Cold Steel

5

Heedless of claws and teeth, Luce threw her body across the thrashing cat. That was the only reason the Taino soldiers did not finish him off.

I ripped the rope out of the general’s grasp and jumped from the carriage, brandishing my cane as I ran to Rory’s side. “Call them off!”

The instant I pressed my cane against his head to make sure he didn’t bite anyone, his body melted away to become a man lying naked and bleeding on the cobblestones. He’d been hit in his right shoulder and left thigh. A liquid pulsed along his skin like blood, although it was clear, not red. His eyes were open, questing back and forth as if trying to fix on a moving target.

I grasped his hand.

“Is this death, Cat?” His voice was a whisper. “I feel my strength draining out of me. Will my spirit pass back to my mother on the other side? Or will I just dissolve into the wind?”

Soldiers blocked us in, facing the angry crowd. Caonabo came up with his catch-fires.

“Don’t touch him!” I snarled.

“Make your choice, Perdita. He may bleed out, or I can cauterize his wounds.”

His words punched the breath right out of my lungs. I shifted back to let him kneel.

“Rory, this fire mage will stop the bleeding. Allow him to touch you.”

Among Rory’s people—a pride of saber-toothed cats who roamed in the spirit world—a male trusted his mother and aunts and sisters absolutely. He watched me with eyes as amber as my own, for we had inherited golden eyes and black hair from the creature who had sired us. Luce crept to my side as the prince inspected the wounded leg. He wiped up a dab of the colorless blood, sniffed it, and glanced at me but asked no questions. A man of his education no doubt could draw his own conclusions. After assuring himself the shot had gone clear through flesh, he placed a hand on either side of the thigh.

Caonabo’s two catch-fires lit as if they were gas lamps touched to flame.

I gasped. Luce’s grip on my arm tightened.

A skin of fire radiated from the prince’s hands. Four days ago, on Hallows’ Eve, standing under the veil of my sire’s terrifying power, I had seen Prince Caonabo’s mother casting off the backlash of her magic into a net of catch-fires. The lines drawn between the cacica and her catch-fires had spanned the island of Kiskeya. She had created a woven web through which the backwash of fire magic was drained out of her, through the catch-fires, and into the seemingly bottomless well that was the spirit world. Shimmering threads spun out of Caonabo and into his catch-fires. One catch-fire alone would have burst into flame and died; two could split the backlash between them and pour it harmlessly away.

Rory exhaled sharply. His eyes rolled up, and he passed out.

“Blessed Tanit!” I touched his throat.

His pulse stirred, weak but steady, as pale blood leaked along the curve of his neck. Unthinkingly, I licked his blood off my fingers. It was so sweet, not harsh at all.

Prince Caonabo draped linen over Rory’s genitals to give him a scrap of dignity. An elderly woman with feathers and beads woven into her white hair approached, carrying a basket. She produced a pair of tweezers. He probed Rory’s shoulder and pulled out a bloody bullet. He then pressed a hand over the wound and cauterized it as well.

Luce sat beside me, clutching my other arm. I scrubbed at my lips but the taste of Rory’s blood lingered. I began to shake.

Caonabo rose. “Now we go to Council Hall.”

“Yee shall not go with them, Cat!” Luce cried. “They shan’t kill yee!”

“Hush, Luce.” I grabbed her. “Help Kofi bring our gear. Quickly! Now go!”

She kissed Rory’s cheek in a way that brought tears to my eyes. She was free to choose what pleasure and affection she desired. If he died, who was I or anyone to say it would have been better if they had not shared love?

Proudly she rose. At a gesture from Caonabo, the Taino soldiers parted to let her leave. I yanked off the noose over my neck and only then did I think to look for James Drake.

He had vanished. Caonabo was wiping his hands with a cloth, surrounded by concerned attendants.

Camjiata took hold of my elbow. “Don’t be a fool, Cat. Drake has guessed the cold mage is still alive, for it is obvious whenever you speak of him. Your plan on Hallows’ Night to kill me went badly wrong. Still, I hold no ill will against you. Our lives—yours and mine—are bound by destiny. We are meant to be allies in the struggle for liberation.”

