Cold Steel

If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was holding a severed head in my arms, I could have believed myself talking in an ordinary manner with a woman who found me a little tiresome.



“The fire banes who serve me are not slaves.”



“Prince Caonabo said murderers are sometimes punished by being forced to become catch-fires. Anyway, why would anyone volunteer to do something so dangerous?”



“Fire banes can take into their bodies the energy I release. They throw it into Soraya, which is the name we give to what you call the spirit world. Were I to pour the backlash of my magic into a single fire bane, I should kill her. Even if she is only a funnel, she cannot take all without some spilling into her flesh and burning her up. Over many generations, my ancestors taught themselves how to split these wakes into more than one thread and weave them through more than one fire bane. Thus, all are protected.”



“So the more powerful a fire mage, the more fire banes she needs? I saw the threads of your magic that night on the ballcourt. You wove them through a dozen fire banes. It seemed your net of magic spanned the entire island of Kiskeya and kept your dying brother alive.”



“Interesting. You can see within both worlds, something few can do.”



“I never saw anything like what you could do. It was… impressive, and to be honest, Your Highness, it was rather intimidating.”



This compliment she let pass without blinking. “It is not that other fire mages do not have access to the lakes of energy which I can tap. Many stand at that shore but cannot or will not wade into the deep. My particular skill lies in the quality and precision of my weaving. There is no fire bane I cannot control, no matter how many threads I weave into the whole. But let me assure you, your husband was at no risk from me. I do not take what is not offered, and he did not offer himself. To be honest, the man talked so much about you that at times he became tedious. I expect you would have found his words gratifying.”



A strange, smoky feeling scorched my heart. It was not so easy to wave away responsibility for her death when I was talking to her. It wasn’t that I regretted saving my life or Vai’s life or Bee’s life. It was that I regretted the whole situation we had been forced into. Regret has a way of creeping through flesh and mind the way blood returns to frozen limbs and makes you hurt. If I’d known more or things had fallen out differently, she might have become my ally.



“What the fire bane has is the same way of thinking I have. He is precise. Methodical. Meticulous. Disciplined. I was astounded that he had the means to douse my weaving. I should like to ask him how he did it. Where is he? For I would have thought he would stay with you.”



Now that she and I were so closely bound, I saw no reason to hide the truth. “The Master of the Wild Hunt stole him from me.”



“The maku spirit lord drank my blood, and then stole the young man. An intriguing strategy. You must ask yourself what the spirit lord wants.”



We came to a wide clearing. At its center rose a ceiba tree whose steepled roots flowed like ridges from a massive trunk. Baskets hung from the big thorns that adorned the lower roots. Some were filled with rotting fruit or with animal flesh turned green and putrid with decay. Others gave off a pleasing scent of herbs and flowers. One was filled to the brim with fresh yam pudding that smelled so sweet and tasty that I licked my lips and barely restrained myself from scooping with my fingers and eating it all up. In one, a tiny little creature with a downy coat of feathers slept, curled up all cozy for a long eternity’s nap.



I found an empty basket and pulled it off the tree. “With your permission, Your Highness, I’d like to place your head in this basket so I have my hands free to climb.”



To my surprise she smiled, not in a friendly way but in the way a rich woman smiles when a servant brings her just the gown she wanted in the morning. “It is a proper place for me to rest.”



I wove grasses to make a nest that would keep her face angled up, for it seemed undignified to smash her facedown into the basket. A leather cord laced closed the lips of the basket. I fixed its strap around my body alongside the two flasks. Rory licked his foreleg.



I put a hand on the coarse fur of his neck. “Change into your man form as soon as you can. That’s how we’ll know we’ve crossed back into the mortal world.”



He looked up the thorn-ridden bole of the tree as if to ask me how we were meant to climb, with the lowest branches out of my reach and him with no hands able to grasp.



“We came in through the roots,” I said, “so we go out through the roots.”