Cold Steel

“Go, Bee! Through water.”

“I love you, Cat.” Chin lifted, Bee smiled bravely at me.

My look had to speak for me, because I could not produce words. The big cats prowled the perimeter of the warded ground to give Bee time to get away. Shards littering the ground stirred to take on the monstrous shape of a fluttering harpy with teeth like obsidian knives. Four wolves loped up, tongues lolling and breath steaming. More winged creatures appeared in the distance, arrowing our way.

I leaped forward to confront the wolves. “Hurry! Rory, go with her!”

She plunged into the little pool and fell away from us as if running down invisible steps. I smeared a drop of blood from my shoulder onto my boot and stuck the foot in the water to create a gate for Rory. The instant Bee’s head vanished beneath the waters, with Rory behind her, the spirit beasts tested the air for a smell that was no longer present. In ones and twos, they trotted away.

18

I had to let go of my unshed tears so I could concentrate on the task that lay before me. By scratching each cat on its big head, I calmed myself. I ought to have been scared of them. Any, except possibly the half-grown littlest, could have ripped me to pieces, but they shouldered their bodies around mine in a way I found so charmingly affectionate that it sucked my tears quite dry. They heartened me.

“My thanks to you. No need to accompany me any farther. Run as far as you can before he comes back.”

Yet the cats waited as I retrieved the head of the cacica from the ground where Bee had perforce left her. “Your Highness, you have been generous in aiding us. I feel obliged to confess that I am taking you to Haübey, not to Caonabo.”

She regarded me unblinking with a stare I was glad I had never had to face down while she sat on the duho, the seat of power. “Explain yourself.”

“Your brother the cacique made a bargain with me. He said he would get me to Europa if I would take you to your exiled son Haübey. I accepted because reaching Europa was the only chance I had to get my husband back. The cacique promised me that Haübey will take you back to Sharagua, and thus to Caonabo.”

“I wondered when you would tell me. I can see we do not travel in Taino country. My brother is a persuasive man, and you are young, so I cannot fault you for giving way to his conniving. What is done cannot be changed. In truth, I have seen sights I would not otherwise have witnessed, so my gourd of knowledge becomes weightier. Was that winged creature who attacked us the one who commanded my death?”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Well, then, you did well to defy him as much as you are able.”

I had rarely received a compliment that pleased me more. “My thanks, Your Highness. Since we’re here, will you drink?”

“Your manners are improving. Yet is it safe to drink here?”

“Here on warded ground, from this water, it is.”

“Then I will do so, for I wish to taste the waters of these springs.”

I cradled her in my hands so she could lap, rather like a dog, but it went well enough. I drank to satiety, filled the bottles, and stowed them in my pack. My sire’s whispered words nagged at me, but I dared not discuss them aloud with the cacica lest unseen ears overhear. Had he been taunting me, or warning me?

“We must go to the palace,” I said.

“In Sharagua, such a central compound would be the cacique’s domain. That suggests the palace is the home of the spirit courts of Europa. We can discover what lies within by entering.”

Buoyed by this truism, I advanced, with the cacica’s hair clutched in my right hand and my sword in my left. We walked at least a mile, if one could measure distance here as in the mortal world, and I was pretty sure one could not. I was pretty sure distances might expand and contract. How else could the cats have reached me so quickly when I called to them? They paced alongside, escorting us. The littlest several times bumped into me on purpose, until I finally swatted her with the flat of my sword.

“Little beast! No wonder Rory finds you annoying!”

She sulked away so like Bee’s spoiled little sister Astraea that I laughed. The adult females coughed in what I imagined was shared amusement.

Strange to think that laughter brought us to the walls.

White walls like seamless ceramic rose to the height of ten men, so high I could not hope to climb. A massive sea-green door promised an entry, but it was closed tight. Fortunately, warded ground formed the tongue of the gate, with a smooth pillar, a spring of water rising in a stone basin, and a sapling ash tree. Standing safe between the wards, I examined the huge doors.