by Kate Elliott
Lord Marius whistled under his breath. “Ripe Venus! No wonder your courtship failed!”
It was all I could do not to burst out laughing at the way her erstwhile suitor’s hands crushed into fists and his face tensed with anger at her plain speaking. I was sure Bee felt my shaking, for she swept an axe-blow glance in my direction to warn me to keep my peace.
“How was it you phrased it, Legate?” She tapped a finger against her perfect chin as she glanced at the ceiling for inspiration. “What awkward poetic phrases did you use to describe my—”
“You dare not mock me in this impertinent way.”
“I am mocking you, Legate. You considered me beneath you, and you meant that in so many different ways. But I am not the woman you wish me to be. I never was.”
She dismissed Amadou Barry with a proud lift of her chin and settled her implacable gaze on the mansa of Four Moons House. He was staring at her with an expression of outright astonishment, but I could see the beginnings of a condescending smile pull at his lips. The clock ticked over and rang six bells. No one moved until the last echo of the sixth bell died away.
“You may think me amusing, Mansa,” she said, “for I must suppose you are now thinking I am a fiery little lass ripe for plucking by a strong man in his prime. But I do not find you amusing, nor do you awe me, you and your cold magic. You would have murdered my dearest cousin just for the sake of getting hold of my dreams.”
“I do what I must,” he said, with a frown at her rebuke. “You do not understand the consequences.”
“I do not understand the consequences? My dearest cousin is the one who would have died, had your command been carried out. I would have been forced to marry a man against my will, and been cast into your House as a prisoner. You couldn’t have protected me from the Wild Hunt regardless. I would have been dismembered and my head thrown in a well. So don’t tell me that I am the one who does not understand the consequences.”
Rory had moved halfway up the stairs, while I stood on the first step. Bee unlaced the basket and pulled out the skull. There was a struggling silence, broken at last by Lord Marius.
“Whose skull is that?”
“This?” she asked with a flutter of eyelashes. “This is the skull of my mother-in-law.”
“Did you smite her dead with a scolding lecture?” the soldier asked with a laugh.
“Married!” Amadou Barry’s face was cut with a look of sheer jealous rage. He took a step toward her, but Lord Marius fastened a hand on his arm, halting him. “Who married you?”
Bee ignored him. “I did not smite her. I rather liked her, and I believe she rather liked me, although we did not have the leisure to come to know each other well before the unpleasant incident in which she died. I show this to you, Mansa, to let you know that legally you have no grounds to force me to your will. I am a nitaino—a noble woman of independent means—in the Taino kingdom. No court and not even my family can use the threat of legal possession over me now. I have standing under Taino law.”
“How did your mother-in-law die?” I asked.
“Why, thank you for asking, Cat.” She swept them with a combative gaze. “The Wild Hunt killed her on Hallows’ Night. They dismembered her and threw her head in a well.”
“Bright Jupiter!” muttered Amadou Barry.
When she pressed a hand to her delicate throat, they all flinched.
“Cold mages are themselves at risk of being hunted down on Hallows’ Night. I understand it is the reason mage Houses are reluctant to rise to positions of political power in the world. Power draws the Hunt as scent draws hounds.”
Amadou Barry and Lord Marius gave each other startled looks. They had clearly never known there might be a hidden reason the mage Houses did not set themselves up as princes and emperors in their own right.
The mansa had not gained control of Four Moons House by being impulsive, thoughtless, crude, or impatient, but even his temper had its limits. “These secrets are not yours to share.”
“Who is to stop me from sharing them?” exclaimed Bee. “Will you kill me right now with your magic? Crush me with cold? Shatter me like iron?”
Ice crackled across the tabletop. Bee smiled so gloatingly that had that smile been turned on me, I would have slapped her; it had happened, on one of the rare occasions when we fought.
“I would have you stop and consider one thing before you act, Mansa,” she said.
“What we thought was a log has revealed itself as a crocodile,” remarked Bakary.
“I expect you mean to tell us, Maestressa, for you have quite the storyteller’s gift,” said Lord Marius appreciatively.
