Cold Steel

He showed me a sketch. Bee had drawn five people on a wide path. The path was spanned by a huge monumental archway hung with painted gourds in the Taino style. Seen past the arch, lying below the height, spread a splendid city and harbor, almost certainly Taino if one judged by the ballcourt and sprawling palace seen in the distance. Rory loitered at the back of the group with a jaunty grin on his face, as if he’d just gotten away with something he knew he ought not to have done, and certainly ought not to have enjoyed quite so much. A second man was sketched entirely from the back, but I could tell he was Vai. He wore a splendidly fashionable dash jacket printed in an outrageous pattern of flowers like bursting fireworks, and he was holding my hand. In the sketch, I looked as cranky and out of sorts as if I’d been having a discussion I didn’t want to have. Fortunately I was wearing a fashionable military-cut riding jacket with a split skirt and a jaunty hat.

In the sketch, Prince Caonabo leaned against the right-hand span of the archway as if he had been waiting a long time for us to reach him. Bee strode out in front looking quite spectacularly…

“Pregnant!” I cried.

“Pregnant,” agreed Caonabo. He snapped the sketchbook shut, and Bee flinched. “There you are, Maestra, you and your brother and your husband, alive and well in Sharagua. What man would not be moved by such a pleasing vision of his harmonious future?”

I hadn’t had time to examine the sketch closely, for there was one obvious thing that might have caused this puzzling tension between them. “That is you, Your Highness, is it not?”

Bee blushed mightily.

Caonabo did not look at her, only at me. “You wonder if I believe it to be my brother. Haübey and I are twins, shaped to the same mold. Few people can tell us apart. But Beatrice can tell us apart. It is evident to me by certain small signs”—none of which he was going to share with me!—“that the man in the sketch is meant to represent me rather than Haübey. The sketch might be described as a bribe, if you will.”

I grasped Bee’s hand. Her skin felt like ice. “What do you mean, Your Highness?”

“What man would not wish to make sure such a future came about by protecting all the parts necessary to make this meeting happen? Do you not suppose so, Beatrice? A man’s ability to sire children is a mark of potency. Even though it is my sister’s sons who will inherit my position as cacique once I pass over, still, a cacique who cannot sire children of his own will be seen as a weak man unworthy of the duho, the seat of power.”

Bee’s fingers tightened on mine until my hand hurt. Her strength always surprised people, even me as I set my jaw and tried to relax into the pain, for it was clear Bee was truly upset.

He went on in that same level voice, but I could hear an edge. “But one problem remains.”

“What is that, Your Highness?”

“Dream walkers are barren.”

Bee gasped.

“How can anyone know?” I asked, but my mind was already churning. Camjiata had married a dream walker and she had never borne children. The radical fighter Brennan Touré Du had told Bee and me a story about a young woman from his home village who had seen visions and been killed by the Wild Hunt on Hallows’ Night, and Brennan had remarked that although the woman had been married for five years, she had given birth to no child in that time. “I mean, surely even if one or two dreamers never had children, no scholar would claim that means all such women are barren.”

“We Taino have studied this matter for many generations. We have our own disciplines of what the Romans name scientia. Who first observed the transit of the planet you call Venus? Who invented the steam engine, which was then carried across the sea to Europa? Our scholars have spanned earth and heavens with their investigations. It is known to our scholars through careful investigation that dream walkers are barren. The sketch is a lie, not a dream. Is it not, Beatrice?”

She released my hand. I winced as blood flowed back into my squashed fingers.

“My bride lied to me, deliberately and with forethought. She meant to mislead and manipulate me into doing what she wanted.”

From the vivid flush in her cheeks and the tears streaking her face, it was obvious she was both ashamed and defiant. “My other choice was to tell you I would divorce you and not help you gain the throne. I will not stand by and see Cat put on trial and executed.”

“Telling me the truth would have been honest.” That he did not look at her made his words sound even more hurtful. He stared at me, as if daring me to look away and thus prove my guilt. “Tell me, Catherine Bell Barahal, do you care that you are responsible for the cacica’s death? If her exalted rank means nothing, for I believe you once told me that Taino queens and princes mean little enough to you, then do you care that you are responsible for a woman’s death?”