The coach rolled smoothly to a halt a hand’s height above the ground. The horses stamped and steamed. I released the latch to step down daintily onto the ball court.
Every gaze was turned to me. I would not have had it any other way.
As one, as in greeting or to show respect, the Taino rose.
I paused one breath, to acknowledge them. Then I sought and found my enemy beneath the stone eye.
“I do not like being betrayed, General Camjiata.” My voice carried easily, for the wind had ceased so utterly that the very atmosphere, like a rope, stretched taut. Yet my long black hair still rippled and flowed in the unseen tides of magic that washed around us. “Not once did you betray me. Not twice did you betray me. But with every promise or offer you have made to me, you betrayed me. Where are my husband and my sword, both of which you stole from me?”
Camjiata stepped out of the shadows. He was not a man to be beaten down. Whatever fears haunted him, no sign of fear marred his face now. He appealed to the crowd.
“An opia haunts us! In northern lands, we call this day Hallows’ Night, and know it for the day when the dead may cross into the land of the living. We cannot trust the shadows that walk out of the night on this night, of all nights.”
“I am no opia—” I retorted, but he cut me off.
“Yet she is no opia,” he cried, with an orator’s gesture that invited his audience to note how he had agreed. “She is a witch and a salter. She has used her witchcraft to escape from Salt Island and means to infest us all with the salt plague.”
A man who knew how to infest an orderly crowd with terror and strife could make the mob do his bidding. As startled and scared as the Expeditioners had been at the appearance of a coach riding down the wings of night, the salt plague frightened them far more. People pushed and shoved and began trying to climb up into the risers where the Taino, so collected and calm before, were now looking alarmed. Everyone seemed desperate to get away before I lurched over to bite them.
At Prince Caonabo’s order, Taino soldiers made a fence around the ball court’s exits, while others hurried onto the risers to restore order. But I wasn’t worried about them. Captain Tira was pushing through the surging crowd; she had a hand on her sword and her gaze on me, and I didn’t have to be my sire’s daughter or a Hassi Barahal spy to figure she had just been ordered to kill me.
Rory slipped down out of the coach with the grace of a prowling cat and handed me the machete I’d stolen from Salt Island. I stepped back, weighing the machete in my hand as I looked around for Camjiata. But it was Vai I saw. He shoved through the crowd with a naked blade of cold steel in his hand. He looked stunned and angry and oh so welcome as he placed himself beside me.
Captain Tira halted, too far away to lunge at me with her falcata.
“Catherine, they told me you were sequestered with Beatrice!”
“They lied. I was kidnapped and sent to Salt Island.”
As if to reassure himself that I was real and not illusion, he reached for my hand.
A searingly cold wind swept across the ball court. An icy sleet began to drizzle. My sire stepped down out of the coach as into a fine summer’s balm.
His gaze met mine just as Vai’s fingers brushed my hand.
The Master of the Wild Hunt smiled. It was nothing more than a slight upward quirk of the lips and an infinitesimal narrowing of the eyes, but it was the most horrifying expression I had ever seen. I snatched my betraying touch back from Vai’s, but it was too late.
My sire licked his lips, as if tasting the most delicious food.
“Strong and sweet!” His smile mocked me, for he understood perfectly my look of horror. “You are truly my daughter, to have sought and bound such rich blood as this.”
“No!” At last I spotted Camjiata making his way toward the end of the ball court, hoping to escape Vai’s cold steel and my anger. “That’s your prey!”
“The fire weaver?” His gaze lifted to the cacica. “So rare it is to find one such as her. I knew there was tremendous power hiding behind their spirit fence. But I couldn’t get through it to find out. Yet after all, the smell of the cold mage’s blood delights me far more.”
“No! No!” Camjiata was almost out of sight. “Him! Over there!”
My sire stared right where I pointed. “I see only darkness. There is no one there. Do not try to deceive me.”
The Master of the Wild Hunt was blind in the mortal world except to the flare of those who channeled the energies that bind the worlds, that weave life to death and death to life, order and disorder. He could not see Camjiata to take him, even if he could be bothered to want to.
