Spiritwalker 3: Cold Steel (16 page)

Her gaze tracked the wolves. “They will never stop hunting me.”

His smiling expression vanished. “My oath is this. If we get out of this, if you need
me, then you need only get word to me. I will come for you, and for the child if there
is one. No matter who or what hunts you.”

The men at the longboat cried out in triumph as they found it seaworthy and its equipment
intact. Shouting, they called three names—
Tara! Daniel! Gaius!
—and I realized they did not yet know the man on the path above was dead, for they
could see nothing of what had occurred in the rear guard.

With her bloody arm, my mother pulled him against her. She kissed him with the passion
of the condemned. When she released him, he was so stricken by astonishment that she
had taken several steps away before she realized he wasn’t following her.

“Daniel! Don’t make me regret that.”

Beneath the cruel face of the ice, he laughed, looking like the happiest man in the
world.

“You would laugh at a time like this,” she said with a smile that made her look like
a woman who knew how to jest in a tavern over drinks. “Let’s get out of here before
those cursed wolves get down the path.”

They strode toward their companions and the boats, but she abruptly halted, dragging
him to a stop. “Did you hear something?”

He looked up at the face of the ice. “Just the wolves and the wind.”

“No,” she said. “Something else.”

The wolves began to descend.

“Cat! Wake up! You’re howling.” Bee was shaking me, trying to jostle my head off a
cliff.

“Ouch! Let go, you beast!” Then I remembered everything. I sat up just as we jolted
on such a bump that I was slammed into the side of a wagon. “Ow!”

Bee and I were crammed into the bed of the wagon with Vai’s chest, the Taino basket,
and a dozen crates heaped with glistening oysters. The crates jostled with each jounce.

A man looked around from the driver’s seat. He was a white-haired, light-skinned elder
with a pipe in his mouth and his shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal sun-weathered forearms
corded with muscle. “The lass wakes! I thought sure she was drunk as a lord and would
sleep it off ’til teatime. Especially with that howling. Thought it was dire wolves,
didn’t I? Or a pack of women cast off for their unsightly looks and scolding tongues!”
He cackled at his own jest.

Fiery Shemesh! What nightmare was this?

“Bee, where are we?” I whispered as I rubbed my bruised shoulder. “Where is the dragon?”

“The dragon cast us out on land,” she whispered back.

The road was a cart track, two ruts cutting through damp earth. Mud slopped with each
turn of the wheels, but we were high and dry. The two oxen pulling the wagon had the
stolid pace of animals who can walk all day without stopping. Around us lay green
hills ablaze with spring flowers. I shivered, for although the wagoner was content
in his shirtsleeves, it seemed deathly cold.

Rory was sitting up next to the driver, wearing one of Vai’s best dash jackets, the
fabric red, gold, and orange squares limned by black. He took a puff on the pipe and
coughed violently.

The old man chortled again. “You smoke like a woman, lad! No doubt comes of being
forced to attend on your sister and cousin all these months, as you say. I’ll teach
you to be a man.”

The sight of Rory wearing the dash jacket distracted me. “Bee! How could you let Rory
wear that particular jacket? That’s the one Vai wore the morning after we…”

Her foot poked me to silence. “How could I have remembered that!”

“He’s already got a smudge on the elbow!”

She gazed past me, steadfastly mute. Back the way we had come rose the roofs of fishermen’s
shacks next to a small marble temple whose pinnacle was marked with the chariot of
a sea god. A sleepy strand gave way to rocky shallows where men raked for oysters.
Beyond lay an islet prominently marked by a stone pillar and a tree so large I could
tell it was an oak even from this distance. The gray-blue waters of the sea soughed
in the brisk wind, chipped with foam. Out on the water it was raining, but up here
it was dry and sunny. It looked a cursed lot like the land I had grown up in.

Bee tugged down my skirt, which had gotten ruched up past my knees. “You slept through
most of the journey. It’s as if you had actually been stunned.”

“You were stupefied,” added Rory helpfully, turning to address me. “Then you started
making smacking noises like you were trying to kiss someone, or had turned into a
fish. You didn’t start howling until you reached dry land.”

“Rory and I had to drag you and the chest out of the Great Smoke and onto warded ground,
right there on that little island. An oysterman saw us and brought a rowboat to help
us to shore. This kind fellow agreed to convey us.”

