shall. Yee shall deliver her head to Haübey, not to Caonabo.”

“Haübey was exiled after he was bitten by a salter. He can never return to the Taino kingdom.”

“Yee don’ know everything.” He slid an arm around my waist and pulled me close. Cursedly, he felt exactly like Vai as he murmured in my ear, “Nevertheless, I’s willing to make yee a deal. For ’tis certain Haübey is gone over the ocean where I cannot reach him.”

“Cat,” said Rory.

“How long ago did the general and his army leave?” I cried with alarm. “How long have we been in the spirit world?”

“The reckoning of days and months mean little enough to me.”

“Cat,” said Rory.

I pulled out of the opia’s appealing grasp. “I promised to deliver the head. Then my cousin can help me get back to Expedition. I have to get a ship to Europa.”

“What if I could get yee to Europa? Right now? If yee do as I ask and promise to take the cacica’s head to Haübey?”

“Cat!”

I was hallucinating Bee’s voice.

Rory tugged on my arm. I looked round to see Bee plowing through the crowd. She was hauling the smaller of Vai’s wooden travel chests with the aid of a grinning Taino man who was wearing an embroidered loincloth, bronze anklets and bracelets, a beaded necklace, a feathered cap, and nothing more. His friends followed along, dressed in a similarly appealing style. Like me, Bee wore an amply cut Europan skirt, good for striding, but a sleeveless bodice in the Expedition manner because, although it was night, it was plenty warm. She, Rory, and I stuck out like the maku we were, but no one seemed to mind.

“Bee!”

She halted, face flushed and curls in disarray. What I assumed was a pretty “Thank you” in Taino dismissed the young man. After looking over me and Rory, he retreated to his amused friends.

“Here you are, Cat! I was afraid to leave the chest because James Drake saw it and threatened to burn all of Andevai’s clothes. If there’s one thing you can trust about that man, it’s that he hates your husband and he could easily do it.”

“That’s two things,” said Rory.

She skewered him with a black gaze. “You get to haul it all the way back!”

“Where are we?” I had to pitch my voice to be heard above the rattle and song. “Why are you talking to James Drake?”

“We’re in Sharagua. I’ve been divorced and cast off. And here you are, in the middle of the areito on coronation night. I saw our meeting here in a dream. I’ve made arrangements for us to travel with General Camjiata’s army to Iberia.”

I looked around. The opia had vanished.

Bee grabbed my wrist, yanking as if she meant to rip my arm out of its socket. “Cat! We have to go! A carriage is waiting outside. The tide waits for no man, and not even for me.”

“I’m not going with General Camjiata! Why is he in Sharagua?”

“For the coronation. Anyway, of course he wants me to return with him to Iberia and help him win his war.”

“We can’t trust him!”

“The situation is not as simple as you think it is. Where did you get this?” With her usual disrespect for my belongings, she pulled the basket around and began unlacing it. “These sort of baskets are only ever used by behiques.” She pried open the top of the basket, pulling back her hair with a hand so it didn’t fall in her eyes. “Cat,” she said in an altered tone, “why do you have a skull?”

Blessed Tanit! Hair, skin, the usual appurtenances of flesh and life had vanished to leave a bone-white skull. “It wasn’t a skull before. It was more like the head of the poet Bran Cof, only more commanding and less rude.”

“Look!” Rory pointed to the arch.

A dozen foreigners pushed into view. Falcatas swung from their hips, half concealed in the knee-length folds of their dash jackets. I recognized Captain Tira’s broad shoulders and short black hair instantly, not to mention the way she swept the crowd with a searching gaze.

“Gracious Melqart!” I said to the air. “Where is that cursed opia?”

“Seem a better offer now, don’ it?” he said behind me in a tone I could only describe as gloating.

I spun to face him, clasping the basket shut. “How can I know you’ll keep your word?”

“I give yee me word of honor as a Taino man,” the opia said. “Besides that, which is truly all yee need, I shall help yee get to Europa because I want the cacica’s head to go to Haübey together with a message that he need to come home. So yee see, gal, I’s helping me own self. Yee’s just the messenger I have at hand.”

Such sweet words: help yee get to Europa. But I had to rein in my galloping heart. “I promised Queen Anacaona to take her head to Caonabo.”

“So yee shall. When yee give the head to Haübey, he shall bring it home to Caonabo.”

