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“Salve. Salve, Perdita.”
Greetings, lost woman. The formal Latin soothed my ears.
A person moved toward me with palms outstretched in the sign of peace. “By Jupiter Magnus! It is Catherine Bell Barahal. How in the unholy hells you got here I cannot imagine.”
I brandished my cane. I wasn’t going to get bitten again. “Don’t come closer. I’ll kill you.”
“Catherine Bell Barahal. Look at me. We’ve met before.”
Five people stood in a cunning circle around me, so I couldn’t bolt. Behind, still on the beach with the sun’s glare washing their skin to the color of rotting corpses, the young woman was tugging on the thing that had bit me, trying to drag it away as it strained toward me. Three men and two women faced me. Four of the strangers were foreign. They had thick straight black hair very like my own and they looked a little like Rory but a lot more like someone else entirely: broad across the cheeks with high, flat foreheads and deep-set brown eyes, fit and healthy. In fact, they looked like people, nothing like the lurching man-thing that had bitten me. At least the monster in the water had been terrible in its perfectly awful beauty. Wouldn’t it have been better if it had killed me and I’d bled my life away in the water?
Blessed Tanit! I was going to die in the most horrible way imaginable.
My knees gave way. First I was standing and then I was on the ground.
One of the men crouched beside me, out of range of my cane.
“Catherine,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’m not a salter. Hold out your arm.”
His calm tone convinced me to hold out my arm. A woman upended a vessel. Salt water poured over the wound. I must have yelped, but all I could hear was the pain.
“You’re faint. Drink this.”
I was dead anyway so if he meant to poison me it would be preferable to die quickly instead of slowly. He handed me a hollowed-out gourd and unsealed its cork. I lifted its rim to my mouth. A sweet liquor with the kick of strong alcohol coursed down my throat. I began to chug it, until one of the women spoke curtly, and the speaker took hold of my undamaged wrist and stayed me.
“Wait. Let it settle. Then you can have more.”
Its searing after-bite blasted along my throat. Finally he came into focus. He had hair the reddish-gold color commonly seen in western Celtic tribes who had not mixed with Roman legionnaires and the Mande refugees from the empire of Mali.
“You were with Camjiata,” I whispered. “In the law offices.”
“That’s right. I’m James Drake. You do remember me?”
The liquid churned in my belly. I broke into a sweat. “Was that man a salter who bit me?”
“Stay calm.” He spoke to the others. By their voices, it seemed they were haggling.
“My mind must be rotting already,” I cried. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”
They came to a grudging consensus. The others moved off, taking the creature and the young woman with them. For some reason, the creature did not attack them.
“That’s because we’re speaking Taino,” he said, turning back to me. “It’s the common language in these parts. Drink up. It’s the local drink. It’s called rum.”
I drained the vessel. The liquor cleansed my mouth; it numbed and dazzled, spiking straight to my head. “Will rum cure me?”
“No. Rum can’t cure the salt plague. The seawater has flooded his saliva away. But I want to wash the bite again. You have to come with me. Please put the sword back in your belt. No need to wave it around.”
The sight of the jagged tooth marks bruising my forearm and the blood leaking sluggishly along my skin made me clumsy. I fumblingly fastened the cane to its loop. With a hand pressed to my back, he steered me to a sandy path that led into the trees. Birds clamored in a brazen assault on my ears. Where it was bright the sun was a lance piercing my eyes and where it was shadowed the earth was a monstrous presence trying to devour me. I could not get my balance despite my companion’s solicitous hand and respectful silence although I would have liked it better if he had talked to drown out my whirlpooling terror.
We came to a clearing around a circular pool filled to the brim with water as intensely blue as James Drake’s eyes. Next to the pool rose an unwalled shelter, just a roof thatched with dried fronds that shaded a table and bench. He sat me on the bench and gave me a second gourd of rum.
“What’s this for if it won’t cure me?”
“It’s to numb the pain and the fear. We don’t know each other, Cat Barahal, but you’re going to have to trust me.”
“Why does it matter if I trust you? I’m going to die. There’s no cure, and every bitten person dies.” Shaking, I took a long swallow of the rum. It was better than thinking.
A pot and several baskets hung under the eaves. He took down the pot, filled it with water, and hung it from a tripod. Then he put his hand on the wood beneath it. His lips parted, and flames curled up.