I shook off his grip. “I’m not putting that noose back on.”

Wardens carried Rory up the steps, through the entryway, and along a corridor. The chamber we entered was furnished with tables and benches. The men settled Rory atop one of the tables and set up guard at both sets of doors. I asked them to bring a basin, water, and cloth, as well as a behique who was a healer.

One door let onto the main corridor. A set of glass-paned doors opened onto a large central courtyard that was completely boxed in by the wings of the Council Hall complex. In the courtyard a monument depicted a buffalo and lion, and a covered cistern provided water. But the most striking object in the courtyard was a majestic ceiba tree, with a wide canopy and ridge-like roots grown out from the trunk.

I paced, one hand on the ghost-sword the Taino believed held my mother’s spirit and the other cupped around the locket I wore that contained a portrait of Daniel Hassi Barahal, the man who had called himself my father even though he had not sired me. The locket also held strands of hair from my husband. In the warmth of the locket I felt the pulse of the thread that bound the heart of Andevai Diarisso Haranwy to my own. Somewhere in the spirit world, Vai was alive.

A local healer arrived, an older woman with a fire mage’s crackling touch. After helping me wash Rory she coaxed a sweet-smelling syrup down his throat to help him sleep. After she left I sat beside him for the longest time, combing out his hair with my fingers because I had no other way to relieve the churn of my emotions. I’d been a fool to provoke Drake, but it had felt so good! Yet he had wanted me to lose my temper, so I had played into his hands. The fire I’d felt was my anger, not his magic. My rashness had hurt Rory, not me.

I rested my head on my arms on the table. Rory’s breathing whispered in my ear. I had to make a plan, but the general’s words kept trampling through my thoughts: “Our lives are bound by destiny.” Chains draped me everywhere I looked.

My night’s broken sleep caught up to me. I dozed, then drifted awake to the sound of voices outside. Groggily, I raised my head to look out into the courtyard. Judging by the lack of shadows, it was almost midday. Rory still slept. I jumped to my feet as the door to the main corridor opened.

A troll entered. Prince Caonabo called them the feathered people, which was a more respectful and accurate description than the Europan appellation of trolls. What they called themselves involved whistling and song, an intricate language whose nuances we rats—as trolls called humans—could not imitate except at the simplest level.

Like all trolls Keer was tall, with the predatorily gracile movement of a creature at home with killing, even though I had never seen her eat anything other than fruit and nuts. She had the snout and teeth of a hunter and big, round eyes like those of a raptor that can see farther and with more detail than any human. Seen from a distance, the tiny brown feathers covering her skin made it look as if she were covered with scales. Close up, the odd shimmer of feathers and the expressive shifting of her feathered crest caused her to seem a blend of lizard and bird and yet, truly, not either one. She was a lawyer, the local representative of the firm of Godwik and Clutch. Her clutch also ran a printing press.

Behind her came Kofi and Luce carrying Vai’s chest between them.

Keer approached me in an intimidating manner, but I did not retreat. She passed her cheek alongside mine, and took in an audible sniff. I sucked in a breath myself, for it was always wise to imitate what trolls did as a mark of respect. Her scent reminded me of the perfume of summer in the north, when the sun bakes grass from green to gold.

She bobbed a greeting, then stepped away to pace around the table on which Rory lay. “I have come to represent you at the standing inquiry, and to help you make your defense. Curious, this one. He looks like a rat but he smells like a cat.”

I smoothed a hand over Rory’s disheveled hair, wondering if Keer was fighting off an urge to taste mancat flesh. “I suppose he does.”

She chuffed a trollish laugh. Three trolls accompanied her. Two posted themselves as guards, one at each door. The third sat at the other table, opened a writing case, and prepared to take a written record of the proceedings.

“Cat, have yee eaten?” Luce asked.

“I asked the wardens to bring something, but they never did.”

“How like men!” she muttered. “Yee must be famished.”

“I am, and really thirsty, too.”

