“Bastard!” Isaura spat at Chase and his soulless indifference. She unleashed a storm of liquid retribution at him, glad for once of the witching water streaming down her face. Yet the Firebrand deflected every strike, meeting each ribbon of river or hunk of hail with a buckler of flame. All while Haru, despite being bound and weaponless, bobbed and weaved and hummed Amadi to a standstill and Jie sped further away with Shoteka.
So when Bataru broke the tie, Isaura forgave him everything that had come before.
After besting a ponchoed guard, the Afrii seized the fallen man’s clubs and tossed the larger to Amadi. He used it to unleash a flurry of blows at Haru, all of which she dodged—except for a hit to her throat that left her on her knees, gasping for air.
Isaura sidestepped to avoid Jaxat and Demba, who were so entangled in headlocks and leg pulls that it was impossible to tell which Cimarron leader was winning. “Get Shoteka!” she yelled at Amadi.
Chase attempted to peel off some of his fire to stop Amadi, but Isaura deluged the Anglo with all the water she could summon. If this went on much longer, she’d be on the ground next to Haru, drained and helpless.
But this wasn’t the time to be careful. This was the time to get her boy back.
Chase snarled as his flames sputtered beneath her attack, and she stepped forward to press him further, to pin him, to end him so she could move on to people who mattered. A couple more feet and she’d be close enough to desiccate the hateful bastard, to yank the water out of him and watch him turn to dust.
And when his fire suddenly flickered and died, failing him just as Amadi had said it might, she knew she had him.
Or she would have, if a dark, whirring blur hadn’t appeared in her peripheral vision and forced her to duck.
The hurled object—one of the courtyard’s wooden benches—missed her by inches, but she turned quickly enough to see it strike another target: Amadi.
It was an impossible throw. The Afrii had been on the outskirts of the courtyard, and the distance the bench had traveled was mindboggling. But that hadn’t stopped one of its legs from caving in Amadi’s skull.
“No!” Isaura screamed as he pitched forward. She spun to face the thrower and found Fara reaching for another bench, purple foam trickling from the big man’s lips. Isaura readied three more water arrows, but before she could loose them, something hard smashed against her head, this time in the back.
And for the third time in two months—and the second in a week—pain and darkness swallowed her consciousness.
* * *
“Da hit you,” a hoarse voice said in Espan when Isaura woke. “From behind. You really should be more aware of your surroundings in a fight. Looking straight ahead will get you killed.”
The stranger’s words were nearly inaudible over the ringing in Isaura’s ears. And even though she’d opened her eyes the barest amount, to just a sliver of a slit, the light revealed by that tiny crack was unbearably bright.
She also couldn’t quench.
“Who are you?” Isaura asked once she’d managed to suppress the first of what promised to be many waves of nausea.
“I’m—” The stranger paused to cough. “I’m someone who owes you an apology … again.”
Isaura finally placed the voice: it was Haru’s, but coarsened considerably, no doubt because of Amadi’s hit to her throat.
Would that he’d crushed her windpipe.
“Keep your hollow apologies,” Isaura said. “And leave me alone.”
“I don’t think you want me to do that. You have a concussion; a bad one by the looks of it. And if—” Another pause; another cough. “If Jaxat’s star wards are up again for you too, you’ll need help.”
Isaura tried to sit up, but that proved to be a stupid, excruciating mistake. Even opening her eyes another fraction was too much.
“Lie back,” Haru advised before coughing again. “Bataru and I will get you to your canoe.”
“Bataru?”
“He’s the one that got you out of the courtyard. And that’s about all I can say without hacking out my jugular. Just lie back for now.”
Isaura didn’t want to sit still, didn’t want to do anything this treacherous Nippon suggested. But if she couldn’t move, and she couldn’t quench … what else was there?
So, rigid as a board, she let Haru and Bataru lift her onto what felt like a blanket and carry her in a direction she couldn’t see.