“That’s all very well, Bee, but it doesn’t answer my question.” My legs were sticky
and my skirt was damp. Bee had gotten my wool jacket onto me, although she hadn’t
buttoned it. I chafed my arms and hands, trying to warm up. I was exceedingly grateful
for the sun, however weak its light and heat seemed compared to the blazing sun in
Expedition. “Where are we?”

“Why, dearest,” she said with a triumphant smile, “we’re on the road to Adurnam. We’ve
reached Europa.”

The rain caught up with us as we reached the outskirts of Adurnam. By the time we
reached Westmarket we were soaked through, and the downpour had left Bee’s curls plastered
to her neck. Vai’s dash jacket was creased and sodden and, worst of all, Rory had
burned the cuff with ashes from the wagoner’s pipe. I had begun shivering so badly
I didn’t have the energy to scold him.

The wagoner reined up at the edge of the bustling fish market just as the rain ceased.
Wagons and carts trundled in from the marshy Sieve, the vast estuary of the Rhenus
River.

“This is as far as I come, lasses.” He cackled, tapping his hat against the driver’s
bench to flick water off the brim. “You had me half believing those lively tales you
spun about the foreigners over the ocean who allow girls to run about half naked kicking
a ball. As if females wouldn’t just hurt themselves trying to play such games like
men.”

Irritation warmed me as I clambered off the wagon. “I was not making it up! The game
is called batey. You don’t kick the ball, because it’s not allowed to touch the ground.
Women play it in leagues, just like the men, and people come to watch.”

“Folk come to watch, as if they were men! I’d say for another reason, ha ha! Women
ruling and men bowing and scraping to stop from being scolded! I’m as likely to believe
this tale of an Assembly of representatives voted on by every person in the city.
As if a prince would allow that!”

I spoke through gritted teeth. “There is no prince in Expedition.”

“No, there’s a fancy-dressed queen instead!” He laughed as he wiped rain from his
cheeks. “You’re killing me, lass!”

Rory pulled me back before I whacked the man with my cane. To soothe me he groomed
away tendrils of hair stuck to my forehead. “You’re not going to convince him of what
is true if he believes it can’t be true.”

Bee twisted a slender bracelet off one dainty wrist. “Please take this as thanks for
your help.”

“You don’t need to pay me. I’m happy to do a good turn…” The wagoner paused as Bee
held up the bracelet. “Is that gold?”

“Gold from the court of the Taino king,” she said prettily. “He was so overwhelmed
by my beauty that he married me.”

“If you want to call that marriage.” His gaze hardened. By the way his gaze flicked
between us, I guessed he was reconsidering his estimate of what manner of young females
we might be and whether Rory was truly my brother or rather our partner in crime.

Bee’s diminutive stature led people to think her both mild and harmless, until she
shifted her feet to a fighting stance. “We expect to be treated with the respect we
have shown you,” she said in a voice thick with queenly grandeur. “Do not make me
regret I thought you a decent man.”

He relaxed. “I see you two girls is having me on. My thanks, then, and I’ll take the
bauble gladly, as a keepsake of your mischievous ways. Now you get on to your sire,
lass. Lest he get tired of waiting for you and come hunting you down. Listen, you
can hear him coming now!”

In the distance horns tootled and drums and cymbals clashed.

“What festival parade is that?” I asked as we heaved the chest out of the carriage.

“Tomorrow Mars Camulos has his feast. The mask associations have been practicing for
weeks for the festival procession. You Phoenician girls won’t be dancing to that Roman
horn!”

With a wave and another cackle he drove into the narrow lanes of the market.

“Mars Camulos!” said Bee with a dark frown. “That means tomorrow is the twenty-third
day of the month of Martius. The areito to celebrate Caonabo becoming cacique took
place on the first of Februarius. Which means we left Sharagua six weeks ago.”

“Six weeks! And yet three months before that!” I cried, thinking of Vai, taken from
me on Hallows’ Night.

Looking toward the stalls of fish, Rory eyed the nearest vendor as if gauging whether
he could snatch a fish and run. “No wonder I’m so hungry!”

“Rory, don’t do it.” Bee grabbed his arm, and he winced. She turned to me. “You’ve
always said that time passes differently in the spirit world. It’s still strange to
have it happen to us.”

Rain started up again in a blowsy mist. My teeth began to chatter. “We need to find
shelter and decide what to do.”

