Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

“I can understand why my sire would breed children in the spirit world. Not all of the predators in the Wild Hunt are his children, but at least some are, and he can bind all of us whenever he wishes, as he did Rory. But why did he want Tara Bell?”

“Perhaps he is one of those men who delight in knowing they can take a person who does not want them.”

“I’m not sure we can call him a man. I don’t think he feels what we feel. He must have had some other reason. Think how useful I proved because I was able to cut a fence for him into Taino country.” I told him about the way my sire had enfolded me in his wings, the words he had whispered, and how I had thought at first that he had been speaking of Vai. “But now I think he was talking about himself. Mortal blood feeds the spirit courts and gives them the power to bind their servants to them. He’s bound to the courts, just as I’m bound to him. Just as you and your village are bound to Four Moons House. Why tell me that a prince among slaves is still a slave if he does not chafe at his chains?”

As he considered my words, I could not help but note what a decorative thinker he was, with his chiseled shoulders and those inventive fingers splayed along his chin. “So ‘the palace where those without blood cannot walk’ was the pit. Our ancestors whose spirits walk in the spirit world can’t cross into the palace—the pit—because they have no blood.”

o;The latch of the coach conceals two gremlin spirits, one inside and one outside. They can see and talk. When I was climbing up the tree in the spirit world, I saw through its eyes.”

“Ah, yes, I remember you talking about the latch.”

“Are you saying you don’t believe me about the latch?”

He kissed my forehead. “Love, why did you try to kill your sire? You would only have killed yourself.”

I brushed my fingers across his lips. “I was so angry and afraid that I forgot.” I swung out of bed and padded over to the table to dress. “Although now that I think of it, if you hadn’t stabbed him the first time and he hadn’t boasted that the injury would fall on his children, then you wouldn’t have known to stop me from trying to kill him.”

“That is convoluted logic even for you.” Sitting up, he shaped four globes of cold fire as easily as I might inhale. “Love, how did your mother get pregnant by the Master of the Wild Hunt?”

I got into my undergarments. “He threatened to kill Daniel, and the other survivors, unless she allowed him to impregnate her.”

He nodded gravely. “The women in my village suffered much the same. My grandmother was sent up to the mage House to work in the hall. One of the men fancied her. Village girls like her weren’t allowed to say no. He kept her as his mistress until he got her pregnant and discarded her.”

“Is that why you bloomed with cold magic? Because your grandsire was a magister?”

He smiled as at an old joke. “The man who sired my father on my grandmother was a clerk, not a mage. He was sent to Four Moons House as part of the retinue of a woman from another mage House when she married the mansa’s father. Who’s to say the magic came from his breeding? It might have bloomed from an unknown seed. It might have come from my grandmother.”

“The same place you got your looks? From your grandmother?”

“My mother did once say my father was the handsomest man she had ever seen. Of all his children, I resembled him the most.” He looked very appealing, sitting naked on the bedding. The light cast a sheen on his skin that made me want to rub my hands all over him all over again. The curve of his knee drew my eye to the line of his thigh. He had a way of looking at me that meant he knew I knew he knew I was admiring him, and that he was perfectly happy to be admired. He was like Bee in that way: That people enjoyed looking at him gave him satisfaction.

“You’re sitting there hoping to tempt me back into bed, aren’t you? But if we want to dry out your clothes, I have to light a fire.” I glanced at the skin nailed over the window. “It will be dark soon, so I won’t make you stay out for long.”

“How can you dry out my clothes? To go outside, I must have something to wear.”

“You can wear the clothes I brought for Rory. They’ve dried out—”

“Rory?” The courting Vai who had sat patiently through many evenings at the boardinghouse while I flirted with customers had never spoken quite this sharply to me.

“One of my sire’s other children. The saber-toothed cat. You met him in the spirit world, at the hearth of the djelimuso Lucia Kante.”

He lifted his chin, gone a little prickly as if embarrassed he had revealed a spark of jealousy. “I remember the cats. The male is your half brother?”

“Yes. My sire can change form as he wishes.”

“I can guess the details.”

“I can understand why my sire would breed children in the spirit world. Not all of the predators in the Wild Hunt are his children, but at least some are, and he can bind all of us whenever he wishes, as he did Rory. But why did he want Tara Bell?”

“Perhaps he is one of those men who delight in knowing they can take a person who does not want them.”

“I’m not sure we can call him a man. I don’t think he feels what we feel. He must have had some other reason. Think how useful I proved because I was able to cut a fence for him into Taino country.” I told him about the way my sire had enfolded me in his wings, the words he had whispered, and how I had thought at first that he had been speaking of Vai. “But now I think he was talking about himself. Mortal blood feeds the spirit courts and gives them the power to bind their servants to them. He’s bound to the courts, just as I’m bound to him. Just as you and your village are bound to Four Moons House. Why tell me that a prince among slaves is still a slave if he does not chafe at his chains?”

As he considered my words, I could not help but note what a decorative thinker he was, with his chiseled shoulders and those inventive fingers splayed along his chin. “So ‘the palace where those without blood cannot walk’ was the pit. Our ancestors whose spirits walk in the spirit world can’t cross into the palace—the pit—because they have no blood.”

“Yes. That’s why the cacica couldn’t cross and I had to leave her hanging…” I trailed off as I realized I had positioned the skull with a full view of the bed.

Vai followed the line of my gaze. “Catherine, why is there a skull on the table?”