Cold Fire

“Cat, did he really say it would offend his radical principles to shop on Avenue Kolonkan?”



“Yes, and worst of all, Bee, he meant it in that pedantic way he means things.” I glanced at Captain Tira, who met my gaze with the same interested look she had thrown me when she had entered the bedchamber accompanying Vai’s belongings. “Not that I can afford to buy anything on Avenue Kolonkan anyway.”



“I’ll buy you whatever you want, dearest. Never mind what he says!”



I had a sudden and horrific image of being caught between Vai and Bee arguing, a precise cold steel blade pitted against the blunt trauma of an axe. I temporized, because while I agreed with Vai, there had been such lovely trinkets and ribbons. “I thought the Taino treasury was empty.”



“I think the situation is more complicated than that phrase makes it sound. We traveled halfway across Kiskeya, to Sharagua and back. I have never seen a more prosperous, orderly, and healthy people. No one stopped me from going anywhere I wished. I saw not a single starving child, and I assure you, I was looking for the wretched and the poor because I wanted to gauge exactly how powerful and rich the Taino kingdom was if I was to ally myself with them.”



Despite Captain Tira’s presence, I decided to say what really weighed on my mind. “An alliance brought about by the general. He is half Roman. We can’t trust him.”



“Roman on his mother’s side. Iberian and Mande on his father’s. That makes him of mixed lineage. Just like you. Should I therefore not trust you?” Her curls swayed around her face as she smiled impishly at me. Her hands clutching mine were the only hint of her anxiety at what lay ahead and the huge gamble she had taken. “Of course he is using me to get what he wants, which is the cacica’s airships and access to Expedition’s wealth and factories because the Council daren’t say no to him once the Taino support his cause. I don’t care. Because it gets me security. If the cold mage truly loves you, and you love him, then you are both fortunate and cursed, because you two will never be secure. People who want to use one of you can threaten the other one. And they will. But when I am a powerful noblewoman and respected seer among the Taino, I can protect you both. Always, Cat. Always.” She embraced me. “And buy you whatever you want on Avenue Kolonkan.”



The captain had folded her arms across her chest and closed her eyes, as if the maudlin outpourings of gals like us commonly bored her to sleep.



I muttered, “You would think Captain Tira often delivers innocent young brides to strangers meant to become their husbands.” A flicker of movement twitched in her cheek, and her right foot shifted, heel raising and lowering. “Captain, did the general really figure out where Vai was all that time from Bee’s sketchbook? Or did someone inform on him? No harm in telling me now.”



She opened her eyes. Her silence was her answer.



A growing clamor of sound greeted us: drums, rattles, horns, and singing swelled and ebbed like the sea’s surge. We had reached the border, and it sounded like an areito had already started.



The carriage halted.



Bee took in a shuddering breath. We locked gazes.



“Always, Bee,” I said. “Always.”



The door was opened from outside. The captain went out first.



Bee took advantage of her departure to draw me close and whisper. “Remember, say nothing and do nothing except what I tell you to do. Don’t speak unless I tell you to. And especially, don’t take orders from others, only from me.”



“That shouldn’t be difficult, accustomed as I am to you bossing me around.”



As Captain Tira looked back in, Bee released me to wave an imperious hand. “You first, dearest, for the last and most dramatic entrance shall be mine.”



“You always hog the dramatic entrance, Bee,” I said as I clambered out. “Maybe next time I’ll steal it from you.”



I had not once ventured out of Expedition’s sprawl in the weeks after Drake had dumped me on the jetty. Its streets and courtyard gates, untidy alleys and well-groomed ball courts, cheerful markets and the shimmering presence of the sea and the masts of ships, and even the whistling parties of trolls hurrying about their business, had become my landscape.



We had fallen into another world.



The huge plaza reminded me of paintings I had seen depicting the great public spaces of Rome and Qart Hadast when those empires were in their heyday. The paved open space stretched so far that tendrils of dusk hid its boundaries. Ahead lay entrances to four monumental ball courts, two on either side of a long stone building painted red and blue and pierced with nine narrow archways. The central arch was surmounted by an elaborately painted scene depicting fish spilling from an overturned gourd.