She and Amadi didn’t do any better at scouting, however. They found no new wheel ruts at the crossroads, even after following each to the nearest village. None of their inhabitants had seen or heard of any Han. The surrounding wilderness didn’t reveal anything either. But as sunrise signaled the end of their third night without sleep, Manuel went lame.
Isaura flinched when she felt his cadence lose its rhythm. She’d pushed him too hard, allowed him too little time to graze and drink. And she appreciated that he’d still given everything he had.
Yet she needed more.
Dismounting felt like sliding down a cliff: the ground seemed miles away, and the impact promised a terrible new reality. But when she finally landed, she immediately led Manuel a few more steps to see how he walked.
It wasn’t good.
Putting weight on his front left leg was clearly painful—he was limping worse than Amadi. And the culprit was obvious: his knee was swelling. He’d need days of rest to cure that. Maybe weeks.
Time she didn’t have.
She didn’t realize she’d collapsed until Amadi picked her up. “Relax,” he said as he leaned forward and positioned her on his back. “I’ll carry you to Fochik’s village. We’ll get another horse from her and go south.”
Isaura nearly fell asleep then and there. “No,” she said after a moment, fighting through her fatigue and despair. “There is no other horse … But there is a canoe.”
Amadi tilted to the side so he could free a hand to take Manuel’s reins. “Quecxl’s boat.”
In the memories the Wraith had shared with them, Quecxl had often been paddling a canoe, piloting it up a coast or through various lakes and rivers while his gull lazed on the boat’s prow. In one of the last memories, he’d beached the vessel on the shores of the Messippi, not far from the earthen pyramid.
“We’ll leave Manuel with Fochik,” Isaura murmured as Amadi began to walk, his lean back seemingly unburdened by her weight. “She wouldn’t dare lose him too. But we’ll take Quecxl’s canoe south.”
“All the way to Metica City if we have to,” Amadi agreed. “Maybe the Han are headed there as well. But first, you need to rest. Sleep now so you can paddle later.”
She closed her eyes as directed. Even tired and drained as she was, the decision to leave Manuel behind hurt. He’d been her stalwart companion for years. How could she go on without him?
But Shoteka needed her to.
“We’ll be back,” Isaura whispered to Manuel. “Shoteka and I will be back.”
And with that promise—and another vow of vengeance against the Han—she fell asleep.
Chapter Four
Bolin
“So they’re headed south now?”
Jie bent closer to the map Da had purchased in Manila, but she was barely looking at the stylized parchment. Most of her vision was taken up by the starscape of energy points she saw whenever she tried to find other wu. Shamans as strong as the Afrii and the Espan were multicolored—easy to find. “Yes. Down the big river.” She pointed to the flowing lines labeled “Messippi” on the map.
Her brother wiped the sweat from his brow and nodded. “Good. I wasn’t sure they’d figure out the note. If I’d thought faster, I would have had that one write it in Western letters.” Da jerked his thumb at the rear of the cart, where the Anglo—Chase, he’d called himself—sat unbound, surprisingly docile despite the blood-stained bandage wound around his right shoulder.
“Da …” Jie tried to push through the purple haze that veiled her thoughts these days whenever she turned them in certain directions. “Why are we heading south?” Her hand strayed to the toddler sleeping between them and stroked his little head. “And why isn’t Chase trying to—”
“Don’t think on these things,” her brother said swiftly, soothingly. “I’ll take care of them. We’re going where we need to go.” He hopped off the cart and spoke to Bolin: their guide, guard, and, after a year of traveling together, friend. “Will you teach the Anglo more words? He won’t be much use if you have to translate everything.”
Bolin nodded and set down the arrow he’d been fletching.
“Are you smoothing our tracks again?” Jie asked when her brother mounted Lok, Bolin’s horse.
