Cold Steel (Spiritwalker 3)

The plaza erupted in a blizzard of chaos. Daggers of ice burned my skin. The dais and its thrones dissolved in a shrieking wail whose punch was like a spear of thwarted greed and rage that drove me to my knees. Agony raked through my chest. But I could not faint. I could not falter.

The courts swelled like vast wings unfurling. Wave upon wave of furious beings pounded against me as storm waves thrash the shore. I drew my sword and frantically parried, deflecting their freezing bite and icy grip. But my strength was ebbing fast.

This was the one part of my plan I had been able to devise no answer for, the reason I feared I might not survive. I had thought to fight my way to the gate and through to the salt mine, where I might hope and pray to find enough water in the desert in order to live and travel a long road back to the ones I loved. But as the wrath of the courts rose like a flood tide around me, I realized I was going to drown before I could ever cut my way to the mortal world.

“Hsss! Hurry!”

A door swung open in the air above me. I shook off the bag of coins and heaved it into the coach, tossed my sword in after, and hooked an arm through the steps. Claws raked through my skirt and petticoats. Teeth fastened on my boot. I kicked until they fell back.

They were only gathering themselves for another, more ferocious assault. But the brief respite was all I needed to pull myself up, roll inside, and slam shut the door.

Gale winds tossed the coach up and down and sideways as it bucketed away from the palace. Where we went I did not know. I clung to my sword. The bag of coins slammed into my belly, winding me. Where the chains had bitten into me to take the first taste of my blood, my chest throbbed like fire. The pain of that wound deafened and blinded me and I just lay there panting in the hope that oblivion would claim me soon. All I could do was tighten my hand around my locket and pray that if I had just been infested with the salt plague, then the disease would consume me quickly and with less agony than this.

“Blessed Tanit,” I murmured, “please bring me home.”

My blood seeped onto the floor of the coach, moistening and melting into the coach’s substance. Blood makes the gate.

I fell through.

The goddess caught me in her arms. She cradled me like a newborn, her brown face smiling down at me. Tears wet her cheeks. A crescent moon shone above her head to light the path for those who must walk into darkness.

“Choose, little cat. For you may have peace now if you wish it.”

“I just want to go home.”

Home is the people you care for, the ones who care for you in return.

Her kiss woke me back into the world. When I opened my eyes I found myself kneeling in a garden lush with pomegranates and ripe grapes and cascades of purple flowers. Before me rose a stone statue of the goddess wearing her lioness head, she who protects women but also gives them the strength to protect themselves.

The horns of a crescent moon sank into dawn. Pain pooled at my chest. Sticky blood oozed down my body to be swallowed by the damp soil. I blinked. A winter wind rattled through bare branches, for I now found myself huddled not in a summer garden but all alone and abandoned in an empty sanctuary. The air had a bitter, angry bite. Someone had stabbed me in the heart and then eaten out my head. I pitched forward onto my face.

A familiar and beloved voice spoke my name. “Catherine. My sweet Catherine, wake up.”

A familiar and beloved hand took hold of mine. “Cat, wake up! What on earth got into her to wander off to Tanit’s sanctuary when she ought to have been hiding inside like every other sensible person? I thought I was going to die of anguish when we got back and she was gone!”

“I should like to know what miscreant stabbed her in the chest. She’s fortunate it is such a shallow wound.”

“Look how her skirts are torn. I can’t leave her for a single day without her getting into trouble!”

Warm lips brushed my forehead. “She’s feverish. Let’s get her home.”

I dreamed I was turning into a pillar of salt, grain by grain. I was thirsty all the time, and hot, and uncomfortable, but there was always someone to wipe me down with a damp cool cloth or lift me up to spoon broth down my parched throat. I could not get enough salty gruel to eat.

Sometimes Rory licked my face with his rough cat’s tongue, rumbling softly as he guarded me in his cat shape. Sometimes Bee held my hand and sang to me, off-key, or combed out and rebraided my tangled hair. Sometimes Vai slept beside me in the bed he had built for us—although I had only slept in it once, I recalled its contours with intimate precision.

Obviously I was hallucinating, because I also saw Kayleigh sitting with her mother in attendance on my sickbed, and it was intriguing to watch how animated Vai’s mother was with her eldest daughter compared to the stiff formality she offered her only son. For what seemed like hours Vai would sit on the bed gently stroking my hands or hair while talking softly to Kofi about the latest radical pamphlet by Professora Nayo Kuti or the setbacks the radical efforts had met with in the Veneti dukedoms under the hand of their overlord, the Armorican prince, and his pregnant daughter who would act as regent if she bore an infant son.

Kofi’s laugh heartened me. “I reckon it is as well we happened to come when we did, for I thought sure I should have to tie yee to a chair lest yee burn down the entire building for the way yee lost yee head. Not that yee can burn things, fire bane! Peradventure yee shall have an easier life of it, Vai, if yee stop and think before yee panic.”

“I did not panic!”

“You did,” said Bee, for I just then realized she was sitting on the bed at my feet, her pencil scratching across a page.

“No more than you did, Beatrice!”

“Is this how it shall be, yee two always bickering?” demanded Kofi. “Because if it shall be this way, I can go back to a more restful domicile in Expedition and likewise not have to suffer this frightful cold.”

“You only think this is cold because you’ve not yet experienced winter,” muttered Vai so peevishly that Kofi laughed again, obviously teasing him, and I realized it was Kofi’s willingness to joke with him that had likely won Vai’s trust when the two men first met.