23
I gripped my pagne in a fist and hauled the cloth to my knees so I could better stride. “What is your name again?”
My nice admirer had a merry grin and that was something on a cheerless night with anger and fear stalking through the streets. “Bala. This is Gaius.”
Kerchiefed Gaius had a frown like a barge.
“I’m perfectly harmless,” I said, daring Gaius with my gaze to say otherwise.
Gaius snorted. “If yee say so, Sweet Cat. Yee have that man strung on a leash, or else he have yee strung likewise, I’s not sure which.”
“I do not! I am a perfectly respectable gal. It is not my fault I was married against my will.”
“That is one rumor we have heard,” said Bala. “Hearing it for true lend a new smell to the rose, don’ it?” he added, to his friend.
“If yee call that a rose,” Gaius muttered.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.” My fingers tightened on Bala’s arm. He was a bigger man than I had thought, a full head taller than me and with shoulders that might bear the world on their breadth. His friend with the Roman name and a mass of hair in locks under the kerchief was almost as tall but stockier. For an instant, I wondered if I was safe with them, but then I reflected that should they trouble me, they would have to answer to Aunty Djeneba, Uncle Joe, and the rest of the neighborhood. “Sometimes people say I talk too much.”
Gaius made a noise like a choked-off laugh.
Bala said, “Yee have a lovely voice, Sweet Cat. Now, gal, shall we meet wardens in the street, yee shall stand back and let us take care of them.”
I removed my hand from his arm. “I can take care of myself in a fight. Do you doubt me?”
“There is the tongue,” said Gaius to Bala. “So I told yee.”
“We shall walk quickly and keep silent,” said Bala with the smile of a man seeking to keep the peace.
I fumed as a thousand wickedly cutting barbs of splendid insults came and went unspoken on my tongue. The Speckled Iguana lay about fifteen blocks away, on the other side of the Passaporte market, whose stalls and grounds lay empty but for the winking eyes of rats bold in the darkness and the leavings of crushed shells that had not been swept up. Clouds veiled the sky, making the intermittent noise of struggle seem both far and close, hard to gauge.
As we skirted the edge of the market, Gaius spoke in a low voice. “Yee meant it, did yee not, Sweet Cat? That yee would fight. Is it true, that story about yee and the shark?”
“Why would I have told it otherwise? Do you think I am a liar??”
Perhaps my voice rose sharply. Bala touched my arm. “I see many a shadow at guard.”
Belatedly it occurred to me that the wardens might have staked out the Speckled Iguana, if they knew it for a haunt of radicals and troublemakers. Instead, the local men had staked out their ground, flanking the area with clusters of men bearing muskets, pistols, and machetes, the favored blade of the countryside. Lamps burned on the porch and in the windows of the inn, by which I knew Vai was either not there, or was dead.
I ran up onto the porch, colliding with an older man who was no taller than me but twice as wide. A patch covered his right eye, and a horrendous starburst wound had turned his right cheek into a pitted and scoured puckering of ropy white scar tissue. He yanked me to a halt.
“I’ll be smited by Bright Reshef if you aren’t the daughter of Lieutenant Tara Bell. For you look very like her, but for the hair and the color of your eyes.”
“Ja, maku,” said Bala, who with Gaius loomed behind me. “What is with the hand on the gal?”
“Is the maku bothering yee, Cat?” asked Gaius.
I stared at my interlocutor. My mind seemed caught in a roof-shattering gale. He saw the stamp of my mother’s face in my own. I wanted to demand of him how he knew her, but as I tried to focus the splintering spray of my thoughts, I hung on to one concept: Tell no one. Keep silence.
“Drake is here,” he said, as if he had gleaned my mind with a rake and pulled forth a nugget. “He’s in the back room with the wounded. He has been wondering where you fetched up.” He looked over my companions, unimpressed by their stature. “I see you found protectors.”
“Let me go.”
He raised his eyebrows as if to suggest I was being overly dramatic, but he let go. “Do not say you shall deny whose daughter you are? I fought beside Lieutenant Bell.” His Iberian lilt pitched out like the ring of a trumpet. “In the Parisi campaign, when we took Alesia.”
Blessed Tanit, how my heart wished to hear the tale! But I was too cunning to reveal myself to him! I drew myself up, matching him eye to eye.
“I came for a drink, for the walk has made me uncommonly thirsty. Bala? Gaius? I quite forgot my coin, so you shall have to buy me a shot of rum.” I swept past the man and into a spacious common room crammed with noisy, sweaty, angry men.
“Yee stick close by us, Cat,” said Gaius as Bala pushed to the bar. “I don’ like this crowd. Yee should be getting home and not drinking any more, for I reckon drink make yee reckless.”
The situation would have struck me as amusing-my admirer and his skeptical friend turned into watchful guard dogs-had I not just then seen a flash of bright red hair where a door opened behind the bar.
The old soldier came up beside me and raised a hand to draw James Drake’s attention. “He shall want to talk to you, lass. I hear you may be carrying his child.”
I slapped him.
He grunted, but although I had slapped him hard, he’d barely been staggered.
I thought: That wasn’t very effective. So I slugged him, right beneath the curve of his ribs. He doubled over, gasping and-strangely-gurgling as with choked amusement. As a shocked murmur spread out like a ripple, he said, “Your mama taught you to hit, did she? Oof?!”
His laugh was a booming chortle whose mirth made me want to strangle him. Gracious Melqart! James Drake! If he had seen me, he would come out. I did not want Vai humiliated by the whole world-or at least every man now staring at me-seeing me with Drake. When in doubt, attack.
I shoved up to the bar, heedless of the men I elbowed aside, and tweaked Bala’s sleeve. “I have to go back and check the wounded. Wait for me. I don’t want to go home alone.”
His interested smile sharpened gratifyingly, and I smiled, for he really was an appealing fellow, but I had to get past that door before James Drake walked out of it, so I hopped over the bar, grabbed a shot glass clear with white rum and drank it down in one swallow, then sidestepped the surprised bartender and thence past him through the still-open door. I shut the door behind me to see a long room filled with shapes lying all a-tumble on the floor or atop long tables on which, on kinder nights, folk might dine and chatter on about politics and batey. Tonight I heard only moans.
By lamplight, Drake bent over a man whose stomach had been opened by a gash, its gaping lips revealing the moist mire of intestines. An old woman with blood splashed across her apron and a serious-looking Taino man whose age I could not guess worked side by side at another table, she sewing shut a gaping shoulder wound with needle and thread while he pressed the ragged flesh together with steady hands. For a moment, I was sure I saw sparks trembling at his lips and a smear of ember light, but when I blinked, I realized I was just reeling. I braced myself with a hand on the door, in case any cursed fool tried to barge in after me.
“This one can’t be saved, for I give you my oath his spirit is already one step out of his flesh,” Drake said.
The Taino man said, “Take him, then. How many can you save with him?”
“One, for certain.” He indicated a man whimpering with the bleats of a person trying to be stoic in the face of unrelenting pain. What appeared at first glance as a kerchief was a leaking mat of blood and, beneath it, the white flag of exposed skull. Drake spread fingers over the wound.
Heat swamped the room, sticky and sumptuous, like sweet pudding that coats the lips until you must lick them clean for the sake of your craving. A kernel of desire swirled in my gut. I opened my mouth, but all that came out was a sighing exhalation.
