Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

The question popped out unbidden. “Why do you think I know?”

Raising the lamp, he frowned as if genuinely puzzled. “Are you angry at me?”

I fisted my hands, suddenly furious at myself. Wouldn’t it be better to be honest about my anger instead of making all these petty retorts and always answering questions with questions?

The thought stunned me into muteness. Answering questions with questions?

He sighed, as if my silence was my answer. “I’ll get a hammock for you. It will be cooler to sleep up there, but I warn you, the mosquitoes will feast on you at dawn.” He went into the house and emerged with a bundle of netting, which he tossed to me. “There are loops at each end. String it from the hooks in the posts. Draw up the ladder. Salters can’t climb, and Taino princes are too proud to ask for a ladder to be lowered. Although I’m not.” He blew me a kiss as he left.

I strung up the netting. I had a difficult time finding a comfortable position because my sword kept getting caught against my body at awkward angles. Once settled, I stared at the sea as the breeze stirred my shift against my sticky body. My eyelids were sweating.

Footsteps paced nearby, wearing a circuit. A man sobbed, “Kill me, kill me before I rot,” but no one was listening. No one but me.

I wrapped my arms around myself, wishing I were not alone. Yet how could I wish Bee or Rory here on this terrible island? I thought of Drake and of Prince Caonabo. I did not think the prince was interested in seduction. I was pretty sure he had simply been curious about my cold steel and my foreign origins. Drake’s motives seemed simpler: He was a man who might die at any moment. He had risked his life to heal me, and evidently he was the kind of man who thought it fair to get something in exchange. I had my life.

I dozed restlessly, woken once by a resounding splash. I smelled smoke. A smear of light like the flames of a bonfire dusted the ridge. My elbow itched. An annoying buzz whined by my ear. A twisted wail of despair descended into heartbroken sobs. Shuddering, I closed my eyes.

The sway of the hammock lulled me. The night wind kissed my lips as I clutched the locket.

A thread of magic draws taut, a path down which I can feel the presence of a bright, proud, and rather arrogant soul whose light is balm to my lonely shadow. A figure remarkably like Andevai turns with a surprised exclamation, speaking in a tone that suggested I had deliberately encouraged this untenable situation. “Catherine? I’m looking for you! Where are you?”

Wasn’t I on Salt Island, wondering how I would save Bee and recover Rory? Had the locket’s touch made me think of Vai because the djeli’s magic bound us through the spirit world? Was I always going to have to answer questions with questions? Yet the first time the eru and I had spoken, hadn’t I asked her, “Isn’t it said the servants of the night court answer questions with questions??”

Drowsily I smiled. The eru was a servant of the Wild Hunt, and now so was I. Drake was wrong. I wasn’t just being annoying. At last I slept and, thankfully, I did not remember my dreams.

17

I woke as a rising light marked the dawn, my first in a new world. The curve of the sun’s light flashed as I untangled myself from the netting and stretched. The air was pleasant, not quite cool but not sweat-making either. The sea was utterly gorgeous, so deeply wrought a green-blue color that it reminded me of a vast pulsing jewel. A flock of large birds with ungainly necks and fanned tails wandered out from the trees, searching for breakfast along the verge. The bite mark on my arm was pink, bruised, and sore when I gingerly pressed on it. But it was healing. I murmured a prayer to Blessed Tanit, protector of women.

After climbing down, I ventured into the brush beyond the stream to relieve myself. Back in the house, I washed, straightened my pagne and bodice, and took an accounting of my worldly possessions: a sword, a locket, a stone, a wool jacket and undervest, boots, and the slaughtered skirts.

It was time to spy. Wrapped in shadow, I crept up to the biggest house and poured myself up the steps onto the porch as if I were the wind. The door was a curtain, roped aside. Inside, baskets hung from the ceiling. A sloped wooden chair was placed in the center back of the room, its back carved with an animal face. Another door, draped with a curtain, led into a second room whose interior I could not see. Since I guessed this to be Prince Caonabo’s exalted residence, I had no desire to penetrate its secrets.

The next two houses lay empty except for mouse droppings and chickens squawking as they wandered in and out. In the fourth I found Drake asleep in a hammock, wearing no shirt, his pale torso as smooth as that of a man who labors with pen instead of axe.

I crept into the next house only to find myself face to face with two Taino women, one young and one old enough to have a lined face and strands of silver in her black hair. Hale and strong, the older woman wore a sleeveless tent of a robe woven from white fabric that covered her to the ankles. Worst, she saw me right through my shadows. Her lips curled up.

I let the threads fall. “Salvete. I am Catherine Bell Barahal. My apologies. I got lost.”

Her half smile vanished and she surveyed me from top to toe as I bunched my hands into fists. I had forgotten Drake’s warning: Never speak to her unless she addresses you first.

She grabbed my wrist just as Prince Caonabo entered the house with his doomed young relative tagging cheerfully after him. Without so much as a word, she pushed up my torn sleeve and pressed her lips to the wound. This was the kiss of life. Heat coursed up my veins and spread through my flesh, even to the stirring in my loins. Male or female, what did it matter, really, when the body yearned? As she straightened, still holding my arm, a corner of her lips lifted with unexpected humor and perhaps even sensual interest. Prince Caonabo made a comment in Taino, and the two catch-fires smiled. I snatched my arm out of her grasp, my face burning.

teps paced nearby, wearing a circuit. A man sobbed, “Kill me, kill me before I rot,” but no one was listening. No one but me.

I wrapped my arms around myself, wishing I were not alone. Yet how could I wish Bee or Rory here on this terrible island? I thought of Drake and of Prince Caonabo. I did not think the prince was interested in seduction. I was pretty sure he had simply been curious about my cold steel and my foreign origins. Drake’s motives seemed simpler: He was a man who might die at any moment. He had risked his life to heal me, and evidently he was the kind of man who thought it fair to get something in exchange. I had my life.

I dozed restlessly, woken once by a resounding splash. I smelled smoke. A smear of light like the flames of a bonfire dusted the ridge. My elbow itched. An annoying buzz whined by my ear. A twisted wail of despair descended into heartbroken sobs. Shuddering, I closed my eyes.

The sway of the hammock lulled me. The night wind kissed my lips as I clutched the locket.

A thread of magic draws taut, a path down which I can feel the presence of a bright, proud, and rather arrogant soul whose light is balm to my lonely shadow. A figure remarkably like Andevai turns with a surprised exclamation, speaking in a tone that suggested I had deliberately encouraged this untenable situation. “Catherine? I’m looking for you! Where are you?”

Wasn’t I on Salt Island, wondering how I would save Bee and recover Rory? Had the locket’s touch made me think of Vai because the djeli’s magic bound us through the spirit world? Was I always going to have to answer questions with questions? Yet the first time the eru and I had spoken, hadn’t I asked her, “Isn’t it said the servants of the night court answer questions with questions??”

Drowsily I smiled. The eru was a servant of the Wild Hunt, and now so was I. Drake was wrong. I wasn’t just being annoying. At last I slept and, thankfully, I did not remember my dreams.

17