* * *
“Jie brought down Jaxat’s wards,” Haru explained later, after Bataru had called a break following several hours of mostly silent marching (or in Isaura’s case, lying flat and swaying). “I’m not sure how, but she stopped them long enough to let everyone do … what they do. But that also brought back the purple fog.”
Isaura scowled. She could see a little better and move her head around without wanting to vomit until the end of days, but that was about it. Even slapping at insects remained beyond her. “The fog that ‘made you’ fight Amadi again. Sure. It wasn’t your fault at all.”
“Why do you think that big fellow threw the bench? Did you see the purple gunk on his mouth? That’s what it looks like in the beginning, right after Da infects you.”
A memory struck Isaura, of purple bubbles tinging Amadi’s lips on the earthen pyramid.
“Fara would never have done that on his own,” Bataru added, sounding troubled.
That part did seem odd … A few days ago, Amadi had mentioned that he’d befriended Bataru and his huge companion. Why would Fara turn around and smash Amadi’s head in? Had Haru been telling the truth about Da’s fog?
“So now that Jaxat’s wards are back up,” Isaura said to the Nippon, “the fog is gone again, and I’m supposed to trust you?”
“I understand why you wouldn’t, but I’m trying to prove why you should.”
“Then we should be following Shen Da.”
“We can’t.” Haru hesitated. She didn’t cough this time, but she took a moment to massage her spectacularly bruised throat. “I didn’t see where they went, and he’ll have covered their tracks. He can regrow things, erase a path by unbending the trampled blades of glass. We won’t find him that way. Your best bet is to meet him in Huancavelica.”
“Like he wants.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Haru grimaced, clapped her hand to her chest, held it there, and coughed anyway. “I don’t know.”
“Then take me to Amadi.”
“We can’t do that either. Da has him.”
“What?”
Haru couldn’t answer—she was consumed by her worst coughing fit yet. So Bataru stepped in. “The Han made Fara pick Amadi up and carry him. Then they and the scarred white man fled the fight. Later, when it was over, I went to look for them. No sign, but their cart, the one we brought back from the silver train, was gone.”
“Pollas en vinagre.” Isaura rotated her head to rest on the other side. The back was still too painful to put pressure on. “What does he want Amadi for?”
Haru breathed in gingerly before responding. “Probably to fog him too. He and that Fara would make a hell of a guard team.”
Maybe that’s what Da had attempted on the pyramid. “I don’t think he can. I think he already tried, and it didn’t work.”
“That’s something, then.”
Isaura studied Haru for a moment. “Why didn’t Da take you with him?”
“I would have been dead weight when they escaped. I probably looked dead. I expect my throat will ache for weeks.”
“But if he wanted more guards, why leave his first one behind?”
Haru shrugged, her uncertainty looking perfectly genuine. “He might have just been done with me. I think he realized why I encouraged him to join the silver train. I’ve never been so happy to be ambushed.”
Isaura furrowed her brow. The Nippon’s words sounded plausible. But was this another of Shen Da’s ploys? Had he sent Haru to spy on her? To gain her trust and misdirect her?
&nbs
p; She turned to Bataru. “If Jaxat’s wards are back up, he must still be alive.”
The Afrii frowned. “Yes. And the King too, even though we beat back his men. I’m not sure we should have. Fara was guarding your house the night before the trial. He heard what Jaxat said to you, and told me in the morning. A good Mohammedan wouldn’t speak like that.”
“And that’s why you’re helping me?”
Bataru looked up to gauge the sun’s position. “We should keep moving.”
Isaura started to reach a hand out to him, then thought better of it. “Thank you.”
She wasn’t ready to say that to Haru yet. Not even close.
* * *
The next morning, once Isaura had recovered enough to hold Bataru’s knife, she cut out her star.
The Afrii offered to assist, as did Haru, but Isaura wouldn’t let either of them near her hand, even when digging out the tattoo’s first dot proved hideously agonizing, more painful than birthing Shoteka. Yet when the rest of the dots scattered, spreading out across her body like skittering insects—some to places she couldn’t see or reach—there was no help for it.
