Cold Steel

“We want justice,” said the head of Queen Anacaona. “You allowed the hunter who rides at the behest of the foreign courts to cross the Great Smoke and raid into our country, resulting in my death. Answer, maku.”

I recollected Keer’s questions, coming at the debate sideways instead of head-on. “You shouldn’t have invaded Expedition Territory.”

“Do you scold me, child? The Council of Expedition broke the First Treaty, which their ancestors and ours swore to uphold. That gave the Taino the right and the obligation to invade, to protect our people from diseases like the salt plague.”

Here was an opening I could exploit! “It’s true that Expedition’s Council violated the terms of the First Treaty. But the Council no longer rules Expedition. The people of Expedition replaced the corrupt Council with a new Assembly. It is not justice to punish the Assembly for actions they did not commit.” I surveyed the gathered ancestors. They were patient, as the dead can be, but I had an idea they were not going to be patient for long. I had to strike quickly. “Furthermore, you had no right to quarantine me on Salt Island, because I was clean. I was never infested with the salt plague. Isn’t that true? Wasn’t I clean?”

Queen Anacaona’s brown cheeks suffused with natural color, as if blood pumped through them even though she had no heart. “You were clean. And Expedition does indeed have a new government. But both those things are beside the point, as I believe you know. Is it true, or is it not true, that a pack of maku spirit hunters crossed the Great Smoke and raided into our country?”

“What is the Great Smoke?”

“Do they teach the young nothing in your country? The Great Smoke is the ocean of all existence. It embraces all things, just as the ocean of water in the mortal world embraces all lands. It is not easy to cross the Great Smoke, for Leviathan guards it. But it can be done. Long ago, behiques wove a spirit fence around Taino country precisely to keep out the spirit lords from other territories in the spirit world because we did not want them to walk into our lands and disturb us. So let me ask you again. Did the maku spirit hunters cross from your land to ours on a road made of your bone and blood because in your nature and living body you partake both of the spirit world and the mortal world? Was it your presence, your body, that cut a gate in the spirit fence with which we protect ourselves? Did the Hunt enter the land because of you? Speak the truth, maku. Be warned. In this country, lies are knives you wield against your own flesh.”

The ancestors’ gazes pressed against me as if they were invisible blades waiting to cut my flesh to ribbons. I had to tell the truth, but not because of the knives. I had to tell the truth because this was a court of law. One did not lie in such a place.

“The Hunt did enter your country because I cut a gate in the fence. The Master of the Wild Hunt compelled me to lead him to the dragon dreamer, to my cousin, Beatrice. I never knew there was a spirit fence around your country. I never knew I could cut through it, and that cutting through it would leave your lands vulnerable. For that, I am truly sorry.”

Her gaze had a shine that was not like living eyes but more like polished wood beads. I could almost see my reflection in it. “Who turned the eyes and will of the hunter onto me? Who was the instrument of my death?”

I straightened my shoulders. I was not proud, but neither was I ashamed. “I was clean, yet the noble cacica would have killed me as a salter if I had not asked the Master of the Wild Hunt to kill her first. I acted in self-defense.”

A gust of rain washed through the hall, dissolving the roof and beams and floor and the ancestors themselves. Wet, I found myself standing ankle-deep in clumps of dirt in a field of young cassava plants. A sandy path snaked away into the forest’s canopy, where one tree’s crown rose above the others like a tower. Beside me, Rory sank down on his haunches.

The head of Queen Anacaona still rested in my arms. The way she watched me, unblinking, made me shift my feet restlessly, but I could not run away from what I had done.

“What happened to the hall? And the ballcourt?” I asked.

“The lords who sit at the court of justice have released you. You told the truth.”

“Does that mean I’m free?”

Her stare bored into me. “My throne is shaken. My sons are scattered and weak because I was torn from the Taino court at an inauspicious time. My brother the cacique was healing in slow measure and would have survived, but instead he took his last breath. My body is dead because of you. Knowing that, do you feel free?”

Even knowing I’d made the only choice I could, and that I had truly acted in self-defense, I did not feel free. I did not want to be the kind of person who would.