Cold Steel

earlier time. For generations, only families with Council ties and wealth were allowed to own property inside the walls, while newer districts were built outside the walls. When the Council still ruled, the gates were locked at dusk and even in the daytime any person entering the old city could be searched. Now the toughs swarmed right in after us, dogging our heels. Their presence heartened me.

I addressed Prince Caonabo. “Your Highness, did you know that the general believes I am to be the instrument of his death? That is why he conspired with your mother the honored cacica to have me permanently quarantined on Salt Island.”

“I want the truth,” said Caonabo.

We halted at the base of the wide steps that fronted Council Hall. I caught sight of Luce pushing through the crowd. Idiot girl! Rory gestured to warn her off.

The prince’s attendants unfolded the carriage steps.

Before any of us could alight from the carriage, a young man descended the steps of Council Hall with a mocking grin that I wanted to punch right off his face. His red-gold hair seemed to blaze like flame and his blue eyes to kindle with heat, or maybe those were sparks from his fire magic. Really, the last person I wanted to see in a situation like this was James Drake. I curled my left hand into a fist as he came up.

“Why, Cat, I’ve been waiting all night for you to show up.” As an afterthought, he acknowledged the prince with a careless wave. “Your Highness, my understanding of Taino law is that murderers are sentenced to labor in the cane fields for life. Or they are assigned as a catch-fire to a fire mage. We all know she’s responsible for the Exalted Queen’s death. Once she is convicted, I will be happy to take her off Taino hands. I could use a remarkably pretty catch-fire.”

Naturally Prince Caonabo had too much dignity to respond to this rude outburst.

But I didn’t!

“James Drake! Why are you standing here waiting for me like a lovesick but rejected suitor?”

The general pulled firmly on the rope to keep me on the seat. “Don’t be rash, Cat,” he murmured. “This is not the place or time for a pissing match.”

“I wasn’t waiting because I want you!” Drake’s gaze flicked around the crowd: the Taino soldiers, the crowd held at a prudent distance by wardens, Camjiata’s retinue of veterans, and the guards stationed at the Council Hall doors. He pitched his voice louder. “I hope you finally understand that I slept with you only to show the cold mage he wasn’t so high and mighty as he thought he was. Because there’s really nothing a man hates more than knowing his wife is a whore.”

The word stung. “You lied to me and got me drunk.”

“The ease with which I got you to have sex ought to give any man pause, knowing how easy it was to tip rum down your throat and coax the clothes off your admittedly attractive body. Still, it scarcely matters now. I’m a magnanimous man. I’d never turn away a pretty girl like you if you offered to warm my bed in exchange for better treatment after the standing inquiry condemns you as a murderer.”

My face was burning, and my heart was pounding. “Fortunately, I only had sexual congress with you twice. That’s all I needed, to know I needn’t bother if I want to take any pleasure from the act.”

People in the crowd sniggered.

The prince was literally blinking in astonishment, mouth agape.

Drake laughed derisively, but anyone could see he was furious. “You keep ruining the impression of your pretty face with that crass mouth of yours. Now that you’re an accused murderer, I’d be careful about antagonizing the only person in this city who might be persuaded to make your life more pleasant than it will be in the cane fields.”

When I shifted forward with fist cocked, the general tugged on the rope to pull me up short.

“I’d have to be dead before I’d let you touch me,” I said as the hemp scraped my neck.

“Strange you should phrase it in quite that way.” Drake smiled as might a man who is waiting to see your reaction when you realize the trap has closed over your foot.

“James, that is really enough,” Camjiata said without raising his voice.

“I will tell you what is enough! Enough is that my noble kinfolk stole my birthright and inheritance, and I let them because I was too young and powerless to fight. But I’m not powerless now. I want her as my catch-fire, so I’ll cursed well get her as my catch-fire. I’ll have the last word after all, won’t I?”

“You sound like a man who can’t let go of the knowledge that he lost and his rival succeeded. As for you, Cat, this childish bickering insults His Noble Highness the prince and indeed all of us forced to listen to it.”

Drake was livid. “I did not lose to him!”

Drake had the power to immolate me, but in doing so, he would burn himself up as well. Unlike Prince Caonabo, he had no catch-fires to spill away the backlash of his magic. I couldn’t help myself. I had to keep poking.

“Really? It’s never bothered you that you couldn’t spoil his love for me because he’s a better man than you’ll ever be? That the moment I found him I never thought of you again? That he’s killed your fire magic more than once and can do it again?”

Light pulsed as the forecourt’s gas lamps flared. A mist-like glamour writhed around Drake’s body. “When next I meet Andevai Diarisso Haranwy, he will crawl at my feet and admit I am stronger than he is. Fire always defeats ice in the end.”

Prince Caonabo spoke sharp words in Taino. Soldiers raised rifles. The murmuring crowd pushed back, for no one wanted to stand close when a fire mage went rogue.

“I said enough!” snapped the general. “James, go back to the house.”

“Enough is right! I’ve had enough of this bitch!” His bright blue eyes really did seem to blaze.

Heat flared in my chest, like fire kindling. I lunged, but the general yanked me down so hard I hit my shoulder and banged a knee. In that eyeblink during which I was too stunned to move, I saw what would happen by the stiffening of Rory’s shoulders, the tremor in his eyes. Like me he thought with his body. He reacted to danger in an entirely predictable way.

Rory changed as thoroughly as if the tide of a dragon’s dream washed over him to dissolve him into his true form. His body melted and flowed, clothes ripping at the seams as his shape shifted. A huge black saber-toothed cat leaped.

Reports rang out, guns going off, and the big cat stumbled and went down.

5

Heedless of claws and teeth, Luce threw her body across the thrashing cat. That was the only reason the Taino soldiers did not finish him off.

I ripped the rope out of the general’s grasp and jumped from the carriage, brandishing my cane as I ran to Rory’s side. “Call them off!”

The instant I pressed my cane against his head to make sure he didn’t bite anyone, his body melted away to become a man lying naked and bleeding on the cobblestones. He’d been hit in his right shoulder and left thigh. A liquid pulsed along his skin like blood, although it was clear, not red. His eyes were open, questing back and forth as if trying to fix on a moving target.

I grasped his hand.

“Is this death, Cat?” His voice was a whisper. “I feel my strength draining out of me. Will my spirit pass back to my mother on the other side? Or will I just dissolve into the wind?”

Soldiers blocked us in, facing the angry crowd. Caonabo came up with his catch-fires.

“Don’t touch him!” I snarled.

“Make your choice, Perdita. He may bleed out, or I can cauterize his wounds.”

His words punched the breath right out of my lungs. I shifted back to let him kneel.

“Rory, this fire mage will stop the bleeding. Allow him to touch you.”

Among Rory’s people—a pride of saber-toothed cats who roamed in the spirit world—a male trusted his mother and aunts and sisters absolutely. He watched me with eyes as amber as my own, for we had inherited golden eyes and black hair from the creature who had sired us. Luce crept to my side as the prince inspected the