“I will hold you again,” she panted. “Just keep calling to me. Let your voice be my eyes.”
There was no light this deep in the mine, but she didn’t slow down, sending tiny runners of water out to either side so she could sense the path without over-slicking it. And anyway, what was a broken ankle now, or another knock on the head? All that mattered was getting to Shoteka before he inhaled too much quicksilver, and his baby teeth fell out in clumps and he trembled all day and kicked at nothing, an azagado before he was even two and—
No. Just get to him. Take him from Shen Da. Damn your dizziness. Run!
The Han wouldn’t be able to see any better than her. But he had Amadi’s spirit armor. Did that mean Amadi would die from his chest wounds? Could he—
Later. Help him once you have Shoteka. Move faster!
But how would she overcome Shen Da when she caught up to him? He couldn’t be hurt now, even if—
Enough. No more thoughts. Only strides. Catch the Han.
After another minute of this blind running, Isaura could hear heavy breathing beyond her own, and Shoteka’s cries had grown louder. She was gaining. Shen Da might move with a coward’s fear, but she was fueled by a mother’s rage. There would be no escape for him.
Not unless Shoteka went quiet.
Suddenly—as if he’d been silenced.
“Shoteka!” Isaura called, even though it meant giving away her position. And would he still answer to that name?
There was no response, no noise of any kind. The heavy breathing had stopped as abruptly as Shoteka’s wailing.
Isaura halted too, willing herself to be still, to calm her lungs and heart so she could listen. She could only hope Shen Da had put his hand over Shoteka’s mouth, that this was a play for stealth and nothing worse.
If that was the case, it was working. The mine sounded empty, an echo waiting to happen.
She needed a light. It was already a miracle she hadn’t smashed into something. Would it really be asking for that much more to stumble on a candle? After everything she’d been through? Everything her son had been through? Didn’t they deserve—
Stone clacked against metal behind her, and before she’d finished turning around, illumination filled the tunnel.
For a second, Isaura thought the source—a sputtering torch—was hanging in the air, conjured by her prayer. But then her eyes adjusted, and she could make out the figure holding the torch. His lines were faint, as if someone had sketched him on the mine wall without filling him in.
“Urcon,” she said, remembering the gray boy’s name.
He nodded and offered her the torch.
“Thank you.” Pivoting back to the direction she’d been running, Isaura found two tunnels splitting off in front of her. Another step and she’d have crashed into the junction. “Which way?”
Urcon moved before the right fork and opened his mouth. No sound came out, but he cocked his head as if listening. Then he repeated the same technique in front of the left fork. Finally, he shook his head.
“Pollas en vinagre.” Isaura briefly considered having the gray boy go down one tunnel while she investigated the other, but if he found something, it wasn’t like he could call out. She’d have to keep trusting in miracles—and that more were owed to her. “Keep up.”
Two steps into the left tunnel, something tickled her ear. The inside of her ear.
It wasn’t a sound; Urcon didn’t look like he’d heard anything. But Isaura could have sworn someone had whispered to her.
She’d had this feeling before. Seven months ago, the Red Wraith had planted a hook in her mind that had tugged her to the earthen pyramid. This summons felt softer, though, more welcome and … familiar.
Her son was calling to her again. Faintly, from the right tunnel.
“Other way,” Isaura murmured to Urcon, careful not to drown out the wordless pull as she backtracked and sped down the opposite fork. Had the Red Wraith given Shoteka this ability while healing him? Had her son somehow inherited it from her? Or Rowtag?
After. Sort it out after. For now, just get your boy.
The torch bobbed up and down as she ran, like a brush painting the dark with light and smoke. Being able to see didn’t make her much faster—she’d been flying before too—but her progress was visible now instead of theoretical, the floor zooming beneath her as the walls blurred to either side.
And she was on the right track. Shoteka’s mental call was growing stronger, clarifying into his lilting little voice, spurring her on, urging her to catch up before—
He went silent again.
“NO!” she screamed.
But this time she could see him. When she rounded the next bend, he was only twenty feet away, sprawled on the floor next to an equally unconscious Shen Da. Yet when she sprang forward, something held her back.
Urcon had her by the wrist.
Isaura yanked her arm down, to no avail—the gray boy’s grip was strong. “Let go of me.”
He shook his head.
She shoved him against the wall. “I need to get to my son. LET GO.”
Urcon raised his free index finger, then cupped it and his thumb around his throat to mime a choking gesture.
She tried to pull away again, nearly won free, and—
Remembered Chasca speaking about umpe. “Men’s candles go out,” the Huanca had said. “And they want to sleep, but they never wake up.”
Isaura stopped struggling. “They’re in umpe.”
Urcon released her and nodded.
“How do we get them out?”
He took a deep breath and puffed up his cheeks.
“Right. Thank you.”
Isaura leaned her torch against the wall, sucked in as much of the mine’s tainted air as she could, and dashed to Shoteka.
He wasn’t breathing.
She scooped him up and sprinted back to the torch, hoping she’d seen incorrectly, but its smoky glow told the same story as the shadows: her boy’s lips were still.
“Breathe,” she whispered, then kissed his mouth and blew in gently. When that didn’t work, she pressed on his chest, willing it to rise and fall, to fill his lungs like a bellows.
