Cold Steel

6

Some people have the knack of sweeping into any situation as if they were born to be the light of all eyes. Beatrice might be mistaken for a shallow, flighty, and self-absorbed young woman, but I knew her bombastic and flamboyant manner concealed a generous heart, a brooding intellect, and an indignation at the unfairness and injustice in the world. She had had a lot of time to think about the curse of dreaming that would plague her for the rest of her life and had chosen to confront it head-on. Clutching a sketchbook and lead pencil, she sailed into the room.

“Cat! There you are!”

A magnificent white cotton robe in the style of a Taino noblewoman’s covered her from shoulders to ankles. A bodice beaded with pearls wrapped her bosom and waist, emphasizing her much admired and voluptuous curves. The lush curls of her black hair cascaded around her shoulders, ornamented with strings of pearls. She embraced me, then looked around my shoulder.

“Rory!” She ran to him and rested her cheek against his. Tears glimmered in her eyes.

“Prince Caonabo healed him,” I said, following her. “I thought you should know that.”

Prince Caonabo broke his silence. “Assemblyman, how can my people trust those who will not honor the law and our ancient treaties?”

“A heavy accusation, Your Highness,” said Kofi, with the stare of a man who feels sure of his ground. I was surprised he spoke so boldly to the Taino prince. “My advice to yee is to be careful in how yee choose yee allies.”

The prince indicated the door. “I should prefer to speak to the accused in private.”

Kofi looked at me, and I nodded my permission. He, Keer, and all the others left. Bee and I were alone with the prince except, of course, for his catch-fires and Rory.

Bee smiled blindingly at Caonabo for long enough to coax a smile to his grave expression. “I hope you see it is impossible for you to consider hanging my dear Cat.”

“Hanging is a barbaric Europan custom,” the prince replied as he crossed the chamber.

Reaching her, he extended a hand. To my surprise, Bee meekly handed him her new sketchbook, the one she had started after Camjiata had stolen the other. Bee had started drawing the year my parents died and had never stopped. She often slept with a pencil in her hand. Even now her fingers were smudged with lead. She had been drawing and had come in such haste she hadn’t had time to wash.

“So, Beatrice”—he pronounced the name charmingly, like Bey-a-tree-say—“we all three know she had a hand in the death of my mother.” I would never have dared to thumb through Bee’s sketchbook without permission unless I was far enough away from her to avoid objects flung at me. He flipped casually through its mostly blank pages. “Regardless, I have done as you asked.”

“What did you ask, Bee?” I demanded.

“I asked nothing.” Bee’s gaze was fixed on the sketchbook as if she expected spiders to crawl out of it.

“It is true. She asked nothing. A woman like Beatrice does not crudely threaten. She would never remind me in plain words that my claim to the cacique’s throne is tenuous and that I need her presence as my bride to give my claim weight. She would never hold over my head how precious a treasure she is. One need only look at her to know that.”

She flashed a gaze at him, her chin trembling, then demurely cast her gaze to the floor. “Does the marriage bed not please you, Husband?”

He tensed. “You know it does. But that cannot sway me.”

“Sway you from what?” I asked.

“Beatrice went to visit you at your domicile yesterday,” said the prince. “She returned to the palace before evening. It was at that time I believe she heard my councillors speak of arresting you for the murder of the cacica. Here is the sketch she drew this morning.”

He showed me a sketch. Bee had drawn five people on a wide path. The path was spanned by a huge monumental archway hung with painted gourds in the Taino style. Seen past the arch, lying below the height, spread a splendid city and harbor, almost certainly Taino if one judged by the ballcourt and sprawling palace seen in the distance. Rory loitered at the back of the group with a jaunty grin on his face, as if he’d just gotten away with something he knew he ought not to have done, and certainly ought not to have enjoyed quite so much. A second man was sketched entirely from the back, but I could tell he was Vai. He wore a splendidly fashionable dash jacket printed in an outrageous pattern of flowers like bursting fireworks, and he was holding my hand. In the sketch, I looked as cranky and out of sorts as if I’d been having a discussion I didn’t want to have. Fortunately I was wearing a fashionable military-cut riding jacket with a split skirt and a jaunty hat.

