Cold Steel

Page 17

Behind her came Kofi and Luce carrying Vai’s chest between them.
Keer approached me in an intimidating manner, but I did not retreat. She passed her cheek alongside mine, and took in an audible sniff. I sucked in a breath myself, for it was always wise to imitate what trolls did as a mark of respect. Her scent reminded me of the perfume of summer in the north, when the sun bakes grass from green to gold.
She bobbed a greeting, then stepped away to pace around the table on which Rory lay. “I have come to represent you at the standing inquiry, and to help you make your defense. Curious, this one. He looks like a rat but he smells like a cat.”
I smoothed a hand over Rory’s disheveled hair, wondering if Keer was fighting off an urge to taste mancat flesh. “I suppose he does.”
She chuffed a trollish laugh. Three trolls accompanied her. Two posted themselves as guards, one at each door. The third sat at the other table, opened a writing case, and prepared to take a written record of the proceedings.
“Cat, have yee eaten?” Luce asked.
“I asked the wardens to bring something, but they never did.”
“How like men!” she muttered. “Yee must be famished.”
“I am, and really thirsty, too.”
“We cannot begin until you are fed,” said Keer. “No person can be expected to think properly if she is distracted by hunger.” She showed her teeth in an unsettling mimicry of a human smile, which reminded me how easily she could eat me if she were distracted by hunger.
“I’ll get food,” said Luce.
While we waited, Keer, Kofi, and I argued about the latest batey games and gossip. Luce returned with rice porridge, fruit, ginger beer, and enough cassava bread and rice and peas to feed six of me, although I managed to finish almost half of it while the others picked off the rest. When I had done, Keer banished Luce and Kofi.
“I must conduct the interview in privacy, so yee must wait outside.” When they had gone, she settled opposite me at the table. She was facile with human language and adjusted her speech to fit her listener. “Tell me everything that happened.”
I explained how I had been betrayed by General Camjiata into the custody of Queen Anacaona, and how she had ordered her people to imprison me on Salt Island because I had been bitten by a salter. “But the cacica herself said I was clean. The salt plague is spread by the invisible teeth of the ghouls, eating through flesh and then into the brain. I have no ghoul’s teeth in my body. There was nothing to heal.”
“Useful to know but not helpful with the case,” she said, watching as the clerk scratched markings I could not read. “The First Treaty does give the Taino the right to demand you be turned over to them because of the quarantine. What else can you tell me?”
I explained how, on Hallows’ Eve, the Wild Hunt had ridden out of a hurricane and rescued me from Salt Island. At the command of the Master of the Wild Hunt, I had cut a path with my half-mortal blood through the fence of magic that surrounded the Taino kingdom. My sire had told me the Wild Hunt would kill my dear cousin Beatrice if I did not find richer blood to feed the courts who ruled the Hunt. I had meant for the Wild Hunt to kill General Camjiata, the man who had betrayed me. But because Camjiata had no magic, my sire could not see or sense him. Instead, my sire had decided to kill my husband because he was a cold mage of rare and unexpected potency. At the same time, the cacica had been about to kill me together with other fugitives who had escaped Salt Island.
“You did not with your own hands, talons, teeth, or sword kill the cacica,” said Keer.
“No, but I convinced the Master of the Wild Hunt to take her instead of Vai.”
“You acted in self-defense. The cacica was about to kill you, and you defended yourself.”
“What about Rory? Many witnesses saw a black saber-toothed cat break her neck.”
She tapped her taloned fingers on the table. “Is a soldier responsible for the deaths he is ordered to inflict in battle? Or is the general who commands the deaths held to be the responsible party? Furthermore, on a night of storm, confused and frightened people may see shadows as giant eagles or as creeping spiders. Perhaps there was such a cat. Certainly in the ancestral territories of my people, what you rats call troll country, such carnivores prowl the land. We have hunted them and been hunted in our turn. But that is not proof that your brother committed the act.”
“The prince saw him become a cat and then change back into a man, just now, when he got shot,” I said.
“We cannot accuse a man of thieving a hat just because some man was seen to steal a hat and the accused is also a man.” She bared her teeth at me in a brilliantly sharp smile, as if she were preparing to eat any lawyers who argued against her. “Very well. I am prepared to make a case.”