The night came alive with drums speaking across the length and breadth of Expedition Territory, bursts of mountainous noise rising only to be asphyxiated by ominous valleys of quiet. Wind moaned along the roof, dragging the sounds of street battles in and out of windows until Djeneba’s brother and her sons came up from the jetty where their fishing boat was moored and told us to shutter the windows and net the roofs, for the weather was about to turn bad.
I was glad of the work, for I had grown restless. When I pressed my hand to my locket, I felt Vai’s warmth, but he could have been anywhere. After the gate was closed, I paced. I drank the dram of rum Uncle Joe offered, and then a second larger dram, for I simply could not sit still.
A rap came at the gate, regulars too nervous to sit at home in darkened compounds. They informed us of what we already knew: The gaslight in Passaporte District had been choked off at the Gas Works, as punishment. We lit candles and lamps. Younger men arrived, bruised and cut, eager to regale a receptive audience with an exuberant tale of how they and a pack of sailors had fought off the wardens down by the jetty. A fire had broken out and been extinguished by a fire bane of unheard-of power, which had spurred the wardens into a further frenzy of head-bashing and arrests.
Their tale was thirsty work, and I felt obliged, asking them questions about the location and extent of the possible fires, to drink rum with them, for my mouth was dry. My batey-playing admirer and his kerchiefed friend arrived without their crude companion; they had been down at the Speckled Iguana where lay wounded men.
“I have to go there,” I said, my mind churning with visions of Vai all beaten and bloody and of Bee’s head floating in a dark well. If Vai was hurt, I had to rescue him. If I knew where Drake was hiding, I could offer him upon Hallows’ Night. I would become a killer, like my sire. So be it.
Uncle Joe said, “Yee stay here, Cat. Yee’s had too much to drink.”
“I really have to go.” I drained another slug of rum for courage and went to the gate. They could not stop me as my admirer and his friend followed me out.
23
I gripped my pagne in a fist and hauled the cloth to my knees so I could better stride. “What is your name again?”
My nice admirer had a merry grin and that was something on a cheerless night with anger and fear stalking through the streets. “Bala. This is Gaius.”
Kerchiefed Gaius had a frown like a barge.
“I’m perfectly harmless,” I said, daring Gaius with my gaze to say otherwise.
Gaius snorted. “If yee say so, Sweet Cat. Yee have that man strung on a leash, or else he have yee strung likewise, I’s not sure which.”
“I do not! I am a perfectly respectable gal. It is not my fault I was married against my will.”
“That is one rumor we have heard,” said Bala. “Hearing it for true lend a new smell to the rose, don’ it?” he added, to his friend.
“If yee call that a rose,” Gaius muttered.
“I shouldn’t have said anything.” My fingers tightened on Bala’s arm. He was a bigger man than I had thought, a full head taller than me and with shoulders that might bear the world on their breadth. His friend with the Roman name and a mass of hair in locks under the kerchief was almost as tall but stockier. For an instant, I wondered if I was safe with them, but then I reflected that should they trouble me, they would have to answer to Aunty Djeneba, Uncle Joe, and the rest of the neighborhood. “Sometimes people say I talk too much.”
Gaius made a noise like a choked-off laugh.
Bala said, “Yee have a lovely voice, Sweet Cat. Now, gal, shall we meet wardens in the street, yee shall stand back and let us take care of them.”
I removed my hand from his arm. “I can take care of myself in a fight. Do you doubt me?”
“There is the tongue,” said Gaius to Bala. “So I told yee.”
“We shall walk quickly and keep silent,” said Bala with the smile of a man seeking to keep the peace.
I fumed as a thousand wickedly cutting barbs of splendid insults came and went unspoken on my tongue. The Speckled Iguana lay about fifteen blocks away, on the other side of the Passaporte market, whose stalls and grounds lay empty but for the winking eyes of rats bold in the darkness and the leavings of crushed shells that had not been swept up. Clouds veiled the sky, making the intermittent noise of struggle seem both far and close, hard to gauge.
As we skirted the edge of the market, Gaius spoke in a low voice. “Yee meant it, did yee not, Sweet Cat? That yee would fight. Is it true, that story about yee and the shark?”