Cold Steel

“If you sit and watch the big pot, the water will boil,” I added.



“Really?” He settled on a stool with such a pleased expression that I could not tell whether he simply did not know the old saying, or had a profoundly complex sense of humor.



In the kitchen Bee and I stripped, wrapped ourselves in towels, and hung the wet clothes on a rack by the stove to dry.



“Really, Cat, wasn’t that a little mean-spirited? A watched pot never boils!”



“Of course it boils eventually unless there’s a cold mage nearby to douse the fire. It will keep him out of trouble.” I pulled out Queen Anacaona’s skull, with its empty eye sockets and remarkably good teeth. Some peculiar magic was keeping the jaw wired on. “Where shall we set her?”



“You can’t mean to set out the skull as if it can see or hear anything!”



“It seems rude to leave her shut up in the basket. I’ll set her here on one of the plates so she feels as if she knows what’s going on.” I placed her on a cupboard shelf, facing out. “There you are, Your Highness. We will be going into and out of this kitchen, but be assured we will not leave the house without you. In fact, if you have any spectral powers, you might warn us if an enemy approaches the house so we can escape. Otherwise you’ll fall into their custody and then you’ll never reach your son.”



I glanced at Bee, sure she was about to make a mocking comment.



Instead, her lips pursed as she considered the skull of the cacica who had briefly been her mother-in-law. She made a courtesy. “My apologies, Your Highness. I regret my rude comment.”



We left the cacica to oversee the kitchen while we explored the house. Our bare feet marked trails on the floors. Warmth from the two fires drifted upstairs like the kiss of an opia. The cold mages had repapered the walls, replaced the curtains, and removed all the old furniture. Only two things remained from the house we had grown up in.



One was the big mirror on the first-floor landing, covered by a sheet. I pulled back the sheet and rubbed a finger over the mirror’s slick surface, remembering how an elderly djeli had chained the marriage between Vai and me in its dark surface. The light from the lamp Bee held gleamed in the mirror, illuminating us as indistinct figures. Threads of gossamer magic chased around me before receding into the shadows. A faintly gleaming chain spun out of my chest and pierced the surface of the mirror, as an arrow loosed into a pool stabs a path. Although barely visible in the darkness, the thread shot sure and strong into the unseen depths.



Was there movement in the heart of the mirror? I extended a hand to touch it. Its surface was smooth and hard.



“Cat, are you staring at yourself? For you look a sight, with your hair all tangled and that towel draped so fashionably…” She touched her own bedraggled curls with her free hand. “Blessed Tanit! Is that really how I look?”



I pretended to recognize her as if for the first time. “Bee? Is that truly you? I would never have known… I thought perhaps a medusa, with the snakes of her hair all dead and limp—”



She kicked me in the shin.



I let the sheet drop back over the mirror’s face. We went upstairs to the bedchamber we had shared for most of our lives. In a secret hiding place in the wall of the chamber we found Bee’s first sketchbook with its scrawls, and a scrap of faded calico fabric wrapped around my childhood toys: a red-and-cream polished agate, a little wood play sword, and a tiny carving of a stallion caught in the flow of a gallop.



“You gave me an awful bruise on the head with that thing,” said Bee as I brandished the little sword. “You were such a beast, Cat. Always getting into fights.”



“I was not! I was always saving you when you got in fights! Like the time in the ribbon shop when that Roman girl yanked on your hair until you screamed while her mother pretended nothing was happening.”



She grinned as she galloped the toy stallion across the floor. “You had hacked off half her hair before her mother bothered to come look. It’s a good thing we can run so fast.”



“It’s not speed. It’s knowing how to distract the enemy.”



“Do you remember seeing her again years later when we arrived at the academy?” Bee laughed so hard she had to wipe tears away. “All grown up, and with her hair done in those knots and bows that were fashionable four years ago.”



“Thank Tanit that went out of fashion as quickly as it did. Your hair was too curly and mine too heavy and straight.”



“How she looked daggers at us! She started a whispering campaign, do you remember? To try to make us feel ashamed of being impoverished Phoenician girls.”