“My thanks,” she said with a pretty courtesy. “Queen Anacaona died because the Wild Hunt must take blood on Hallows’ Night. Because I was hidden from the Wild Hunt, Queen Anacaona was taken in my place. Isn’t that a thing you would like to know how to do, Magister?”
“Die in your place?” said the mansa.
Bee laughed with genuine amusement at his jest. “Would you willingly die in my place, to spare me?”
His smile flashed. Its easy charm shocked me. One could never look at the mansa and see him as anything except a man of exceptional status and self-confidence, because he lived at the pinnacle of rank and wealth. I had not known the man had a sense of humor, or was able to laugh at himself. The obvious had blinded me: All along Vai had modeled his arrogant behavior on the mansa’s, because Vai had been trying to be like the man who commanded his life.
“You intend to trade the secret of how you hid from the Wild Hunt in exchange for your freedom,” said the mansa. “How like a Phoenician!”
“I have not relinquished my claim to her!” cried the legate.
The mansa looked Amadou Barry up and down in a way that reminded me of Vai at his most obnoxiously cutting. “Legate, I mean no offense, but to offer to make a woman your mistress is not a claim. I will offer her a legal standing within Four Moons House while you are merely demanding she gratify your sexual desire for her.”
“I will marry her! She belongs to me!”
“I do not belong to you, Amadou!” cried Bee so indignantly that a suspicion flowered that she still retained a partiality toward the man. “Perhaps I do not want to marry any man. Perhaps I no longer see marriage as a contract that can benefit me. Look at my poor dear cousin, chained to a man against her will. Is this all I am to be allowed to hope for? I have decided it is not.”
“Yes, quite magnificent,” Lord Marius said with a shade too much sarcasm for my liking. “You can’t marry her, Amadou. The day after tomorrow you are to marry the prince of Tarrant’s daughter. I shall have to take charge. You are all dazzled by her fabled beauty, as the Hellenes of old squabbled over a woman and all for her cherry lips and fulsome bosom—”
“In fact,” I corrected, “Helen was the heiress to Sparta, a splendidly rich kingdom. They were fighting over her inheritance, not her beauty.”
“—but I am not willing to lose the war we are fated to fight because of a squabble over a woman. If we do not use her gift of dreaming, then General Camjiata will. You all know I have no interest in her comely person, so I will take her into my custody until we have sorted out how to best make use of her dreaming to defeat Camjiata.”
“Very well, Lord Marius, I surrender most humbly and gratefully, knowing I am to be well kept by such notable personages as yourselves,” she said, wielding the blade of sarcasm. “I must say, at least General Camjiata pretended to give me a choice. There is something about the illusion that makes one like a man better for the sake of his wishing to be polite. Yet what can a poor young female do in circumstances such as mine? I will languish in the cage of your making and never learn those things I dream of learning. Meanwhile, naturally, you will find my lips are sealed and my secrets untold. The mansa will never learn how I hid from the Wild Hunt in a way cold mages might also protect themselves.”
Lord Marius ran a hand over the lime-whitened spikes of his short hair. “Let
me speak clearly. If you try to escape and refuse to cooperate, we will have to kill you rather than risk your falling back into the hands of Camjiata. What baffles me is why the general let you go. He used the dreams of his wife to remain a step ahead of us in his first war. Any good strategist would keep you close and use your dreams to benefit his campaign.”
“What makes you think he let us go?” I replied. “We escaped him, too. We do not mean to be owned or manipulated by any man. Not him, and not any of you.”
The mansa took hold of my chin. His stare was a command demanding I give up my secrets. I gazed back with all the mulish determination I possessed. He intimidated me. While Vai had edges made of insecurity and youthful pride, the mansa had the surety of a man who has never doubted his worth, his high station, or his honor.
“Maybe it is not to be wondered at that the boy believes himself in love with you. You defied me, and lived to speak of it. He has too much pride. He resented the natural dislike the other boys felt for him, so he refused to acknowledge their higher station. When his magic bloomed to its fullness, he forced them to their knees, just to let them know he could do it. But he never defied me. Never. Not until you did.”
