Cold Fire

“You are the last person to claim that blood means nothing, Cat. Your mother meant to sacrifice herself in order to make sure you were raised by your own blood instead of by a stranger.”



The breeze wove a net that made my lips heavy and my throat thick. I stared at him.



“So you didn’t know? Your parents never told you what she risked for you?”



“Don’t you know my parents died when I was six? Was that why they were so afraid of Tara being recaptured by your army? Not because she was a deserter, but because of your wife’s dream about me? Were they just trying to keep me safe? Because they feared what you might do to me?”



“As the djeli said, destiny is a straight path. We are meant for what we are meant for.”



“I can’t argue with that mulish truism!”



“Indeed, you can’t. Here’s something you don’t know. Your mother betrayed me.”



“How did she do that?”



“She chose Daniel over my cause, her heart over my army, the duty she felt for him and for the baby over the duty she owed to me. She might have waited until her term of service was up, only another five years. But at some point on the lost expedition to the Baltic Ice Shelf, she had sexual congress with Daniel Barahal, and by doing so, broke her oath to me.”



The old city’s night revelry danced in the excitable rhythm of drums and lutes and laughter, heard from beyond the garden walls. I stared. He didn’t know Daniel wasn’t my father. Yet why should Tara or Daniel have told him? “You can’t know what circumstances were like on that expedition,” I said. “Many people died.”



He set a foot on the bench beside me, braced as if to remind me that he was bigger than I was in every way possible. “Certainly we may do in extreme conditions what we might not do elsewise. But you see, she never claimed so. You can of course understand that when the women in my Amazon Corps swear an oath to remain celibate, it is understood that women may be vulnerable to rape. They less than other women, because of their training and comrades, but it happens.”



“Would that have made a difference to her sentence?”



“Of course it would. A soldier made pregnant by rape can serve out her enlistment if she gives up the child to anonymous fosterage. Tara could have claimed rape, given you up, served out her enlistment, married Daniel after, and had other children with him.”



“Why couldn’t a raped woman give the baby to her family?”



“It would be too easy to circumvent the law. An army must have discipline. No one forced Tara to sign the enlistment papers. She knew the terms. Instead, she hid her pregnancy until she was wounded in battle and her condition revealed. Then we had no choice but to arrest her for insubordination. Yet with my own ears I heard her swear in court that Daniel was the father and she his willing partner, and so he had therefore the right to claim and raise the child after her execution. Yet no pregnant woman can know if a baby will be healthy or even survive birth. So I had to wonder, why she was willing to sacrifice her life for the chance of keeping you with Daniel?”



I knew the answer: because she had hoped Daniel could somehow keep me away from the Master of the Wild Hunt. It hadn’t been about Camjiata at all, even though he thought it was.



“Do not defy me as your mother did, Cat. I cannot be merciful. Bring me the cold mage.”



I bowed my head to give myself space to calm my thundering heart. Rising, I smoothed down my pagne. “Are we finished, General?”



“No. We are not finished. But this night I am going to have a drink and thence to my bed.”



I made him a pretty courtesy in the Adurnam manner, but the heat of my anger had forged my heart into cold steel.



30



In the morning, I went to the law offices and after a protracted duel negotiated new terms: I would write Keer a thrilling monograph detailing the lurid superstitions believed in the primitive villages of Europa, and in payment she would take me to see Chartji’s aunt.



For two weeks I followed a strict routine. Early in the morning when it was cool, Bee and I attended the fencing academy. I then accompanied Bee to her morning lessons in Taino, for it seemed useful to learn something of the language most people in the Antilles spoke. She then was carried off by a pair of Taino women, haughty nobles, and their prodigious retinue of companions, servants, allies, hangers-on, and guards. The rest of the day was mine. While I did indulge myself playing batey with off-duty soldiers in the courtyard, mostly I thumbed through my father’s journals. I chose tales I could string together to give Vai a glimpse of the truth of what had happened to me in the spirit world. My first two attempts Keer rejected. The third she accepted.