Cold Fire

“It keeps away the women.”

Irritation marred the features of most men, making them look small-minded or ill-tempered. Not Vai. Irritation sharpened his features, made a woman want to kiss him until he relented. I imagined hungry young women buzzing like bees to a succulently annoyed flower.

He raised an eyebrow, in supercilious query.

“How nice for you,” I said, since he was clearly expecting a response to a statement meant to provoke me. “Or not.”

“Don’t change the subject, Catherine. I don’t see how the tale I told is much different than the one you just embroidered.”

“It’s all true!”

“I’m sure it is. If anyone could punch a shark in the eye and survive to tell of it, it would be you.”

“I would thank you for the fine praise, except you looked so annoyed when I was telling that part of the story.”

“Yes, annoyance was certainly my first reaction on hearing you had been attacked by a shark. I couldn’t possibly have been shocked or terrified on your behalf. Although you left out the part about exactly how you found yourself floating in the middle of the sea in the first place.”

“Would you have turned me over to the wardens if I hadn’t been clean?”

His chin raised as sharply as if I had slapped him. A breath of ice kissed my lips.

Because I was suddenly, inexplicably furious, I pressed my attack, leaning closer with an aggressive whisper. “You would have been right to do so. I was on Salt Island.”

He stood so quickly that all around the courtyard people jumped, and looked forcibly away. He grabbed my arm and dragged me closer, across the table. The table’s edge dug into my thighs.

His voice emerged in a hoarse murmur. “You just dreamed that. You were never there.”

“Let go,” I said, rigid beneath his hand. All I could see was Abby’s face.

He released me. Sat down. Shut his eyes, breathing hard, as the cold eddy of air around us faded. I fought to recover my composure. As I straightened out the disturbed fabric, I wondered what people were making of all this. It would be an easy plate to garnish: The long-parted lovers quarrel over the circumstance that precipitated their separation.

When his breathing had settled, he opened his eyes and considered me with the haughty arrogance I knew best. “Which explains the presence of the fire mage. Although I can’t quite figure how a fire mage might have come to be working with the notorious Barr Cousins.”

I parried. “I don’t think the Barr Cousins liked the fire mage much.”

“Good for them. I don’t like him much either.”

“I didn’t ask you to like him. You don’t even know him.”

He set his elbows on the table, heedless of the fabric I was neatly piecing back together. “There is where you are wrong. I met him in Adurnam. In the entryway of the law offices of Godwik and Clutch. Where I also found you. I remembered that when I saw him again today—”

Jerking up, I stabbed myself with a pin. “Ah!”

“—Wandering around the harbor with a ridiculous cap pulled down to cover his red hair and asking about a girl he had lost track of after he had rescued her from a shipwreck on a deserted islet. I’m surprised you forgot to mention the shipwreck in your otherwise flamboyant tale.”

I licked a spot of blood from my finger.

“I must wonder why he was in Adurnam then, and why he came here now,” he finished.

Vai didn’t know General Camjiata had been in the law offices in Adurnam. And I wasn’t about to tell him since it was none of his cursed business and nothing to do with me anyway no matter what the Iberian Monster claimed.

“I never met Drake before that day in Adurnam,” I said quite truthfully, “and then not again until that which we won’t speak of.” But I sat down, resting my head in my hands because otherwise I was going to touch my belly. “Blessed Tanit! Did anyone tell him where I’d gone?”

“No one did in the carpentry yard. I did find out you can leave a message for him at the Speckled Iguana. Shall we go over there now?”

I found the courage to look at him. “Can’t I just stay here?”

He exhaled sharply. Then the self-satisfied lift of his mouth betrayed him. “You can, if that’s what you want.”

I began to tremble. “You couldn’t just come straight out and ask me what you really want to know, which I must suppose is whether I want to go back to James Drake. At least the infamous murderer Nick Blade was honest with me!”