“That’s very gratifying, Your Excellency.”
“Don’t mock me, Catherine. Where is Andevai?”
“He is in the spirit world. I need only look into the mirror upstairs to find him.”
“Can it be done, Bakary?” the mansa asked. “She is not a djlelimuso, a woman of craft and words who can bind the threads of power.”
Bakary rubbed his gray beard. “I can see into the spirit world but cannot cross, while you can do neither, Your Excellency. I was taught that only the dead cross into the spirit world.” He glanced at Rory as he spoke the words. “Her flesh is living flesh, like ours, yet she has crossed.”
Did they not know that the hunters of Vai’s village could walk into the spirit world at the cross-quarter days in order to hunt? I kept silence.
The mansa released my chin. “Very well. Show me.”
I took the skull and tucked it into the basket. We climbed the stairs. A year and a half ago, I had descended them from the second floor while Andevai had ascended from the entryway. It was strange to return to the place where he and I had first looked on each other, face-to-face. Then, I had wanted nothing more than for him to leave us all alone. Now, I wanted nothing more than to find him.
I dragged the cover off the mirror.
Illuminated by the dregs of fading daylight and a single sphere of cold fire, the mirror reflected the seven people gathered on the landing. I had never realized how my hair writhed as if in a wind blowing off the spirit world. Did my eyes really gleam in that unexpected fashion, like polished amber? A sleek saber-toothed cat watched, waiting for my signal. No whisper of spirit-world magic tangled through Bee, but there was a smoky gleam in her eyes and on her forehead, as if a third eye was about to sprout there.
Lord Marius examined the mirror with the attention of a man trained to strike at the opportune moment. He looked exactly as he seemed. Amadou Barry stared at Beatrice. His visage had an avaricious glint that made him seem less handsome and more selfish.
The mansa’s cold magic chased around him like the currents of many streams. One of those currents lashed out into the silvery depths of the mirror as the air around us fell suddenly colder. He was pulling in energy from the other side with which to weave here, although I had no idea how he was doing it.
Of us all, Bakary’s was the most solid presence in the mirror: an old man with silver-black hair and a calm gaze.
The glittering chain with which another djeli had bound me to Andevai flowed into the mirror. I brushed my fingers across its gleam. Magic thrummed like a pulse anchored to Vai’s heart.
“Catherine? Where are you?” Vai whispered, as if he felt my attention. “Beware, love. Think with your mind, not your body.”
The tremor of his beloved voice so shocked me that I yanked on the chain.
It moved. Or I moved. Or the world moved.
Past the surface of the mirror, my gaze spanned the depths as if I were an eagle gliding above and watching the land roll past beneath. Mountains and valleys skimmed by below. Outside a walled town, peaceful eru worked and laughed and gossiped in the same manner as ordinary people did in the mortal world, only the eru were creatures of the spirit world with wings, third eyes in the center of their foreheads, and magic more powerful than that of any cold mage. The fields they farmed were sown in spirals. The beasts they shepherded were antelopes whose triple horns were studded by gemstones and glazed as with silver. A bloated beast like a slothfully blinking airship drifted past above the black line of a road and the warded triangle of a watering hole. A clan of tawny saber-toothed cats had gathered to nose at the pool, lick at a pillar of salt, and lounge in the shade of a tree.
Light flashed on the horizon. Where the land ended in a long straight shoreline, it met not water but the ashy ocean that we had traversed in the belly of a dragon, the Great Smoke. A tide of dark mist washed in, spilling over the land like the sweep of a broom. Beneath the smoke the land vanished. Only the road and warded ground remained unmoved and unchanged. My rope of magic held firm, but when the tide receded back into the smoky churn of the depths, the shoreline had changed.
