Cold Steel

4

“Shall I eat him, Cat?” murmured Rory.

“Rory, don’t move. They’ll shoot you.” I faced the general. “How did you find us?”

“You see, Cat, it isn’t that you need to have the dragon dreamer at your side at all times,” said General Camjiata as he strolled up to me. “She does not dream the day before of what will come to pass the next morning.”

“She doesn’t?” I asked, thinking of my dream.

He took no notice because he was too enthralled by the sound of his own voice. “Nor can she walk by purpose into a dream that will tell her what she wishes to know about a crossroads in her future. She may never even recognize what it is she has seen. What you need to make use of a dreamer’s gift is a record of her dreams, so you can study this record until you see patterns emerge and weave the pieces together.”

He opened the book.

“That’s Bee’s sketchbook!” I exclaimed. “The one you stole from her!”

The page was a jumble of images drawn in Bee’s vivid style: a winged horse galloping across waves; the famous twinned bronze pillars known to stand in the temple of Melqart outside the city of Gadir in Iberia; a black saber-toothed cat; nine half-moons. And a pretty little portrait of me from the back, holding by the hair the decapitated head of Queen Anacaona as I looked over my shoulder as if in flight from a pursuer.

“Gah.” I reached across him to turn the page, for the gruesome detail took me aback.

He pulled the book away from me. “The White Horse is a ship that will sail to Gadir from the quay known by its pillars of Heracles, which to the Phoenicians are known to be the pillars in the temple of Melqart at Gadir. On the Nones of November, the fifth day of November, which is today, the fugitive accused of the murder of the cacica will arrive at the quay with her brother.”

“Why nine moons when November isn’t the ninth month? And why the half-moon?”

“In the early Roman calendar, November was the ninth month. Nones refers to the day of the half-moon. If you don’t know that, you can’t make use of the dream.”

“You could just have guessed I might have tried to escape on a Phoenician ship leaving before the tide turns.”

Taino soldiers parted ranks to allow a frowning Prince Caonabo to come forward.

The general indicated me. “Your Highness. I told you I would find her. With this one, you really need to use a rope if you want to capture her.”

He whistled. In his first war his army had been famed for its Amazon Corps, women who fought with more ferocity than men. My mother, Tara Bell, had been a captain in his Amazon Corps, and she had been condemned to death for the crime of becoming pregnant, with me. A woman dressed in soldier’s garb walked forward. Captain Tira sheathed her falcata and unlooped a length of rope. It had a noose, to go around my neck.

“Yee cannot be serious!” said Kofi.

Rory snarled.

Camjiata smiled, as if he hoped I would do something reckless.

Luce, Kofi, and the men of Kofi’s household were fenced in. No doubt they would be charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive.

“Your Highness, I’ll come quietly,” I said to Prince Caonabo, “if you will agree to let these people go free, no questions asked, no grudge held, no charges brought.”

“So have I already agreed,” the prince replied. “All but your brother may go without prejudice.”

“Kofi, just go,” I said, for by the gritting of his teeth I could see his frustration building.

His eyes flared as he gestured for his kinfolk to depart, but he went. Luce flung her arms around Rory, who peeled her off and pushed her after the others. The soldiers made an opening for them to push out their carts. A crowd had begun to gather on the jetty, mostly laborers headed for work or women carrying wood or water to their homes.

“An ugly crowd,” said Camjiata. “Best we make our way to Council Hall quickly, Your Highness. We need only leash the girl. The young man will follow her.”

No longer pretending to smile, he dropped the noose over my neck. The coarse sailor’s hemp chafed my skin.

The prince’s open carriage rolled out from behind Nance’s. I clothed myself in as much dignity as I could gather and stepped up into it. Rory walked behind the carriage to keep an eye on everyone. I wondered if it was his usual position in the hunt when he and his mother, aunt, and sisters prowled the spirit world in search of their next meal.

Prince Caonabo sat facing me. Camjiata sat next to me, holding the rope.

As the driver snapped the reins and the horses moved forward, the Taino soldiers paced in disciplined ranks. The general’s Iberian veterans had more of a swagger. Sailors and laborers gathered at slips and quays to stare, and women and wagons moved aside to let us pass. A gaggle of young toughs shadowed us.

“Why have you involved yourself in this inquiry, General?” I asked politely, even if I really wanted to bite and claw.

“Cat, I am not your enemy. Please be assured that Tara Bell’s child will always have a home with me if she needs shelter. I want only to protect you.” I had never met a man who could speak in such sentimental platitudes and yet have it sound so genuine and unforced. It was one of the most irritating things about him.

“Protect me? You betrayed me!”

“The cacica was required by law to exile you to Salt Island. What you don’t understand is that Salt Island was the safest place for you at that time.”

“That you can say so with a straight face and such sincerity is almost admirable! Everything I did here in Expedition was machinated by you.”

“Perhaps not quite everything. Things are not as simple as you believe they are. But this is not the place to discuss them.”

We crossed under the shadow of the gate and into the old city with its encircling stone walls, legacy of an earlier time. For generations, only families with Council ties and wealth were allowed to own property inside the walls, while newer districts were built outside the walls. When the Council still ruled, the gates were locked at dusk and even in the daytime any person entering the old city could be searched. Now the toughs swarmed right in after us, dogging our heels. Their presence heartened me.