“You’re sure?” Haru asked, her voice raspy as she moved the knife’s tip within a few inches of Isaura’s left cheekbone. “This one might scar worse than the rest.”
“He didn’t fog me, did he?” The thought had just occurred to Isaura. After Da had knocked her out in the courtyard, she’d been at his mercy for who knew how long. And if this purple fog was real, and he’d infected her with it … then the last vertex of Jaxat’s ward was the only thing keeping her from being the Han’s puppet.
Haru shook her head. “He ran after Jie as soon as he hit you.”
And if the Nippon were lying, and Da had secretly ordered Shoteka’s real mother to forget about her son once the purple fog had a hold of her? But she wouldn’t be able to get him back without quenching, and she couldn’t quench without ridding herself of Jaxat’s damned star. “Just finish it.”
Haru had already scraped half a dozen dots off Isaura, in the places she wasn’t willing to let Bataru search. Gouging out the last pigment stain should have been easy by comparison. But it was the most painful extraction of all, and Isaura could do little more than pant for minutes after.
“Sixteen cuts,” Bataru said admiringly once Isaura’s breathing had returned to normal.
“That took heart,” Haru agreed before stopping to cough. “Did it work?”
Still aching with residual pain, Isaura searched for water, found it, and summoned enough to wash away the little mounds of blood speckling her body. More importantly, she still remembered her son and wanted him back. “Yes.”
“Good.”
It wouldn’t take much effort to flood Haru’s mouth and nose and keep them full. But the Nippon had helped her … “Those tattoos are evil,” Isaura said. “Do you want me to get yours out?”
“No.”
“You won’t be able to do it all on your own.”
“I’m not going to do it at all.”
“Because of the fog?”
The Nippon nodded. “I’m done being Da’s Bunraku doll. And I think I liked it better when humming didn’t mean anything—when it was just fun. Besides, the star looks nice.”
“Ancient Mohammedan symbol,” Bataru noted.
“… I guess that’s fine.”
Isaura gave Haru a considering look, then turned to Bataru. “How much farther to the coast?”
“Maybe two hours. Less, if you can walk.”
“I might need a cane.”
Bataru bent over the blanket and untied the knots that had held its ends to the long, forked branch they’d used to carry her. Belatedly—now that her vision was mostly clear—Isaura recognized the limb as the dowsing rod he’d cut for her more than a week ago.
“That’s why you’re helping me,” she realized. “The wells.”
His lips twitched in what might have been a smile. “Kings come and go, but people always need water. Come on.”
* * *
Isaura breathed a sigh of relief. Quecxl’s canoe was still where Bataru and his men had left it, upside down on the bank of that fateful cove. And Fara’s boulder didn’t seem to have done more than surface damage to the hull. Perhaps her luck was starting to change.
“Thank you,” she said again to Bataru. “I couldn’t have found this on my own.”
He waved off her gratitude. “You wouldn’t have needed to if I’d let you and Amadi go on your way.”
“But now you have three wells, and you know Jaxat’s true character. And I saw Shoteka. It wasn’t a total loss.”
Bataru nodded thoughtfully. Then he said his goodbyes, and after extracting a promise that Isaura would do her best to free Fara, the Afrii disappeared into the jungle.
“Are you up to rowing that?” Haru pointed at the canoe, which somehow looked heavier than it had a week ago.
Isaura planted her dowsing branch, leaned onto its fork, and caused a jet of water to flip the canoe onto its proper side. “Not with the oar.”
“Ah.”
“I could use a hand, though.” The words were out before she’d thought them through, but once she’d spoken them, she realized she didn’t want to take them back. “A week ago,” she said, shifting her weight on the dowsing branch, “I had supplies, I had a pistol … and I had Amadi.” His absence struck her like an arrow. If anyone could survive Shen Da’s deviousness, it was the Black Resurrection.