The wind stole his answer as he galloped away, but she had little doubt her guess was correct. After every crossroad, Da backtracked, removed his shoes, and returned on foot, letting his toes touch the earth where it had been marked by wheels and hooves. With each step, he imparted his jing into the soil, erasing scuff marks, righting bent blades of grass, and composting horse and ox dung into dirt. He expunged the signs of his second passage as well, until there was nothing to indicate which way they’d gone.
“I won’t do this the whole way,” he’d explained to Jie after completing his first round of trailguising (as she’d come to think of it). “Just until the Afrii and the Espan are far enough away for it not to matter.”
But why did it matter? What did it have to do with the boy? Was he …
More purple haze. Da had told her not to think about these things. She felt like she should, but her focus kept shifting, bouncing and bending like windblown reeds until she found herself listening to Bolin: he’d climbed into the back of the cart to further instruct Chase in the basics of Mandarin. The scarred white man had picked up a surprising amount of vocabulary already, no doubt because their guide was a patient teacher who spoke Anglo well enough to instruct in it.
A cheery burble drew her attention back to the boy. He blinked the sleep from his eyes and lifted his head. He’d been so blank a few days ago, as if he’d gone through something traumatic. And then he’d exhausted himself crying, a cycle he’d repeated several times. He’d perked up this morning, though, even threatening to scurry off the cart and onto Hai and Kun—the oxen were amazingly tolerant, but that would have been pushing it.
“Are you hungry, little explorer?” Jie picked him up carefully and braced the bamboo supports on her arms against those on her legs. It didn’t transfer all the weight, but it helped. How weak she’d grown, even just in the year since she and Da had fled the Forbidden City. But she could still hold a child to her breast, especially one no more than nine months old.
“Is that better?” she asked as she bared a nipple for him. She hadn’t been able to feed him the first time she’d tried, but Da had grafted some herbs together to help her lactate, and her milk flowed readily now. The boy drank it eagerly, each suck pricking like a splinter. But it was a good hurt, because it came from nourishing a child.
Except it wasn’t her child.
Something about this was wrong. Why was she caring for this boy, this little brown beauty who clearly didn’t have an ounce of Han blood in him? Why wasn’t his mother—
More purple haze. More coils of confusion and bending, bouncing thoughts.
Jie shook her head and glanced behind her. For a moment, she looked directly into Chase’s eyes. The Anglo was staring at her, his expression filled with uncertainty and … shyness?
He turned away, and Jie wondered if she’d projected her own emotions onto him. His scars were unfortunate, particularly the bright red handprint on his forehead, and his ropy hair needed washing. But she liked his jaw. It was sturdy, like the rest of his face. There was a solidness there that spoke of underlying strength.
But those scars … Definitely unfortunate.
So was the arrow that sailed by Jie’s head and into Bolin’s hand.
He didn’t cry out, but Jie did as she whipped her head around and hunched over the boy to shield him. Four brown-skinned natives awaited her gaze—they must move like ghosts to have snuck up so quietly. Bolin had told her the Anglos sometimes called this race the “original people.” The local tribe called themselves Chata. Da usually called them all bandits.
The foremost of the brown-skinned men proved her brother right by thrusting an empty sack at Jie and making a filling motion. The other three Chata trained their bows on her and the covered port
ion of the cart behind her.
“Highwaymen,” she murmured as the first Chata pointed at her and then to the side of the path. “Four of them. Three have bows.”
“Are you all right?” Bolin whispered back.
“I’m fine. Is your hand—”
“I can still hold a blade. Can you carry the boy?”
Jie hefted the child (still suckling happily), gauging his weight as the first Chata jabbed his finger to the side of the path again. “Yes.”
“Good. Get clear, and we’ll come out.”
She rose as quickly as she dared, concentrating on holding the boy, maintaining her balance as she stepped down, and taking the necessary few paces away from the cart. She only wobbled once, and not so badly that she feared falling—better than she’d expected.
The first Chata eyed her bamboo braces, then yelled something at the cart.
“I’m sending Chase first,” Bolin said for Jie’s benefit.
The Anglo emerged a moment later, hands up and eyes calm.
Until one of the Chata shouted in recognition.
