“I see.”
Nayra pulled two pieces of elaborately knotted cords from the basket and brought them to her mother.
Chasca held up the shorter cord. “To most people, knots are just knots. A snarl that fastens. A kink that holds. Nothing more.” She tapped a knot halfway down the cord. “But to some people, knots are words. Symbols that store information based on the direction of the tie, the shape of the twist, even the color of the rope.” Now she shook the cord. “Like this one. If you take it to Huitaca, an elder in the village of Quilla—it’s on your way to Huancavelica; I’ll draw you a map—she’ll know Chasca sent you, and that she should help you.”
“Thank you,” Isaura said, a bit bemusedly, as she accepted the cord.
Chasca smiled for a second. “Yes, knots can be words. Powerful words. But with the right teaching and gifts, knots can be more. Knots can be magic.”
Haru nodded approvingly. Knots could be ritual too. How many times had she used a length of enclosing rope to bound a pure space for her morning prayer to the kami?
After clearing a space in the center of the room, Chasca gestured at Nayra, who peeked at Isaura, took a deep breath, and undid the last knot of the longer cord. Then she threw it on the floor, and a ring of fire appeared where the knot had been.
The flames were small, barely larger in circumference than the cord, but the fire was greedy, and like a snake eating its tail, the red ring swallowed the knotted rope from back to front.
Haru blinked in amazement. No wonder this family hadn’t been overawed when Isaura summoned a few jugs’ worth of water. This was more than just blessing a rope for prayer. This was … magic, as Chasca had said.
“Huitaca is more skilled with knots than I am,” the original woman said when the ring of fire winked out, leaving behind a trail of ash. “And there are others gathering in Quilla nearly as accomplished. They understand that family is the strongest bond. They will help you get your son back.”
“Thank you,” Isaura repeated, more fervently this time.
Chasca patted Nayra on the head and put a hand on Kon’s shoulder. “And if their assistance allows you to succeed in your mission, I hope you’ll aid them in theirs.”
“And what’s that?” Haru asked.
Chasca glanced at her husband, still dribbling, and her eldest son, still kicking. When she spoke, her voice was fierce: “To tear down La Mina de la Muerte.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Mangueras Chutes
Amadi scowled behind his hemp-and-tar mask as he tipped the latest wheelbarrow of guano into a canvas chute atop the mangueras enclosure. This hadn’t been the plan.
He was supposed to be moving into position with Capac, Rimak, Laquan, and Weza, stealing close to the loading area below, where upwards of twenty ships from various countries waited for their holds to be filled with bird shit. But earlier in the afternoon, as he and Capac had hidden again while the others finished what they hoped would be their last shifts, an overseer had spotted Amadi. An Afrii overseer, a man who’d betrayed his own kind by carrying an Espan whip and enacting the white men’s barbarous orders.
Amadi had been tempted to kill him on sight.
But it was too early for that. Fight now, and the chance to escape later might be lost. And the treacherous overseer hadn’t seen Capac. So Amadi went willingly enough, hoping Capac would have the courage to carry out his instructions on his own.
They weren’t difficult: Wait until night begins to fall, and the last loads of guano are thrown down the mangueras chutes. When their dust further dims the remaining light, slip into the water and swim to one of the vendor ships. Sneak aboard, hide, and don’t come out until the vendor returns to the mainland to resupply.
Could Capac and his friends manage that without Amadi leading them? He’d find out soon enough. The Afrii overseer hadn’t given him more than a cursory glance—just the look of a man in power appraising a man who wasn’t.
“I need you in the chutes,” the overseer had said. “One of the free laborers fell in. You’ll take his place.”
After the meeting in the gambling shed, Capac had explained that free laborers usually manned the mangueras enclosures. Tipping in the loads of guano was dangerous, and the islands’ masters didn’t want to risk losing their slaves and indentured servants. So they paid free laborers to do it instead … until they fell in themselves.
“Now!” the overseer had added when Amadi didn’t respond immediately. He’d nodded then, but that hadn’t stopped the overseer from unfurling his whip and lashing Amadi’s right hand. The islands’ masters may not want to lose their most valuable laborers, but brutalizing them was still very much allowed.
Amadi had held his right hand with his left as the overseer marched him up to the mangueras enclosure, concealing the way his skin repaired itself. His spirit armor felt strong today. That was good. He’d likely need it again before this was over.
The overseer had departed long since, but Amadi hadn’t been able to leave the enclosure. Several guards blocked the path down, and the flow of wheelbarrows brought up by sweaty, guano-caked workers was so constant that there hadn’t been a chance to do anything other than dump the loads into a chute and try not to fall in.
Or at least, that had been the goal until twilight arrived.
Now, with the supply of guano finally starting to slow, Amadi took a moment to readjust his hemp mask, given to him by one of the other chute workers. The tar-smeared fibers itched fiercely, and they didn’t do much to filter out the acrid dust pervading everything in the mangueras enclosure, but at least they hid his expression.
