Kate Elliott - Cold Steel

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.”

I smeared the last moist dregs of his drying blood onto my fingers, then pricked my forearm on one of the thorns. Its sting burned into my skin. As we crept into the dark hollows beneath the vast architecture of roots, I wiped our blood on the bark.

Deep in the pit of the tree the shadows melted away into steps ascending. He went first. It quickly grew so dark I had to keep a hand against the curving trunk. My shoulder ached, less sore than before. The grim implication dogged my steps: I could never attack my sire with cold steel if it meant I would harm not just myself but Rory and every other servant of the Hunt.

“Pah!” said Rory, as if he were spitting something out.

“Rory!” My fingers spread across the skin of a muscular back.

“Ouch!” he added. “Don’t you think it’s strange that it hurts so much when no blade touched us?”

I carefully felt along his shoulder. Where he had been shot a scar had already formed. “At least we’re back in the mortal world.”

He hissed. “Shh! I smell people. I hear them, too.”

We crept through a maze of shallow, stagnant pools, scum slicking our feet. The air was thick with a scent similar to the one I imagined the ancient wrappings of Kemet mummies would have if you were so unfortunate as to be forced to unwrap one in order to clothe yourself. I probed with a foot, my sandal tapping rock.

He whispered, “I hate it when I have no shoes and the ground pokes my feet.”

“I brought sandals. Put them on.”

“You’re such a good sister. Always thinking of my comfort!”

“My comfort, too. Put on these trousers and singlet first!”

“Clothes are so confining. I understand why you wear them when it’s cold, but I see no need for them in a warm place like here.”

“In human society you are meant to clothe yourself except when you are in private.”

“Yes, it would be difficult to pet if one had to wear clothes!” He pressed a hand to my cheek. “Your skin is hot, Cat. Are you feverish?”

“It’s called blushing. Is the wound on your leg bleeding? No? Then put your trousers on!”

When he had dressed, we moved on. A salt-sea smell tinged with smoke tickled my nose. Light filtered in, too constant to be torchlight and too bright to be candles. We groped along a rock wall on which figures had been drawn in poses of dancing and eating as at one of the festivals the locals called an areito. It was at such a festival with its dancing and food that Vai had won my heart. I could almost hear the ghost of that night’s music in my ears, until I realized I was hearing singing, drums, and the rattle of shaken gourds. A rocky incline dusted with drifting sand gave way to a cave mouth. Its ledge overlooked a massive hollow fitted out with gaslights. From the height of the ledge we gazed across the hollow and through a monumental arch built from massive beams of wood. Through the archway could be seen a magnificent city whose major thoroughfares were illuminated by gas lamps. Right in the center of the city lay the straight lines of a ballcourt and next to it a plaza with high-roofed buildings like administrative offices and palaces. Beyond the city, a full moon glimmered over a flat sea. Masts filled a harbor, and bloated shadows moored to short towers marked airships. The distant jetty was strung with globes, their golden light awash over the dark waters. The entire city seemed to be out celebrating.

It was the view Bee had drawn in her sketchbook, only without us in it.

In the hollow below, an areito let loose in full rhythm. People stamped out a dance in lines of men or of women. Revelers stared as we descended into the hollow. A few offered drink or food as if to see if we were solid. I tested several smiles, trying to seem friendly and harmless. We made our way around the edge beneath the gleam of gas lamps. The hollow had once been a cavern, but its roof had long since collapsed. We struggled through the crowded celebration. I grabbed hold of Rory’s jacket and tugged him to a halt as I searched for a route up the other side.

Away across the crowd, I saw the man wearing a terribly dashing dash jacket in a gold-and-orange brick pattern. He smiled in that aggravating way that made my heart melt, the way he’d smiled when he had said, “ How could you not want me, Catherine? ”

My limbs turned to stone as he arrowed toward me. Even when a surge of laughing people cut off my view, freeing me from the chain that linked our gazes, I could not move.

Then there he was, standing right in front of me, looking exactly like Vai except that he was not wearing shoes or even sandals. The bare feet were a dead giveaway.

“Who are you?” I demanded. “What do you want?”

“Rory, is that our sire?” I asked.

“Our sire?” Rory took several deep sniffs. All I could smell was the bloom of ripe guava and a whiff of tobacco. “No. That’s not his smell. It couldn’t be him anyway. Our sire can only cross into the mortal world on Hallows’ Night.”

The opia’s lips quirked up. “Yee’s caused a deal of trouble for me, gal. I know what yee carry in that basket. I shall make it worth yee while if yee don’ deliver the head of the cacica to the Honored Caonabo, he who is now cacique over all the Taino people.”

“Caonabo is cacique already?”

“This is his coronation areito, here and everywhere in Taino land.”

“But I promised I would deliver her head to her son.”

“So yee shall. Yee shall deliver her head to Haübey, not to Caonabo.”

“Haübey was exiled after he was bitten by a salter. He can never return to the Taino kingdom.”

“Yee don’ know everything.” He slid an arm around my waist and pulled me close. Cursedly, he felt exactly like Vai as he murmured in my ear, “Nevertheless, I’s willing to make yee a deal. For ’tis certain Haübey is gone over the ocean where I cannot reach him.”

“Cat,” said Rory.

“How long ago did the general and his army leave?” I cried with alarm. “How long have we been in the spirit world?”

“The reckoning of days and months mean little enough to me.”

“Cat,” said Rory.

I pulled out of the opia’s appealing grasp. “I promised to deliver the head. Then my cousin can help me get back to Expedition. I have to get a ship to Europa.”

“What if I could get yee to Europa? Right now? If yee do as I ask and promise to take the cacica’s head to Haübey?”

“Cat!”

I was hallucinating Bee’s voice.

Rory tugged on my arm. I looked round to see Bee plowing through the crowd. She was hauling the smaller of Vai’s wooden travel chests with the aid of a grinning Taino man who was wearing an embroidered loincloth, bronze anklets and bracelets, a beaded necklace, a feathered cap, and nothing more. His friends followed along, dressed in a similarly appealing style. Like me, Bee wore an amply cut Europan skirt, good for striding, but a sleeveless bodice in the Expedition manner because, although it was night, it was plenty warm. She, Rory, and I stuck out like the maku we were, but no one seemed to mind.