Cold Fire

The Council was surrendering to Prince Caonabo. His fire magic was difficult to see under the glare of his mother’s power, and even so it was nothing more than a sober, quiet flame. He stood straight and somber, receiving a copy of a written document that I assumed was the First Treaty. On the stone risers, like spectators to the final game in a prestigious tournament, sat many Taino, both women and men. Some seemed skeptical, even disapproving, while others looked pleased and triumphant.

The cacica sat on a carved duho, her seat of power, placed on a raised wooden platform at one end of the ball court. Some of her catch-fires sat near her, while others were scattered around the ball court and some even outside it. The geometry of their placement was too convoluted for me to follow. Nor did it matter, for out of them all, only one caught my eye.

Vai sat cross-legged on a mat on the ground next to the cacica’s duho. With his hands relaxed on his thighs, he looked perfectly at ease as he turned to speak to the queen. I did not like the way she looked at him! Suddenly those rumors that she forced male fire banes to marry her did not seem far-fetched or scurrilous. What did she care about the marriage laws of Europans and the chains that bound him and me? I had a hankering for a chisel.

His demeanor I could not fault, for he displayed toward her the respect he always showed women. She was, I thought, pointing out to him the geometry of her catch-fires, dispersed in a pattern that extended farther than my crow’s eyes could see. Like lamps turned low, each visible fire bane was limned by a nimbus of silvery mist. No nimbus touched Vai. She was not diverting any of the backlash into him.

His eyes widened and his head cocked to one side as if he heard an unexpected sound. After a comment to the cacica, he rose, his gaze lifting to sweep the darkness beyond.

I was sure he had sensed me.

The crows swooped low over the ball court. Behind Caonabo, set between the prince and the platform where the cacica presided, rose six wooden posts. A person was lashed to each post as to a mast. One of the prisoners was Juba, who gazed over the assembly with the look of a man who knows he has been condemned and is not sorry for the crime that has brought him to this place of execution. Juba and Caonabo truly had uncannily identical features, but once you had seen them together, you could never mistake one for the other, for Caonabo was grave and self-contained while Juba was impassioned and impatient.

The crow settled on top of one of the posts. To my utter horror, I recognized the woman tied there. Abby’s clothing was so humble and dirt-stained you could tell she had been snatched from the fields. She had her eyes shut. By the way her lips moved, she seemed to be singing.

Yet even she was not the person I needed to find.

The crow looked into the darkness and fixed on the great stone eye through which the players could score a goal. From the shadows, General Camjiata observed the proceedings, flanked by Captain Tira and the one-eyed proprietor of the Speckled Iguana.

On the ball court, Caonabo was speaking to the Expeditioners. He sounded weary but unswerving, a man who does not like the task he has been given but will carry it out to its fullest.

“Always, we the Taino have held in every regard to the First Treaty, which our ancestors made with your ancestors. We respect the words and agreements of those who came before us as if they were our own, for they are our own. You have allowed the threat of salters to live among you. The bitten must be exiled to Salt Island, even if they are healed. They are dead. That is the law. We did not unearth this disease. You brought it on your ships. We allowed you to build your city as long as the agreement we made was honored. But it has not been honored—”

He broke off, raising a hand to test the air. He turned to address the cacica. “Most dignified and wise of mothers,” he said, “forgive my impetuous speech for I have not received permission to address you, but this wind is not natural. A spirit comes.”

The crow fluttered to the great stone eye and looked down. An expression very like fear pinched the general’s face as he looked at the night sky.

“I see him!” I cried, but by speaking I broke the wings that bound me into the crow’s eyes. I slammed hard onto the seat, knocking breath from my lungs. Rory steadied me.

“I see him,” said the Master of the Wild Hunt, with a smile.

Such simple words to herald death.

The world tipped beneath me as the coach banked sharply, plunging toward the ground. I fell against the latch, and my weight clicked it down with a spark of protest from the gremlin. The door swung out with me holding to it. The wind loosed my hair, and it streamed out behind me like the wings of the storm.

As the coach skated above the paving stones right down the center of the ball court, people scattered out of the way, shouting. They dragged companions with them, or shoved others aside in their scramble to escape. Some flung themselves down, cowering.