Cold Steel (The Spiritwalker Trilogy)

by Kate Elliott

  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 t
hat 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?”

  7

  I had to trust in the plan hatched by Kofi and Keer. With Rory wounded, I had few options.

  We spent the rest of the afternoon quietly. When Rory woke up, he seemed far better than he had any right to be, but he developed a sulky whine that Luce was better able to tolerate than I was. She demanded that wash water be brought so I could bathe and change my clothes. I sewed buttonholes on the two winter coats because the tailors hadn’t had time to finish them. To pass the time, she and I discussed the chamber murals. The paintings depicted the history of the First Fleet: the eruption of the salt plague out of the salt mines of the Sahara Desert; the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by the multitudes fleeing with the Malian fleet; landfall on the southern shore of the island of Kiskeya in the Sea of Antilles.

  Luce traced the adventures of her ancestors with a look of dizzy excitement. “I shall have an adventure, too. I shall come with yee to rescue Vai. I’s old enough to leave home. I always wanted to travel, like me father!”

  “No, you shall not!” Leaning my forehead against hers, I captured her gaze with mine to bind her to my will. I was implacable; I had to be, because she was a sheltered girl with a sunny good nature from having grown up in a loyal household whose family members cared for each other. “We can’t afford your passage to Europa. You can’t walk into the spirit world anyway.”

  Her frown developed a stubborn kick.

  “Rory and I can cross into the spirit world because of what we are. People aren’t meant to walk there. Hunters apprentice for years to learn the secret lore passed down among them. You will die, or be changed beyond recognition.”

  Luce glared, trembling. “Everyone say I shall be a great help to me mother to run the boardinghouse. But what if that is not what I want? I don’ want to work in them factories neither. And the ships me father sails don’ accept women as sailors, for that is the Roman way. I don’ have the connections nor the apprentice fee a gal need to get a berth on a ship run by a troll consortium.”

  “It would just kill your family if you left, Luce. They love you!”

  Her dark gaze accused me, as if I had betrayed her.

  Rory stirred. “I’m thirsty,” he whimpered. She went to him.

  At nightfall I went to the doors that looked over the courtyard. Kofi joined me.

  “How old is that ceiba tree?” In the night breeze stirring its branches I was sure I felt the breath of the spirit world. Its scent wound through my bones.

  Kofi rocked from toe to heel and back. “’Twas a sapling planted here on that very day the Taino caciques and the captains of the fleet met to seal the First Treaty. The story go that they who ruled chose one beautiful gal who did come over with the Malian fleet and one handsome lad who was Taino-born upon this island. They two were sacrificed and their blood and bones set in the earth to feed the tree and bind the treaty.”

  I pressed a cheek into the glass. I tasted on the air the ancient power of blood to bind the living and the dead.

  He put a hand on my forearm. “The Taino believe the ancestors hold them to the right and proper way of living. There was never one thing to stop the Taino all these years from invading Expedition except so far as they held to the law.”

  “No, I suppose not. The Taino kingdom is so powerful, and Expedition Territory is tiny in comparison. But I must say, Kofi, I really think their greatest strength is their fire mages. If I’m found guilty, will the provisional Assembly allow the prince to take me away into Taino country? Will they hand me over to James Drake? Will they support me or sacrifice me?”

  The scars on his cheeks made him seem forbidding until he smiled. “They shall have to find yee guilty first. I tell yee, gal, I have heard yee scold men before, but to watch yee tear into that fire mage Drake made me skin turn cold.”

  “I know I shouldn’t have spoken like that. I’ll keep my mouth shut from now on.”

  He laughed.

  I leaned my head against Kofi’s shoulder, so broad and solid, but I wished it were Vai I was leaning against. The shock of Caonabo repudiating Bee and her departure with him on a journey sure to be miserable and unpleasant had torn away my shield of determination. All my ugliest fears surfaced like Leviathan breaching the waves.

  “Vai’s so accustomed to being the most powerful magister, to winning. What if my sire breaks him? What kind of man will he be? And will I still love him?”

  “Peradventure Vai shall not survive this. But I reckon I have never met a man with such a high opinion of he own consequence. In such a dark place, a man’s vanity and arrogance can be what save him.”