The once-straight shoreline was now cut by fingerlike bays, as if the Great Smoke had taken bites out of the spirit land. The bloated air beast had vanished, although a large animal lumbered over a field of thorns, crushing all under its hooves. Eru rose in a cloud from the warded walls of their town, but they did not see me. I thought that maybe I wasn’t even really there, that the chain acted like a hunter’s scent to lead me toward my prey. Was this chain how Vai could always find me?
A white cliff towered above a lake riddled with icebergs. At first I thought it was an ice shelf, but as I swooped closer I realized it was a fortress built of crystal.
I slammed right into its wall.
The impact jolted me out of the vision. I found myself back on the first-floor landing with my right arm halfway into the mirror as if plunged up to the elbow in water, and the rest of me standing in front of the mirror blinking back tears. The heat of summer baked like sun on the arm that was thrust into the spirit world, while the rest of my body shivered in the cold house.
Bakary spoke behind me. “Don’t touch her, Your Excellency.”
“If Lord Marius stabs her with his sword, will she die?” asked the mansa.
Never let it be said I could not throw caution to the winds and just take the leap.
“Rory, take off your clothes. Bee, the mirror is water. You can cross if you will come.”
“Of course I will!” cried Bee.
I cut my skin. Blood streamed from the gloomy spring chill of the mortal world into the hot blaze of the spirit world. When my sword’s tip grazed the surface, the mirror peeled back like an eye opening. Was this part of the power I had as a spiritwalker? With my blood to seed it, could cold steel open a gate through which others could cross?
Steel flared at my back, felt on my tongue as the gritty remains of a blacksmith’s forge. Lord Marius had drawn his sword.
“She can’t be allowed to escape!” cried Amadou Barry.
“Follow me!” I cried.
I fell through, pouring like blood through the gash.
17
My knees thumped onto stony ground. Black night enveloped me, unrelieved by moon or stars. As I lifted my sword arm defensively, fire waxed the blade as a shimmering steel gleam.
“Ah! Something stung me!”
“Bee?”
I held the sword aloft, searching for her in the aura of the blade’s light. Just in front of me a wall rose into the darkness, its face too smooth and high to climb. The surrounding land was covered with tall grass as far as the light from my sword reached. I did not see Bee, but I heard a whine like insects swarming.
“Bee!” I called.
Grass crackled. A huge cat wit
h wicked curving canines and eyes as golden as my own sprang up to me. He nudged me with his head, then licked my forearm where a trickle of blood oozed along my skin. The rough trail of his tongue startled me into a laugh.
“Cat?” Bee’s voice rose out of the darkness. I still could not see her, but she sounded panicked. “Everything hates me here. This wasn’t a good idea! Ouch!”
“Where are you?” I cried.
Rory loped into the darkness. The whining spiked into a shrill buzzing. The big cat returned out of the gloom with Bee pressed to his side. She was waving an arm frantically in the air. I made a few cuts of my sword around her. The buzzing vanished as a cloud of tiny creatures scattered.
She dumped the packs at my feet. “I hope you’re happy, Cat. I didn’t think I would really cross through. I only meant to pretend to do so, because I was afraid you would refuse to go if you thought I was in danger.”
“You were in danger!”
“At least there I could have thrown myself into Amadou Barry’s arms if I had no other choice. Here I’m going to get eaten, and you’re going to have to carry all this alone.”
The cat sniffed at Bee, then staggered sideways in a showy manner as if her smell revolted him.
“Stop that!” She smacked him on the nose. “You may find your puerile jokes amusing, Rory, but I don’t!”
A cry like that of a rabbit being disemboweled shrieked out of the darkness. Bee leaped backward, only to slam into the wall. Rory pounced in front of her as his tail lashed. Wings fluttered in the grass. The scrape of a sword being drawn shuddered the air, followed by a leaden thump, a squawk of anger, and a battering like a body being beaten to death.
A figure lumbered out of the darkness.
“Bright Jupiter! What is this cursed Tartarus? Where are we?”
Amadou Barry thrashed out of the grass and into the circle of light made by my sword’s gleam. He had his military hat in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. The blade was coated with a viscous fluid to which white feathers clung.