The Black Resurrection

by Nick Wisseman

  The Afrii, standing nearby, cocked his head at the sound of his name. He wasn’t wu; Jie hadn’t been able to map or mirror him. But his strength was remarkable, and the grafts Da had applied—jaguar claws, reinforced bones, patches of chameleon skin—had taken well. They were also subtle enough to be hidden under a cloak or glove. The Emperor may have crushed Da’s dream of creating a dragon to protect Jie, but with Fara making such progress, the dream had new life.

  Of course, Chase and his fire had been part of that dream until recently. And Jie liked him. Maybe more than liked him. But he was bordering on being more trouble than he was worth.

  “Sometimes it’s best to trust in the Tao,” Da murmured as the Espan, short and rakish, raised his pistol in a mocking salute to Chase. “I’m starting to wonder if we haven’t been fighting the Way too much. Perhaps we just need to let things happen … ‘The sage acts by doing nothing.’”

  Jie glared at him. She hated it when he quoted the Tao Te Ching at her. And he certainly hadn’t exemplified its “don’t strain” philosophy of late—not for years, really. Not since she’d fallen sick. If she was able to disrupt the duel by mirroring Chase’s fire, Da wouldn’t stop her. But neither would he rush to save the Anglo. The fool had brought this on himself; he could get out from under it himself. Either way, the outcome would come quickly. And then they could talk to the Espans about accompanying them to Huancavelica.

  “You found the herbs you wanted?” Da asked.

  Jie nodded curtly, her attention on Chase.

  The Anglo had returned the short Espan’s salute, and now both waited for a signal from the Espan’s friend. The rest of their party was lounging along the river, cracking jokes and laughing loud. Da was tempted to counter with a few notes on his flute, but he doubted Jie would approve. Would the other white men be so merry if they knew Chase could ash them all with a sweep of his pistol? He’d loaded the pistol with real shot, however. Apparently he intended to fight this duel according to its ridiculous Eropan rules.

  Fool.

  The tension showed on his face. Chase looked as sweaty as he had in the jungles of Panma, his burn scars glistening so brightly they looked fresh again, raw and writhing. Yet his hand was steady as he aimed the pistol, and when he glanced at the cart, his eyes smoldered.

  Just before the Espan signaler gave the word, Jie shifted Bolin so his head rested on her shoulder, gazing into the cart rather than out at the river. He’d still hear the gunshots, but he wouldn’t see what they did.

  “Comienzo!” the signaler shouted at last, and the short Espan wasted no time loosing his shot.

  For a moment, it looked like he’d blown off Chase’s head.

  But the bullet had merely knocked aside some of the Anglo’s ropy strands of hair, whipping them around the other side of his neck. He stood as calmly as before, and his gun hadn’t wavered.

  “Oh,” Jie said, sounding half relieved, half angry. She was squinting in a way that suggested she was trying—and failing—to mirror.

  “Finish it,” Da murmured, surprised to find himself rooting for the Anglo as the other onlookers fell silent.

  For his part, the short Espan merely nodded and turned himself sideways, offering as small a profile as possible. He’d be allowed to take another shot if Chase missed. Until then, courage was his only weapon.

  But not a shield. Chase’s shot took the Espan in the nose, blasting it clean off and showering the ground behind him with bits of cartilage and nostril.

  His friends went to him at once, as did the vendor. Judging by the tears running down her face, Jie probably wanted to go to Chase. But Bolin was wailing, no doubt upset by the noise, and she stayed put to comfort him.

  So Da hopped down instead. “Nice aim,” he said after making the short walk to where Chase still stood, his arm not yet lowered. “Maybe you should keep that loaded all the time, in case you can’t find your other fire.”

  “Maybe,” Chase whispered.

  As the other Espans wrapped their friend’s ruined face with a torn-off sleeve, the street vendor held up something small and curved. “A perfect replacement,” he said in Espan. “Very fashionable, and only one peso.”

