Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

She giggled. “Yee’s so funny.”

I went back up to the room with a candle. Kayleigh had fallen asleep on the other cot, which meant I had slept on Vai’s cot last night. Tomorrow we would obviously have to discuss other sleeping arrangements. I slept soundly. When I woke the next morning, Kayleigh was gone. I didn’t know where Vai had slept.

The courtyard had a calm beauty in the soft light.

“Where are all the children?” I asked Aunty Djeneba, who was grating the white root called cassava. “Where is Lucretia?”

“At school. They finish at noon. As for yee, we shall start yee easy today. Yee said yee can sew. I have got some mending by. Usually we take it down to Tailors’ Row but it would be a quiet job for yee in the shade.”

I pulled a bench over so I could sit under the kitchen roof. We were alone in the courtyard.

She said in a low voice, “One thing first. Yee must keep that arm covered until the wound heal. Yee must never speak of what happened. Never.”

I touched my sleeve, feeling the tender wound beneath. “Vai must have seen the bite when he took my jacket off.”

“Yes, and came to me at once, exactly as he should. I went out me own self and brought in a local behique, a good man, very discreet. Only we four know.”

We four, and everyone on Salt Island, but I didn’t volunteer the information. “I know what will happen to me if the wardens track me down. But would something happen to you, Aunty?”

She paused in her grating. “It speak well of yee that yee ask, gal. I would be arrested and lose everything I own.”

“That is a terrible risk. Why take me in?”

She indicated the sewing basket and a folded stack of old clothes. “Here is a great lot of torn hems, ripped sleeves, and holes worn in elbows and knees. We people who live outside the old city have come to believe Expedition’s Council see us as these old clothes to use and throw out. If yee was the daughter of a Council family, we would hear no talk of sending yee to Salt Island.”

“My father wrote that if all are not equal before the law, then the law is worth nothing.”

“A wise man, that one who sired yee. Walk he still among the living?”

I looked away because I could say nothing.

“Seem the grief is still fresh,” she said kindly.

She returned to cutting, grating, and grinding, while I found peace in mending as she talked about how her people could trace their descent to sailors on the first fleet. She had herself married a man whose grandparents had left Celtic Brigantia to make their fortune in the markets of Expedition. Her husband had passed on a night three years ago when an owl had roosted atop the roof. Her three sons worked a fishing boat with their uncle her brother, and her only surviving daughter Brenna, the one with the Roman sweetheart, helped her run the lodging house. Uncle Joe, widower of Aunty’s sister, oversaw the part of the establishment where folk came to eat and drink.

“Do you have gaslight on all the streets in Expedition? Only a few places have gaslight in Adurnam.”

“All of the old city and the harbor district and troll town, of course. We here in Passaporte District got the street lighting three years ago. Only because we took to the streets in protest that we pay land tax and excise tax and we shall see something for the coin we pay to the Council’s treasury. But Lucairi District and them on out there? Nothing. They must still rely on fire banes to light they way at night.”

Here was my chance to find out more about mages in this part of the world.

“Fire banes work like common lamplighters and linkboys here?” I finished off mending a threadbare elbow with a pattern darning and held it up.

She looked surprised. “’Tis as good as tailor’s work. Yee have a neat hand for a woman. Fire banes likewise work for the fire wardens and at areitos and other night gatherings.”

“What’s an areito? A festival of some kind?”

“’Tis the Taino word for a sacred or community gathering, what the Romans would call a festival. As for the other, all fire banes must register with Warden Hall. That is the law. At that time they swear never to enter any association with other mages.”

“I’ve seen the power the mage Houses hold in Europa, so I can understand people in Expedition might be cautious about mage associations. Is there a button for this?”

“In the tin. It need two. If yee’s not registered as a fire bane, yee can be arrested. If yee go to register, yee’s not yet registered, so yee can be arrested if they want to arrest yee.”

“That’s exceedingly unfair! Why would the wardens want to arrest fire banes anyway?”

“Because they sell them to the Taino. The proceeds go to Council’s treasury.”

“Why would the Taino want fire banes?”