Blessed Tanit! I shuddered with hope. “What about my cousin? Her blood won’t give her passage into the spirit world. She can only cross through water. Anyway, the creatures of the spirit world hate her and want to kill her.”

“Peradventure them in Europa do, but our ways are different in this part of the world. As for the dreamer, the pools yee waded through shall give her passage. I shall take yee back that same way.”

“Cat, who are you talking to?” demanded Bee.

“Can’t you see him?” Rory asked. “Are you blind, Bee?”

“Not too blind to kick you. Cat, who are you talking to?”

The opia wearing Vai’s face smiled in the smug way Vai had when he knew he was about to be proven right. “Best make up yee mind quick quick, gal. Here they come.”

Captain Tira spotted me across the dancing crowd.

“Very well,” I said. “In exchange for you delivering us safely to Europa, I will deliver the cacica’s head to Haübey with the message that he is free to return from exile.”

The opia replied with an impatient smile so unlike any of Vai’s expressions that I knew I was seeing a glimpse of the man he had once been. Yet he twined his fingers through mine just as Vai had done and drew me back the way we had come.

“Rory, get the chest,” I called over my shoulder. “Bee, are you coming with us, or going with the general? You better come with us. I want you to. Please.”

“Of course I’m coming with you!”

We danced and dodged around revelers oblivious to the chase. They smiled and clapped to include us. As we climbed the narrow path toward the cave, a rifle went off, followed by a rousing cheer from the crowd, who evidently thought it part of the celebration.

We had no sooner ducked into the cave mouth than about twenty Iberians ran up in our wake. The opia vanished in a scatter of sand. I drew my sword.

“Stay back,” I said to the soldiers. “Rory, take off your clothes and give them to Bee. That will surprise them.”

“Blessed Tanit!” cried Bee. “Don’t take off… you’re not really going to…”

She broke off with an audible gasp as Rory stripped. The soldiers halted in confusion.

“You two go on,” I said, keeping my gaze on the soldiers. “Bee, you’ll have to haul the chest when he changes. Stop and wait for me once he’s a cat. Go!”

They went. The soldiers could have rushed us, but the gleam of my sword and Rory’s unexpected disrobing gave them pause.

“I’m reliably informed by the locals that my sword is an object of power known as a cemi, inhabited by the spirit of my mother,” I said in my most amiable tone. “Tara Bell was an officer in the Amazon Corps. Perhaps you knew her or fought beside her.”

Captain Tira pushed through, attended by two men carrying lamps.

“Catherine Bell Barahal, the general wish to speak with yee.”

“Then why has he sent soldiers after me, if it’s to be a friendly chat?”

“I reckon he thought yee might be a bit recalcitrant.” She gestured.

Four of the soldiers broke ranks to approach me.

I thrust at the leftmost, pricking his forearm so he yelped and dropped his rifle. As it clattered down, I pressed in past him to jam the hilt of my sword into the chin of the next man, then swung away before he could counter. The third man clubbed at me with his rifle, but I leaped past him and shoved the fourth man into range of the blow.

The captain shouted a command. Rifles leveled, pointing at me.

“Stand down, gal!” cried Captain Tira.

A gust of wind roared through the cave with a squall of blown sand. The lamps whooshed out. A rifle went off. The sting of its powder lanced up my nostrils. A hand fastened on my shoulder. I twisted away, grabbed the arm, and bit. The man shrieked, reeling away. Men shouted as the lamps crashed to the ground and shattered with a gush of oil that abruptly flamed into bright fire.

The scent of guava flooded the air. A person who looked like me raced past them out the cave mouth. To my left stood a third opia looking just like me. Everyone started shouting at once. In the confusion I dashed for the back of the cave. Another gust of wind doused the burning oil, drenching the cave in darkness. I thudded into a man’s body which I knew instantly as Vai’s.

“Yee brother and cousin is safe. Follow me.”

We splashed through the string of caves up which we had so recently climbed. I stumbled more than once, stubbing my toes on rocks. Blood dribbled down my foot to smear the ground.

When we passed from the mortal world into the spirit world I did not know. But in the dense night of the cave, a big cat’s body nudged up beside me. A long incisor grazed my hip as my hand slipped across his moist nose. He licked me with a raspy tongue. I giggled.

“My feet are coated with slime!” exclaimed Bee in the darkness. “It’s disgusting.”

I laughed.

“Shh!” The opia pulled me close, lips pressed to my ear. “We’s not out of danger.”

