Cold Fire (43 page)

So many mysteries. And yet I had my own burdens.

I left the law offices and, drawing the shadows around me, walked down the long boulevard along the sleepy waters of the bay to the neighborhood I had too briefly called home. I sought out the compound where Kofi’s people hired out carts and wagons. I crept in where I had never been invited, feeling like the worst intruder. There I saw Kayleigh boiling and mangling clothes with young women, laughing and easy with them as she had never been easy with me.

I waited. Midway through the afternoon, Kofi came in with an older man who looked enough like him to be a brother. Kofi greeted Kayleigh with an affectionate wink that made me absolutely wild with envy for the simple pleasure they could take in being together among family that cherished them. But I stalked him as he went into a secondary courtyard where three new rooms were going up beside a shed storing broken wheels. We were alone. I let the shadows fall.

He stepped into the shed and picked up a splintered spoke. “A witch, then. Leave Kayleigh alone. She never harmed yee.”

“Whatever you think of me, whatever you believe of me, I ask you to remember I risked my life to find that old man in the boathouse.”

“That is surely true,” he agreed grudgingly. “For he sake, I shall listen.” He waited.

We had gone too far too fast to exchange polite pleasantries. “I wasn’t the one who betrayed the radicals at Nance’s. I knew nothing about it. The general and his people were using me. I was ignorant of the plan. It’s a complicated story.”

“The stories yee tell always is. Yee shall understand if I’s skeptical.”

“Jasmeen is the general’s mistress. With my own eyes I saw Jasmeen kiss the general and call him darling. She comes at night for assignations. She’s the one who betrayed you.”

He whistled softly. “Yee’s a meaner bitch than even I thought, weaving a tale like that.”

A foot scuffed behind us. Kofi whipped his spar forward as if to charge. Just as I shifted to defend myself, Kayleigh stepped in under the shed’s roof. Kofi settled back on his heels.

“Maybe Cat is, but if I were you, Kofi, I would look into it.”

“Would yee now, love? After she humiliated yee brother as plain as she could?”

My face burned, but I bit down the words I wanted to shout into his doubting face.

Kayleigh sighed. “Even if Cat betrayed Vai, which seems likely, I think she cares for him. People have more than one face, many parts, contradictory feelings. I don’t think she wants him dead. I have a very good idea of where she wants him.” Her mouth curled into a smirk.

Kofi lowered the spoke. “The same argument Vai made. He said ’twould take a hells good actress to behave toward a man the way she was behaving the night of the areito. But he wanted it to be true. That don’ make it true.”

“He wanted it to be true?” I asked, so choked with hope I could barely speak.

“Don’ think I shall let yee get yee claws in him, gal. Vai is like me own brother. Get out.”

“Wait.” Kayleigh took a step closer, hand raised. “We hear yee’s living with the general, Cat.”

“I live with my cousin, not with the general. She needs me. You may have heard she is soon to be married to Prince Caonabo.”

“So we have read,” said Kofi. “The radicals shall call for a boycott of the wedding areito. We don’ like it that the general had a hand in the raid at Nance’s.”

I plied my hook, hoping for a catch. “Are we trading information now? I have some for you. The marriage is the deal the general made with the cacica, in return for her support for his Europan war. He promised her that the spoils of victory in Europa would refill her empty treasury.”

Kofi took a step back and caught himself with a muttered curse. “Ma Jupiter! I don’ reckon that can be true. An empty treasury!”

“I’m just telling you what I heard. I can bring you more information.”

“In exchange for Vai?” he asked, his gaze like a machete’s cut.

I reached into the pocket sewn inside my skirt and drew out a copy of the pamphlet. “In exchange for this. Can you get this to him?”

“I think not! Likely yee have mixed yee moon’s blood into the ink to further witch Vai.”

I winced. “Do people really do that?”

Kayleigh giggled. “You should see your face, Cat.”

“I don’t think it’s funny,” I said.