Chase lowered his hands as the Chata spat—with impressive accuracy and distance—at the Anglo’s handprint scar. He was too slow to block the spittle, but he was quick enough to intercept the arrow that followed.
Intercept it with fire.
The flames erupted from his right hand as he brought it down like a hatchet, chopping at the arrow as if he meant to cut it into kindling. It turned to ash instead, a black streak that disintegrated when what remained of it hit his chest.
Two knives came hurling out of the cart before anyone else could react. Bolin’s first throw took the spitter in the throat; his other blade sank deep into another Chata’s eye.
Chase swung his burning hand toward the third archer, yelled what must be an Anglo battle cry … and grimaced as his flames sputtered and vanished.
The Chata ducked to avoid a third knife from the cart and loosed an arrow in return. A grunt from inside suggested the shot had connected.
“Bolin!” Jie screamed as Chase stretched his fingers in vain.
Then it happened.
The familiar doubling sensation washed through her, the feeling that she was suddenly in two places at once. Except this time her new, second presence was closer than it had ever been. This time it was in Chase. And it was reflecting his fire into her.
She knew from long experience that there was no stopping the mirroring once it began. It never started when she wanted either. Not anymore. But when it did, sometimes she could direct it.
Angling her left hand away from the child she still held to her breast, Jie pointed at the last archer and hissed as a hot looseness passed through her and manifested as a bolt of fire. It flew faster than his arrow had, so fast it was in and out of his chest before he could draw breath to scream. He fell a moment later, his next arrow nocked but undrawn.
There was no second shot for Jie either: her connection with Chase had vanished when the streak of fire left her, and now the aftereffects of mirroring were upon her.
Blades in her joints, broken glass in her veins—she’d told Da once it felt like being shattered, but that didn’t cover it. Not even close.
It took everything she had left to sit rather than fall, to descend with enough control to avoid dropping the boy or collapsing on him. Even so, the landing wasn’t gentle, and he let go of her nipple to unleash a piercing wail.
The cry seemed to snap the last Chata—the one with the sack—out of his stupor. He’d drawn a feathered ax during the first exchange of projectiles, but seeing Chase and then Jie reveal themselves to be wu had stunned him.
Or maybe it was the death of his comrades?
Because while she struggled to stay upright, and Chase continued to grope for fire that wouldn’t come, and Bolin remained ominously quiet in the cart, the Chata didn’t seize the opportunity to counterattack or flee. He just went to each of his dead friends in turn and gaped at their wounds, as if he couldn’t believe they were real.
He was still pondering their blood and burns when Da trampled him beneath Lok’s hooves.
“Are you hurt?” her brother asked as he swung down, barefoot and grim.
“No,” Jie said, trying to comfort the squalling boy without falling apart herself. Her body ached so badly she wouldn’t have been surprised to see fissures in her skin. And she’d just killed a man. “They shot Bolin. He’s in the cart.”
Da frowned, but he didn’t leave her until he’d removed the horse’s saddlebags and made a pillow for her to lie back on. He knew what mirroring did to her.
In the meantime, Chase had darted into the cart to check on Bolin. The Anglo reemerged as Da approached.
“Gone,” Chase said softly in passable Mandarin, shaking his head.
For a moment, Jie wondered if the white man was lying. Her mind was clearer than it had been in days; holding his fire inside her seemed to have seared back the purple haze. She remembered how Bolin had knocked Chase unconscious when he fell down the earthen pyramid, and put an arrow in him when the Anglo roused and tried to escape the next day. Had Bolin really died from the injuries the bandits had given him? Or had Chase seen an opportunity to take his revenge?
Yet there was no deceit in the Anglo’s eyes. A touch of grudging respect maybe, but no trickery. No triumph. Just truth: Bolin was dead.
The knowledge pierced her like the arrows that had slain her friend, and the pain cut loose more memories.
“I remember,” she whispered at Da’s back. “I remember reaching the pyramid just in time. Arriving after months of sailing, first to Manila and then Acapulco, and then months more of traveling north in the cart you grew from two cedar trees with your jing.
