Cold Steel

Bakary spoke behind me. “Don’t touch her, Your Excellency.”



“If Lord Marius stabs her with his sword, will she die?” asked the mansa.



Never let it be said I could not throw caution to the winds and just take the leap.



“Rory, take off your clothes. Bee, the mirror is water. You can cross if you will come.”



“Of course I will!” cried Bee.



I cut my skin. Blood streamed from the gloomy spring chill of the mortal world into the hot blaze of the spirit world. When my sword’s tip grazed the surface, the mirror peeled back like an eye opening. Was this part of the power I had as a spiritwalker? With my blood to seed it, could cold steel open a gate through which others could cross?



Steel flared at my back, felt on my tongue as the gritty remains of a blacksmith’s forge. Lord Marius had drawn his sword.



“She can’t be allowed to escape!” cried Amadou Barry.



“Follow me!” I cried.



I fell through, pouring like blood through the gash.



17



My knees thumped onto stony ground. Black night enveloped me, unrelieved by moon or stars. As I lifted my sword arm defensively, fire waxed the blade as a shimmering steel gleam.



“Ah! Something stung me!”



“Bee?”



I held the sword aloft, searching for her in the aura of the blade’s light. Just in front of me a wall rose into the darkness, its face too smooth and high to climb. The surrounding land was covered with tall grass as far as the light from my sword reached. I did not see Bee, but I heard a whine like insects swarming.



“Bee!” I called.



Grass crackled. A huge cat with wicked curving canines and eyes as golden as my own sprang up to me. He nudged me with his head, then licked my forearm where a trickle of blood oozed along my skin. The rough trail of his tongue startled me into a laugh.



“Cat?” Bee’s voice rose out of the darkness. I still could not see her, but she sounded panicked. “Everything hates me here. This wasn’t a good idea! Ouch!”



“Where are you?” I cried.



Rory loped into the darkness. The whining spiked into a shrill buzzing. The big cat returned out of the gloom with Bee pressed to his side. She was waving an arm frantically in the air. I made a few cuts of my sword around her. The buzzing vanished as a cloud of tiny creatures scattered.



She dumped the packs at my feet. “I hope you’re happy, Cat. I didn’t think I would really cross through. I only meant to pretend to do so, because I was afraid you would refuse to go if you thought I was in danger.”



“You were in danger!”



“At least there I could have thrown myself into Amadou Barry’s arms if I had no other choice. Here I’m going to get eaten, and you’re going to have to carry all this alone.”



The cat sniffed at Bee, then staggered sideways in a showy manner as if her smell revolted him.



“Stop that!” She smacked him on the nose. “You may find your puerile jokes amusing, Rory, but I don’t!”



A cry like that of a rabbit being disemboweled shrieked out of the darkness. Bee leaped backward, only to slam into the wall. Rory pounced in front of her as his tail lashed. Wings fluttered in the grass. The scrape of a sword being drawn shuddered the air, followed by a leaden thump, a squawk of anger, and a battering like a body being beaten to death.



A figure lumbered out of the darkness.



“Bright Jupiter! What is this cursed Tartarus? Where are we?”



Amadou Barry thrashed out of the grass and into the circle of light made by my sword’s gleam. He had his military hat in one hand and a drawn sword in the other. The blade was coated with a viscous fluid to which white feathers clung.



“What attacked me?”



Rory opened his jaws to display his teeth. Amadou raised his sword.



“The cat is our ally,” I said sharply. I looked up, hearing the flutter of wings. “Down! Get down!”



Of course he did not comply. Why would a patrician Roman legate who was also a Fula prince listen to a bastard girl whose mother was a northern barbarian and had been an Amazon soldier in the army of his most hated enemy besides?



A creature with a human body and the head and claws of a harpy struck, claws closing on his shoulder. Hat and sword fell as he shouted in pain and shock. The beast lurched upward, trying to carry him away, but his mortal weight brought it to a crashing halt.



I lunged. My focus narrowed to the beast’s emotionless face, for it looked not like a woman but like a creature wearing the mask of a woman. The tip of my blade pierced its golden eye. Its howl shuddered down my blade. I pulled back. My blade slid free as ichor sprayed. In a thunder of wings it sprang into the air and vanished from sight, bleats fading as it flew away.