“Kayleigh me gal, don’ touch that!” said Kofi.

She took the pamphlet from me and glanced through it. “I saw this for sale today. It’s just stories from Europa. If she mixed her moon’s blood into the ink then the printers shall have it all in their press, too.” She looked at me. “What do you want?”

“I want to meet him, under a flag of truce.”

“Sure yee do,” muttered Kofi. “The better to witch him. Or claim the reward for he arrest.”

“If I was what you think I am, I could have had you arrested already, Kofi, and Aunty Djeneba and all them. And your associates.”

“We’s small fry compared to the fire bane and the leadership. That gal Livvy was at the meeting. She is in prison in Warden Hall with she grandfather.” He shook his head, mouth a sarcastic line. “And yet yee wonder why I cannot trust yee.”

There was no answer to that. Voices and footfalls neared from the main compound.

“I’ll return on Jovesday. That gives you two days.”

“Jovesday next,” he countered. “Nine days is soonest I can manage. If he agree.”

“Agreed.” Nine days was too long, but it was an offer. I drew the shadows around me.

Kofi sucked in a sharp breath. “Is that common where yee come from, Kayleigh? That ordinary women shall vanish that way? She is a witch.”

“Not the kind of witch you mean,” said Kayleigh. “My grandmother helped Cat twice. She never would have done had she found Cat to have a wicked soul.” With her stare she dared Kofi to contradict her, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. “Get the message to Vai.”

“I shall, because yee ask it. But yee’s wrong about that gal.”

“My grandmother was not wrong!”

I crept out past a file of men coming to build on the half-finished rooms.

That night I went early to bed and slept hard. Bee came in late, and she dreamed, because at dawn before I even completed my yawn, she grabbed her sketchbook and drew with such focus and speed that I watched in awe. She filled two facing pages with a landscape of such splendor and detail that we might have been looking through a window: a calm lake surrounded by slender birch and sleepy pine, the flat landscape rimed with a thin carpet of snow; a rowboat tied to a rickety little pier; mist wreathing a wooded island. An indistinct figure stood on the pier.

She threw pencil and sketchbook onto the bed with a sigh of relief and scrambled up. “All right, now I can pee.”

I examined the sketch as she hurried behind the screen to the chamber pot and then back out to pour water from a pitcher into the copper basin. “Too much wine at last night’s dinner? What glittering notables did you associate with?”

She washed hands and face. “The professora was back last night. She asked after you again. Something about a story she wants to tell you about Uncle Daniel.”

I turned the page, but the next sheet was blank. “I want to hear it. She must be at the university. Bee.” She patted her face dry and looked at me, caught by my tone. “Bee, promise me. On Hallows’ Night, go to the law offices and ask for Keer. The maze that is troll town will hide you.”

She examined me, her gaze guileless and pure. “If you say so, I’ll do it. But I wonder how you can be sure.”

“Nothing is sure. But there are only twenty-nine days left until Hallows’ Night. I don’t know what the Taino can actually do. So right now, I think the troll town maze is the best chance you have.”

The week dragged past, for all I could do was wonder if Vai would meet with me and if the troll town maze could save Bee. If all else failed I would offer up Drake, but I wasn’t sure my sire would take him. I found a measure of peace by preparing a distillation of Daniel’s extensive notes on the legal congress presided over by Camjiata. Daniel had been a knowledgeable and astute student of the law, careful to note how the new legal code improved the condition of the general populace of Europa, and the ways it imposed restrictions.

On Mercuriday, the day before Jovesday, I stayed at the fencing hall after Bee had to leave for her language and protocol lessons. The fencing master had to scold me twice for too aggressively pushing in on an opponent, but the exercise calmed my foul mood.

I met Professora Alhamrai at the front door as she was coming down and I was going up.

“Peace to you,” I said by way of greeting. “Have you been in conference with the general?”