“I have to speak to the headmaster, Cat. I think we should go there first.”

Rory hunched his shoulders. “He’s a dragon. You can’t trust him. He will eat you.”

“He won’t eat me, Rory.” Bee poked him in the arm. “He might eat you, though, and
there are moments when you are so annoying that I must say I expect I would encourage
him to do so.”

Rory drew himself straight, lips pulled back. “I shall have you know, Beatrice, that
I am never annoying. That you find me so is a reflection on your character, not mine.”

“We need to scout out our ground first,” I temporized, for I sensed Rory trembling
at the edge of rebellion. Also, I desperately wanted to dry out and get warm. “Let’s
go first to the law offices of Godwik and Clutch. It’s a long walk across the city,
I know. But if there’s anyone I trust, it’s the trolls… the feathered people, I mean.
The Taino always use the more polite phrase.”

“We need not imitate the Taino in everything just because they believe themselves
to be superior to us!” remarked Bee in a frosty tone. “But I suppose it is wisest
to go to the law offices first. Wait here.”

She left Rory and me huddled with the chest under the eaves of a decrepit warehouse.
Wagons lined up to offload their glistening catch into the baskets and crates of middlemen,
merchants, cooks, and men guarding wheelbarrows. No one paid us any mind, for we looked
exactly like an impoverished brother and sister who had no home and no means of buying
our next meal, but I felt exposed and vulnerable.

“Rory, what did you tell the wagoner about our sire? You ought to have been silent.”

“It was while you were howling. I said our sire was the Master of
the Wild Hunt. The benefit of telling the truth is that so few people believe you.”

I laughed. “When did you get to be so wise?”

“There was this woman I petted in the palace of the prince of Tarrant that time I
got trapped there after eating the pug dog and the peahen…”

He regaled me with a story that made me laugh more than once, even if there were particulars
I had to command him to skip over because I did not want to hear them. Having no shame,
he had no idea there were private things a person did not tell other people. Just
as he finished, Bee reappeared carrying three leather peddlers’ sacks and a wrapped
paper bundle.

Rory took the wrapped paper from her, brushed his cheek against hers, then held the
paper to his nose and inhaled. “Fish! You brought me food.”

“How did you manage that?” I demanded.

“A noble bride receives a lot of gold jewelry. If she isn’t bountifully adorned, it’s
shameful for her family.”

“You had no family in Taino country.”

An odd expression creased her mouth from a memory I could not share. “Let’s go. We’ll
transfer the chest’s contents to these packs when we have a roof over our heads.”

The chest was indeed an unwieldy burden. The coarse rope chafed my fingers as we trudged
through the busy streets of Adurnam. The sky was heavy with clouds and gritty with
coal smoke from the afternoon cooking. Dreary colors and pinched faces made me feel
we walked through a foreign land. To mark the festival of the god who ruled over war,
shopkeepers had already adorned their doorways with a red wreath pierced with the
short sword known as a gladius or with a wooden mask depicting a ram’s head with massive
horns. The drinking would begin at sunset, and tomorrow morning there would be a procession
through the streets.

We headed east toward the new districts along Enterprise Road. But our steps strayed
toward the hills where the ancient Kena’ani settlement had risen long ago and where
sanctuaries sacred to Melqart, Tanit, and Ba’al still stood. By unspoken agreement,
Bee and I took a roundabout way that led us to the house where we had grown up.

We halted on the edge of Falle Square at dusk. The small four-story town house was
shuttered, its front gate padlocked. No thread of smoke rose from the chimney. No
festival wreath marked the door, not that any manner of Roman adornment had ever hung
there when we lived in the house. The mansa of Four Moons House had purchased the
property from the Hassi Barahal clan after my aunt and uncle had fled Adurnam. He
had meant to keep Bee and me prisoner there until he sorted out what to do with us,
but we had escaped.

Rain spattered as the wind picked up. Bee and Rory waited in the back alley while
I wrapped shadows around myself, climbed over the back gate, and scanned the yard
with its laundry room, cistern, and outdoor hearth. The old carriage house had been
empty for years, for we could not afford horses or carriage, but the new owners had
stocked it with hay and bags of feed. Bee and I had long ago hidden a key beneath
a pair of loose boards in the carriage house. It was still there, but when I brought
it to the door, the locks had been changed.