  I sniveled out something meant to be a chuckle. “If any man’s conceit can survive captivity by the Master of the Wild Hunt, it would be his.”

  “There. Yee have brought yee fear out into the light. I reckon yee have been fretting.”

  I sniffled, wiping my eyes. “Now Bee’s thrown away her future trying to save me.”

  A windblown branch tapped on one of the glass doors that led out to the courtyard.

  “Cat, she done no different a thing than yee did for her. Chance it shall even be for the best. The Taino nobles is a high and mighty people who look down on folk like us. Maybe she would fancy a life in their court, or maybe she would find she own self in a cage that squeeze like a trap. Vai told me one time that the day he was brought up from the village to Four Moons House and taken before the mansa, he reckoned he was the most fortunate lad alive to have such a chance. He came to find they did not want him but dared not turn him away. They treated him like the worst kind of mangy cur. So he decided to become better at being one of them than any of them was at it. Yee said to me one time that the worst thing for Vai shall be if he go back to the mage House and become a cold mage like to what he was when yee two first met. I see now what yee meant. ’Twas no good home for him at the mage House. So why is yee so sure the Taino court would be a good home for yee cousin?”

  “Do you think they could crush her?”

  He chuckled. “That gal? I reckon not. But that don’ mean she shall for a surety live a happy life there. Had she married a Taino man of the common run I reckon she should have as good a chance as any to have a good life, for the Taino live as well and justly as any folk do. But I’s not a man to choose a palace of gold and precious shells over a humble room if the first come with a knife in the back and a foot on me heart and the second come with a smile and a kiss. I don’ know what yee cousin wish for above all else. She may be glad later to have another choice.”

  When I thought about it, wondering what Bee would really want, I realized I wasn’t sure. If anyone had asked me a year ago if I hoped and dreamed a handsome, wealthy, and well-connected young man would fall in love with me at first sight, I would have laughed and said yes because it was the sort of thing a young woman was supposed to say yes to. But it wouldn’t have been true. Bee was the one who dreamed of a romantic story in which she figured as the principal heroine. I had wanted nothing more than to have a chance to follow in my father Daniel’s footsteps, to travel the length and breadth of Europa seeing new places and, if I was fortunate, have adventures as he had had. I would have wanted a romantic interlude… at some unspecified later date.

  Be
e had made her choice. She had chosen to be loyal to me.

  I released Kofi’s hand and smiled crookedly at him. “Thank you, Kofi.”

  Rory had fallen back asleep, so Luce took the first watch in a chair and I settled on a bed of blankets on the floor. I shut my eyes, but my mind kept pressing me back into the bitterly sweet memory of lying in Vai’s arms the one night we had shared. How he had kissed me! How was a gal meant to sleep if she could not stop thinking of his passionate caresses?

  The scratching at the window just would not stop. I sat up. Luce slept, one arm curled against her chest and the other flung out to one side. Kofi was leaning against the interior door, eyes closed, napping on his feet. I crawled over to the drapes that concealed the glass doors. I twitched aside the lower corner to peer out into the night-swamped courtyard.

  Shadows marked the glass in blotches and lines. Winged shapes flittered across the sky.

  A slender green finger was tapping on the glass. I recoiled. A branch had elongated until it reached the doors, as if trying to find a path inside. A bat perched on the swaying end, staring at me with obsidian eyes. I blinked, and it vanished.

  A man pressed against the door. He had Vai’s face and he wore a magnificent dash jacket printed with fishes spilling out of gourds.

  “We shall find a way in,” he said in a low, sweet voice. The scent of guava penetrated the glass separating us. I wanted to kiss him to taste the fruit, but I knew better. “Yee cannot escape us. We know yee killed her.”

  The latch turned but caught because it was locked. The key shuddered in a gust of wind.

  “You can’t come in,” I whispered.

  It was impossible to stare into those brown eyes and not be drawn closer; his lips tempted me; his hands reminded me of the kind of work they could do. But he was not Vai. He was an opia, the spirit of a dead man.

  “Open the door,” he whispered, “and yee shall have what yee so badly desire.”