Even knowing I was grasping a stranger—a dead man!—I could not stifle the tremor of arousal I felt at the familiar shape I had my arms around, his strong shoulders, his solid chest. He even had the sawdust-and-sweat scent of Vai as well as the mouthwatering fragrance of guava.

“Then it’s best if we hurry,” I whispered, my irritation at my body’s unwanted reaction making my voice a hiss.

“We can bide a few breaths here, gal, as long as we bide quiet-like. The maku soldiers cannot venture any deeper into the cave. ’Tis a small reward to ask that yee kiss me, don’ yee reckon?” he murmured in Vai’s coaxing voice. His lips brushed my mouth.

I stiffened my entire body, as Vai had done when my sire had teased him with my form in the coach. “I don’t reckon. Not with my brother and cousin right next to me! And the cacica’s head in the basket.”

“She cannot see with the basket closed up tight, can she?”

“They warned me that opia are dangerous spirits. Why do you appear to me as my husband?”

“Because it vex yee,” he whispered, laughter in his tone. “And I like yee when yee is vexed.”

A little stab of laughter shook me. “Who are you?”

He rubbed his cheek against mine, the bristle of beard making me shiver. “Just one kiss like that one yee gave me in yee room in Expedition, when yee thought I was him. Don’ yee think yee owe me?”

“You haven’t gotten us to Europa yet.”

“For the chance of it, gal.”

“Let me see the face you wore when you were a living man.”

He chuckled. “I like the stubborn way yee never give up.”

Blessed Tanit, but I took the chance of it. Rory didn’t care, the cacica’s head was safe in the basket, and it was too dark for Bee to see anything. I pressed my mouth to his. For a single searing kiss, I pretended I was holding Vai. It was a good kiss, strong and sweet.

“Cat, where are you? What is going on?” Bee’s hand brushed my shoulder like the flutter of a feather across my skin. Her fingers dug into my upper arm. “What are you doing?”

His hand slid down my arm and caught hold of my fingers as he stepped back.

“Cat, there is someone else here with us,” Bee said ominously.

“He’s an opia. He’s helping us so we can do something for him. Help me carry the chest.” I hoisted one end of the chest by its rope handle. “It was very clever of you to bring the chest, Bee.”

“Cleverness had nothing to do with it. It was pure desperation. I’d already hidden the other two when Drake caught me with this one. The moment he saw Andevai’s dash jackets, I saw murder in his eyes. Sartorial murder. I couldn’t bear the thought of all that expensive fabric and fine tailoring blazing into ash.”

“How came you to have all our gear?”

“I got all three chests from Lucretia before I left for Sharagua. I told her I would deliver them to you. Gracious Melqart, Cat. I must ask, how many fashionable dash jackets can one man own?”

“I haven’t yet had the leisure to make an accounting!”

We moved deeper into the night of the spirit world. Vast roots tangled around us.

“By the way, I’m sorry to mention it, but General Camjiata took your father’s journals.”

This newest betrayal scarcely scratched my already jangling nerves. “Of course he would! At least I know he’ll keep them safe.”

“We need to go quiet here,” murmured the opia as we began to descend. “For I would not want any to hear me who might put a stop to the business we’s about.”

“Shh,” I said to Bee. My breathing grew ragged as we made our way down within the tree, for I both hoped and feared that I would again grasp the latch and see into the coach where Vai was my sire’s prisoner. But all we did was descend step by step, me holding the opia’s hand as he guided us and Bee linked to me by the chest. Rory padded at the rear.

I smelled the mire of earth and heard the moan of a conch shell being blown. I heard the thump and patter of batey and the cheering shouts of the crowd as one of the players scored. Yet we did not walk into the ceremonial plaza where I had been before.

Down we went and down farther yet, past the charcoal scent of a cook fire and a smell of pepperpot that made me lick my lips with hunger. Rory gave a rumble of displeasure, reminding me that he was hungry, too.

“Don’ stop.” The opia fastened his fingers tightly to mine. “We shall go deeper, into the realm of the old ones that lie below all.”

“What is that voice? Where are we going?” Bee whispered.

I had no words with which to answer her. The black void around us was impenetrable. Warm water tickled over my sandaled feet and streamed off. A salty wind with a bellows’ breath hissed against my face like the exhalation of a beast so huge it cannot be seen or touched.

Was this what it meant to crawl into the maw of Leviathan?

