“Why, yes, Cat, I do happen to know that.”
“Why not marry Bee to Juba? He could come back from exile and take the cacique’s seat of power with Bee at his side. Why marry Bee to a fire mage, when she might be caught in the conflagration? Can you imagine I would wish even the chance of this on Bee?”
“Do not think every fire mage is like Drake. Juba’s exile is permanent. That is the Taino law. As for Caonabo, recall that he has a catch-fire. More importantly, he is now the cacica’s only other living son. But he is said to have the temperament of an unworldly scholar. You see, Juba was the one meant for the throne. Now the cacica fears an attempt by factions within her court to install a different claimant. That is why Caonabo needs the alliance with a dragon dreamer.”
Juba’s interest in Bee suddenly took on a much more ominous cast. Did he support his brother, or hope to undermine him? I pulled on my blouse and tied my pagne around my hips. “How providential for you, General, that you stumbled upon my cousin so early in your campaign.”
“Providential? Never forget that I am an accomplished campaigner.” When I stepped out from behind the screen, the general walked to the door and opened it. “Cat, we leave in an hour. I hope you are fit for it.”
“I will stand beside Bee for as long as she needs me. But you must promise me, General, that no harm will come to my husband in the twenty days I am with her.”
“I promise on my mother’s grave that no harm will come to your husband by any intent, plot, knowledge, conspiracy, or neglect of mine. He is too valuable. Magister, will you stay? Ah. I see by your wounded look it was a foolish question. Naturally you will be remaining where you can most quickly be reunited with your wife. Just as well, since I took the liberty of sending for your things.”
From the hall came the sound of footsteps. Captain Tira appeared, casting a doubtful glance at Vai and an interested one at me. She ushered in men who were carrying Vai’s chest, several baskets, and the bed. Vai and I must have appeared like academy students flummoxed by an unexpected exam they had not prepared for. The four soldiers retreated with disciplined haste and poorly suppressed grins.
“Did someone betray Vai?” I demanded.
“No. I took the liberty of looking through Beatrice’s sketchbook. On a page with four phases of the moon, which clearly represent Four Moons House and thus the cold mage, I recognized the bench.”
“Bastard!” I said. “That’s put us in our place.”
“Now, Cat,” he said with a smile as sharp as a splinter, digging deep, “were I you, I would not be precipitous in throwing around that particular word. One hour. Captain, shall we go?”
33
The closed carriage rumbled along for what seemed hours. My bold, fearless Bee sat with hands neatly clasped on her lap as she and I poured forth a stream of unenlightening babble about the baubles and fabrics we had admired on Avenue Kolonkan. It passed the time, and alleviated our nerves. We were dressed in the local style, in simple blouses and pagnes. Captain Tira sat at attention in the facing seat, too much like a jailer for us to speak openly about the things we most wished to discuss. Vai had accepted the general’s invitation to ride in the other carriage, since he wasn’t allowed to travel with Bee.
“And then I said, ‘Looking is not spending!’”
“Cat, did he really say it would offend his radical principles to shop on Avenue Kolonkan?”
“Yes, and worst of all, Bee, he meant it in that pedantic way he means things.” I glanced at Captain Tira, who met my gaze with the same interested look she had thrown me when she had entered the bedchamber accompanying Vai’s belongings. “Not that I can afford to buy anything on Avenue Kolonkan anyway.”
“I’ll buy you whatever you want, dearest. Never mind what he says!”
I had a sudden and horrific image of being caught between Vai and Bee arguing, a precise cold steel blade pitted against the blunt trauma of an axe. I temporized, because while I agreed with Vai, there had been such lovely trinkets and ribbons. “I thought the Taino treasury was empty.”
“I think the situation is more complicated than that phrase makes it sound. We traveled halfway across Kiskeya, to Sharagua and back. I have never seen a more prosperous, orderly, and healthy people. No one stopped me from going anywhere I wished. I saw not a single starving child, and I assure you, I was looking for the wretched and the poor because I wanted to gauge exactly how powerful and rich the Taino kingdom was if I was to ally myself with them.”
Despite Captain Tira’s presence, I decided to say what really weighed on my mind. “An alliance brought about by the general. He is half Roman. We can’t trust him.”
“Roman on his mother’s side. Iberian and Mande on his father’s. That makes him of mixed lineage. Just like you. Should I therefore not trust you?” Her curls swayed around her face as she smiled impishly at me. Her hands clutching mine were the only hint of her anxiety at what lay ahead and the huge gamble she had taken. “Of course he is using me to get what he wants, which is the cacica’s airships and access to Expedition’s wealth and factories because the Council daren’t say no to him once the Taino support his cause. I don’t care. Because it gets me security. If the cold mage truly loves you, and you love him, then you are both fortunate and cursed, because you two will never be secure. People who want to use one of you can threaten the other one. And they will. But when I am a powerful noblewoman and respected seer among the Taino, I can protect you both. Always, Cat. Always.” She embraced me. “And buy you whatever you want on Avenue Kolonkan.”
The captain had folded her arms across her chest and closed her eyes, as if the maudlin outpourings of gals like us commonly bored her to sleep.
I muttered, “You would think Captain Tira often delivers innocent young brides to strangers meant to become their husbands.” A flicker of movement twitched in her cheek, and her right foot shifted, heel raising and lowering. “Captain, did the general really figure out where Vai was all that time from Bee’s sketchbook? Or did someone inform on him? No harm in telling me now.”
She opened her eyes. Her silence was her answer.
A growing clamor of sound greeted us: drums, rattles, horns, and singing swelled and ebbed like the sea’s surge. We had reached the border, and it sounded like an areito had already started.
The carriage halted.
Bee took in a shuddering breath. We locked gazes.
“Always, Bee,” I said. “Always.”
The door was opened from outside. The captain went out first.
Bee took advantage of her departure to draw me close and whisper. “Remember, say nothing and do nothing except what I tell you to do. Don’t speak unless I tell you to. And especially, don’t take orders from others, only from me.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult, accustomed as I am to you bossing me around.”
As Captain Tira looked back in, Bee released me to wave an imperious hand. “You first, dearest, for the last and most dramatic entrance shall be mine.”
“You always hog the dramatic entrance, Bee,” I said as I clambered out. “Maybe next time I’ll steal it from you.”
I had not once ventured out of Expedition’s sprawl in the weeks after Drake had dumped me on the jetty. Its streets and courtyard gates, untidy alleys and well-groomed ball courts, cheerful markets and the shimmering presence of the sea and the masts of ships, and even the whistling parties of trolls hurrying about their business, had become my landscape.
We had fallen into another world.
The huge plaza reminded me of paintings I had seen depicting the great public spaces of Rome and Qart Hadast when those empires were in their heyday. The paved open space stretched so far that tendrils of dusk hid its boundaries. Ahead lay entrances to four monumental ball courts, two on either side of a long stone building painted red and blue and pierced with nine narrow archways. The central arch was surmounted by an elaborately painted scene depicting fish spilling from an overturned gourd.