“Ah! You think I meant to enslave him. That is not what I meant. The people of Expedition call such as me a fire mage.”

“Yes, I know that,” I retorted, for she had stung me by saying Vai was wasted on me. “I’ve met other fire mages, like James Drake.”

“Fire mages are not like James Drake. He is a criminal, whatever you may have thought of him.”

“I didn’t like him much, no matter what it may have seemed.”

“I could see the nature of your regret developing on Salt Island. You were foolish.”

“I was scared.”

“You were ignorant.”

“All right, then,” I replied grudgingly, because it seemed churlish to argue over such a fine point with a woman who was dead because of a choice I had made. “I was ignorant and scared and foolish. Maybe being all those things was also an excuse to do something I was curious about but wasn’t honest enough to admit wanting.”

Birds fluttered in the trees, plumage flashing through patches of light. My feet crackled on drying leaves. Rory’s breath warmed my back.

“All of those things,” she agreed, “but it appears you can learn. Yet you are not my kinswoman to be offered to eat from the platter of my knowledge. However, I will not allow you to think I meant to enslave the fire bane who is your husband. This much I will tell you. When we weave, we are not weaving fire, we are weaving what the Hellenes call energy and the Mande call nyama and others call the living force. One way it can manifest is as fire. Such dispersal of living force will kill the fire weaver unless she has a way to cast it off.”

“That’s why you use fire banes as catch-fires. People sell them to you as slaves.”

If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was holding a severed head in my arms, I could have believed myself talking in an ordinary manner with a woman who found me a little tiresome.

“The fire banes who serve me are not slaves.”

“Prince Caonabo said murderers are sometimes punished by being forced to become catch-fires. Anyway, why would anyone volunteer to do something so dangerous?”

“Fire banes can take into their bodies the energy I release. They throw it into Soraya, which is the name we give to what you call the spirit world. Were I to pour the backlash of my magic into a single fire bane, I should kill her. Even if she is only a funnel, she cannot take all without some spilling into her flesh and burning her up. Over many generations, my ancestors taught themselves how to split these wakes into more than one thread and weave them through more than one fire bane. Thus, all are protected.”