Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

I did not want to drown in my anger, so I went over and knelt beside Abby. “I’m so sorry,” I said to her brother.

“I know yee,” she said with that horribly puzzled smile.

She began to comb through the tangles of my hair with her fingers. I did not want to interrupt something that comforted her, so I settled cross-legged in front of her. Knife man brought over a comb, and Abby worked through my hair, never yanking although the snarls seemed intractable. The woman who had laughed offered me a gourd bottle, and I swallowed a juice that made my eyes water and my mouth sting. Or maybe I was just tired and shaken. With Abby still combing my hair, my eyes fluttered and shut.

I woke leaning against the side of the basket, my hair a smooth curtain falling over my shoulders to my hips. Abby stood at the prow of the basket with her brother, his arm around her, watching phosphorus dance its glamour on the waves. Staring into their future, which must have seemed very dark. Wasn’t it sometimes better to be dead?

I shut my eyes rather than look.

I woke as the air changed, and we bucked like a skittish horse. The clut-clut-clut slowed to a lazy clunk-cluunk-cluuunk. I rose. We drifted over land, a hulking beast of ridges grown with a breathing exhalation of forest. I remembered Bee’s sketches of airships. What had seemed funny then, when she had drawn hapless passengers falling from the basket to deaths far below, seemed indecent now. Easy to joke about a thing you have no experience of and will never suffer.

Off to our right, firelight dappled a hollow.

Knife man paid out the ladder, and the woman who had laughed went over with a grace and strength I admired. I grasped Abby’s hand just before she went over, and she smiled at me, and her brother said, “Thank yee, maku,” in a way that made me glad she had been saved, even what was left of her. Even in the face of the deaths of others, two of which I had caused. Even so.

Over they went, climbing away into a life hidden from me. Below, on the ground, a rushlight shivered into life. After some time, it wavered away and vanished. The woman who had laughed swung a leg back over and hopped in. We began to move as knife man hauled the ladder back up.

A shape dropped beside me, startling me so badly I cried out. The fourth crewman was a petite, white-haired woman with a lined and leathery black face, her eyes hidden behind goggles. Her sleeveless singlet exposed wiry arms, and she wore loose trousers, a harness with four knives, and a bracelet molded in the shape of a running wolf. She said a word whose meaning I could not guess at, and swung back up into the rigging.

o;What was your business in Adurnam?”

“Why, to rescue the general and bring him over the ocean to Expedition.”

“He’s in Expedition?”

“At the moment, he is not. He went west to a city called Sharagua to pay his respects to the cacique’s court and person.”

“You didn’t travel with him?”

“In the Taino kingdom, all fire mages serve the cacique. So I’m forbidden from traveling into Taino country. I wouldn’t want to anyway. Their laws are unreasonably strict. They won’t allow me to heal people.”

“Heal people? You burned those salters alive!”

“I used them as catch-fires, that’s true. Was that life, what they suffered? I ended their misery through a quick, merciful death that healed Abby. To burn out all the teeth in someone as far advanced in the disease as she was would have killed me. I think it was a fair trade.”

“So speaks the man who said he could heal me if I would just have sex with him.”

“Cat, you were drunk. You can’t expect to have understood exactly what I meant. Anyway, I thought you knew your own mind. You’re an independent young woman, traveling on your own. And you’re a Phoenician girl.”

I put a hand on my sword’s hilt. “I would be very cautious about what you say next.”

He took a step away from me just as it occurred to me that it might be a mistake to make a fire mage angry. But his voice remained patient. “I meant only that a young woman of your background can do as she wishes. I would never have suggested otherwise had I thought you were under the thumb of a father or brother.” He smiled pleasantly. “Or beholden to a husband.”

I could not speak out of sheer choked consternation. My cheeks flamed.

Then he surprised me. “My sincerest apologies, Cat. I meant no harm, and certainly no disrespect. A remarkably pretty girl like you is hard to resist.” He raised both hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I hope we can make peace.”

“Whatever else,” I muttered grudgingly, “you did get me off Salt Island.”

“So I did.” With a nod, he groped his way by guide rope to the stern, where he began to chat with the sterns-man at his rudder.

I did not want to drown in my anger, so I went over and knelt beside Abby. “I’m so sorry,” I said to her brother.

“I know yee,” she said with that horribly puzzled smile.

She began to comb through the tangles of my hair with her fingers. I did not want to interrupt something that comforted her, so I settled cross-legged in front of her. Knife man brought over a comb, and Abby worked through my hair, never yanking although the snarls seemed intractable. The woman who had laughed offered me a gourd bottle, and I swallowed a juice that made my eyes water and my mouth sting. Or maybe I was just tired and shaken. With Abby still combing my hair, my eyes fluttered and shut.

I woke leaning against the side of the basket, my hair a smooth curtain falling over my shoulders to my hips. Abby stood at the prow of the basket with her brother, his arm around her, watching phosphorus dance its glamour on the waves. Staring into their future, which must have seemed very dark. Wasn’t it sometimes better to be dead?