Drake was livid. “I did not lose to him!”
Drake had the power to immolate me, but in doing so, he would burn himself up as well. Unlike Prince Caonabo, he had no catch-fires to spill away the backlash of his magic. I couldn’t help myself. I had to keep poking.
“Really? It’s never bothered you that you couldn’t spoil his love for me because he’s a better man than you’ll ever be? That the moment I found him I never thought of you again? That he’s killed your fire magic more than once and can do it again?”
Light pulsed as the forecourt’s gas lamps flared. A mist-like glamour writhed around Drake’s body. “When next I meet Andevai Diarisso Haranwy, he will crawl at my feet and admit I am stronger than he is. Fire always defeats ice in the end.”
Prince Caonabo spoke sharp words in Taino. Soldiers raised rifles. The murmuring crowd pushed back, for no one wanted to stand close when a fire mage went rogue.
“I said enough!” snapped the general. “James, go back to the house.”
“Enough is right! I’ve had enough of this bitch!” His bright blue eyes really did seem to blaze.
Heat flared in my chest, like fire kindling. I lunged, but the general yanked me down so hard I hit my shoulder and banged a knee. In that eyeblink during which I was too stunned to move, I saw what would happen by the stiffening of Rory’s shoulders, the tremor in his eyes. Like me he thought with his body. He reacted to danger in an entirely predictable way.
Rory changed as thoroughly as if the tide of a dragon’s dream washed over him to dissolve him into his true form. His body melted and flowed, clothes ripping at the seams as his shape shifted. A huge black saber-toothed cat leaped.
Reports rang out, guns going off, and the big cat stumbled and went down.
5
Heedless of claws and teeth, Luce threw her body across the thrashing cat. That was the only reason the Taino soldiers did not finish him off.
I ripped the rope out of the general’s grasp and jumped from the carriage, brandishing my cane as I ran to Rory’s side. “Call them off!”
The instant I pressed my cane against his head to make sure he didn’t bite anyone, his body melted away to become a man lying naked and bleeding on the cobblestones. He’d been hit in his right shoulder and left thigh. A liquid pulsed along his skin like blood, although it was clear, not red. His eyes were open, questing back and forth as if trying to fix on a moving target.
I grasped his hand.
“Is this death, Cat?” His voice was a whisper. “I feel my strength draining out of me. Will my spirit pass back to my mother on the other side? Or will I just dissolve into the wind?”
Soldiers blocked us in, facing the angry crowd. Caonabo came up with his catch-fires.
“Don’t touch him!” I snarled.
“Make your choice, Perdita. He may bleed out, or I can cauterize his wounds.”
His words punched the breath right out of my lungs. I shifted back to let him kneel.
“Rory, this fire mage will stop the bleeding. Allow him to touch you.”
Among Rory’s people—a pride of saber-toothed cats who roamed in the spirit world—a male trusted his mother and aunts and sisters absolutely. He watched me with eyes as amber as my own, for we had inherited golden eyes and black hair from the creature who had sired us. Luce crept to my side as the prince inspected the wounded leg. He wiped up a dab of the colorless blood, sniffed it, and glanced at me but asked no questions. A man of his education no doubt could draw his own conclusions. After assuring himself the shot had gone clear through flesh, he placed a hand on either side of the thigh.
Caonabo’s two catch-fires lit as if they were gas lamps touched to flame.
I gasped. Luce’s grip on my arm tightened.
A skin of fire radiated from the prince’s hands. Four days ago, on Hallows’ Eve, standing under the veil of my sire’s terrifying power, I had seen Prince Caonabo’s mother casting off the backlash of her magic into a net of catch-fires. The lines drawn between the cacica and her catch-fires had spanned the island of Kiskeya. She had created a woven web through which the backwash of fire magic was drained out of her, through the catch-fires, and into the seemingly bottomless well that was the spirit world. Shimmering threads spun out of Caonabo and into his catch-fires. One catch-fire alone would have burst into flame and died; two could split the backlash between them and pour it harmlessly away.
Rory exhaled sharply. His eyes rolled up, and he passed out.
“Blessed Tanit!” I touched his throat.
His pulse stirred, weak but steady, as pale blood leaked along the curve of his neck. Unthinkingly, I licked his blood off my fingers. It was so sweet, not harsh at all.
Prince Caonabo draped linen over Rory’s genitals to give him a scrap of dignity. An elderly woman with feathers and beads woven into her white hair approached, carrying a basket. She produced a pair of tweezers. He probed Rory’s shoulder and pulled out a bloody bullet. He then pressed a hand over the wound and cauterized it as well.
Luce sat beside me, clutching my other arm. I scrubbed at my lips but the taste of Rory’s blood lingered. I began to shake.
Caonabo rose. “Now we go to Council Hall.”
“Yee shall not go with them, Cat!” Luce cried. “They shan’t kill yee!”
“Hush, Luce.” I grabbed her. “Help Kofi bring our gear. Quickly! Now go!”
She kissed Rory’s cheek in a way that brought tears to my eyes. She was free to choose what pleasure and affection she desired. If he died, who was I or anyone to say it would have been better if they had not shared love?
Proudly she rose. At a gesture from Caonabo, the Taino soldiers parted to let her leave. I yanked off the noose over my neck and only then did I think to look for James Drake.
He had vanished. Caonabo was wiping his hands with a cloth, surrounded by concerned attendants.
Camjiata took hold of my elbow. “Don’t be a fool, Cat. Drake has guessed the cold mage is still alive, for it is obvious whenever you speak of him. Your plan on Hallows’ Night to kill me went badly wrong. Still, I hold no ill will against you. Our lives—yours and mine—are bound by destiny. We are meant to be allies in the struggle for liberation.”
I shook off his grip. “I’m not putting that noose back on.”
Wardens carried Rory up the steps, through the entryway, and along a corridor. The chamber we entered was furnished with tables and benches. The men settled Rory atop one of the tables and set up guard at both sets of doors. I asked them to bring a basin, water, and cloth, as well as a behique who was a healer.
One door let onto the main corridor. A set of glass-paned doors opened onto a large central courtyard that was completely boxed in by the wings of the Council Hall complex. In the courtyard a monument depicted a buffalo and lion, and a covered cistern provided water. But the most striking object in the courtyard was a majestic ceiba tree, with a wide canopy and ridge-like roots grown out from the trunk.
I paced, one hand on the ghost-sword the Taino believed held my mother’s spirit and the other cupped around the locket I wore that contained a portrait of Daniel Hassi Barahal, the man who had called himself my father even though he had not sired me. The locket also held strands of hair from my husband. In the warmth of the locket I felt the pulse of the thread that bound the heart of Andevai Diarisso Haranwy to my own. Somewhere in the spirit world, Vai was alive.
A local healer arrived, an older woman with a fire mage’s crackling touch. After helping me wash Rory she coaxed a sweet-smelling syrup down his throat to help him sleep. After she left I sat beside him for the longest time, combing out his hair with my fingers because I had no other way to relieve the churn of my emotions. I’d been a fool to provoke Drake, but it had felt so good! Yet he had wanted me to lose my temper, so I had played into his hands. The fire I’d felt was my anger, not his magic. My rashness had hurt Rory, not me.