Cold Fire

“I’m talking to the latch! Prying little beast! I’ll throw you in a furnace and melt you!”



“Catherine? Did you hit your head?”



“Didn’t you hear what it said?”



“What makes you think I let him hear me?” said the latch with a smirk. “But if he weaves me a pretty illusion first, then I’ll close my eyes and let you do that other thing in private.”



“Catherine, as much as I would love to keep kissing you instead of hearing you rave on about furnaces, we need to do something now.”



The door to the spirit world was opened from the outside. The gulf of the sky yawned, for we rolled through the void of heaven. The hunt coursed away into a swirl of lightning and black cloud. As calmly as if he were entering the coach from a street corner, my sire stepped in.



I threw myself across Vai to shield him. “You said there would only be one sacrifice.”



My sire sat opposite us, raising his eyebrows as Vai set me to one side. Vai left his arm around me but did not speak. We faced the Master of the Wild Hunt together.



“By the terms of the contract, we can take only one,” replied my sire. “We have taken this night’s blood. But that doesn’t mean I can’t take a prisoner across to the spirit world with me. I’m going to find out what it was this magister did that he oughtn’t to have been able to do.” As he spoke, his human face slowly congealed into the mask of ice. “Which means that in addition to assuaging my terrible curiosity, I can release you, little cat, from my service. As long as he resides in my palace, I need only tug on the leash to bring you crawling back.”



He leaned forward and pressed a hand on Vai’s chest, his touch the embrace of ice.



Then he flung me out the open door.



36



Into the sea.



The warm salty water closed over my face, but I did not have the luxury of panic. I pulled to the surface and breached just as I realized two sharks were circling, drawn by the scent of my blood. My rage and hate leaked like poison into the water, and perhaps that was why they did not dart in for the kill. Or perhaps because they recognized a kinswoman. For they stayed away, merely keeping an eye on me as I floundered toward shore.



It seemed inevitable that I waded to shore at the jetty almost exactly where Drake had dumped me the first time. The few men working the piers turned to watch me emerge from the sea with my blouse and pagne plastered to my body, revealing every curve and mound. My blood streaked one leg. When I glared at them, they backed away.



I halted on the revetment next to baskets filled with fresh catch, slippery pargo with their red tails and little cachicata. Behind, the sun had risen two hands above the horizon, the dawn feed done and the wind no more than a soft breeze. The wide flat expanse of the waters in their constant shimmering reminded me of the trolls’ mirrors. At least I had saved Bee.



The sky shone so blue it looked flat; wisps of cloud trailed off the highlands. I scanned the roofs and smoke of the city but saw no sign of the Taino airship fleet. Indeed, there weren’t many men on the piers. The streets had a peculiar emptiness, as if most traffic had drained off in the face of a coming storm. The few men gathered into clumps to whisper and stare as I dripped across the boulevard and walked into the deserted carpentry yard. Only three people worked there, despite the early-morning coolness. The two men set down their axes and hurried under the shade of the shelter’s roof, where the Taino boss was leaning over her table making tallies in her accounts book. She looked up, saw me, and said something in Taino to them. They bolted out the back as she straightened to greet me.



“The maku’s perdita,” she said in the local speech.



“Could you ask me a question, please?” I said.



She had the Taino habit of looking at you directly and without fear. “What manner of question shall I ask, Perdita?”



The thrill that coursed through my heart made me smile, not with joy but with resolve. “That was the right one. What day is it? What happened to the Taino fleet?”



“In the Roman calendar, ’tis the third day of November. As for the other, here is the story as I heard it. Three nights back, when the cursed Council surrendered Expedition to the Taino cacica, a witch flew down out of the night, turned she own self into a big black saber-toothed cat and killed the cacica, then tore her to bits and threw she head in a well. That witch was surely angry because the cacica had stolen the maku fire bane the witch loved. Yee suppose that could be true?”



“No, not quite like that. But what happened afterward?”



“The witch flew off with the maku.”