“It’s time, Oseye,” he muttered before accepting one of the last wheelbarrows, rolling it to the larger of the three chutes, and tipping it in. Normally, he would have leaned back to avoid tumbling after the hundred pounds or so of guano he’d sent screaming towards the target ship below. But instead, he pretended to stumble, swore loudly, and pitched forward into the chute.
The ride was fast, disgusting, and painful.
Fast, because the chute was angled almost vertically—Amadi tried to slow his descent by pressing against either side of the canvas, but it bent beneath his hands.
Disgusting, because the sides were coated with guano, and the air in the chute was unbreathable, filled with dust from the load he’d just dumped.
Painful, because the guano didn’t cushion his fall when he dropped out of the chute and into the waiting ship’s hold. With the force of a fall from at least two hundred feet, Amadi struck the edge of the hold, bounced off, smacked against the other side, and ricocheted on top of a pile of the bird shit he’d spent hours delivering.
“Another clumsy one,” someone muttered in Anglo once the guano dust had settled.
“Another dead one,” someone else amended.
“You want me to fish him out?”
“Wait on it. They’re signaling two more loads.”
Amadi had hoped he’d be whole enough to spring up from the hold and dive over the boat’s side. But his chest had been all but caved in by the initial impact—he doubted he had a single unbroken rib or unruptured organ—and the second blow had shattered his left hip. It was easy enough to play dead right now. More than easy.
Of course, lying in the hold meant letting the last two loads of guano rain down on him. The first load didn’t hit him directly. The canvas bucked at the end, sending the bulk of its contents to the left. But the second load caught him head-on, knocking the wind from his lungs and further cracking his ribs.
“Bloody hell. He’s half-buried now. Can we just leave him?”
“No! It stinks as it is. Let him rot a few days in this heat, and it’ll be all we can do to draw breath. Haul him out.”
Amadi continued to lie still as two boathooks poked and prodded him until their wielders found satisfactory purchase beneath his shoulders. Then they levered him up, the hooks digging into his armpits as he was wrenched free of the guano covering most of his lower body.
>
It hurt, but everything hurt, and he only had to feign death for a few more seconds. Just long enough for the hooks to arc him over the ship’s side, where they dropped him into the sea with no ceremony other than a “Poor bastard” and a “Good riddance.”
As Amadi sank beneath the ship, he decided a water vodun must have taken a disliking to him. He’d spent far too much time near-drowning of late.
But he had to remain motionless until he passed from sight, even if it meant letting his lungs burn and swallowing a few mouthfuls of guano-infused water. Finally, when he judged it safe to start swimming, he ignored the aches of his various mending injuries and made for the vendor ships.
According to Capac, the locals usually stayed behind the queuing guano ships, close enough to be within hailing distance but far enough to avoid the worst of the dust. And in the murky, darkening water, it was hard to tell where they were. So after swimming beneath the last of the Eropan ships, Amadi surfaced reluctantly, spit out the filthy water in his mouth, and breathed a sigh of relief.
His sense of direction hadn’t deserted him—the vendor ships were directly ahead of him. He couldn’t see anyone else swimming for them, though. But that could be a good thing. The sky’s transition from day to night was already well underway, and even this far from the chutes, guano dust still fogged the air. Capac and his friends might be in the sea with him this very moment. Best to stick to the plan and keep moving.
Amadi did so underwater, taking advantage of his spirit armor’s ability to repair his lungs and substitute for air when they screamed for it. He didn’t come up again until he was among the vendor ships.
Where things started to go wrong. Again.
For starters, he picked the wrong ship (possibly because it smelled delicious, of baked bread and fried fish). Hauling himself aboard was no trouble. His chest and hip were mostly whole by then, and the boat’s thousands of interwoven reeds provided decent handholds. But then he heard a muffled oath from a nearby ship—a larger one, also of reed construction—and he saw something bobbing in the water by its hull.
Laquan’s topknot.
Cursing silently, Amadi slipped back into the sea and swam toward the other ship. By the time he reached it, Laquan had already scrambled on deck, where someone was asking increasingly hostile questions in accented Espan.
“Are you a coolie?” the voice hissed. “A Han miner? You are, aren’t you? You know you can’t be here.”
“We just want a ride to the mainland,” a new voice replied—Capac’s. Good. Hopefully Weza and Rimak were aboard as well. “We can pay.”
“And the Espans can throw me on that island if they find out I helped you. No. Get off.”
Amadi climbed the ship’s side until the top of his head was level with the deck. Peering over it, he saw Capac, Rimak, and Laquan (but where was Weza?) dripping and crouching opposite an original man and a boy who was probably his son. Their wares—more fish and what smelled like roasted corn—were half put away. They must have been preparing to leave for the day.
“Their money is good,” Amadi said as he stood on deck. Capac grinned hugely at the sight of him. “Saved from tiny wages that don’t begin to compensate for the terrible work that earned them. But they will give you a fair share for passage to the mainland, a trip you were about to make anyway. This is not a hard decision.”
“For you, maybe,” the original man muttered, looking from one would-be runaway to the next. Calculating the odds, perhaps: four against two, with his son too young for such a fight.
“What’s your name?”