In the sketch, Prince Caonabo leaned against the right-hand span of the archway as if he had been waiting a long time for us to reach him. Bee strode out in front looking quite spectacularly…

“Pregnant!” I cried.

“Pregnant,” agreed Caonabo. He snapped the sketchbook shut, and Bee flinched. “There you are, Maestra, you and your brother and your husband, alive and well in Sharagua. What man would not be moved by such a pleasing vision of his harmonious future?”

I hadn’t had time to examine the sketch closely, for there was one obvious thing that might have caused this puzzling tension between them. “That is you, Your Highness, is it not?”

Bee blushed mightily.

Caonabo did not look at her, only at me. “You wonder if I believe it to be my brother. Haübey and I are twins, shaped to the same mold. Few people can tell us apart. But Beatrice can tell us apart. It is evident to me by certain small signs”—none of which he was going to share with me!—“that the man in the sketch is meant to represent me rather than Haübey. The sketch might be described as a bribe, if you will.”

I grasped Bee’s hand. Her skin felt like ice. “What do you mean, Your Highness?”

“What man would not wish to make sure such a future came about by protecting all the parts necessary to make this meeting happen? Do you not suppose so, Beatrice? A man’s ability to sire children is a mark of potency. Even though it is my sister’s sons who will inherit my position as cacique once I pass over, still, a cacique who cannot sire children of his own will be seen as a weak man unworthy of the duho, the seat of power.”

Bee’s fingers tightened on mine until my hand hurt. Her strength always surprised people, even me as I set my jaw and tried to relax into the pain, for it was clear Bee was truly upset.

He went on in that same level voice, but I could hear an edge. “But one problem remains.”

“What is that, Your Highness?”

“Dream walkers are barren.”

Bee gasped.

“How can anyone know?” I asked, but my mind was already churning. Camjiata had married a dream walker and she had never borne children. The radical fighter Brennan Touré Du had told Bee and me a story about a young woman from his home village who had seen visions and been killed by the Wild Hunt on Hallows’ Night, and Brennan had remarked that although the woman had been married for five years, she had given birth to no child in that time. “I mean, surely even if one or two dreamers never had children, no scholar would claim that means all such women are barren.”

“We Taino have studied this matter for many generations. We have our own disciplines of what the Romans name scientia. Who first observed the transit of the planet you call Venus? Who invented the steam engine, which was then carried across the sea to Europa? Our scholars have spanned earth and heavens with their investigations. It is known to our scholars through careful investigation that dream walkers are barren. The sketch is a lie, not a dream. Is it not, Beatrice?”

She released my hand. I winced as blood flowed back into my squashed fingers.

“My bride lied to me, deliberately and with forethought. She meant to mislead and manipulate me into doing what she wanted.”

From the vivid flush in her cheeks and the tears streaking her face, it was obvious she was both ashamed and defiant. “My other choice was to tell you I would divorce you and not help you gain the throne. I will not stand by and see Cat put on trial and executed.”

“Telling me the truth would have been honest.” That he did not look at her made his words sound even more hurtful. He stared at me, as if daring me to look away and thus prove my guilt. “Tell me, Catherine Bell Barahal, do you care that you are responsible for the cacica’s death? If her exalted rank means nothing, for I believe you once told me that Taino queens and princes mean little enough to you, then do you care that you are responsible for a woman’s death?”

“How dare you speak to her like that!” Bee stepped between him and me with such an aggressive movement that both catch-fires turned. “Cat did not murder the cacica! It’s unjust of you to blame her just because you need someone to blame!”

I set Bee firmly to one side. “No, he deserves an answer.”

Prince Caonabo and I were the same height, so we matched, eye to eye. “I held no animosity toward Queen Anacaona except that she conspired with General Camjiata to exile me to Salt Island. At least her motives seemed disinterested in that regard. But at the ballcourt on Hallows’ Night, she was going to kill me. You know it is true.”

“I heard her words. She called for the death of salters, as was her right and obligation to protect the kingdom from illness.”

