I had to look away.
The ball court was in chaos, the crowd streaming every which way. The Taino soldiers blocking the ends of the playing field had fled. People stampeded for safety, leaving broken and sobbing wounded behind. A few pockets of order held ground, among them Prince Caonabo who had not panicked but instead had taken advantage of the chaos to cut the bonds of his twin. Juba took the knife from his brother and ran to free the other prisoners. A ceremonial spear in hand, Caonabo approached the raised platform with soldiers at his heels. A shadowy hound loped past, a head hanging from its jaws by long black hair.
Then huge glittering flakes of a heavy snowfall obscured the scene, making it seem I, my sire, and Vai were alone in the world.
My sire opened his fingers. The chain and ring had crumbled into rust. When he blew on his hand, the red dust dispersed like chaff into the blowing snow. Touched by that dust, my machete corroded and deformed as rust bloomed on the blade, creeping up as if to engulf and consume my flesh. I let go. The blade shattered when it hit the ground.
He lifted Vai with one arm and shoved him into the coach.
“But you have this night’s blood!” I cried as I scrambled in after Vai.
The door slammed shut behind me like the hammer of fate, leaving my sire outside and us within, his prisoners. A whip snapped. The coach rocked as the horses pulled us upward.
Vai blinked, shaking himself as if motion and will had just returned. “I understand now. Your sire is the Master of the Wild Hunt.”
“And I hate him!” I cried as I tried to open latches and shutters, but they were all locked.
“Of course you do, love.”
I flung my arms around him, and then we were kissing with the passion of the condemned.
“This is certainly more interesting than the last time you two were in the coach together.”
I broke away to glare at the thin gremlin face with its winking gaze and straight line of a mouth. “Shut your eyes!”
Vai drew back, looking startled. “Catherine?”
“I’m talking to the latch! Prying little beast! I’ll throw you in a furnace and melt you!”
“Catherine? Did you hit your head?”
“Didn’t you hear what it said?”
“What makes you think I let him hear me?” said the latch with a smirk. “But if he weaves me a pretty illusion first, then I’ll close my eyes and let you do that other thing in private.”
“Catherine, as much as I would love to keep kissing you instead of hearing you rave on about furnaces, we need to do something now.”
The door to the spirit world was opened from the outside. The gulf of the sky yawned, for we rolled through the void of heaven. The hunt coursed away into a swirl of lightning and black cloud. As calmly as if he were entering the coach from a street corner, my sire stepped in.
I threw myself across Vai to shield him. “You said there would only be one sacrifice.”
My sire sat opposite us, raising his eyebrows as Vai set me to one side. Vai left his arm around me but did not speak. We faced the Master of the Wild Hunt together.
“By the terms of the contract, we can take only one,” replied my sire. “We have taken this night’s blood. But that doesn’t mean I can’t take a prisoner across to the spirit world with me. I’m going to find out what it was this magister did that he oughtn’t to have been able to do.” As he spoke, his human face slowly congealed into the mask of ice. “Which means that in addition to assuaging my terrible curiosity, I can release you, little cat, from my service. As long as he resides in my palace, I need only tug on the leash to bring you crawling back.”
He leaned forward and pressed a hand on Vai’s chest, his touch the embrace of ice.
Then he flung me out the open door.
36
Into the sea.
The warm salty water closed over my face, but I did not have the luxury of panic. I pulled to the surface and breached just as I realized two sharks were circling, drawn by the scent of my blood. My rage and hate leaked like poison into the water, and perhaps that was why they did not dart in for the kill. Or perhaps because they recognized a kinswoman. For they stayed away, merely keeping an eye on me as I floundered toward shore.
It seemed inevitable that I waded to shore at the jetty almost exactly where Drake had dumped me the first time. The few men working the piers turned to watch me emerge from the sea with my blouse and pagne plastered to my body, revealing every curve and mound. My blood streaked one leg. When I glared at them, they backed away.
I halted on the revetment next to baskets filled with fresh catch, slippery pargo with their red tails and little cachicata. Behind, the sun had risen two hands above the horizon, the dawn feed done and the wind no more than a soft breeze. The wide flat expanse of the waters in their constant shimmering reminded me of the trolls’ mirrors. At least I had saved Bee.
The sky shone so blue it looked flat; wisps of cloud trailed off the highlands. I scanned the roofs and smoke of the city but saw no sign of the Taino airship fleet. Indeed, there weren’t many men on the piers. The streets had a peculiar emptiness, as if most traffic had drained off in the face of a coming storm. The few men gathered into clumps to whisper and stare as I dripped across the boulevard and walked into the deserted carpentry yard. Only three people worked there, despite the early-morning coolness. The two men set down their axes and hurried under the shade of the shelter’s roof, where the Taino boss was leaning over her table making tallies in her accounts book. She looked up, saw me, and said something in Taino to them. They bolted out the back as she straightened to greet me.
“The maku’s perdita,” she said in the local speech.
“Could you ask me a question, please?” I said.
She had the Taino habit of looking at you directly and without fear. “What manner of question shall I ask, Perdita?”
The thrill that coursed through my heart made me smile, not with joy but with resolve. “That was the right one. What day is it? What happened to the Taino fleet?”
“In the Roman calendar, ’tis the third day of November. As for the other, here is the story as I heard it. Three nights back, when the cursed Council surrendered Expedition to the Taino cacica, a witch flew down out of the night, turned she own self into a big black saber-toothed cat and killed the cacica, then tore her to bits and threw she head in a well. That witch was surely angry because the cacica had stolen the maku fire bane the witch loved. Yee suppose that could be true?”
“No, not quite like that. But what happened afterward?”
“The witch flew off with the maku.”
“I mean, what has happened in Expedition?”
“Why, the wardens took control of Council House. Yesterday Gaius Sanogo was elected by unanimous vote as president of the committee that shall sit to write a charter for an Assembly. An Assembly we shall now have. ’Tis long past time, if yee want me opinion on it. As for the Taino, they cannot trouble us until they sort out they own rule. If Prince Caonabo wish to inherit he uncle’s duho, he and all that army must return to Sharagua.”
“You’re Taino.”
“No, gal. I’s an Expeditioner, born and raised. Some say yee killed the maku. Did yee so? Or only fly off with him?”
I raised my eyes to the heavens, so bold and vast and fathomless, like the face of the ice. “I never had wings. I was only the arrow my sire loosed to find his mark. And so the hunt drank the cacica’s blood, and then its master stole my beloved to keep me on his leash.”
I shut my eyes. In the spirit world, the length of a kiss might stretch to three days. I pressed a hand over my locket and felt the pulse of the chain that bound us. The only thing that could break it now was death, and Vai still lived.