“Punchau,” the original man said grudgingly.
“Punchau, if you call out, how long do you think it will take the other ships to come? If they even hear, or care? Will they be quick enough?”
The original man considered this, then shook his head.
“Not worth the risk,” Amadi agreed. “Best to return home, as you do every night. We’ll stay out of sight, and once you reach the shore, you’ll find a pouch of coins in our place. Easy money.”
Punchau hesitated a moment before tapping his boy on the shoulder and motioning towards the fish and corn. Silently, the boy put the rest of their wares away while his father prepared to set sail.
Amadi nodded and crouched next to his companions. He’d stood longer than he should have, even with the dying light and the last of the dust obscuring him from the neighboring ships. But veiled threats always sounded less veiled when you delivered them from your full height.
“You got out,” Capac whispered.
“Not in a way I ever want to repeat. Where’s Weza?”
Rimak grimaced.
“Where is he?” Amadi repeated.
“I’m sorry,” Laquan finally answered. “He lost his nerve when you were called up to the mangueras.”
“He didn’t come,” Capac added. “The coward.”
Amadi eyed the island they’d just left, looking for signs of alarm. “Let’s hope that’s all he is.”
Was the Kongan a traitor? A rat who’d informed on them to the overseers? It was impossible to know. But as the original man and his son guided their reed ship away from the Chinchas, it became clear they were being followed.
“You’ve ruined me,” Punchau despaired once their pursuer’s intent was certain.
Capac said something harsh in a language he and the original man must have shared, because the latter shut his mouth after that. The silence was welcome—it gave Amadi time to think.
“Maybe it’s another native going home?” Laquan suggested after a while.
“No, it’s a Eropan ship,” Amadi said, wishing the moon would hurry up and show itself so he could better scout this new foe. “See the mast? And they’re quick. They’ll catch us before we make it to the mainland.”
Punchau muttered something about “ruin” again, but Capac cut him off with a sharp look.
Amadi ran his hands over his chest. No pain. His ribs were whole again. “Do you have a rope?”
Punchau had several, and once they were knotted into a single cord of sufficient length, Amadi tied it around his middle. Then he was swimming in the dark again, speeding underwater toward the pursuing ship. When he tugged on the rope three times, Rimak, Capac, and Laquan would haul him back to Punchau’s boat.
But he wouldn’t give that signal until he’d dealt with whoever was hunting them.
It didn’t take long to reach the mystery ship. They’d raised another sail, and he was swimming as fast as he knew how. When the ship’s prow was only a few feet in front of him, Amadi veered to the side and tried to grab hold of the hull. But it was slick with guano paste, and his fingers found no purchase as he drifted past.
The rope didn’t let him go far. It reached its full extent before he’d finished turning around, and he pulled himself along the taut cord until he was next to the rudder. The ship’s stern was equally foul with guano, but if he stood on the rudder and stretched, he could reach a windowsill. And if he stood on the sill, he could get a hand on deck. It only took a few moments to raise the rest of him there as well.
Then, to the surprise of the ten white crewmen and armed guards he found there, he was in position to do what he did best.
Four minutes, two gunshots to the chest, and a sword thrust to the thigh later, he tugged three times on the rope and stumbled over the ship’s side. A few minutes after that, he was back on Punchau’s reed ship.
“We’re safe,” Amadi panted as he clutched his partially restored torso.
Capac pressed a rag to the larger gunshot hole, the one just beneath the sternum. “What did you do?”
Amadi pointed at the other ship, which was listing to the south and falling behind.
“The Black Resurrection,” Laquan breathed as Amadi’s thigh wound closed in on itself.
He waved this off and pointed the other direction, to the east. “We should still hurry,” he told Punchau and his astonished son. “Take us to the mainland.”
* * *
“It smells so much better here,” Capac noted.
Amadi grunted.
“You’re still for Huancavelica?”
“Yes.”
The stocky original man nodded grimly. “Rimak was right when he said the Mine of Death is worse than the demon half of uku pacha. But I’ll get you close. There’s an old Inkan road we can take most of the way.”
“Thank you.”
Capac shrugged. “You saved me from something almost as bad. And it’s not far from my home. But …”
“But what?”
“Why are you going there?”
Amadi almost said, “Isaura.” And it was true. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her—her courage, her love for her son, her silky, auburn hair—since they’d been separated. But it would sound like a foolish reason for going to this “Mine of Death.” So he just said, “To find someone.”
“Someone like you?”
Amadi thought of Isaura’s ability to “quench” … and then remembered what she’d said about how Jie had mimicked that ability and Da had made things grow, and how Chase kept spewing hateful, destructive flames. “Yes. I’m looking for people like me.”
“Like Urcon?”
“Who?”
Capac grimaced, as if he regretted disclosing as much as he had, but went on anyway. “A boy. People say he can switch things, transfer properties. That he’s a huaca—a spirit. I don’t know if it’s true, but he’s survived the mines better than anyone else.”
Interesting. Amadi started jogging and gestured for Capac to keep up. “Tell me more.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Black Resurrection Page 21