I addressed Prince Caonabo. “Your Highness, did you know that the general believes I am to be the instrument of his death? That is why he conspired with your mother the honored cacica to have me permanently quarantined on Salt Island.”

“I want the truth,” said Caonabo.

We halted at the base of the wide steps that fronted Council Hall. I caught sight of Luce pushing through the crowd. Idiot girl! Rory gestured to warn her off.

The prince’s attendants unfolded the carriage steps.

Before any of us could alight from the carriage, a young man descended the steps of Council Hall with a mocking grin that I wanted to punch right off his face. His red-gold hair seemed to blaze like flame and his blue eyes to kindle with heat, or maybe those were sparks from his fire magic. Really, the last person I wanted to see in a situation like this was James Drake. I curled my left hand into a fist as he came up.

“Why, Cat, I’ve been waiting all night for you to show up.” As an afterthought, he acknowledged the prince with a careless wave. “Your Highness, my understanding of Taino law is that murderers are sentenced to labor in the cane fields for life. Or they are assigned as a catch-fire to a fire mage. We all know she’s responsible for the Exalted Queen’s death. Once she is convicted, I will be happy to take her off Taino hands. I could use a remarkably pretty catch-fire.”

Naturally Prince Caonabo had too much dignity to respond to this rude outburst.

But I didn’t!

“James Drake! Why are you standing here waiting for me like a lovesick but rejected suitor?”

The general pulled firmly on the rope to keep me on the seat. “Don’t be rash, Cat,” he murmured. “This is not the place or time for a pissing match.”

“I wasn’t waiting because I want you!” Drake’s gaze flicked around the crowd: the Taino soldiers, the crowd held at a prudent distance by wardens, Camjiata’s retinue of veterans, and the guards stationed at the Council Hall doors. He pitched his voice louder. “I hope you finally understand that I slept with you only to show the cold mage he wasn’t so high and mighty as he thought he was. Because there’s really nothing a man hates more than knowing his wife is a whore.”

The word stung. “You lied to me and got me drunk.”

“The ease with which I got you to have sex ought to give any man pause, knowing how easy it was to tip rum down your throat and coax the clothes off your admittedly attractive body. Still, it scarcely matters now. I’m a magnanimous man. I’d never turn away a pretty girl like you if you offered to warm my bed in exchange for better treatment after the standing inquiry condemns you as a murderer.”

My face was burning, and my heart was pounding. “Fortunately, I only had sexual congress with you twice. That’s all I needed, to know I needn’t bother if I want to take any pleasure from the act.”

People in the crowd sniggered.

The prince was literally blinking in astonishment, mouth agape.

Drake laughed derisively, but anyone could see he was furious. “You keep ruining the impression of your pretty face with that crass mouth of yours. Now that you’re an accused murderer, I’d be careful about antagonizing the only person in this city who might be persuaded to make your life more pleasant than it will be in the cane fields.”

When I shifted forward with fist cocked, the general tugged on the rope to pull me up short.

“I’d have to be dead before I’d let you touch me,” I said as the hemp scraped my neck.

“Strange you should phrase it in quite that way.” Drake smiled as might a man who is waiting to see your reaction when you realize the trap has closed over your foot.

“James, that is really enough,” Camjiata said without raising his voice.

“I will tell you what is enough! Enough is that my noble kinfolk stole my birthright and inheritance, and I let them because I was too young and powerless to fight. But I’m not powerless now. I want her as my catch-fire, so I’ll cursed well get her as my catch-fire. I’ll have the last word after all, won’t I?”

“You sound like a man who can’t let go of the knowledge that he lost and his rival succeeded. As for you, Cat, this childish bickering insults His Noble Highness the prince and indeed all of us forced to listen to it.”

Drake was livid. “I did not lose to him!”

Drake had the power to immolate me, but in doing so, he would burn himself up as well. Unlike Prince Caonabo, he had no catch-fires to spill away the backlash of his magic. I couldn’t help myself. I had to keep poking.

“Really? It’s never bothered you that you couldn’t spoil his love for me because he’s a better man than you’ll ever be? That the moment I found him I never thought of you again? That he’s killed your fire magic more than once and can do it again?”

Light pulsed as the forecourt’s gas lamps flared. A mist-like glamour writhed around Drake’s body. “When next I meet Andevai Diarisso Haranwy, he will crawl at my feet and admit I am stronger than he is. Fire always defeats ice in the end.”

Prince Caonabo spoke sharp words in Taino. Soldiers raised rifles. The murmuring crowd pushed back, for no one wanted to stand close when a fire mage went rogue.

“I said enough!” snapped the general. “James, go back to the house.”

“Enough is right! I’ve had enough of this bitch!” His bright blue eyes really did seem to blaze.

Heat flared in my chest, like fire kindling. I lunged, but the general yanked me down so hard I hit my shoulder and banged a knee. In that eyeblink during which I was too stunned to move, I saw what would happen by the stiffening of Rory’s shoulders, the tremor in his eyes. Like me he thought with his body. He reacted to danger in an entirely predictable way.

Rory changed as thoroughly as if the tide of a dragon’s dream washed over him to dissolve him into his true form. His body melted and flowed, clothes ripping at the seams as his shape shifted. A huge black saber-toothed cat leaped.

Reports rang out, guns going off, and the big cat stumbled and went down.