Music, drumming, and singing came from the ball courts. Oddly, the only Expeditioners I saw were a single troop of wardens standing off to my left, and a few local vendors who had set up along the plaza with fried plantains, cassava bread straight off the griddle, seafood being cooked over charcoal, and mounds of fruit. Their customers were Taino streaming out from the ball courts, men from the courts to my left and women from the courts to my right. They wore loosely draped cloth in an antique Roman-like way, although both young women and men wore only a pagne-like cloth wrapped around their hips and no shirts at all, casually bare-chested.
But none of these things robbed me of words. What rendered me speechless were the thirty or more airships tethered at the border between the Taino kingdom and Expedition Territory. Some were scout ships no larger than the one navigated by the Barr Cousins. Many were the size of the ocean-crossing airship Bee and I had seen in Adurnam, the one Vai had destroyed. Among them floated three leviathans monstrous in their glamour. It was a stunning show of wealth and force.
Bee slipped an arm around me. “I have a fancy to be like the didos of old, the queens of Qart Hadast who sailed at the head of a mighty fleet. I shall draw my fleet as a school of bloated silvery fish released from a vast heavenly gourd.”
“I can scarcely imagine what it must be like to sail the seas of a noble court, when any courtier is ready to stab you in the back or flatter shamelessly for a step up the ladder. I would far rather wait tables at Aunty Djeneba’s.”
“Where the customers try to put their hands on your ass? How is that different? Do not worry for me. I shall crush my rivals with smiles and the axe blow of my indomitable will.”
“I can’t bear it if they take you away from me, Bee.”
“Dearest, we shall all return to Europa together like conquering heroes.”
The other carriage rolled in, and the general emerged, followed by Vai wearing the dash jacket he had worn the night of the areito. He marked me with the smile that belonged to me alone.
As the sun shimmered against the horizon, the central gate opened. A procession of women appeared. They were dressed in skirts that lapped their ankles and in bodices like wide belts woven with beads. Feathers adorned their long black hair, which they wore unbound. Two at the front walked with hands outstretched and fire-actual flame-rising from their palms as if they contained the oil that lit the lamps. The two fire mages were flanked by four women equally richly garbed, one of whom was not Taino but red-headed, pale, and freckled like a refugee from the Europan north. Were they catch-fires? Hard to tell. By the elaboration and richness of their clothing, they seemed equally honored. Behind walked three more women heavily draped with thick stone pendants and gold bracelets on their bare arms, their skin patterned with lines and dots. When they reached a raised circular platform in the middle of the plaza, they halted.
My sword bloomed against my hand as day crossed twilight’s border.
“Come, Cat,” Bee said regally, squaring her shoulders.
“Aren’t we underdressed?”
“You haven’t noticed that many of the Taino women are far more underdressed? I certainly have! I do not intend to emulate them!”
“Beatrice.” The general offered his arm. She took it, thus allowing me to drop back next to Vai. I twined my fingers through his as we followed them toward the Taino noblewomen. Captain Tira paced at our backs. I saw no sign of Drake or Juba.
“If you need anything, go to Keer at the law offices of Godwik and Clutch,” I murmured. “She’ll drive a hard bargain, but I can trust the trolls to like the game better than the prize.”
“Tell me how you are feeling, Catherine.”
“Well enough. I’m fine, Vai. I don’t know how I can bear being apart from you for twenty days.”
His fingers tightened over mine. “It’s right that you go with your cousin. I’ll just hope you come back dressed like those Taino women out there.”
“Vai!”
When he smiled, I was so smitten by a rush of affection and desire that all I could do was stare at him in the most besotted manner imaginable. “My sweet Catherine, we won’t be apart for long. We are truly married now, love. Nothing can change that.”
The gravity and formality of the occasion prevented a kiss, and I would not have tried anyway, not with some of those Taino women staring at me as if I had two faces. Night fell as we reached the platform. The general let go of Bee, and Vai had therefore to let go of me.
The Taino women escorted us under the central arch and through a masonry tunnel across the border and into the country Bee had determined to take on. The smell of tobacco permeated the air. On the other side of the arch lay another huge plaza. From the ball courts rose the joyous sound of people singing and dancing with rattle and drum. Our party walked on a raised walkway to a single-story building. We entered a long room lit by what seemed a hundred lamps hissing as oil burned. Our attendants spoke to Beatrice.
“They are asking if you are my cemi,” she said.
“If I am your cemi?”
“They want to see your hair unbound, and if you have a navel. Why would they think you didn’t have a navel?”
“They think I’m a spirit of the dead.”
“I won’t let them bully you. You need show them nothing. Otherwise Juba says they will think I can forever be pushed around.” Her reply to them, in Taino, was precise and slow.
They merely shrugged, taking off their sandals and washing their feet before they escorted Bee up onto a carpet of reed mats. Under the heat and light shimmering out of the lamps, they stripped her naked, wiped her down with damp cloths, perfumed her with sweet-smelling oils, and painted her bare arms with lines that crawled up the curve of her flesh like serpents. Then they dressed her in a long wrap skirt of pure white cotton; red and gold feathers for her hair; a bodice woven of cotton and beads; a stone collar carved with turtles and frogs; and wreaths of bells for her ankles and wrists. When they had finished, I could believe she had become someone else, crossing into a new world.
I followed, as ignored as a cane that hides a sword. Her attendants did not speak to me, and she indicated by occasional glances and nods that I was doing exactly as I should. We proceeded down a corridor on soft matting. Bee and the Taino women walked barefoot; I was the only one shod, in the sandals Vai had given me. We came to a porch that overlooked a courtyard crowded with men standing on one side and women seated on the other. Our escort moved aside to reveal Bee. I stayed at the back.
The many elders and proud nobles examined Bee in her finery. The men had stern, striking features; most wore feathers and stone collars. Opposite, women looked us up and down with solemn gazes. They were beautifully adorned in feathers and beads and pure white beaded bodices and skirts. No overt hostility marred their expressions. Neither did they seem overawed by the presence of a woman who walked the dream of dragons. It was hard to judge.
One face caught my eye among the women. I saw the very behica who had grasped my arm on Salt Island and informed me through Caonabo’s translation that Drake had not healed me because I had never been infested. Instinct jolted me. Hide. I caught a few threads of magic to obscure myself.
Yet the behica saw me at once. She saw me, and she knew me. But she said nothing.
The assembled people sang in call and response. The melody seemed familiar, a tune I heard whistled on Expedition’s streets, but the pulse and winding rhythm of the song made it seem like a proclamation. Only I did not know what for.
When they finished, we proceeded along another walkway to a large wooden building raised on stilts and surrounded by a veranda lit by gas lamps. Bee strode toward the building as toward her destiny, head high. She was so beautiful.