“We cannot begin until you are fed,” said Keer. “No person can be expected to think properly if she is distracted by hunger.” She showed her teeth in an unsettling mimicry of a human smile, which reminded me how easily she could eat me if she were distracted by hunger.

“I’ll get food,” said Luce.

While we waited, Keer, Kofi, and I argued about the latest batey games and gossip. Luce returned with rice porridge, fruit, ginger beer, and enough cassava bread and rice and peas to feed six of me, although I managed to finish almost half of it while the others picked off the rest. When I had done, Keer banished Luce and Kofi.

“I must conduct the interview in privacy, so yee must wait outside.” When they had gone, she settled opposite me at the table. She was facile with human language and adjusted her speech to fit her listener. “Tell me everything that happened.”

I explained how I had been betrayed by General Camjiata into the custody of Queen Anacaona, and how she had ordered her people to imprison me on Salt Island because I had been bitten by a salter. “But the cacica herself said I was clean. The salt plague is spread by the invisible teeth of the ghouls, eating through flesh and then into the brain. I have no ghoul’s teeth in my body. There was nothing to heal.”

“Useful to know but not helpful with the case,” she said, watching as the clerk scratched markings I could not read. “The First Treaty does give the Taino the right to demand you be turned over to them because of the quarantine. What else can you tell me?”

I explained how, on Hallows’ Eve, the Wild Hunt had ridden out of a hurricane and rescued me from Salt Island. At the command of the Master of the Wild Hunt, I had cut a path with my half-mortal blood through the fence of magic that surrounded the Taino kingdom. My sire had told me the Wild Hunt would kill my dear cousin Beatrice if I did not find richer blood to feed the courts who ruled the Hunt. I had meant for the Wild Hunt to kill General Camjiata, the man who had betrayed me. But because Camjiata had no magic, my sire could not see or sense him. Instead, my sire had decided to kill my husband because he was a cold mage of rare and unexpected potency. At the same time, the cacica had been about to kill me together with other fugitives who had escaped Salt Island.

“You did not with your own hands, talons, teeth, or sword kill the cacica,” said Keer.

“No, but I convinced the Master of the Wild Hunt to take her instead of Vai.”

“You acted in self-defense. The cacica was about to kill you, and you defended yourself.”

“What about Rory? Many witnesses saw a black saber-toothed cat break her neck.”

She tapped her taloned fingers on the table. “Is a soldier responsible for the deaths he is ordered to inflict in battle? Or is the general who commands the deaths held to be the responsible party? Furthermore, on a night of storm, confused and frightened people may see shadows as giant eagles or as creeping spiders. Perhaps there was such a cat. Certainly in the ancestral territories of my people, what you rats call troll country, such carnivores prowl the land. We have hunted them and been hunted in our turn. But that is not proof that your brother committed the act.”

“The prince saw him become a cat and then change back into a man, just now, when he got shot,” I said.

“We cannot accuse a man of thieving a hat just because some man was seen to steal a hat and the accused is also a man.” She bared her teeth at me in a brilliantly sharp smile, as if she were preparing to eat any lawyers who argued against her. “Very well. I am prepared to make a case.”

As the clerk tidied up her notes, we went to the glass-paned doors to look into the deserted courtyard. Afternoon shadows smeared darkness across stone pathways.

Kofi joined us there. “I have set wardens to guard yee so the fire mage can make no mischief before the inquiry. I don’ trust him, with the way he went after yee on the steps. As for the general, we shall see who shall come out the winner in this match.”

“The general scored a point on you all, didn’t he? By catching me at the quay.”

His taut smile made him look eager for a fight. “We’s not playing batey now. We in the Assembly is playing the game of politics. We don’ intend to lose this hard-won freedom. If the Taino can force us to turn yee over to them, then it’s as if they rule us. That’s why we shall fight so hard to get yee off, despite what the law and the First Treaty say.”

Voices were raised outside. We looked around as the door slammed open to reveal stern-faced Taino soldiers, richly dressed attendants, Prince Caonabo, and Beatrice.