Cold Fire (Spiritwalker 2)

I slammed into the edge of the gate and, with eyes blinded by tears, groped onto the street. Yet I had not gone twenty paces when my legs gave out and I collapsed into heaving sobs. The worst of it was that the few folk out on the street passed me by and, recognizing me, walked on as if I weren’t there. Whispering. Look at she, that whore in the pay of the wardens. They say she is really a witch and shall drink yee blood and eat yee heart as she did to the poor deluded maku.

o;The washroom attendant?”

“She has to earn her living, too. That way.” She pointed toward an archway set under whitewashed walls, then returned to nibbling on a custard tart layered with slices of star-apple.

The washroom lay tucked in the back beside a lattice that screened off the kitchen. Women worked, chopping, grinding, and conversing about the highest-scoring member of the Anolis women’s team, who had begun to hook her elbow shots in a manner that suggested a hidden injury would soon put an end to her glory days. An elderly woman in a faded but scrupulously clean pagne dozed in the shade beside the tiled entrance to a little toilet.

A piercing shriek from the courtyard brought a crashing halt to the kitchen conversation.

“It stung me!” screamed Bee. “The pain! I feel…so sick…I’m going to throw up!”

I dropped the coin into the gourd, drew the threads of shadow around me, and slipped out through the kitchen into a side street. I had left my cane in Bee’s room, shoved beneath the mattress, so even the trolls ignored me as I strode along the busy streets of Expedition. Only the occasional dwarf mammoth showed a tendency to probe in my direction with its exquisitely sensitive trunk. Folk worked on roofs and walls, repairing the damage from the hurricane. Mostly people were muttering about the warden’s arrest of an elderly man known to broadsheet readers as the Virtuous Rock, who had spearheaded the radicals’ drive for an Assembly. The Council had made it known that in the event of a general strike, the man and his granddaughter would be hanged.

Nerves made me sweat more than the sun. I was chewing on my lower lip as I halted before the gate to Aunty Djeneba’s boardinghouse. It was propped open just enough for a child to slip through, a sign that the establishment was not yet open for business although I could hear the comforting flow of voices as the family made ready. I waited until the street lay momentarily empty, then dropped my glamour and squeezed past the gate into the courtyard.

Luce, sweeping, saw me first. The scrape of her broom ceased as her lips parted. Uncle Joe, at the bar, looked up. In the kitchen peeling sweet potatoes, Brenna paused.

Silence in surprise has a quality as loud as a scream. Like a ripple from a thrown stone, it soon laps over the entire pond. The children, busy braiding streamers as for an upcoming festival, fixed their hands in their laps as if they thought crows were about to swoop down and rip them clean off. In her shaded sling chair, old Aunty Brigid cackled with a frightful rasp in her sleep, “nr nr not the owl. Leave me be. I’s not ready to go yet.”

Aunty Djeneba turned. For an eternity her gaze measured me as her expression congealed into disgust. Every voice faded. All movement in the courtyard ceased except for the drip of water from the rain-soaked leaves of the ceiba tree.

At last she spoke. “Sly women like to yee is not welcome in this respectable establishment, maku.”

My lips had gone numb and my feet turned to dead weights, impossible to shift. My cheeks flamed. I opened my mouth but no word came out for there was nothing left on my tongue except shame and hurt as they all stared at me until I wished only to sink into the dirt and be obliterated.

All but Aunty Djeneba pointedly looked away, and that was worse.

“Yee reduced him to tears, if that is what yee came to hear and gloat over, witch. He is gone and not coming back so there is no one here for yee to torment. Lucretia shall fetch yee things, for yee shall not bring the wardens down on us on a charge of theft.”

Beneath the throttling shock quivered words, barely deliverable in a hoarse mangled voice. “It isn’t what it seemed. I can explain. They used me to get at him. I didn’t know…I had no idea…” How pointless and stupid the words sounded. How pathetic and cheap. “I need to find him. I have to warn him he’s still in danger.”

“Did yee not get yee full payment because yee did not deliver up the fire bane?” Like storm clouds, she swelled in indignation as I cowered under the tumult of her anger. “How did we not see it, yee washed up with yee hair unbound on the jetty in the company of another man? With yee magics and yee hair like a net to catch him in? How yee blinded him, poor lad. I must wonder if any of it were true, or if yee even went so far as to bite yee own arm to make him worry for yee. Just get out, maku. We have no more wish to ever see yee again nor hear that lying voice.”

I slammed into the edge of the gate and, with eyes blinded by tears, groped onto the street. Yet I had not gone twenty paces when my legs gave out and I collapsed into heaving sobs. The worst of it was that the few folk out on the street passed me by and, recognizing me, walked on as if I weren’t there. Whispering. Look at she, that whore in the pay of the wardens. They say she is really a witch and shall drink yee blood and eat yee heart as she did to the poor deluded maku.

“Cat?”

I looked into Luce’s tear-streaked face. Ashamed, I looked away. I could not bear her scorn.

She pressed a bundle into my hands, my worldly goods as scant as the goodwill left to me. “Tell me why yee said that yee did not know. Please.”

Words shook out of half-controlled sobs. “It’s true James Drake found me on a beach…”

“Salt Island. So Gran’ tell me. But no one can leave there, and yee’s no fire mage.”

“I never lied about that! The Barr Cousins did bring me to Expedition from Salt Island. It’s true I knew Drake was working for General Camjiata back in Adurnam. But I didn’t come to the Antilles with the general. I wasn’t part of his organization. When Drake dumped me on the jetty, I didn’t know it was because they hoped Vai would find me and then they could find him by tracking me. I know it sounds impossible, but I didn’t know anything about it. Oh, no one will believe me, Luce. Why should they? I wouldn’t believe me. I have to find him, or the general will kill him.”

“After everything yee said to him and the way yee acted, I wonder why him dying should matter to yee. If yee’s really a witch, yee shall want him dead.”

My face was slobbery with self-pity and self-loathing. I could not get over the way Aunty Djeneba had looked at me as if I were a noxious vile cockroach crawling back into sight. But I owed Luce the truth. I wiped my eyes and nose, and I looked up into her solemn gaze.

“I am not a whore or a witch. I know it seems like Kofi was right, that I’m two-faced like a star-apple tree. But I was just confused. I meant to leave here, to take a room elsewhere, but I couldn’t bear to leave him. I said yes to him the night of the areito. I meant it, Luce. I love him. Then everything happened so fast.” Pain was a knife in my heart. I bit my lip rather than moan.

Her hand brushed my arm. “Venus Lennaya forgive me if I have made the wrong judgment, but I believe yee. He came that night, took he things, and left to go hide. Kayleigh live down by Kofi-lad’s people now. She and he is to marry. That is all I can say because it is all I know.”

She hurried off, back through the gates where I was no longer welcome.

Blessed Tanit, watch over your heartbroken daughter.