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The eerie glow around his person had faded, but his blue eyes shimmered. “Please don’t be so annoying.”
I was so angry that I thought maybe the top of my head was going to blow off. And, if we were fortunate, propel the airship faster. “You lied to me!”
“Maku bastard!” The man who had had his arm around Abby grabbed Drake’s shoulder, threatening with a hand in a fist. “She mind rotted. Yee promised to heal she!”
Drake’s eyes burned hot blue. “Take your hand off me. Or I’ll burn it off.”
Knife man rocked the basket. Abby’s man stumbled to his knees. Drake caught himself clumsily, bellying against the basket’s rim. I shifted to balance, and the woman who had laughed grinned at me.
The young man burst into tears. “She me dear good sister. Dey behiques tell we it too late. Den dey take she a Salt Island. But den we hear dat in Expedition der some folk can heal any salter. Dat how I find yee. Now she don’ know she own name. She don’ know me, she own brother.”
“She is healed. There’s no salt plague in her. You have what I could save. And you thank me for the risks I took by assaulting me?”
“God’s blessing for saving she,” wept the young man.
Drake rested a hand on the man’s plaited hair. “What happened to the salter who bit her?”
“We drive dat salter in a pit and we pour salted water over he.”
“That was done well. I would have acted sooner, but if I had, I would have been arrested and imprisoned and she would never have gotten off Salt Island. Go back to her. She needs you.”
With both hands on the guide rope the brother staggered back to where Abby sat as in a stupor at the stern, her hands lax on the untidy mess of her rumpled pagne.
I shook out and retied my pagne. I was not ready to talk about Abby. “Drake, when did you leave Adurnam? What happened to the general? Why are you here?”
“I’m here because Expedition is my home. I was born in the Ordovici territories, but I left home at seventeen. I’ve lived in Expedition Territory for twelve years. Once my business in Adurnam was complete, I sailed back to Expedition.”
“What was your business in Adurnam?”
“Why, to rescue the general and bring him over the ocean to Expedition.”
“He’s in Expedition?”
“At the moment, he is not. He went west to a city called Sharagua to pay his respects to the cacique’s court and person.”
“You didn’t travel with him?”
“In the Taino kingdom, all fire mages serve the cacique. So I’m forbidden from traveling into Taino country. I wouldn’t want to anyway. Their laws are unreasonably strict. They won’t allow me to heal people.”
“Heal people? You burned those salters alive!”
“I used them as catch-fires, that’s true. Was that life, what they suffered? I ended their misery through a quick, merciful death that healed Abby. To burn out all the teeth in someone as far advanced in the disease as she was would have killed me. I think it was a fair trade.”
“So speaks the man who said he could heal me if I would just have sex with him.”
“Cat, you were drunk. You can’t expect to have understood exactly what I meant. Anyway, I thought you knew your own mind. You’re an independent young woman, traveling on your own. And you’re a Phoenician girl.”
I put a hand on my sword’s hilt. “I would be very cautious about what you say next.”
He took a step away from me just as it occurred to me that it might be a mistake to make a fire mage angry. But his voice remained patient. “I meant only that a young woman of your background can do as she wishes. I would never have suggested otherwise had I thought you were under the thumb of a father or brother.” He smiled pleasantly. “Or beholden to a husband.”
I could not speak out of sheer choked consternation. My cheeks flamed.
Then he surprised me. “My sincerest apologies, Cat. I meant no harm, and certainly no disrespect. A remarkably pretty girl like you is hard to resist.” He raised both hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I hope we can make peace.”
“Whatever else,” I muttered grudgingly, “you did get me off Salt Island.”
“So I did.” With a nod, he groped his way by guide rope to the stern, where he began to chat with the sterns-man at his rudder.