“But I ruined everything by mirroring,” she went on, her voice rising in volume with each word. “I didn’t mean to, but when the master wu who’d summoned Chase and the other shamans unleashed their titanic powers, I couldn’t help reflecting some of them. It was too much.
“You and Bolin watched over me, though. And when I regained consciousness, I mirrored the seer’s magic again and had a second vision. This one was about the child, the little boy at the center of the ghostly avatars the master wu projected into the sky. You wanted to take him, and I said no. But you breathed something foul into my mouth, and then you did the same thing to Bolin …”
Da was facing her now, his expression a battlefield between guilt and grief.
“You stole him,” she said, whispering again. “You stole this boy and made me a part of it. And for what? I never wanted to be a mother this way. And I won’t live long enough to—”
“You’ll outlive us all,” Da said softly, hypnotically. “But don’t think on it. Think of how good a companion Bolin was … and how we’ll miss him now that he’s returned to the Tao … and what rituals we’ll perform to ensure the spirits that populated his body linger to guard it.”
The purple haze crept forward with each suggestion, and by the time her brother had finished speaking, Jie’s thoughts were bouncing and bending again. “We’ll need candles,” she murmured eventually. “And rice. Tea, some water—”
“I’ll get it,” Da said, heading for the cart. “You take care of the child the Tao has given you, the one you always wanted.”
The child … The beautiful child happily nursing at her breast again.
She stroked his wispy hair. “Bolin,” she whispered, enjoying the feel of him. “That’s what we’ll call you. He was a brave man, and you will be too.”
* * *
After a brief service for the elder Bolin, Da laid him in the grave Chase had been tasked with digging and smoothed over the top.
“And him?” the Anglo asked, pointing to the last Chata. Lok’s weight had flattened the original man’s left shoulder and cracked his skull. But he still breathed—raggedly—and he’d started to regain consciousness.
Da pursed his lips. “I might have a way for him to redeem himself. Come translate for me.” He beckoned
Chase over to the original man, and they knelt next to him for several minutes. At one point, Jie thought she saw her brother spit something into the Chata’s mouth, but it might have been her imagination.
“The Afrii and the Espan,” Da said after he’d returned and helped her take her specially cushioned seat in the front of the cart. “Chase says their names are Amadi and Isaura. They’re still headed south?”
Jie looked at—and through—the map he’d produced again. “Yes.”
“Good. And the other one? The gray skin? He’s still here?” Da traced his finger down the map, from their present position in the north, through New Espan, and to a southerly mountain labeled “Huancavelica.”
Jie looked for the light she’d first seen there six months ago. It still shone. “He’s there.”
Her brother nodded. “Then we continue.” He put away the map, pulled out his flute, and snapped the reins, causing Hai and Kun—mouths flecked with purple; now wasn’t that odd?—to lurch into an impressively fast trot, as did Lok, connected to the oxen by a lead rope.
Behind them, Chase bumped against something and swore. He probably hadn’t been ready for the initial jolt of motion. Maybe because he’d been leaning forward to look at the map? He wouldn’t have been able to read anything on it.
But he might have seen where Da pointed. And next to “Huancavelica,” the map’s maker had drawn a symbol of unmistakable warning.
A small, howling skull.
Chapter Five
The Messippi
Amadi thrust his oar into the water, repeating the motion he’d made thousands of times over the last few weeks. Ahead of him, Isaura sat cross-legged, staring at the bottom of Quecxl’s canoe and massaging her temples, her auburn hair yanked out of its elaborate braids and pulled back in a simple ponytail.
“Time to rest,” he said, vaguely proud of how fluent his Anglo had become. Isaura had helped him polish it to make the miles go faster. And there had been a lot of miles—more than they’d hoped. None of the settlements and trading outposts they’d stopped at so far had seen a Han in months, if ever. At this rate, they’d end up going all the way to Metica City to get the note translated.
The Black Resurrection Page 4