Cold Fire

“Well,” Drake said grudgingly, “it isn’t as if he could be trying to seduce you.”



I thought of Abby’s words. “You would know, I suppose.”



“Dear me, Cat. Have I done anything to provoke such a mean-spirited reply? I only meant that a nephew of the supreme ruler is not in the business of marrying the daughter of an impoverished Phoenician mercenary house. But we have to speak of this later. Where is Abby?”



She would not get into trouble on my account! “Why do you think I know where she is?”



He sighed. “Your insistence on being contrary in every answer is really quite annoying, Cat. A woman who is always contrary is unlikely to please a husband.”



I experienced a sudden and painful revelation that it was important to converse with a man before you became intimate with him, or else never to converse with him afterward. “I am sorry to inform you that not every woman wants a husband.”



“You’re very young. And very naïve.”



I felt my ears turn to steam. “All the better to be taken advantage of??”



The wick flared again, flame licking upward in a flash. Yes, he was definitely angry, and not in a way I found amusing. “Is that what you think? That I took advantage of you?”



I pinched my lips together. I had to accept that Abby was right: I had been bitten, and he had healed me. Anyone would have said yes. He had also promised to get me off this cursed island, on which I was, evidently, meant to be trapped for the rest of my life. I could be caged at the vast estate of Four Moons House in more gilded comfort than this! Best to keep silence.



He went on. “I saved your life, Cat. At considerable risk to my own! Do you know why Prince Caonabo walks everywhere with his young cousin?”



“How could I know that?”



“A rhetorical question, I assume. Really, Cat. This affectation of showing opposition to everything becomes ridiculous and does not do you any credit for you seem otherwise a sensible girl. Naturally, fire mages are rare. They are so revered among the Taino that even mages born among the naborias—we would call them the plebeians—are married into the noble clans. Each fire mage is given a catch-fire. The great risk of being a fire mage is that you overextend your power—”



“And burn up,” I finished. Yet I had felt his magic not as fire but as tendrils snaking through me, drawing my desire out of its innocent sleep.



“And burn up. I wish you would not interrupt me.”



“You have no catch-fire?”



“Who would volunteer to be my catch-fire? Would you?”



My fingers tightened on the railing. “Wouldn’t it be an awful way to die?”



“To burn to death? I don’t intend to find out. Anyway, in Expedition Territory, it is forbidden by law for any fire mage to employ or enslave a person as a catch-fire.”



“Is the prince’s catch-fire a slave?”



“No, he is a cousin. That is his family duty. Among the Taino, catch-fires are honored. If they die, as they often do, they become a god—as we might say—and their skull—if a skull is left—is woven into a figure of power which the Taino call a cemi.”



I lowered my gaze to the gleam of my sword. “Prince Caonabo said my sword was a cemi.”



“That’s probably why he came to talk to you. If he considers it a cemi, then you carrying it would make you seem a person of consequence, with powerful ancestors.”



“How do you know this is a sword?”



He glanced away as if thinking someone else must have spoken. “Because it is one. Now. Where is Abby?”



The question popped out unbidden. “Why do you think I know?”



Raising the lamp, he frowned as if genuinely puzzled. “Are you angry at me?”



I fisted my hands, suddenly furious at myself. Wouldn’t it be better to be honest about my anger instead of making all these petty retorts and always answering questions with questions?



The thought stunned me into muteness. Answering questions with questions?



He sighed, as if my silence was my answer. “I’ll get a hammock for you. It will be cooler to sleep up there, but I warn you, the mosquitoes will feast on you at dawn.” He went into the house and emerged with a bundle of netting, which he tossed to me. “There are loops at each end. String it from the hooks in the posts. Draw up the ladder. Salters can’t climb, and Taino princes are too proud to ask for a ladder to be lowered. Although I’m not.” He blew me a kiss as he left.



I strung up the netting. I had a difficult time finding a comfortable position because my sword kept getting caught against my body at awkward angles. Once settled, I stared at the sea as the breeze stirred my shift against my sticky body. My eyelids were sweating.