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“He drained himself to stop Drake. He just fell hard asleep.”
She grasped my hands convulsively. When I whimpered, she released me. “How bad is it?”
“I feel like I came up one spit short of being cooked. But it’s not too bad, more the shock.”
“I should never have sent that note. I mentioned it in front of Drake. I will kill him myself?!”
“Leave Drake alone, Bee. I’ll take care of him. Believe me, I can.”
She had left the door open. Juba appeared at the threshold. He carried a tray with a pitcher and basin, a vial, a ceramic jar stoppered with a bit of cork, strips of linen, and a small glass bottle. With a surgeon’s knife he cut away the blood-soaked cloth, careful of my modesty, and washed the wound, which was more of a gouge along the skin. I had been fortunate. Just below my elbow, he paused as a swipe of the cloth cleaned a smear of blood off to reveal the bite scar. He looked up, meeting my gaze although I could not guess what he was thinking. He glanced at Bee and, without a word, finished his nursing. After painting the gash with a white salve, he bound it with linen.
“For the skin,” he said, indicating the ceramic jar. He picked up the bottle. “A cup eases the inflammation. Maybe it makes her drowsy or gives her vivid dreams.”
He and Bee stood together like lovers who mean to argue. Bee glanced at me and back at him from under hooded eyes, and he nodded and left.
“Did you?” I asked.
“I did not.” She turned the key in the lock.
I stripped. The jar contained a sticky clear ointment that cooled my skin gloriously. Bee rubbed it on my back and then combed a light layer of olive oil through my hair, glancing at Vai all the while. “For if he were to wake up and catch you naked, it would embarrass me beyond belief.”
“He’s clothed!”
“Yes, but it is one thing for you and me to bathe and change together, and another for there to be a stranger in the room with one or both of us in that condition.”
“He is no stranger,” I murmured. He looked like a man who ought to be woken with a kiss.
“I take it by that cryptic utterance and unrelentingly fatuous expression that you and he are reconciled. Be sure I wish to know no details whatsoever.” She filled a cup from the bottle and handed it to me. “Nap for a few hours. I’ll wake you. We leave mid-afternoon to take a carriage to the festival gate. The cacica has declared she must undertake my final instruction herself.”
“In Sharagua?”
“No. There is a palace at the border, where the areito will be held. It isn’t far, but I have to stay there. Cat, you must nap. You look exhausted and stunned. But I must selfishly ask…I can have one attendant with me for the twenty days. I know that you two…it’s a long time to be away from him…”
“Of course I will go with you! I have to stay with you until after Hallows’ Night no matter what, with or without Vai. But you’ll have to tell me what I need to do and not do.”
“Don’t worry. You know how I love to boss you about. And to show you how much I love you for coming with me, let me take that jacket of his downstairs so the laundresses can clean it.”
She departed with the jacket, and I locked the door. After braiding my hair and drinking the liquid with its sweetly chalky taste, I lay down. An attempt to clasp the sleeping Vai met with success: The lotion had soothed my inflamed skin enough that the touch of cloth did not chafe. But when I closed my eyes, I remembered the fire bursting in my heart.
I slept, and I dreamed I was waking Vai with passionate kisses, and he said we can’t it will hurt you and I said we have to because what if I’m dead tomorrow and he gave way cautiously and tenderly, and then I woke up. To discover Vai asleep beside me and yet somehow his clothes had come off, which forced me to revisit my memories of what had been dream and what had been real. A sound of clicking and rustling had woken me. The key in the lock was being jiggled from the other side of the door. I slipped out from under the thin cotton blanket and dashed for the wardrobe to grab Vai’s sword. Then I picked up my rumpled pagne and tied it hastily over torso and hips as the key worked loose and dropped with a clunk to the floor. Vai stirred. The latch turned, and the general came in.
He closed the door, taking in the scene. “The vigor of youth never fails to amaze.”
Vai blinked several times as in confusion, and then recollection settled his expression. Sitting, he caught sight of Camjiata, realized he was uncovered from the hips up, and, after a moment, smiled with the comfortable bravado of the man who knows he looks well in any outfit.
“You have me at a disadvantage,” he said, making no effort to cover his bare torso or the two chains and rings, one ice lens clear and one cloudy.
The general smiled. “Which you may suppose is deliberate. I must use what advantage I can make for myself, for I am not a cold mage of rare and unexpected potency.” I flushed, not that one could tell, as I was already pinked. “As for you, Cat, I trust you are not too badly injured.”
“Do you? Drake tried to kill Vai, too.” I placed the sword on the bed next to a startled Vai before I stalked to the wardrobe to get a blouse, pagne, and clean bodice and drawers.
“He will not do that again.”
“How can you possibly be sure?” I demanded as I took the clothes, and the ceramic jar of ointment, behind the screen for privacy. Vai kept his gaze fixed on the general.
“I hold the power of life and death over James Drake in ways I am not about to share.”
“You’ll excuse us,” said Vai, “if that seems a slender reed on which to cross this river.”