I felt as if the gullet of a beast were squeezing around me. Sand filtered into my eyes. I blinked, trying to wet away its scrape.

Beneath my sandals the ground crunched. Glimmers of light shot through the earth like sparks strewn through sand. The walls took on an amber gleam. Rory loped ahead toward a low cave mouth. The shush and sough of a stormy sea sounded from outside. But I did not taste the salt of the ocean. Instead, when I licked my lips, I swallowed smoke.

The opia stopped.

Bee and I set down the chest.

She stared at him. “Blessed Tanit! He looks exactly like Andevai!”

He looked her up and down in a way Vai had never once examined her. A sting of jealousy made my heart flame, for unlike every other man I had ever met, Andevai had never shown the least partiality for Bee, not as all the rest did the moment they laid eyes on her voluptuous beauty.

“’Tis a shame I can go no farther and thereby get to know yee better, dream walker,” he said to Bee. “Ask from the old ones that which they owe to yee.”

“Where are we?” I whispered, for I was afraid.

“We have reached the Great Smoke, where the old ones bide. In the mortal world, in the language spoken in Expedition, it is called the ocean.”

“Have you tricked us? We have no ship on which to sail the ocean.”

“’Tis no trick, for here in the spirit world, it have a different substance,” he said in another man’s voice.

We looked onto the face of a man I had never before met. He was Taino through and through, no mixed-race Expeditioner. He had the long black hair and regular features typical of the Taino. His commanding gaze had a hard measure, but a softness in the line of his mouth suggested that kisses pleased him. He was older than I expected, about the same age as the Europan radical leader and pugilist Brennan Touré Du, whom I would have guessed to be in his mid-thirties, a man in his prime. He also looked vaguely familiar.

“Have we met before?”

“We have not. Yee killed me before we had that chance.”

“I did not kill you! You aren’t one of the salters I killed on Salt Island…” I trailed off, watching the promise of his mouth tighten to disapproval.

“I’ve seen you!” cried Bee. “I met you, the first time I went to Sharagua! But you’re dead!”

Had the sun come up at that moment, I would have said that dawn broke upon me. “You’re the cacique! Queen Anacaona’s brother, the one she was keeping alive. You’re Caonabo and Haübey’s uncle.”

The crow’s-feet at his eyes deepened as he smiled. “A smart gal, too.”

“No need to mock me. How comes it that you ruled the Taino kingdom and yet speak the language spoken in Expedition Territory, which is but a trifling place compared to the expanse of your noble and mighty empire?”

“Yee’s got a mouth on yee, gal, that do grate at times. Yet I reckon that man yee seek have the means to keep yee quiet when he get weary of yee talking. If those kisses was anything to go by.”

“A strong man does not need a silent wife,” I muttered as my face flamed.

“Kisses!” exclaimed Bee. “When was there kissing? Cat!”

His grin had a taunting flavor. “I lived in Expedition as a lad for some years. It happen that me uncle, him who was cacique before me, favored a cousin as heir instead of me. Me sister Anacaona deemed it prudent to keep me out of sight while she played the music she needed to at court. When me cousin died, I was recalled.”

“You’re younger than Anacaona?”

“By fifteen years. She was the first child born to the honored mother who carried us, and I was the last. I reckon that is why she always thought she could give the orders. Here is what yee don’ know. Me sister and me own self never did agree about which of her sons was best suited to be cacique after me. She wanted me to choose Haübey because she always favored him. But I wanted him to serve in the army. Caonabo was my choice for cacique all along because he is the steadier man. But me sister the noble cacica is a stubborn woman. She would never see one single change to the law. I respect the ancestors as much as she do. But there come a time when change must happen. We have contained the salt plague with our behiques, and now we have wars to fight elsewhere. I need Haübey back from his exile.”

“He’s gone ahead to Europa with a small advance party,” said Bee.

“He’s a scout gone to Europa, that is certain. Yee shall take the cacica’s head to him and he shall make of it a cemi. With the cemi of Anacaona in his possession, he shall be allowed to return to the court of Caonabo. War shall come, from the west or the north, from the Purépecha Empire or the Empire of the Comanche. I’s not sure. Caonabo shall administer. Haübey shall fight.”

At the cave mouth, the big cat put his ears back. The hair on the back of his neck was all a-bristle. Wind spattered burning sparks of sand all the way up the tunnel, so hot Bee and I had to shield our faces. When we lowered our hands and turned back to the cacique, the opia was gone.