The heat ceased. The girl’s dancing flame vanished. The catch-fire slumped to the floor, and not one person moved to help him. Yet I could not help but notice how Captain Tira had arrayed her soldiers, giving them clear shots at Drake and the four young fire mages. Lady Angeline cast me a look that would have murdered a lesser creature.

“Come now, Cat, don’t make me angry.” Drake brushed a strand of hair out of his eyes. “I just want you to watch when your husband begs me not to harm you because he’s not strong enough to kill my fire. Or perhaps, better yet, when he’s brought before me in shackles, and I ask you to choose between me killing him or you becoming my concubine for him to see.”

I cast a disbelieving look at Camjiata, but he was watching Captain Tira in a fixed way that made me think he was ready to blink an order if need be. Melqart’s Balls! Who was in charge here?

With curled lip, I addressed Drake. “Obviously to save his life I would do what I must.”

“That would make you a whore.”

“No, Drake. It would make you a coward. For this is the coward’s way, to boastingly strut when there is no real threat to his own self.” I turned my attention to the chamber at large, in disgust. “Have we played this scene for long enough? James Drake insults me, hoping to degrade me in your eyes, and I defend myself. Is there a hope for an end to this mockery? Or am I merely his latest victim…?”

I trailed off to let my thoughts catch up to my mouth. Fiery Shemesh! Vai had warned me to be prudent. But it was just so hard when Drake sat there lording it over them, him and his deadly fire magic and his young acolytes and their captive catch-fires. All of them could die. Captain Tira’s pistol and sword were fast, but fire outraced steel.

So I smiled and laughed, stepped around Camjiata, and kissed Drake on the cheek as I had kissed my sire to take him off guard. He recoiled as if I had knifed him in the gut.

“You’re so clever, all of you! I see what you’re about. You don’t trust me, me appearing so suddenly and with such a tale, so you have appointed Drake to carry out a cunning interrogation. But I assure you, everything I have told you is true. My husband’s mother and sisters were dangled as hostages before him so he had no choice but to bow his head to the mansa’s yoke. His radical sympathies have not changed.”

I righted the chair, nodded at Rory, and sat down. My fingers trembled only a little as I considered the smoking ash of my beef. The mood in the chamber shifted from a knife’s edge to blunt wariness.