“She would have killed your twin brother, too, and other people as well, people whose only crime was to have been bitten by salters and healed by fire mages like yourself. As you once healed your brother. Isn’t that right?”

He hesitated, then frowned. “It is true.”

“Haübey would have died on Hallows’ Night, too?” Bee whispered. “You never told me that!”

A flare of emotion blushed his cheeks.

I leaped into silence, for I wanted him to be angry at me instead of Bee. “I couldn’t possibly kill a fire mage as powerful as Queen Anacaona. It seems to me you Taino should direct your anger at the personage who wielded the power to kill the cacica. We Europans call him the Master of the Wild Hunt. I suppose you Taino would call him a spirit lord. But he’s beyond your reach, so you cast your spears of revenge at me.”

His eyes tightened at the corners as he glanced at Bee, then back at me. “Even with the cacica alive, I would have needed the woman who walks the dreams of dragons to strengthen my position when I travel to Sharagua to claim the cacique’s duho. Haübey was the son my mother trained for the duho, not me. But he can never set foot in our land again because, as you say, he was bitten by a salter. That I healed him makes no difference to his exile. He has taken a foreign name, Juba, to show he is dead in Taino country. He has already departed over the sea. Yet I would dishonor my lineage if I allowed a different branch of the family to wrest the duho from me. So you will travel to Sharagua with me, Beatrice. I have the right to ask that of you. And the means to make you do it.”

He offered her the sketchbook. She hesitated to take it, for his gesture had an air of finality that made my neck prickle.

He opened his hand. The book fell. Bee grabbed it before it hit the floor.

“When the duho has passed to me and I am proclaimed as cacique, you will leave Taino country and never come back. You didn’t just lie. You made use of the pure and sacred vision that is the treasure of dreams you guard, to try and cheat me and my people.”

“You forced me to choose between you and my cousin,” Bee said. “You accused her unfairly. It looks to me as if you want to sacrifice her in order to gain the throne. I think I am the one who may doubt the purity of your intentions!”

“You have no idea what my intentions are, or how I intended to thread this labyrinth, to find a way to satisfy justice. We Taino do not sacrifice servants forced to obey their master’s command. But you treat me as a foreigner who cannot be trusted. Yet you were willing to exchange your body and your dreams for the wealth, security, and knowledge my rank and my people offered you.”

She flinched as if his rebuke had been a physical slap. “I have done what my heart told me to do, Your Highness.”

“What of your duty?” His calm gaze and measured words fell more harshly than anger would have.

I embraced her, resting my cheek on her hair as I whispered. “Kofi and Keer have a plan for my defense. Kayleigh has money if we need it for berths on a ship. I will support you whatever you choose, Bee. Do what you must.”

She took in a shuddering breath. “Hassi Barahals may be mercenaries and spies, but we are never, ever cheats.”

“Then go. We can leave messages for each other at any of the law offices of Godwik and Clutch, here or in Adurnam or Havery.”

She wiped her cheeks as she released me. Majestic in presence, she faced the man she had agreed to marry believing his exalted position and powerful kingdom could protect us. “I will do my duty toward you, Your Highness. Never think otherwise.”

I could not read the book of Caonabo’s emotions as I had learned to read Andevai. Despite his vanity and arrogance, or perhaps because of them, Vai had far less restraint. That he believed he had a great deal of self-control while having very little had become one of the things that charmed me about him. Not so with Prince Caonabo. As I watched him watch Bee walk with dignity to the door, I could not tell if he yearned for what they had so quickly lost or if he was simply measuring the odds that he could trust her to do the part he needed her to do.

At the door she glanced back. Her gaze caught mine. We said nothing, for we knew what we needed to know of each other. Our love was our promise and our security. She left, leaving the door open behind her for Caonabo to follow.

The prince paused, turning to give me a last look. “The blood of my mother lies between us, Catherine Bell Barahal. But because I respect the law, I act as the law requires. Do you? Will you take responsibility for your actions, or will you seek the chance to escape what you have brought about without accepting your part in it?”