But she missed him.
Missed the man, not the legend. The stories focused on his bottomless rage and the ability to withstand any wound. But she’d seen his kindness, his courage, his refusal to quit, even when the way forward looked impossible. His radiant smile, his long, lean limbs.
She missed it all.
“And now,” Isaura said eventually, “now I just have a terrible headache and trouble walking. I don’t even have a map,” she realized. “But I have your debt. The debt you owe me, and Amadi, and—beyond anyone else—Shoteka.” Oh God, she’d been so close to him. Inches from touching her boy, from holding him, from having him back and …
And dwelling on that would only mire her in despair.
“I’m calling that debt in,” she finished brusquely. “Help me get to Huancavelica. You owe me that.”
Haru looked at her for a moment before turning to the north. When she spoke, her voice was strained with more than just the aftereffects of Amadi’s strike to her throat. “I never wanted my little samurai to be lost on their own, like I was when my sensei died. They knew what to do if I didn’t come back from guarding a silver train. This should be no different, and they have enough coin to last a few more months.”
“Thank you.”
The Nippon held up her hands. “I’m not sure how much use I’ll be. I’m unarmed. You sank my kaiken at Metica City, and Jaxat’s men took my ko-naginata. Unless you can magic that branch into something …”
“Sorry. I’m not the Red Wraith.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. But I might be able to do the next best thing.” Isaura closed her eyes and sensed her way through the cove’s placid waters, coaxing a small current into casting about for something thin, and sharp, and forgotten … There.
Amadi’s bone-spear sped up to the surface and floated to the shore.
“It’s a little shorter than your ‘ko-naginata,’ but it’s better than nothing.”
Haru picked it up skeptically. “I suppose it’ll do. Once it dries, I might be able to mount it on a longer shaft.”
“Good.” Isaura spent another minute searching for Chase’s old blunderbuss, but that must have washed away. She was fortunate to have found the bone-spear.
Haru set her new weapon in the canoe and guided the boat into the water. “One question.”
“What’s that?”
“The other reason I’m coming is to end Da’s hold over me, and then Jaxat’s.”
“Disperse the fog, then drop the wards?”
Isaura thought again about how easy it would be to drown the Nippon—with enough warning. But what if there wasn’t any? “I’ll take my chances. Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Pruning
As soon as Da’s homemade hourglass emptied, Fara broke Amadi’s neck.
Chase didn’t see it—he was too busy distracting Bolin inside the cart. But he heard the snap. The same snap Amadi’s spine had made every hour since they’d left Bayano and Da had ordered Fara to keep the Black Resurrection from resurrecting.
Da had insisted the ugly work be done where Jie and Bolin couldn’t see it, so Fara always dealt with Amadi behind the cart. But the sound carried, and Chase’s stomach roiled every time he heard it.
Sometimes he wished it was his neck cracking between Fara’s massive hands.
Part of this was the ague. He’d seen other men in the New World come down with the recurring cycles of chills, fever, and sweating. Most Eropan newcomers had to go through this “seasoning” period, and many didn’t survive it. But he’d never suffered the disease himself until now, and it was bloody awful, even though he wasn’t bedridden—yet.
Mostly, though, he hated himself for the devil’s bargain he’d struck with Da.
The impetus had come shortly after they’d reclaimed the cart and left the runaway village to its civil war. Without warning, Jie had passed out from the strain of mirroring Haru and Jaxat simultaneously, and the runaway’s wards had slammed back into place. A second later, Da had rammed a discarded staff into the back of Fara’s head, right in the soft spot where the skull meets the spine. The big Afrii had dropped Amadi’s limp form and flopped on top of him.
“Is the blood star blocking you again?” the Han had asked softly.
Chase hadn’t replied immediately, and that had been an answer in itself.
Da had reversed the grip on his staff. “If I can’t compel you to respond, then that means you can’t summon your fire.”
The Black Resurrection Page 17