Of course! The tree.
Dried blood matted Rory’s thick coat. He circled me once, then sniffed at the cacica’s head.
“Yes, this is the head of the noble cacica, Queen Anacaona. She will be traveling with us until we can deliver her to Prince Caonabo.”
He gave a low rumble, not quite a snarl. Even injured, he was intimidating, huge, graceful, and deadly. But then he nudged me with his big cat head as if impatient with the sword I’d lashed so awkwardly to his back, and suddenly he was just an annoying older brother whose needs weren’t being met quickly enough for his liking. I took back my sword. A slug of rum from the flask Uncle Joe had provided shot right down through my flesh as a brace of courage.
I settled the cacica’s head in the crook of my right arm, facing her forward so she could see where we were going. We headed under the shadow of the forest along the path. Birds with bright yellow-and-red plumage flapped away into the foliage. I heard the toa toa croaking of frogs.
“Where is the fire bane?” she asked. “I am surprised he is not with you. He possesses something more valuable than power.”
“Good looks?”
She actually chuckled, and I was pleased I had made her laugh. “Young people are too easily swayed by sex. Let them dance at areitos. It is best for elders to sort out marriages between clans. A shame he was wasted on you.”
Her words pricked me like thorns. “Did he turn down an offer to become one of your many husbands?”
Perhaps she did not hear the sarcasm in my tone, because her reply was as considered as if mine had been a perfectly reasonable suggestion. “He is an unusually powerful fire bane. For that reason a challenge I would have savored.”
“You told General Camjiata there was no fire bane you could not control.”
“Ah! You think I meant to enslave him. That is not what I meant. The people of Expedition call such as me a fire mage.”
“Yes, I know that,” I retorted, for she had stung me by saying Vai was wasted on me. “I’ve met other fire mages, like James Drake.”
“Fire mages are not like James Drake. He is a criminal, whatever you may have thought of him.”
“I didn’t like him much, no matter what it may have seemed.”
“I could see the nature of your regret developing on Salt Island. You were foolish.”
“I was scared.”
“You were ignorant.”
“All right, then,” I replied grudgingly, because it seemed churlish to argue over such a fine point with a woman who was dead because of a choice I had made. “I was ignorant and scared and foolish. Maybe being all those things was also an excuse to do something I was curious about but wasn’t honest enough to admit wanting.”
Birds fluttered in the trees, plumage flashing through patches of light. My feet crackled on drying leaves. Rory’s breath warmed my back.
“All of those things,” she agreed, “but it appears you can learn. Yet you are not my kinswoman to be offered to eat from the platter of my knowledge. However, I will not allow you to think I meant to enslave the fire bane who is your husband. This much I will tell you. When we weave, we are not weaving fire, we are weaving what the Hellenes call energy and the Mande call nyama and others call the living force. One way it can manifest is as fire. Such dispersal of living force will kill the fire weaver unless she has a way to cast it off.”
“That’s why you use fire banes as catch-fires. People sell them to you as slaves.”
If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was holding a severed head in my arms, I could have believed myself talking in an ordinary manner with a woman who found me a little tiresome.
“The fire banes who serve me are not slaves.”
“Prince Caonabo said murderers are sometimes punished by being forced to become catch-fires. Anyway, why would anyone volunteer to do something so dangerous?”
“Fire banes can take into their bodies the energy I release. They throw it into Soraya, which is the name we give to what you call the spirit world. Were I to pour the backlash of my magic into a single fire bane, I should kill her. Even if she is only a funnel, she cannot take all without some spilling into her flesh and burning her up. Over many generations, my ancestors taught themselves how to split these wakes into more than one thread and weave them through more than one fire bane. Thus, all are protected.”
“So the more powerful a fire mage, the more fire banes she needs? I saw the threads of your magic that night on the ballcourt. You wove them through a dozen fire banes. It seemed your net of magic spanned the entire island of Kiskeya and kept your dying brother alive.”
“Interesting. You can see within both worlds, something few can do.”
“I never saw anything like what you could do. It was… impressive, and to be honest, Your Highness, it was rather intimidating.”
This compliment she let pass without blinking. “It is not that other fire mages do not have access to the lakes of energy which I can tap. Many stand at that shore but cannot or will not wade into the deep. My particular skill lies in the quality and precision of my weaving. There is no fire bane I cannot control, no matter how many threads I weave into the whole. But let me assure you, your husband was at no risk from me. I do not take what is not offered, and he did not offer himself. To be honest, the man talked so much about you that at times he became tedious. I expect you would have found his words gratifying.”
A strange, smoky feeling scorched my heart. It was not so easy to wave away responsibility for her death when I was talking to her. It wasn’t that I regretted saving my life or Vai’s life or Bee’s life. It was that I regretted the whole situation we had been forced into. Regret has a way of creeping through flesh and mind the way blood returns to frozen limbs and makes you hurt. If I’d known more or things had fallen out differently, she might have become my ally.
“What the fire bane has is the same way of thinking I have. He is precise. Methodical. Meticulous. Disciplined. I was astounded that he had the means to douse my weaving. I should like to ask him how he did it. Where is he? For I would have thought he would stay with you.”
Now that she and I were so closely bound, I saw no reason to hide the truth. “The Master of the Wild Hunt stole him from me.”
“The maku spirit lord drank my blood, and then stole the young man. An intriguing strategy. You must ask yourself what the spirit lord wants.”
We came to a wide clearing. At its center rose a ceiba tree whose steepled roots flowed like ridges from a massive trunk. Baskets hung from the big thorns that adorned the lower roots. Some were filled with rotting fruit or with animal flesh turned green and putrid with decay. Others gave off a pleasing scent of herbs and flowers. One was filled to the brim with fresh yam pudding that smelled so sweet and tasty that I licked my lips and barely restrained myself from scooping with my fingers and eating it all up. In one, a tiny little creature with a downy coat of feathers slept, curled up all cozy for a long eternity’s nap.
I found an empty basket and pulled it off the tree. “With your permission, Your Highness, I’d like to place your head in this basket so I have my hands free to climb.”
To my surprise she smiled, not in a friendly way but in the way a rich woman smiles when a servant brings her just the gown she wanted in the morning. “It is a proper place for me to rest.”
I wove grasses to make a nest that would keep her face angled up, for it seemed undignified to smash her facedown into the basket. A leather cord laced closed the lips of the basket. I fixed its strap around my body alongside the two flasks. Rory licked his foreleg.
I put a hand on the coarse fur of his neck. “Change into your man form as soon as you can. That’s how we’ll know we’ve crossed back into the mortal world.”