  Curious, Da looked closer … and realized the vendor was trying to sell Chase’s opponent a wooden nose. On his vest, the lanky Han also had wooden fingers, wooden ears, and an item that looked suspiciously like a wooden phallus.

  Da laughed louder than he had in a long time. Doing so made him hack up several strings of red spittle, but it felt wonderful anyway.

  “Spore them,” Chase said when Da finished wiping his mouth.

  “The Espans?”

  “They’re bigots, but so was I, and they’ve got grit. The one I hit didn’t even flinch while I lined up my shot.”

  Da regarded the Espans again. They’d patched up their friend with professional speed and bought him the vendor’s wooden nose for later. Under their own initiative. Best not to take that away unless he had to. “I’d rather hire them.”

  “Why? They won’t work for us voluntarily. The one I shot? I heard the others talking about him. I think he’s their leader.”

  The wounded Espan was jabbing a finger at them now and hissing something to his comrades.

  Da’s hands clenched tighter than root balls. “Of course you shot their leader. Of course you ruined my plans again. Black eggs, Chase, do you ever not?”

  The Anglo finally lowered his arm and holstered the pistol. “I’m sorry, but you’ve never hesitated to do what needed to be done for your sister. Don’t stop now. Not when we’re so close to Huancavelica. If you think we need more muscle, then take them and be done with it.”

  Da briefly considered compelling the Anglo to genuflect in apology, or jump in the river, or pull his pistol back out and swallow its muzzle. But there would be time for that later. And if the Espans couldn’t be controlled with coin …

  “Tell the vendor to go,” he said grudgingly. “Then wreathe these idiots in fire so Fara can knock them out. It’ll take me until dawn to spore them all.”

  Chase grunted and gestured to the vendor, who approached eagerly.

  Da watched as the Espans took turns drinking from a flask and eyeing Fara. They were hard men, disrespectful and crude. But they didn’t deserve the lingering death he was about to subject them to.

  With them, though, he’d have the army he needed. The army Jie needed.

  And Chase was right. That was all that mattered. Be stone, Da.

  “Fara,” the Anglo called as the chastened vendor scurried away. “We need you.”

  Seconds later, Lima’s sky of witches was marred by shackles of flames, the meaty impact of Fara’s fists on Espan heads, and the first burst of purple, fluttering spores.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Azagados

  The crippled original boy dropped his clay bucket before Haru could reach him.

  She’d tried to get to him in time. But with Jaxat’s star tattoo marring her hand, humming didn’t make her faster anymore, and she was too late to steady the limping boy after he stumbled.

  He didn’t look up at her. Instead, he watched the water he’d spilled run down the rocky slope before disappearing into a web of tiny cracks. Then he cried.

  “Isaura,” Haru called. “Will you fill it back up for him?”

  The Espan was already walking towards them. “Can I see this?” she asked the boy, kneeling in front of him and tapping the bucket.

  He nodded despondently, and she picked up the bucket and turned away from him.

  “There,” she said after turning back around. “Good as new.”

  The boy may or not have understood her words, but he didn’t need to. The bucket was full again, right to the brim.

  A sight that made him cry all over again.

  “Do you need help carrying it?” Haru asked, making a lifting motion.

  Isaura shook her head. Restoring his water had been quick, but they were close to Huancavelica now, maybe only a week or two
out, and the Espan had even less tolerance for delays than she used to.

  “It’s almost dark,” Haru pointed out. “And we barely slept last night. Maybe this boy’s family will let us sleep on their floor. It would beat another night in the open.”

  Isaura started to object, but the boy picked up the bucket, said something that might have been a thank you, and set off towards the village they could see further up the slope.

  “I guess that settles it,” Haru murmured.

  Not for long. The boy was bent double beneath the weight of the bucket, every step of his crooked feet sending water sloshing over the edge. He didn’t get ten paces before he dropped his load again, and this time the bucket broke.

  “Pollas en vinagre,” Isaura muttered as the boy burst into another round of tears. If he hadn’t shattered his bucket, he might have been able to refill it by placing it beneath his streaming eyes.

