Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

“I have to go there,” I said, my mind churning with visions of Vai all beaten and bloody and of Bee’s head floating in a dark well. If Vai was hurt, I had to rescue him. If I knew where Drake was hiding, I could offer him upon Hallows’ Night. I would become a killer, like my sire. So be it.

Uncle Joe said, “Yee stay here, Cat. Yee’s had too much to drink.”

“I really have to go.” I drained another slug of rum for courage and went to the gate. They could not stop me as my admirer and his friend followed me out.

23

I gripped my pagne in a fist and hauled the cloth to my knees so I could better stride. “What is your name again?”

My nice admirer had a merry grin and that was something on a cheerless night with anger and fear stalking through the streets. “Bala. This is Gaius.”

Kerchiefed Gaius had a frown like a barge.

“I’m perfectly harmless,” I said, daring Gaius with my gaze to say otherwise.

Gaius snorted. “If yee say so, Sweet Cat. Yee have that man strung on a leash, or else he have yee strung likewise, I’s not sure which.”

“I do not! I am a perfectly respectable gal. It is not my fault I was married against my will.”

“That is one rumor we have heard,” said Bala. “Hearing it for true lend a new smell to the rose, don’ it?” he added, to his friend.

“If yee call that a rose,” Gaius muttered.

“I shouldn’t have said anything.” My fingers tightened on Bala’s arm. He was a bigger man than I had thought, a full head taller than me and with shoulders that might bear the world on their breadth. His friend with the Roman name and a mass of hair in locks under the kerchief was almost as tall but stockier. For an instant, I wondered if I was safe with them, but then I reflected that should they trouble me, they would have to answer to Aunty Djeneba, Uncle Joe, and the rest of the neighborhood. “Sometimes people say I talk too much.”

Gaius made a noise like a choked-off laugh.

Bala said, “Yee have a lovely voice, Sweet Cat. Now, gal, shall we meet wardens in the street, yee shall stand back and let us take care of them.”

I removed my hand from his arm. “I can take care of myself in a fight. Do you doubt me?”

“There is the tongue,” said Gaius to Bala. “So I told yee.”

“We shall walk quickly and keep silent,” said Bala with the smile of a man seeking to keep the peace.

I fumed as a thousand wickedly cutting barbs of splendid insults came and went unspoken on my tongue. The Speckled Iguana lay about fifteen blocks away, on the other side of the Passaporte market, whose stalls and grounds lay empty but for the winking eyes of rats bold in the darkness and the leavings of crushed shells that had not been swept up. Clouds veiled the sky, making the intermittent noise of struggle seem both far and close, hard to gauge.

As we skirted the edge of the market, Gaius spoke in a low voice. “Yee meant it, did yee not, Sweet Cat? That yee would fight. Is it true, that story about yee and the shark?”

“Why would I have told it otherwise? Do you think I am a liar??”

Perhaps my voice rose sharply. Bala touched my arm. “I see many a shadow at guard.”

Belatedly it occurred to me that the wardens might have staked out the Speckled Iguana, if they knew it for a haunt of radicals and troublemakers. Instead, the local men had staked out their ground, flanking the area with clusters of men bearing muskets, pistols, and machetes, the favored blade of the countryside. Lamps burned on the porch and in the windows of the inn, by which I knew Vai was either not there, or was dead.

I ran up onto the porch, colliding with an older man who was no taller than me but twice as wide. A patch covered his right eye, and a horrendous starburst wound had turned his right cheek into a pitted and scoured puckering of ropy white scar tissue. He yanked me to a halt.

“I’ll be smited by Bright Reshef if you aren’t the daughter of Lieutenant Tara Bell. For you look very like her, but for the hair and the color of your eyes.”

“Ja, maku,” said Bala, who with Gaius loomed behind me. “What is with the hand on the gal?”

“Is the maku bothering yee, Cat?” asked Gaius.

I stared at my interlocutor. My mind seemed caught in a roof-shattering gale. He saw the stamp of my mother’s face in my own. I wanted to demand of him how he knew her, but as I tried to focus the splintering spray of my thoughts, I hung on to one concept: Tell no one. Keep silence.

“Drake is here,” he said, as if he had gleaned my mind with a rake and pulled forth a nugget. “He’s in the back room with the wounded. He has been wondering where you fetched up.” He looked over my companions, unimpressed by their stature. “I see you found protectors.”

“Let me go.”