“He is out. In fact, I came to see you.” She fanned herself with a copy of my pamphlet. “I thought to invite you and your cousin to dine with me this afternoon. I would enjoy discussing your monograph. You may be interested in hearing about my meeting with your father.”

“I would be honored and delighted,” I said. It might also help the weary day pass.

“Gaius Sanogo will escort you. He knows how to reach my house.”

Visions of cells buried beneath Warden Hall bloomed in my mind’s eye. “The commissioner?”

She chuckled. “He will not be arresting you. He particularly enjoys showing up at this door to remind General Camjiata that the general does not rule in Expedition.”

I smiled. “Very well, then.”

When Bee returned in mid-afternoon, she proved more skeptical. “The general is out all day at a military exercise with the new recruits. I wonder if Sanogo knows that?”

“Why do you ask me questions to which you already know the answer?”

She tapped me on the arm with her painted fan. “To annoy you, dearest.”

We dressed in bright pagnes and matching blouses, me with my hair braided back and Bee with her curls partly covered by a yellow scarf that complemented her sea-struck blue-and-green pagne with its schools of stylized fish. We might have been any two local gals walking with a pleasant uncle through the late afternoon heat, except, of course, that we weren’t. We conversed amiably on neutral subjects like batey, batey, batey, and batey. Sanogo did not ask about the cacica’s imminent arrival at the border or the great areito by which the Taino queen would celebrate her son’s marriage to a humble Kena’ani girl of no particular lineage or wealth. Maybe he had spies in Taino country tracking the progress of the cacica and her entourage. Maybe he had spies in the general’s household. Maybe this was just a social visit.

We crossed the harbor in a boat rowed by four silent men. The water was so greasy it was opaque. Bits of rubbish fetched up against the prow as we passed boats and ships tied to moorings. The university lay across the harbor on an artificial island, a vast stone plaza rising from the muddy brown shallows and further reinforced by stone walls. There was only one water gate by which boats could approach, and we waited in line to put in under an archway fitted with a portcullis drawn up and secured by chains. After passing under the archway, we pulled up at a stone pier under the watchful eye of friendly uniformed watchman smiling the way folk do when they know they have the right to bash your head in if you so much as look at them in a way they decide to take offense at.

“Commissioner, no need to ask yee errand. Who is these two pretty gals?”

“Nieces of Professora Habibah ibnah Alhamrai.”

They laughed as at a good joke but let us disembark and pass down the pier to a second gate, also manned by watchmen, who waved us through. Beyond the gate lay a public square paved in stone and inhabited by young men napping in the shade of trees.

“This is more like a fortress than an institution of learning,” said Bee. “Who is the university protecting themselves against?”

Sanogo smiled his most pleasant smile. “The Council. By a decree passed fifty years ago, the Council cannot interfere with the university. The university guards its independence.”

Dusk swirled down over us with a smattering of rain as lamplighters made their rounds. Cobo-hooded gas lamps lit the street at mathematical intervals gauged to provide maximum coverage. As in the old city, the buildings were packed together. We turned out of the built-up portion and onto a tongue of land appointed by fenced gardens and isolated workshop compounds.

A sudden
pop
shuddered the air. Sparks spun skyward. We turned down a dirt path toward the compound the sparks had come from. Overhead, half the sky ran gray with cloud and the other half shaded toward night, stars breaking through. The sea sighed beyond the breakwater. Sanogo indicated an open gate in a whitewashed wall that surrounded four long roofs.

The professora greeted us with a kiss on the cheek. “Peace to you. Come in. Come in.”

The courtyard was a verdant garden of fruit trees, flowering shrubs, and a spectacular latticed patio under a trellis that supported a sprawl of hibiscus. The scent of flowers drenched us, but that was not all I smelled.

“What are you cooking?” I asked, licking my lips as if I could lick the flavor of lamb, garlic, sweet potato, mango, and a stew of fine spices as a savor over all. “That smells amazing!”

