“Isn’t that a way men seduce women-?” I broke off, so flustered and ashamed that all I could do was take a drink. It was juice, sweet and pure.
“I’ve heard it is the only way some men can manage to seduce women.” He took the cup from my hand, drained it, and mercifully changed the subject. “I wish I could know how you are able to stand hidden in plain sight in a chamber where I can see you but others cannot.”
I leaned toward him confidingly, and he caught in a breath.
In a low voice, I said, “The secret belongs to those who remain silent.”
He laughed quite charmingly, curse him, for it was the laugh of a man willing to be amused at his own expense. “How long have you been waiting to say that to me?”
“How long do you think I’ve been waiting?”
“I would suppose, since the very first time you heard me say it. Well, Catherine, I am nothing if not persistent. I also wish I could know if you sailed from Europa to the Antilles, or if you made the journey here while still in the spirit world.”
“And I wish I could know why you and your sister are here. I don’t believe the mansa is generous enough to let go of a girl who might be bred for the hope of more potent cold mages.”
He smiled in a way that made me wary. “There show the cat’s claws. It’s a fair assessment. I will not lie to you, Catherine. Like you, I have things I am not free to speak of. Let me know what I can do to help you with settling in.”
I bundled up the skirts. “I’ll sew in the mornings and serve in the evenings. I start tonight.”
I challenged him with a glare to protest that I needed to rest another day. He merely smiled a soft smile that made my heart turn over, an anatomically impossible maneuver that had the unexpected consequence of heating my blood to a boil.
I had been bound into marriage against my will and chained by magic in ways I did not understand. If the head of the poet Bran Cof had told the truth, I could be released from the marriage as long as I did not succumb to an inconvenient attraction to his physical form. I had a dreadful task assigned me. I could not afford sentiment, or distraction. The master of the Wild Hunt was not interested in sentiment, nor would he be distracted. Bee had already called me heartless, and years of living in an impoverished household had taught me how to be sensible.
Taking a deep breath, I began folding up the fabric. Having to be careful with the pins was good practice. Pins drew blood if they pricked you hard enough.
“Just so you understand, Vai. I am grateful for your help. But nothing has changed between us that we have not already discussed.”
I glanced up to see how he was taking my implacable declaration, only to surprise a look on his face which I could only describe as calculating.
“What?” I demanded. “You look like you’re plotting a crime.”
He looked away so quickly it was as good as a confession.
“We’re finished here.” I pressed cloth to my chest like a shield and stepped back from the table. Around the courtyard, people were pretending not to watch, but they were watching.
He let me go without saying one more word.
21
To wait tables, you had to have a good memory, be quick on your feet, and know how to keep men laughing while you avoided hands touching you in places you weren’t keen on being touched. Whatever tips they gave me- small coins but solid-were mine to keep. And I needed money, for Aunty was paying me in room and board. So I worked long hours, every afternoon and evening from the first arrival to the last departure.
At first I stuck close to the boardinghouse, going out only with Aunty, Brenna, or Lucretia as I got to know Tailors’ Row, the local market, and the larger neighborhood. I needed to reconnoiter my ground. Above all, I did not want to stumble across James Drake.
The following Jovesday afternoon Vai returned from work carrying a pair of sandals. I delivered a tray of ginger beer to a table of men arguing over the results of a batey game and brought a cup of juice to Lucretia and her next youngest sister. Under the shade of the big tree, they were straining pimento-soaked rum through cheesecloth for liqueur. Luce accepted the cup with a smile, then glanced toward Vai, who was waiting by the stairs. I went over.
He held out the sandals. “Catherine, these are for you.”
“I can’t afford them. And I won’t accept gifts from you.”
He glanced up at the tapering, oblong leaves of the ceiba tree as if to find patience hiding in the lofty branches. “Don’t take them for your own sake. Do it for Aunty. You’re walking around here all day and night, and to the market and up and down Tailors’ Row-”
“How do you know what I’m doing during the day when you’re at work?”
His glance toward Lucretia betrayed him. “If you cut your feet, you can’t wait tables…” He paused.
I turned to see two trolls standing in the gate, looking around with predatory gazes. One was tall, drab, and likely female, and the other was short, brightly crested, and likely male. They wore the long cotton jackets commonly worn by men of business in Expedition, the cloth a plain dark green, smeared with soot and oil stains. The customers looked toward them with the same mild disinterest they showed when a street vendor appeared with a tray of cigarillos or taffy, and then at Vai.
He said in a low voice, “Catherine, don’t be an idiot. You’ve been walking around barefoot for over a week.”
“I can’t wear my winter boots.”
“I didn’t say you should. These are cheap sandals. Just take them. I have to go out.”
I took the sandals. He joined the trolls at the gate and left. Why would a cold mage be fraternizing with trolls?
“Oooh me stars!” Lucretia sidled up beside me, smelling of pimento, cinnamon, lime, and rum. After prying the sandals out of my hands, she found the maker’s mark on the sole. “These cost him a pretty bit of coin!”
“He said they were cheap sandals.”
She rolled her eyes as she handed them back to me. “Yee believe that if yee wish, Cat.”
I measured them against my dust-smeared feet. “How did he know my size? Luce? Did you sneak him my boots and then put them back? Are you telling him tales on me?”
She grabbed one of the sandals and whacked me on the hip with it. “Yee’s so stubborn. Just wear the sandals and be glad yee have such, since there is many who have no shoes.”
It was, I realized, a point of pride in Aunty’s household that all the children had shoes and could afford the fee for the district school. For however busy the courtyard was every night and however full the boardinghouse stayed, signs of economical living crept out everywhere, things I recognized from my own upbringing. Chastened, I washed my feet, put on the sandals, and went back to work.
“Sweet Cat, a round of beer! I see yee have new sandals.”
Sweet Cat was what the elderly regulars had decided to call me. “Nice of him to bring them round before he had to go off again.”
“Yes, he go every Jovesday with those two. Yee know them, I suppose.”
“The only trolls I ever knew were lawyers.” I cast my lure. “Are there many troll lawyers here?”
“Many troll lawyers! Yee’s such a maku, Sweet Cat! Now, yee listen.”
They liked to explain things to me, because I listened so well. Trolls loved the law the way batey players loved the game. They were known as specialists in scratching over the finer points of the law and pecking through every least step in the contractual procedures on which legal arrangements were created and implemented. Troll- owned law offices tended to congregate in areas by specialty; law houses that worked maritime law or that anchored branches gone overseas could be found in the harbor district just outside the old city.
By the end of the second week, I had begun to make friends with several of the tailors. Useful and pleasant of themselves, these acquaintances allowed me to have an excuse one morning to depart with apparent innocence
