Gods of Jade and Shadow(26)

“Wait!” she said as he stepped away.

He stopped, his cool hand brushing hers, and her hold on the rope slackened.

“I’ll be behind you,” he said. It wasn’t an attempt at reassurance, it was a fact.

With that, he was gone. She was scared, abandoned among all these strangers. In Uukumil, the biggest event of the year was the peregrination of the local saint, which was hauled from the church and carried around the town. This, this was so much bigger! There were women in terrifying masks and a boy who kept banging a drum, and Casiopea thought of simply running off.

She tightened her grip around the rope and bit her lower lip. She’d said she’d do this and she would. She began walking, pushing her way next to dancers who were paired together and shuffling their feet right in the middle of the street. She slid past two harlequins who tossed confetti at her and evaded three rowdy men who were bumping into people and yelling obscenities.

“You wouldn’t happen to have matches, would you?” a man with a melodious voice asked her.

He was a dark fellow, broad-shouldered, good-looking, and strong. He was dressed like a pirate, with a blue coat, a sash upon his waist, and tall boots. The way his teeth gleamed and the way he stood drew Casiopea in.

This is him, the Mam, she thought.

It is likely that having already met one god, she was able to quickly identify another. Or else it was Hun-Kamé’s essence, caught under her skin, that allowed her to see there was an extraordinary element about this stranger.

“No,” she said, looking down at her shoes, not in modesty, but because she didn’t want him to read the recognition in her eyes.

“A pity. What are you doing all alone on a night like this?”

“I came with my friends, but I seem to have misplaced them,” she said, lying again with panache. She had, it seemed, a talent for it.

“That is terrible. Maybe I could help you find them?”

“Maybe,” she agreed.

He took out a cigarette and a lighter and placed an arm around her waist, guiding her through the street.

“I thought you needed matches,” she said.

“I needed an excuse to talk to you. Look, you sweet thing, how nicely you blush,” he said, his voice honeyed.

He said a number of things to her in that cloying tone of his, things of little importance, because a minute or two later she could not recall them. Compliments, enticements. His words were electric, charged like a cloud pregnant with rain. She followed him away from the revelers, down an empty alley. There he pressed her against a wall and ran a hand along her chest, smiling, the touch making her shiver. Was this what women and men did in the dark? The indecencies the priest muttered about? Books were coy on the specifics of seduction.

“What would you say, hmm, about giving me a kiss or two?” he asked, tossing away his cigarette.

“Now?”

“Yes,” he told her.

Casiopea nodded. The man leaned down to kiss her. She’d never been kissed before and didn’t particularly know if she wanted to start with him. She turned her head.

Her fingers on the rope relaxed for a moment, then she grasped it tight.

She’d been nervous before, but now she grew still and calm. She pushed him away, gently, coyly, so that he smiled. His hands fell on her waist. And she gave him another gentle shove; she raised the rope and attempted to tie his hands but it proved difficult because one of those hands was now roaming down her stomach, pinching at the buttons of her costume. Casiopea let out an irritated sigh and held his wrists together.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“You want that kiss, then you’ll let me do it,” she said, although she intended nothing of the sort.

“What a perverse thing you are! What game are we playing?”

“You’ll see,” she said. “Now, if you will. Be still.”

He laughed as she tied a sturdy knot. When she was done, he tried to kiss her on the lips, and she turned her head and slapped him soundly. Even then he thought she was playing, but when he tried to pull a hand free, he could not.

His face changed: it grew stormy.

Casiopea slid away from him. His eyes were bright as lightning, and when he spoke it was a hiss, like the wind through the trees.

“Who are you?” he asked. “How did you do this? I will give you a thrashing, girl.”

“You will not,” she replied, stepping away from him as he fumbled and tried to undo the knot, even going as far as putting it in his mouth and gnawing, which accomplished nothing. Frustrated, he spat on the floor and began circling her.

“You come here and undo this now, girl! You do it quick and I won’t drown you in the river and play music on your bloated corpse.”

He ran toward her, trying to pin her against the wall, and Casiopea moved aside, the god crashing against it, loosening a few bricks in the process. He turned around and opened his mouth as if to let out a scream, but instead out came a warm gust of wind, which shoved her back two, three steps, and got under her clothes. It felt like someone had rubbed a hot stone against her skin.

She blinked and considered how ridiculous it was to be standing in an empty alley with an angry god when she ought to have been running in the other direction, far and away, back to the guesthouse, and maybe all the way back to her home. But Hun-Kamé had said not to release the man or leave his side, so she brushed the hair away from her face and crossed her arms.