Cold Steel

“Why are you still with me, Your Highness? Is there some task I may perform for you? Somewhere I may carry you? It seems rude to just… plant you here.”

“Take me to my son.”

“To Prince Caonabo in Sharagua?” My heart beat faster with excitement, for if we traveled swiftly enough we might reach there in time to spare Bee the ignominy of Caonabo’s casting her off.

“I am obliged to lend my power to the one who will become cacique.”

“I’m angry about his treatment of Bee, but I know how young men hold their honor high. He seems competent and levelheaded to me otherwise. He certainly honors his relationship to you. So I don’t understand why you don’t think he’s worthy of becoming cacique.”

“It is the same as tossing me onto the dirt to speak to me with such disrespect.”

Prudence dictated retreat. “My apologies, Your Highness. If I am to take you to your son, how do we return to the mortal world and Sharagua?”

“I am always surprised by maku ignorance. This garden is the first garden. That is why the ancestors gather here. As for the worlds, the tree links all.”

Of course! The tree.

Dried blood matted Rory’s thick coat. He circled me once, then sniffed at the cacica’s head.

“Yes, this is the head of the noble cacica, Queen Anacaona. She will be traveling with us until we can deliver her to Prince Caonabo.”

He gave a low rumble, not quite a snarl. Even injured, he was intimidating, huge, graceful, and deadly. But then he nudged me with his big cat head as if impatient with the sword I’d lashed so awkwardly to his back, and suddenly he was just an annoying older brother whose needs weren’t being met quickly enough for his liking. I took back my sword. A slug of rum from the flask Uncle Joe had provided shot right down through my flesh as a brace of courage.

I settled the cacica’s head in the crook of my right arm, facing her forward so she could see where we were going. We headed under the shadow of the forest along the path. Birds with bright yellow-and-red plumage flapped away into the foliage. I heard the toa toa croaking of frogs.

“Where is the fire bane?” she asked. “I am surprised he is not with you. He possesses something more valuable than power.”

“Good looks?”

She actually chuckled, and I was pleased I had made her laugh. “Young people are too easily swayed by sex. Let them dance at areitos. It is best for elders to sort out marriages between clans. A shame he was wasted on you.”

Her words pricked me like thorns. “Did he turn down an offer to become one of your many husbands?”

Perhaps she did not hear the sarcasm in my tone, because her reply was as considered as if mine had been a perfectly reasonable suggestion. “He is an unusually powerful fire bane. For that reason a challenge I would have savored.”

“You told General Camjiata there was no fire bane you could not control.”

“Ah! You think I meant to enslave him. That is not what I meant. The people of Expedition call such as me a fire mage.”

“Yes, I know that,” I retorted, for she had stung me by saying Vai was wasted on me. “I’ve met other fire mages, like James Drake.”

“Fire mages are not like James Drake. He is a criminal, whatever you may have thought of him.”

“I didn’t like him much, no matter what it may have seemed.”

“I could see the nature of your regret developing on Salt Island. You were foolish.”

“I was scared.”

“You were ignorant.”

“All right, then,” I replied grudgingly, because it seemed churlish to argue over such a fine point with a woman who was dead because of a choice I had made. “I was ignorant and scared and foolish. Maybe being all those things was also an excuse to do something I was curious about but wasn’t honest enough to admit wanting.”

Birds fluttered in the trees, plumage flashing through patches of light. My feet crackled on drying leaves. Rory’s breath warmed my back.

“All of those things,” she agreed, “but it appears you can learn. Yet you are not my kinswoman to be offered to eat from the platter of my knowledge. However, I will not allow you to think I meant to enslave the fire bane who is your husband. This much I will tell you. When we weave, we are not weaving fire, we are weaving what the Hellenes call energy and the Mande call nyama and others call the living force. One way it can manifest is as fire. Such dispersal of living force will kill the fire weaver unless she has a way to cast it off.”

“That’s why you use fire banes as catch-fires. People sell them to you as slaves.”