Cold Steel

Page 34

11
“Rory, is that our sire?” I asked.
“Our sire?” Rory took several deep sniffs. All I could smell was the bloom of ripe guava and a whiff of tobacco. “No. That’s not his smell. It couldn’t be him anyway. Our sire can only cross into the mortal world on Hallows’ Night.”
The opia’s lips quirked up. “Yee’s caused a deal of trouble for me, gal. I know what yee carry in that basket. I shall make it worth yee while if yee don’ deliver the head of the cacica to the Honored Caonabo, he who is now cacique over all the Taino people.”
“Caonabo is cacique already?”
“This is his coronation areito, here and everywhere in Taino land.”
“But I promised I would deliver her head to her son.”
“So yee shall. Yee shall deliver her head to Haübey, not to Caonabo.”
“Haübey was exiled after he was bitten by a salter. He can never return to the Taino kingdom.”
“Yee don’ know everything.” He slid an arm around my waist and pulled me close. Cursedly, he felt exactly like Vai as he murmured in my ear, “Nevertheless, I’s willing to make yee a deal. For ’tis certain Haübey is gone over the ocean where I cannot reach him.”
“Cat,” said Rory.
“How long ago did the general and his army leave?” I cried with alarm. “How long have we been in the spirit world?”
“The reckoning of days and months mean little enough to me.”
“Cat,” said Rory.
I pulled out of the opia’s appealing grasp. “I promised to deliver the head. Then my cousin can help me get back to Expedition. I have to get a ship to Europa.”
“What if I could get yee to Europa? Right now? If yee do as I ask and promise to take the cacica’s head to Haübey?”
“Cat!”
I was hallucinating Bee’s voice.
Rory tugged on my arm. I looked round to see Bee plowing through the crowd. She was hauling the smaller of Vai’s wooden travel chests with the aid of a grinning Taino man who was wearing an embroidered loincloth, bronze anklets and bracelets, a beaded necklace, a feathered cap, and nothing more. His friends followed along, dressed in a similarly appealing style. Like me, Bee wore an amply cut Europan skirt, good for striding, but a sleeveless bodice in the Expedition manner because, although it was night, it was plenty warm. She, Rory, and I stuck out like the maku we were, but no one seemed to mind.
“Bee!”
She halted, face flushed and curls in disarray. What I assumed was a pretty “Thank you” in Taino dismissed the young man. After looking over me and Rory, he retreated to his amused friends.
“Here you are, Cat! I was afraid to leave the chest because James Drake saw it and threatened to burn all of Andevai’s clothes. If there’s one thing you can trust about that man, it’s that he hates your husband and he could easily do it.”
“That’s two things,” said Rory.
She skewered him with a black gaze. “You get to haul it all the way back!”
“Where are we?” I had to pitch my voice to be heard above the rattle and song. “Why are you talking to James Drake?”
“We’re in Sharagua. I’ve been divorced and cast off. And here you are, in the middle of the areito on coronation night. I saw our meeting here in a dream. I’ve made arrangements for us to travel with General Camjiata’s army to Iberia.”
I looked around. The opia had vanished.
Bee grabbed my wrist, yanking as if she meant to rip my arm out of its socket. “Cat! We have to go! A carriage is waiting outside. The tide waits for no man, and not even for me.”
“I’m not going with General Camjiata! Why is he in Sharagua?”
“For the coronation. Anyway, of course he wants me to return with him to Iberia and help him win his war.”
“We can’t trust him!”
“The situation is not as simple as you think it is. Where did you get this?” With her usual disrespect for my belongings, she pulled the basket around and began unlacing it. “These sort of baskets are only ever used by behiques.” She pried open the top of the basket, pulling back her hair with a hand so it didn’t fall in her eyes. “Cat,” she said in an altered tone, “why do you have a skull?”
Blessed Tanit! Hair, skin, the usual appurtenances of flesh and life had vanished to leave a bone-white skull. “It wasn’t a skull before. It was more like the head of the poet Bran Cof, only more commanding and less rude.”