The chortles of the thieves faded. I pressed my right arm onto the stinging tip of a thorn. It pierced my flesh with an almost audible groan. My blood trickled down the bark. Beneath my hand the tree smeared to shadow as the trunk became a ladderlike stair leading up into darkness. I tucked up my skirts to keep them out of the way, and I climbed.
8
I climbed up the central pillar of the tree toward a smoky abyss studded with lights. Desperation gave me strength and speed. Perhaps the little creatures were at a disadvantage, them being so many and so small and having to coordinate a large limp weight, for I sensed I was gaining on them.
The canopy of leaves faded into smoke, just as it had in my dream. A sleeting wind cut my face, numbing my lips and then my fingers. With my next step, I kicked out over a gulf of air. Nothingness yawned around me as the tree dissolved. Falling, I flailed desperately.
My sandals caught the rim of a ledge. A bucketing motion beneath and around me made me sway as though I had landed on a moving object. Just before I tumbled off, my hand fastened over a metal door latch. I tried to open it, but it was locked.
“Hsst!” a thin voice whispered. “Quiet! Look through my eyes into those of my sibling inside.”
The latch bit me, two pinprick points of pain. Blood slicked the metal. Like a scraping file, its tongue rasped away the moisture.
I shut my eyes. Only then did I realize where I was. A coachman and his coach served the Master of the Wild Hunt. Gremlin spirits inhabited the latches of the coach’s doors, one facing in and one facing out. Four days ago, as time passed in the mortal world, my sire had thrown me out of this very coach. Again I pushed on the latch, but it did not budge.
Yet through the latch, linked by my blood, I saw into the interior of the coach.
With a hand open on Vai’s chest, the Master of the Wild Hunt pressed him against the opposite seat. Andevai’s eyes were open but he seemed paralyzed, both blind and deaf. The gold threads of his red-and-gold dash jacket shimmered under a weirdly glowing light that emanated from my sire. His blue-white mask of ice made my sire seem even more dreadful, for the mask hid his expression and the true color of his eyes.
For all I could tell, my sire had just flung me out a moment ago, as time flowed in the spirit world.
For the longest time—it seemed an eternity and yet maybe I took in only a single shocked breath—he kept himself propped at arm’s length, hand splayed open on Vai’s chest, while he examined Vai in the considering way an experienced cook examines produce to pick what is best out of the basket. He considered Vai’s dark eyes, kissable mouth, very short, trim beard, and shorn-short black hair. His scrutiny had such a disturbingly predatory focus that I opened my mouth to protest, thinking I could be heard through the door. A rough lick from the gremlin’s tongue silenced me. My lips went numb.
As if he had seen enough, my sire sat back. The mask of ice melted into the youthful face he had worn on the ballcourt the night he had taken Vai prisoner after the death of the cacica. His was the kind of face that drew the eye even if you could not warm to it. He had long straight black hair like the Taino, eyes with a slight fold like the Cathayans, a thin Celtic nose, and brown skin rather lighter than Vai’s deep brown Afric complexion. His golden eyes looked so like mine that anyone would know he and I were related.
Vai sucked in a breath. His gaze swept the confines of the coach, flickering as he noted my sire sitting opposite him. He paused to examine the grubby bundle of clothing and food I’d stolen on Salt Island. The shuttered doors and the rest of the interior had no ornamentation except loops to hold on to, a bracket for a lamp, and a filigree of gold-wire decoration around doors and joinings.
As Vai realized I was gone, his hand tightened on the hilt of his sword, which had been forged of cold steel by the secret mage craft known to Four Moons House. I could almost see his thoughts running. I was pretty sure that much of his exceptional power as a cold mage arose from his patience. He analyzed his situation from all angles before he made a decision, just as he spun illusions out of cold magic and worked them over and over until they were seamless.
Vai’s lips pressed into a flat line, and his gaze fell away as if he were looking elsewhere.
The locket I wore at my neck grew warm. Over a year ago a djeli had been paid to weave magic to chain our marriage so I could not escape the mansa’s command to bind the eldest Hassi Barahal daughter to Four Moons House. The djeli, a bard who was also a shaman, had anchored the magical chain in our bodies, so Vai had told me on the night we consummated the marriage. That night we had pledged in whispers things I dared not think of now because to be able to see but not touch or speak to him, to know he was in danger and cut off from me, made my spirit rage.
His faraway pulse caught in my heart. His mouth twitched.
He knew I lived. Maybe he even knew how close I was.
He glanced cautiously at my sire. The contrast between the two men’s clothing could not have been greater. My sire wore a jacket and trousers of unrelieved black, whereas Vai’s clothing was a beacon, meant to be noticed and admired. It was one of his best garments, sewn by a master tailor from a tightly woven silk so smooth it was sensual, cut longer than the current fashion but so well built that the length and trim emphasized its flattering fit.
With gaze lowered respectfully, as a younger man addresses an elder, he spoke polite words in an exceedingly polite voice that I was pretty sure disguised a rich vein of sarcasm.
“Where I come from, a man would call his wife’s father Father. As a courtesy, you understand. To acknowledge the relationship between them. Shall I address you as Father then?”
“She’s dead.”
Contempt flashed in Vai’s expression, his chin coming up to allow him to look down his nose at an inferior being. I had seen that look all too often in the first days of our marriage. It was odd to be glad he had it in him when I had disliked him for it before. “We both know she is not dead. I must suppose you will tell me what you did with her when you think it worth your while to reveal the information to me.”
“I threw her out the door. She’s of no more use to me.”
Vai’s gaze flickered but he had enough self-control not to glance at either of the doors. “Your own daughter? Able to cross between the mortal world and the spirit world at any time, of her own will and with a drop of her own blood? Of no more use to you? I don’t believe that, and neither do you.”
hrough the latch, linked by my blood, I saw into the interior of the coach.
With a hand open on Vai’s chest, the Master of the Wild Hunt pressed him against the opposite seat. Andevai’s eyes were open but he seemed paralyzed, both blind and deaf. The gold threads of his red-and-gold dash jacket shimmered under a weirdly glowing light that emanated from my sire. His blue-white mask of ice made my sire seem even more dreadful, for the mask hid his expression and the true color of his eyes.
For all I could tell, my sire had just flung me out a moment ago, as time flowed in the spirit world.
For the longest time—it seemed an eternity and yet maybe I took in only a single shocked breath—he kept himself propped at arm’s length, hand splayed open on Vai’s chest, while he examined Vai in the considering way an experienced cook examines produce to pick what is best out of the basket. He considered Vai’s dark eyes, kissable mouth, very short, trim beard, and shorn-short black hair. His scrutiny had such a disturbingly predatory focus that I opened my mouth to protest, thinking I could be heard through the door. A rough lick from the gremlin’s tongue silenced me. My lips went numb.