Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

“I should think they are rare everywhere, given their likelihood of an untimely demise. If that’s the only reason you are marrying, you might as well have been handed off to Four Moons House to be their prisoner. What obligations will the Taino place on you?”

She let out a gusty sigh. “Would you please listen for once? They have traditions here about the lore of walking the path of dreams. Once I am married, I will be allowed to learn.”

“While you’re imprisoned in some hot, dusty palace. Couldn’t you have stayed with Brennan and Kehinde?”

“I would have loved to do so, with their fine revolutionary notions and legendary fistfights and buckets of whiskey and beautifully written pamphlets filled with radical sentiments. But that doesn’t solve my other problem, does it? Perhaps you have a brilliant plan to stop the Wild Hunt from ripping off my head!”

I jumped up, the chair tipping over to clatter to the floor behind me. “Yes! I do!”

Drake stepped in off the balcony. The door opened and the Amazon captain appeared, sword drawn. The general gestured, and she retreated, closing the door.

“I would be glad to hear your plan,” he said, walking over to place the plate in front of Bee.

I dug my nails into my palms, but pain wasn’t enough to loosen my tongue. And it was a lie. I couldn’t protect her. Only my sire could, and then only for as long as it suited him to do so.

Bee looked at me and blinked twice as a signal. “She’s just exaggerating in her usual way.”

“Ah, I understand now.” He walked back to the sideboard, where he heaped bacon, potatoes, and eggs on a plate. “Helene told me never to ask questions of Tara Bell’s child because she dreamed the child was chained by some manner of magical binding.”

The chains that bound me to my husband? Or the ones that bound me to my sire? He didn’t know everything! I righted the chair and sat with hands clasped in my lap as the general returned to the table with a plate for himself. Drake ventured to the end of the table farthest from me.

“Anyway, Cat,” said Bee, barreling on like a fully laden rail car rolling downhill with no brakes, “you’re the one who will never be free of Four Moons House because you are married to one of its cold mages.”

“I know what I know,” I muttered.

“I can’t argue with that mulish truism! Anyway, the Taino won’t hold me prisoner. The general needs me for the war.” She went charmingly pink, like a rose blooming. “The prince is to travel with us. You see, the heir to the cacique’s duho, the king’s seat of power, is chosen from the cacique’s sister’s sons. This prince was never considered a favorite because there was a brother better suited for the task. But now he seems likely to inherit so it is felt he must gain worldly experience to prove his fitness and worth.”

“What changed to make him worthy?”

She glanced toward the general, and then at Drake. “For one thing, he’s a fire mage.”

I laughed a little hysterically.

Drake raised a cup of tea to his lips, watching me over the rim. The general ate methodically with only a lift of the eyes to show he had noticed my untimely levity.

Bee scooped up an egg in her spoon and levered the spoon backwards, aiming its trajectory at me. “Tell me why you’re laughing, or you’ll get egg all over your face.”

I needed a drink to settle my nerves. I got up and went over to the sideboard. The bottle had sherry in it. I jiggered out the cork, poured the deep red liquid to the brim of the last teacup, and gulped it down in one go. Turning, I saw Drake frown. I stuffed the cork back into the bottle.

“Cat!” said Bee. “It’s still morning!”

The general finished his potatoes.

The liquor’s heat rushed through me, and subsided. “I met Prince Caonabo.” She gasped. “He seemed…pleasant. He was certainly inquisitive. And he’s good-looking, if not nearly as pretty as Legate Amadou Barry. No hardship there.” I wiped my brow, for it was already getting warm. “So, General, what exactly is it you want from me?”

He patted his lips with a linen cloth. “That depends on what you want, Cat. Although your choices are constrained.”

I wanted to be released from my sire’s rule, but I couldn’t say that. I wanted a chance to walk beside a man I was finally getting to know, but I refused to speak of that. Maybe the sherry had shortened my temper. Really, I had nothing left to lose except Bee’s life.

“What I want to know is why I should trust you when you placed my mother under sentence of death and would have killed her if she hadn’t escaped.”

“Why, Cat,” he said, and I could have sworn he was taken aback, “the matter is entirely different. She was a sworn lieutenant in my Amazon Corps and thus subject to the rules and regulations of that corps.”

“Including imprisonment and execution should she become pregnant?”

“The conditions and regulations of service were public knowledge. No woman took the oath of enlistment without fully understanding what was expected of her and where her responsibilities and loyalties lay. Those who serve in my army serve freely, but they are bound once they join to follow the code of conduct. As am I, and any person enlisting. For the Amazon Corps, that code included celibacy. Any woman who had served out her period of enlistment might apply for a discharge if she wished to have children, marry, or make some other change in life. A legal code is worthless if those who enforce it treat persons differently according to consequence, status, kinship, or wealth. All must be equal before the law, or the law is worth nothing.”

“That’s what Daniel Hassi Barahal wrote.”