Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

“Of course not! Everyone says it’s much too dangerous!”

“I’ve staggered drunk through the streets without being molested and felt ever so much safer than I did in Adurnam! Anyhow, I think it’s possible Vai is hiding in troll town. Tomorrow morning I’ll go to the law offices. I want anyone watching me to see I’m not living under the general’s protection. I could get a room there, too. Could you live with me there?”

Her eyes flared, then tightened as she looked away. “No. I am required to begin learning Taino and also to take lessons in the complicated court etiquette I will be marrying into.”

“Then I stay with you here. If he will not believe me, then he is not worth suffering over.”

She embraced me, staring into my eyes as if she could pierce the veils that masked me. “Cat, when Hallows’ Night comes, are you going to try to sacrifice yourself in order to save me?”

“What makes you think I could?” I whispered.

“Because I won’t allow it! I read Uncle Daniel’s journals. If you have to answer questions with questions, then when you were in the spirit world without me, you must have been forced to become a servant of the night court. You must promise me you won’t sacrifice yourself. Promise me!”

o;Nothing?” Her eyebrows arched.

“He comes from a village where women can be taken against their will by the mages. He refuses to act that way himself. You have no idea how people fawn over that man. I had no idea he could be so charming and thoughtful.”

“Your husband? The cold mage? Thoughtful? Charming??”

“What other husband do I have?”

“Kena’ani women are according to ancient custom able to acquire two husbands if it is for the good of the family trade. Maybe you found a charming, thoughtful one to go with the obnoxious, self-important one, like a matched set of opposites.”

I trapped her with a smirk. “Like Prince Caonabo and his brother?”

“I shall bury the blade in your skull, just above your right eye.”

“That’s what I love about you. Your precision.” I turned the page, and my heart hammered as if caught in a carpentry yard among busy laborers.

Bee leaned to look. “That’s from one of my dreams. Two trolls walking along. I like how their crests are each raised to a different height, as if one is indifferent and the other amused. See here there are two boots. So there is a man walking with them, only their bodies obscure his. I imagine that the man is the one talking, only we can’t see his face. Trolls are so interesting. They speak perfectly well, but their own language is all whistles and clicks. There is a course at the university here where people try to learn it, but I heard no person can use it properly.”

My mouth parted, as if to receive a kiss. “It’s Vai, with the Jovesday trolls. Kofi said Vai would have to leave Expedition.”

“Who is Kofi?”

I placed my finger on a small portrait of a young man with a mop of locks and jagged scars on his cheeks, pushing a cart heaped with baskets of fruit. “This is Kofi. Vai’s friend.”

“The arrogant cold mage has friends?”

I pinched her arm.

“Ouch! I meant, friends who are common laborers.”

“There’s a great deal the general doesn’t know about Vai. Kofi is going to marry Vai’s sister. Strange to think you’re dreaming about Vai.” I ran a finger across an arch decorated with four phases of the moon, then paused at a sketch of a wooden bench with a slatted back sitting in front of a brick wall adorned with falls of the flowering vine I had seen in Tanit’s bower. “What is this?”

“I don’t know. I just sketch what I dream.”

“The Jovesday trolls,” I murmured. “Could you lie down at night with a specific thing in mind to dream about?”

“I’ve tried. I can’t. I am not dreaming my own dreams. I am walking through the dreams of someone who is already dreaming.”

“A dragon.”

“Yet I still haven’t seen a single plump deer, much less one running exceedingly slowly.”

My smile at her jest twisted into a considering frown. “Keer must know where Chartji’s aunt lives. Chartji’s aunt knows Kofi. There’s the link. I have a plan. Well, as long as Keer doesn’t eat me for not coming back when I said I would. We have to go to the law offices, in the harbor district.”

“There’s a statement to send stark fear through my bones.”