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“Blessed Tanit,” I murmured, blushing even more scaldingly as I turned the skull to face away from the bed and toward the hearth.
“I thought you were telling one of your jesting tales to entertain me, like you do. I didn’t think the basket really had a head in it.”
Was her vision confined to the spirit world? Could skulls see? Could a skull close its eyes if it had no eyelids? Or would it be forced to watch everything?
“Why would you even have the head of the cacica if the Wild Hunt killed her?” he asked.
“The Taino ancestors put me on trial for her murder but I talked my way out of it.”
“Naturally.”
“The council of elders recognized the merit in my arguments!”
His shoulders tensed. “You mean it. It’s really the head of Queen Anacaona.”
“Of course it is! Why would I say so otherwise? I have spoken more to her after she was dead than I ever did while she was living. She admires your good manners and your… attractive disposition. She told me that an unusually powerful fire bane like yourself would have been a challenge she would have savored.”
His jaw tightened. He pulled the fur blanket around his torso and stood, primly covered from armpits to calves.
“Gracious Melqart, Vai. Are you embarrassed that the skull has seen you naked?”
“You’re the one who turned her to look away from the bed.” His look of offended hauteur only emphasized his grip on the blanket.
I laughed so hard that I cried. With a mumbled apology to the cacica, I draped cloth over the skull to cover the eye sockets.
“Oh, Vai,” I said, wiping tears off my cheeks. “I adore you when you’re indignant.”
He was looking very smoky and irritated in a way that made me bite my lower lip lest I laugh again. The man looked delectable when he had been driven up the pinnacle of disdain by feeling his pride and dignity had been slighted. Without a word of warning, he hauled me to the bed and strenuously, if very quietly, worked through his wounded feelings with my full cooperation.
Afterward he left me a sphere of cold fire and went outside. I uncovered the skull. I had grown so accustomed to the skull that it was easy to chat to her, although I was grateful there was no actual conversation or the chance that she would reveal by expression or unguarded comment what she might have seen. As I lit a fresh fire in the ashy hearth, I remarked that as difficult as it was to cope with the lack of fire, it certainly was pleasant to have cold fire as light. I explained that I had grown up in an impoverished household where beeswax candles were too expensive and tallow candles so smoky and foul-smelling it became a chore to sew or read by their light. I set a slab of fish to soak, and softened the dry barleycake in a hot parsnip-and-bean soup.
The water in the tub held a ghost of warmth in which I scrubbed his clothes. I went through them first, but I did not say anything to the cacica when I discovered three of the prophylactic sheaths tucked up one of his cuffs. The rascal! On Hallows’ Night he had been prepared to reunite with me. Of course, he hadn’t known I’d been imprisoned on Salt Island.
Washing done, I tidied up part of my sewing kit, and mended one of the tears in his much-abused dash jacket. The fire roared, drenching me with blissful heat. But I missed him.
How Bee would mock me!
Let her. I had faced worse than her mockery.
I dressed as warmly as I could and went out. Snowflakes spun on a trickle of wind. With clouds overhead, the air wasn’t nearly as frigid. In summer this shoreline would be marshy and plagued by bugs, but it was breathtaking in the winter evening with the snow shining and the water sparkling with the reflection of the magic he casually unleashed in cascades of bursting rainbows. He was throwing the illusion of light around in gouts of color that fell in waterfalls, spilling from image to image. A magnificent stag lost its antlers to become a horse pulling an elaborate chaise that became a Kena’ani ship with its prow cutting through the waves in the shape of a leaping horse. There was no reason or purpose for it. He was just doing it because he could.
He walked to meet me.
“It’s so beautiful, Vai.”
“Mmm,” he agreed as he kissed me with unexpectedly warm lips.
“I missed you.”
“Of course you did, love.” He put an arm around me as we stared south toward an unknown shore. Snow winked where it dissolved into the water. “We need to find a mage House or inn, or we won’t last long in this cold. Even with a fur blanket.”
“I feel like a thief taking the blanket with us. A fine beaver pelt blanket like that costs a year’s wages in Adurnam.”
“I’m taking no chances with you and the cold, love. Now go in. You’re shivering.”
We set out at dawn, glad to be moving. It took all morning to row across the sound. The water was so formidably calm that I was able to take several turns at the oars. By sighting on an unusually tall tree, we came in fairly close to straight across from where we had started, working back against a placid current. There we found a pier and cabin very like the one we had just left, except it had a shed for drying fish.
A path led south through woodland of stunted pine and scrub birch. We stowed the boat and started walking. When a freezing mixture of snow and sleet began to fall on the wings of a stiff east wind, we were forced to turn back and shelter indoors for the rest of the day and night. To be snuggled together with the fur blanket wrapped around us was no hardship, but in winter we could not survive long on love alone.