She led us to a table illuminated by hanging lamps. “Tagines.”

“Habibi’s specialty,” said Sanogo.

Bee waggled her eyebrows suggestively as if to say, “How does
he
know, do you suppose?”

“Do sit.” Professora Alhamrai indicated the table, set with an embroidered tablecloth and serviceable ceramic plates of a red clay glazed with brown starbursts.

“Why are there five place settings?” asked Bee.

“Will you help me with the platters, Beatrice?” she asked. “The kitchen is this way.”

Bee looked at me, but I shrugged, so she followed the professora. I had of course brought my cane. The sword’s ghostly hilt had flowered with the dusk, and it pulsed, tasting magic. I looked up at the pair of glowing lamps and their twisting, flickering flame. Yet there was not a breath of wind. Nor did the lamps hiss.

“Really, ’tis impossible to tell, if yee don’ already know,” said Sanogo, sitting on one of the benches. He pointed down a brick path laid through a gap in a hedge. “Past the bellyache bush, yee might find somewhat of interest.”

My heart had begun to gallop like a reckless horse bearing for home on a storm-wracked night. “Why am I always the last to know or guess?”

“A rhetorical question, I assume. I shall pour the wine. Don’ feel yee must hurry back.”

Vestiges of daylight clung to the western sky. Far in the distance niggled the
clug
and
clut
of factory machines that, with gaslight, could run all night. Closer, smoke puffed lazily up from one of the buildings within the compound.

Past the hedge the path speared through columns of dwarf fruit trees trimmed into spheres and rectangles; it emerged like the mouth of a stream onto a brick pavement fronting a long whitewashed one-story building. Once, I thought, this wing had served as the living quarters of an extended family, each wife or widow or adult sister with her own room, her own bed, and her own children. Between each pair of doors stood a bench set against the wall. A thick vine had over the years been coaxed along the eaves, and falls of purple flowers adorned the expanse. I stared at a bench and wall and flowers just like the sketch I had seen in Bee’s sketchbook. Seeing it, I grew flushed, and then I grew cold, for the workings of a deeper force had spun this moment into being. Not the bench or the building, built by ordinary means, but the energy or will that had directed Bee’s hand. This was a meeting place. Or would have been, had the bench not sat empty between two closed doors.

However, there was another bench. On it sat a male figure wearing a dash jacket perfectly tailored to his well-proportioned frame. Eyes shut, he had his head tilted back to rest on the wall, one hand curled lightly on his lap and the other tapping a rhythm on a thigh. A folded paper with a broken wax seal rested on the bench beside him.

I sat at the opposite end of the bench, my heart as fragile as a trembling songbird cupped in sheltering hands.

“Ah,” he said, without opening his eyes. “My tormenter.”

No, after all, my heart was not a trembling songbird but a hissing, outraged goose in full rampage.

“What puzzles me is how a man willing to spend weeks courting a woman to convince her that she was really in love with him, or could be in love with him if she would just set aside her perfectly reasonable and pragmatical concerns about being in all essentials
owned
by a mage House…” I had to pause to take a breath and sort out my line of argument. “What puzzles me, is how he could spend weeks—
weeks!
—entrenching his plans and carrying out his campaign, and then in one instant be willing to think the worst of her without making any effort to let her explain.”

His drumming fingers stilled. “Was I to doubt the evidence of my eyes?”

“Am I meant to conduct my entire explanation in questions?”

“Can you do so?”

“Do you actually think I’m lying about the questions?”

“Can I know what to believe?”

“Did you read my pamphlet? Get my message?”

“Would you be sitting here if I hadn’t?”

“You arranged this?”

“Who do you suppose sent Professora Alhamrai to the general’s household in the first place over three weeks ago to see how a certain…person was doing?”

“Wouldn’t the esteemed professora be capable of sending herself ?”

“Do you think she would have thought of you at all? Do you think you are the first person on everyone’s mind?”

