“Have you tricked us? We have no ship on which to sail the ocean.”

“’Tis no trick, for here in the spirit world, it have a different substance,” he said in another man’s voice.

We looked onto the face of a man I had never before met. He was Taino through and through, no mixed-race Expeditioner. He had the long black hair and regular features typical of the Taino. His commanding gaze had a hard measure, but a softness in the line of his mouth suggested that kisses pleased him. He was older than I expected, about the same age as the Europan radical leader and pugilist Brennan Touré Du, whom I would have guessed to be in his mid-thirties, a man in his prime. He also looked vaguely familiar.

“Have we met before?”

“We have not. Yee killed me before we had that chance.”

“I did not kill you! You aren’t one of the salters I killed on Salt Island…” I trailed off, watching the promise of his mouth tighten to disapproval.

“I’ve seen you!” cried Bee. “I met you, the first time I went to Sharagua! But you’re dead!”

Had the sun come up at that moment, I would have said that dawn broke upon me. “You’re the cacique! Queen Anacaona’s brother, the one she was keeping alive. You’re Caonabo and Haübey’s uncle.”

The crow’s-feet at his eyes deepened as he smiled. “A smart gal, too.”

“No need to mock me. How comes it that you ruled the Taino kingdom and yet speak the language spoken in Expedition Territory, which is but a trifling place compared to the expanse of your noble and mighty empire?”

“Yee’s got a mouth on yee, gal, that do grate at times. Yet I reckon that man yee seek have the means to keep yee quiet when he get weary of yee talking. If those kisses was anything to go by.”

“A strong man does not need a silent wife,” I muttered as my face flamed.

“Kisses!” exclaimed Bee. “When was there kissing? Cat!”

His grin had a taunting flavor. “I lived in Expedition as a lad for some years. It happen that me uncle, him who was cacique before me, favored a cousin as heir instead of me. Me sister Anacaona deemed it prudent to keep me out of sight while she played the music she needed to at court. When me cousin died, I was recalled.”

“You’re younger than Anacaona?”