  “We need the rest,” Haru said as she scooped up the boy and slung him on her back. “Truly. You don’t want to be exhausted when you confront Da.”

  “I’ll be whatever I need to be,” Isaura promised, but she followed Haru into the village without further complaint.

  * * *

  Traveling beside the Espan woman had been a lesson in discipline—everything Isaura did was directed at getting to Huancavelica as quickly as possible. She’d sped them down the coast in that little canoe, channeling water behind them for hours on end, even though the effort inevitably gave her migraines so intense she often blacked out. When she’d managed to stay conscious, she’d still had to weather the lingering headaches, dizziness, and light-blindness Da’s blow to her head continued to subject her to.

  Her determination hadn’t lessened when they’d beached the canoe and turned inland, taking aging Inkan roads when they could and beating through the brush when they couldn’t. It almost always fell to Haru to call for a rest and find food. She didn’t mind. It was the least she could do, and she’d come to respect Isaura.

  But now and then she asked a little more of her single-minded companion.

  “I think that’s his house,” Haru said after the boy pointed to a small stone structure near the middle of the village. “Will you give his family the water he tried to bring them?”

  “Yes,” Isaura answered. “But then we move on.”

  We’ll see, Haru thought as she approached the boy’s home. She set him in front of the doorway and let him tug her inside.

  Where she saw that everyone in the crippled boy’s family was less healthy than him.

  The father was shaking in his bed, his anemic limbs trembling so violently the saliva dribbling from his toothless mouth flew off in phlegmy gobs. Next to him lay an older boy, spasming with even more force: every few seconds, his right leg bent at the knee, drew up to his abdomen, and kicked out, over and over, with no apparent control. The mother had tremors too, although they seemed smaller, and even the little girl wobbled more than she should have.

  “What is this?” Isaura breathed as she took in the symptoms.

  The younger boy conducted a rapid conversation with his mother, who turned to Isaura and said a single word: “Huancavelica.”

  * * *

  The mother didn’t volunteer more information immediately. And why would she? A Nippon and an Espan had walked into her house uninvited, two foreigners in a forgotten mountain village in the remnants of the Inka Empire. But then Isaura filled several clay jugs and cups with water, making no attempt to hide her magic. And after the whole family finished expressing their thanks, the mother gave her husband and older son a jug apiece and turned to Isaura and Haru.

  “They are azagado,” the original woman said in perfect Espan. “Poisoned by the quicksilver in the Mine of Death.”

  “The mercury,” Isaura said.

  “Yes. They breathe in its dust while they work. It’s a cold metal. The longer you touch it, the more you tremble. And its chill spreads.” The woman pointed to herself and her daughter, who was staring at Isaura. “We’ve never been there, but the men came home shaking, and now we shake too.”

  The older son was still kicking at air, each thrust of his leg upsetting his attempts to drink from the jug his mother had given him.

  “What’s your name?” Haru asked.

  “Chasca,” the original woman said.

  “Chasca, if the mine is so terrible, why do they go?”

  “Because of the mita,” she spat.

  “What’s that?”

  “Slavery. The Espans demand a quota of mitayos from the mountains surrounding Huancavelica. Those who don’t come willingly are dragged in iron collars. The rotations are only for two months, but the wages are tiny.” Chasca glanced at her son, still kicking at nothing. “It isn’t worth it.”

  Isaura winced.

  Chasca noticed. “You are Espan?”

  “I am.”

  “And you approve of this?”

  “Not at all. But the Crown is hellbent on amassing as much wealth as it can, and they use the quicksilver to refine real silver.”

  “The Han want the silver too,” Haru noted. “They use it for their currency. Much of it goes west instead of east.”

  Isaura gestured at the family. “Do they know what the quicksilver does to those who mine it?”

  “Oh, they know,” Chasca said bitterly. “And it’s not just the quicksilver. The tunnels cave in and breathing gets harder the deeper you go. The worst patches are filled with umpe—dead air. Men’s candles go out, and they want to sleep, but they never wake up.”

  Isaura winced again, then nodded at Chasca’s husband. “What about those who come back? Do they get better?”