I opened my mouth, and shut it. The hammering of my heart eased from an erratic cacophony to a mere pounding but no-less-irritated clamor. “Might some vain young man’s pride have been hurt?”

“Why would a person trust a person who had lied to him?”

“Why do you think I lied?”

His eyes opened as his head raised. “Was the appearance of the general, his fire mage, and your cousin not reason enough? Not to mention the wardens?”

“What if a lost young woman had had no inkling of any machinations behind her abandonment on the jetty and was as surprised as anyone at the appearance of the general, his fire mage, and her cousin? Not to mention the wardens?”

He cut me a dagger-like glance from his lovely eyes. “Am I meant to believe anyone could be that naïve?”

“Do you suppose I guessed this dinner was arranged by you?”

His brow furrowed in a way that suggested he was calculating my likely ability to be that naïve.

I had had enough. “Is this meant to impress me with your cleverness, Andevai? Wasn’t it bad enough when you insinuated in that unpleasant way that I might have had other lovers besides Drake? Do you really think I’m pretending about the questions? Do you think I
like
having to answer questions with questions all the time?
Do you?
 ”

He exhaled as he pressed a hand to his forehead. “No, you’re right. My apologies.”

The sudden way he shifted ground took me entirely by surprise. I looked down at the fists I had made of my hands, let out a breath, and opened them.

“Please let me say what I have been thinking about for days, hoping to have a chance to say to you. I want to tell you the things I should have told you when you asked on the night of the areito. I did know Drake was associated with the general. I did know the general was in the law offices of Godwik and Clutch in Adurnam that morning you came to meet with Chartji. But Bee and I were not there to meet him. We would never have gone to the law offices had we known the most notorious man in Europa would arrive there right after we did. We went to the law offices to see if we could get work with the radicals.”

“That would be the enchanting Brennan Du,” he muttered, hands back to tapping on his thighs.

“It’s sweet when you’re jealous.”

His lips pinched together.

I fought down an urge to jab a little deeper into that soft spot. “We left the law offices
because
the general was there. You know what happened after that. Bee and I slipped through the well and…and then I washed up on Salt Island. A salter bit me. Drake found me.”

“You left out the shark.”

“The shark attacked before the salter bit me.”

“You traveled straight from the spirit world into the Sea of Antilles.”

“Yes! But it was the Barr Cousins who rescued us, right off the beach, which I have to admit was very adventurous and ever so exciting… Was that a smile?”

“No.” He looked away so I couldn’t see his face.

But it had been a tiny bit of a smile.

“I knew nothing about the plot until after the raid. I didn’t know the general was in the Antilles until Drake told me. I didn’t know Bee was with the general until I saw her at Nance’s that night. Camjiata used her dreams to find me on Salt Island. He worked out the whole scheme of rescuing me and dropping me on the jetty as a way to flush you out of hiding. But I didn’t know that’s why I had been dumped there. I didn’t even know you were in Expedition. Yet there you were, at the carpentry yard. And you wore me down. And they sprang their trap.”

He whipped around to face me. “I wore you down? Weeks of patient courtship of a woman I can after all already call my wife, and that is how you think of it? That I
wore you down
?”

He pushed to his feet to storm off but I grabbed his wrist and tugged. He was not quite up and not quite stable, so he sat back down hard.

“Am I not flattering you enough?” I was, as the poets said, incandescent with fury, or would have been, if I had not been sitting next to an angry cold mage. “Are you even listening to me?”

An explosion like a fusillade of gunfire shook every building in the compound. Vai leaped to his feet. I ran after him as he cut through an archway in the back of the courtyard and into a cobblestoned side yard that ran alongside a warehouse with shattered windows. At first I thought the explosion had blown them out, but I had heard no breaking glass. Although what glass remained in the windows had jagged edges, none littered the ground; it was cleanly swept. Then my mouth went dry, for I saw flames inside the building and heard whistling in tones of the greatest agitation.