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.”
“She accomplished what I commanded her to do. She cut a gate through the spirit fence the creatures of this part of your world have erected to stop my Hunt from entering these lands. Now I have even more fields in which to hunt.”
“Let us say that is true. If you truly had no more use for her, you would have no reason to take me. I heard you tell her I was the leash you would use to keep her tied to you. So you do wish to keep her bound to you. If you’d stop pretending otherwise, we might manage a productive conversation.”
“I find your arrogance intriguing. I can do what I want to you, and you know it. Yet you speak this way to me.”
“I think you cannot kill me. Not until next Hallows’ Night. You might be better asking yourself, how can we be allies?”
My sire laughed. “You are entirely delightful. More arrogant than the male who was with Tara Bell, but just as talkative and defiant. The difference is that he had never touched Tara Bell while you have had sex with my daughter. You realize, of course, I will have a claim on any children you sire on her.”
Blessed Tanit! I hadn’t thought of that!
Judging by Vai’s suddenly pinched expression, he hadn’t either.
We knew the mansa of Four Moons had a claim on any children we might have until we could find a way to release ourselves from clientage. To condemn our children to the chains my sire had already shackled me with was unthinkable. Yet to gauge by the narrowing of his eyes and the tension in his jaw, the idea of never having children was to Vai unendurable.
“Ah, now I have trapped you,” said my sire with a pleased smile. “That wasn’t nearly as difficult as I feared it might be.”
Horribly, as they had in my dream, his body and face melted, flowing into another face and another body. He became a creature who looked exactly like me, with my thick black hair pulled into a braid. I saw Vai’s gaze drawn as by a spell down the length of the braid to the span of her hips. The creature’s lips were slightly parted as if she was thinking of eating or speaking, and I couldn’t be sure which, but either way she looked as if she was inviting a kiss. She was dressed exactly as I had been when in the coach with him, in a faded length of cloth wrapped to make a skirt and in a damp lawn blouse so thin and threadbare where it clung to the curve of her breasts that the shadow of her nipples showed through the cotton. Was that how I had looked when I had stepped down out of the coach on the ballcourt on Hallows’ Night?
Vai inhaled sharply.
Desperately, I tried to open the door, but the numbness in my lips had infested my whole body. All I could do was watch through gremlin eyes.
The creature who looked like me leaned closer to Vai. The neck of her blouse gapped open to reveal no bodice beneath, nothing but bare skin. Vai pressed back against the seat.
Her hands wandered up the front of his dash jacket.
“Sire a child on me,” the creature said in a voice like mine but nothing like mine, because its whisper was cruelly seductive, “and I’ll leave any children you sire on her alone.”
Vai spoke in a hoarse murmur. “You can’t bear children. You’re a man.”