Cold Steel

We had fallen asleep together in the drowsy afternoon heat in an upstairs room of Aunty Djeneba’s boardinghouse.

After washing up on the jetty of the city of Expedition, on the island of Kiskeya in the Antilles, I had come to live at the boardinghouse. Here Andevai Diarisso Haranwy, the cold mage I had been forced to marry back in Europa, had courted me and won my heart. Bee and I were napping on the bed Andevai had built for his and my wedding night. I shut my eyes, remembering his kisses. For a few breaths I pretended I could hear his voice downstairs in the courtyard, as if he had just come home from the carpentry yard where he worked. But he was gone.

You will never be free.

I sat up, trying to shake off the memory. “What a frightful nightmare I just had. Pinch me, Bee.”

She pinched my arm with the force of iron tongs wielded by a brawny blacksmith.

“Ah! You monster!” I cried.

“You said to do it!”

I shook my arm until the pain subsided, while she laughed. “No, it’s all right. I just wanted to make sure I’m finally awake.”

Bee tapped my cheek affectionately. “You were talking in your sleep. You’ve become quite the revolutionary, Cat. You kept mumbling, ‘All of us will be free.’ ”

With a sigh, I leaned against her shoulder. Bee was significantly shorter than I was, but she was sturdy and determined, easily strong enough to hold me up when I needed support. “It’s no wonder I mumble such words in my sleep. When I wake up, I remember that my sire threw Vai into his magical coach and drove off with him into the spirit world.”

Bee pressed her fingers to my knee, staring at me with brows drawn down as if she could bend the world to her will through her glower, and sometimes I was sure she could. “I know you’re worried because your sire is the Master of the Wild Hunt, because he is a powerful magical denizen of the spirit world, and because not even the most powerful cold mage can stand against him. But even though all that is true, it doesn’t mean you and I can’t defeat him and rescue Andevai.”

“I always feel so heartened when you explain things in exactly that cheering way, Bee.”

“Do you doubt that we can?” she demanded in the belligerent manner I loved.

“I don’t doubt that we must, for certainly no one else can! Anyhow, I’m not going to lie here and cry about it. We will figure out what to do because we have to.”

I rose. In the dim and rather stuffy little room, a cloth-covered screen folded out to divide the space into two halves. Vai’s younger sister had slept on the other side of the screen, but she had recently married a local man and moved into his family’s compound. Two wooden chests held Vai’s clothes and other necessaries. His carpentry tools resided in a smaller chest he had built specially to house them. A covered basket held my few possessions, for I had arrived in Expedition with nothing except the clothes on my back, my sword, and my locket. Through the open window floated the sounds of the household waking from their afternoon naps.

A length of brightly printed fabric that depicted green fans was draped over the screen. Tied around my hips, it made a skirt. I pulled a short gauzy blouse over my bodice.

Bee surveyed me critically. “That looks very well on you, Cat. The style would not flatter my figure.” She fluffed out her curly hair to get the worst snarls out. “Wouldn’t the fastest way to pursue Vai be to enter the spirit world here and follow your sire to Europa through the spirit world?”

“I’ve been warned off trying to enter the spirit world here in the Antilles. The Taino spirits don’t like me. They will do everything they can to stop me entering their territory. Anyway, getting Vai back does not solve our greater problem, does it? The Hunt will still ride every year on Hallows’ Night. It will still hunt down powerful cold mages and innocent dream walkers. Nor will rescuing Vai stop my sire from binding me whenever he wishes.”

With a frown like the cut of a blade, Bee crossed to the window and set her hands on the sill. “It’s true. I can hide from the Wild Hunt in a troll maze, but you can’t. And it isn’t just about you and me and Andevai. What about other women who walk the dreams of dragons, the ones who don’t know that the mirrors of a troll maze will conceal them from the Hunt? I hate to think of what will happen to them when next the Wild Hunt rides. They should be safe, too. Everyone should be safe.”

“Yes. I don’t see why anyone should have to fear the Wild Hunt just because the spirit courts of Europa demand a sacrifice of mortal blood every year. It’s wrong for any person to be torn to pieces and have their head ripped off and thrown down a well.” I looked away so Bee would not see my expression, for that was exactly what had happened to Queen Anacaona on Hallows’ Night. To speak of how Bee’s new husband, Prince Caonabo, had walked in my dream with his threats seemed cruel because it would upset her dreadfully, so I said nothing of it. Bee hadn’t been on the ballcourt when the Wild Hunt had descended on the wings of a hurricane, but the prince had seen it all.