  “Sometimes. If they drink enough and work in the fields, they can sweat out a little of the sickness. But never all of it. After his last rotation in the mines, my father slurred every word he spoke until the day he died.”

  Haru looked at the two men struggling to sip from their jugs. Neither seemed capable of even a minute of manual labor, but she kept that to herself. “That’s why you wanted the water? To help them?”

  “Yes.” Chasca patted her youngest boy on the head. “Kon does his best to bring extra from the river, but it’s a long way for him.” Her eyes strayed to his crooked feet, and she trailed off.

  Isaura followed the original woman’s gaze. “Was that from the mines too? Do they take them that young?”

  “No.” Chasca wrapped her arms around Kon. “That happened here.” She didn’t say how. She didn’t need to.

  Haru had already guessed who’d crippled the boy, and why.

  * * *

  A few minutes later, Haru watched as Kon examined Amadi’s bone-spear, her new ko-naginata. She’d lengthened the blade with careful sharpening, extended the overall reach by adding a wooden shaft, and improved the balance by wrapping the end with rope. It would never be as fine a weapon as the one she’d lost in Bayano, but it would serve. Especially since the bone was unnaturally strong—Isaura had mentioned how the Red Wraith had formed the piece by fusing two femurs into one.

  But Haru’s thoughts were elsewhere. “Would you do that for Shoteka?” she asked Isaura softly.

  The Espan was braiding her hair in another intricate pattern. “Break his feet so he wouldn’t be taken in the mita?”

  “Yes.”

  “If that was the only way? Maybe … I don’t know. It’s a brutal choice. I wish the Wraith’s cure had done something about this. I guess it doesn’t work on poisons.”

  Silence reigned for a few minutes, but then Haru grinned as the daughter—Nayra, her mother had called her—crept closer to Isaura while Chasca helped her husband and older son finish drinking their water and cleaned up their spills. “You’ve got an admirer.”

  The Espan nodded, not unkindly. “I know. But we can’t stay.”

  “It’s late, and Chasca already said—”

  “I won’t take food away from a family whose men are ‘azagado’ or crippled. And we need to get to Huancavelica.” />
  Haru mentally chided herself for mentioning Shoteka. After learning how the Mine of Death had earned its nickname, Isaura must be even more anxious to get her boy back. “What if—”

  Nayra said something in her native tongue, realized she’d interrupted, and shrank back.

  “It’s all right,” Isaura said. “Did you want me to braid your hair? I have time for that much.”

  “She wants to know what knot you use to call water,” Chasca translated as she returned to their side of the house.

  “What knot?”

  “In your hair.” The original woman pointed to Isaura’s braid. “Isn’t that how you do it?”

  Isaura raised her eyebrows. “You mean hair hexes?”

  “If that’s what you call them.”

  “I heard stories about them when I was I child, but I don’t think they do anything for me.”

  Haru was surprised by the uncertainty in Isaura’s voice.

  “I thought they did once,” the Espan amended. “But no—it’s different.”

  “Is it?” Chasca paused, said something that sent Nayra scurrying to a small basket, and switched back to Espan. “Why are you going to Huancavelica?”

  Isaura opened her mouth but didn’t say anything immediately. Haru resisted the impulse to jump in. This wasn’t her answer to give.

  “I heard you,” Chasca elaborated. “When I was cleaning up. My balance isn’t what it was, but my ears are still sharp. You said you’re going to La Mina de la Muerte, despite everything I’ve told you about the consequences.” She made a sweeping gesture encompassing her limping son, his kicking older brother, and their dribbling father. “And I didn’t even mention the voices in the tunnels.”

  “I’m going to Huancavelica,” Isaura said, ignoring the new detail, “because the man who stole my son is taking him there.”

  It was Chasca’s turn to raise her eyebrows. She looked at Haru, who nodded in confirmation.

  “But isn’t your boy Espan?” the original woman asked.

  “He looks more like you than me,” Isaura murmured. “But it’s not the mita. It’s just kidnapping.”