Kate Elliott - Cold Fire

Fingers scratched at the barred door. Had my heart not been firmly embedded in my chest, it would have slammed back and forth around the room like a rabbit gone wild. After the rabbit calmed down, I picked up my sword and leaned an ear against the door.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Abby.”

As my left hand tightened on the hilt, my right crept to my throat. The only sound I could get out was a soft “ Gaaah. ”

“I not here to bite yee. Mebbe after we chat.”

Horribly, we both started giggling. I fumbled with the bar, set it aside, and opened the door.

She slipped in. “I don’ have permission to walk out at night. They put we in di pens. Most times dat change come at night.”

“Sit down. Although it’s horribly hot in here.”

She looked surprised. “Think yee so? If yee want, we go up a di roof.”

I laced on my bodice, and she tied the pagne for me. We climbed a rope ladder and settled side by side on a ledge rimmed with a railing. I sat cross-legged with my sword across my thighs. The clouds were breaking up, mottling the sky. Waves soughed on the beach. The sound was restful until you began to wonder if the steady lift and drag of the waves was really the breathing sleep of leviathan.

“When were you bit?” I asked. “I mean, if you don’t mind speaking of it.”

“I don’ mind. Dat bite sit on me thoughts all di time. Di teeth of di ghouls eat me.”

“Are there ghouls here? I thought they only lived beneath the sands in the Sahara Desert.”

“Dey behiques tell dis story. First time, di salt miners in dat place Mali broke open dat ghoul nest. Di ghouls wake and dey bite. Dey left dey teeth in di miners. Dem teeth a go eating all through every person, every man and gal dat wen bitten. One person bite another person and dey ghoul teeth keep eating on and on.”

“Blessed Tanit.” I took her hand in mine.

A howl that like of a beast with its leg caught in a trap rose from behind us, and fell away.

“What was that?” I am sure the hair stood up on the back of my neck.

“After di teeth eat yee mind, yee don’ have no more thoughts. But mebbe for one moment yee wake up and yee remember and dat make yee scream. Don’ cry, Cat’reen.”

I wiped my cheeks. “It’s so terrible.”

“I mean, yee tears have salt.” I felt her lick her lips, as if she wanted to lick my cheeks to taste the salt of my tears but had enough control to restrain herself.

With an effort, I kept hold of her hand and did not shift away. “If Drake can heal you, why hasn’t he done so already?”

She remained silent for a long time. He had kissed her forehead, so it wasn’t as if he recoiled from touching her. Far out over the sea, a light winked and vanished. Perhaps it was the lamp of the moon shining on the water, for where the clouds shredded away at the zenith, a quarter moon watched. Under its light, Abby’s skin took on a peculiar crystalline gleam, and her eyes showed no irises, only a flat white circle.

“I don’ like dat dis man Drake decide so quick to make yee he sweet gal.”

“I said yes! He didn’t force me, if that’s what you mean.” A certain giddiness, and the rum, still warmed my flesh. Yet a new uneasiness crept like gossipy whispers along my ears. Now that I was no longer terrified and disoriented, it seemed unlikely that the only way for a fire mage to heal someone was to have sexual congress with them. Had I mistaken his words? Because I certainly hadn’t mistaken his intentions. “He told me that to heal me he had to touch my skin with his.”

Startlingly, she laughed. “Di kiss of life. We call it by dat name. But I reckon dat maku give yee di kiss of life and den take a little something more.”

“Bold Astarte!” I muttered. A little something more.

Abby patted my arm. “Dem fire mages reckon dey can take what dey want. So he tell you dat, and den he get you drunk and he take it all. I don’ like it.”

“Oh,” I whispered. “Was I an idiot?”

“Not a bit like dat, Cat’reen!” Her quiet compassion shamed me, for in the midst of her own terror she had opened her heart to feel for me. “If dat man said so to me, right after I got bit, I a done di same as yee for dat chance he heal me. But I don’ like it.”

I leaned against her as I often leaned against Bee, and her smile was all the gift I could ask for.

Out of the darkness, a male voice spoke.

“Salve, Perdita.”

Abby hid her face behind crossed hands in an awkward genuflect. I looked over the railing to see two figures standing below. One was a stocky adolescent wearing as ornament a blocky stone collar. The other was a man perhaps ten years older than me with impressively heavy gold armbands on his bare upper arms and a gold pendant around his neck. He was dressed in white cloth draped over his body something in the manner of a Roman toga. He looked oddly familiar, and not just because I thought he was one of the mages I had faced on the beach.

“I intend to speak with you. I will climb up so we may have privacy.” The man spoke in a formal Latin whose antiquated flavor heightened the princely expectation that he was not asking but telling me.

Abby quivered but did not speak.

I had faced down the Master of the Wild Hunt with his evil crows, monstrous toads, frozen minions, and masked face. For that matter, I had dealt with Andevai Diarisso Haranwy. I knew how to handle a young man who might be arrogant, vain, and besides that a bit of an ass.

“We have not been formally introduced. In my country, a proper introduction is necessary before a man and a woman who are in no other way acquainted may speak to each other. But in deference to what I am informed is your exalted station in life, I will certainly agree to speak to you as long as my companion is allowed to climb down and go on her way unmolested and unpunished.”

Just as different fabrics have different textures, silence can display various qualities. In this case, I was sure that if astonishment were like rain, it would have been pouring sheets.

Yet he replied in the tone he had used before. “Your conditions prove acceptable, Perdita.”

Abby’s dry lips brushed my cheek, and she clambered down the ladder and tottered off.

My interlocutor climbed up and crouched beside me. Straight coal-black hair fell loose down his back. His dark eyes smoldered with the suggestion of buried heat. “You have a name.”

“I do have a name. You have a name as well.”

He blinked, as at an unexpected drop of rain in his eye. “I have learned to speak the Europan tongue. Perhaps I speak wrongly and you do not comprehend. Your name I wish to know.”

“In my country, it is usual for people to introduce their names each to the other. So if I say that my name is Catherine Bell Barahal, then you would say, ‘Greetings’ and afterward you would tell me by what name I can call you.”

“Perdita, it is not possible for you to speak to me as one of my kin. You must address me in the proper way.”

“Because you are a king’s nephew? He is not my king. We have no kings in Europa.”

“But many princes and generals, the histories tell. Perhaps for this reason you fight so much.”

“There is no answer to that! I feel obliged to remind you that you are the one who wanted to talk to me. I mean no offense.”

It seemed he had taken none, for all this time his manner had not changed. He was beginning to seem less like an arrogant and proud man and more like a reserved and formal one. “You speak with bold words. And you carry a cemi with you. Are you of noble birth?”

“What is a cemi?”

“It is that person you hold, who shows her power at night.” He indicated the sword.

“Why do you call it a person?”