Yet they remained dormant.
“Urcon!” she shouted before bending down to lend Shoteka another breath. “What do you do when the umpe gets them?” She started pressing her son’s chest again, then glanced over to find the gray boy struggling to haul Shen Da out of the umpe zone. “Leave that bastard where he is.”
Urcon dragged the Han clear anyway.
Isaura fed Shoteka more air. “Help me, damn it. Not him!”
The gray boy dropped Shen Da’s arms and made a swapping motion. Then he pointed three times: at Shen Da, Shoteka, and down the tunnel—back the way they’d come, to where Amadi lay. Finally, he repeated the swapping motion.
Of course.
Isaura gave Shoteka one more breath, looped her left arm around his middle, and stood. “Can you get Shen Da?”
The gray boy nodded and gave her the torch.
He tried to lift the Han, but although their sizes were similar, it was clear Urcon wouldn’t make it far carrying that much weight.
“Pull him,” Isaura said, cloaking her desperation with encouragement. “I’ll frost the floor beneath him so it’s easier.”
Even that was too slow. Urcon was yanking on Shen Da’s wrists, leaning back at an almost-comical angle and backpedaling furiously, but his pace topped out at that of a middling jog. And by the time they reached the fork, he was tiring.
All while Shoteka’s lungs remained empty.
So Isaura stretched.
There was enough humidity in the mine’s air for minor quenching, but for anything bigger, she needed another source. A deeper source—something that only existed far below this terrible mountain. She’d never tried to call water from such a distance, or to force it through such hard rock. Or been so battered and exhausted while making the attempt.
Yet her need had never been greater.
>
The effort left her wobblier than another blow to the head, and it took every bit of her remaining strength not to drop Shoteka. But Shen Da was already floating when she looked back, and there was a river welling up behind him.
A fast river.
“Don’t resist it,” she called to Urcon when the water swept them forward. “Let it take you.”
There was more water than she could control now, even if she’d been hale and rested. But it still surged in the direction she wanted, ascending the tunnel in violent defiance of natural flow patterns. Isaura dropped her torch and cradled Shoteka to her chest as their passage went from too slow to too quick, a sloshing, tumbling projection that made her feel like a bullet hurtling through a musket barrel.
And then they were out, washing through the mine’s arched entry and into Huancavelica’s cold twilight.
Once in the open, the water dispersed, much of it pouring towards the yawning pit to the side of the main path. Isaura splashed free and staggered to Amadi. “Shoteka needs your spirit armor.”
The Afrii lifted his head. He was lying near where Jie had struck him with the ice darts, covered by a blanket colored more by blood now than dye. When he spoke, his words were windy, whistling around the edges: “You found him.”
“I did, but he’s not breathing. We have to get your spirit armor out of Shen Da and into Shoteka.” She jabbed a finger at the Han, still unconscious and only partially out of the water—Urcon was struggling mightily to pry him from the lingering current. Haru leapt up to help.
Amadi started to do the same, grimaced, and fell back. It was jarring to see him so frail. “What can he trade?”
“What?”
“I don’t think it will work unless Shoteka can give equal value for the spirit armor. Can he manipulate water like you?”
“Not that I know of.” Isaura remembered the way he’d called to her in the tunnel—without sound. “But he can send his thoughts to other people.”
“I’ll try to trade that then.”
Between the two of them, Haru and Urcon were able to manhandle Shen Da out of the water and over to Amadi. “Better hurry,” the Nippon said. “He’s rousing.”
“Give me his hand,” Amadi said, flopping his left arm out from under the blanket so Haru could thread its limp fingers through the Han’s. With his good arm, the Afrii reached up to grip Shoteka’s shoulder.
One beat, two beats … Nothing.
“It’s fighting me,” he whispered.
Isaura tried not to think about how long it had been since Shoteka last drew breath. “Fight back.”
“I am, but I’m not Quecxl. Or Naysin—I don’t know what I’m doing. I think I got lucky before. Urcon, help me.”
The gray boy hurried to Amadi’s side and joined the circle, placing his hands over Shen Da’s and Shoteka’s.
Three beats, four beats … Still nothing.
“Take it back,” Amadi said to Urcon, shifting his good arm to the gray boy. “You’re the real trader—take back your ability and make the swap.”
Five beats, six beats …
Isaura suppressed a torrential sob. “It’s not working.”
And Shen Da’s eyes were open.
But he wasn’t watching her, or Amadi, or anyone else clustered around Shoteka. His gaze was on Jie.
Chase was carrying her to them, and it was hard to say who looked worse. He swayed with each step, flushed and trembling. She was so limp in his arms she seemed boneless. “Jie’s mirroring,” the Anglo announced as he drew close. “She wants to help.”
“Mirroring what?” Amadi asked.
“You. The trading ability. She just switched the color of my scar.” He tilted his head. The handprint burn still marred his face, but only as an outline: the bulk of the angry red coloring was on the palm of his hand now. “She can give Bolin—Shoteka—the spirit armor. If we’re quick.”
Shen Da started to sit up, but before he’d completed the motion, Haru’s bone-naginata was at his throat. Without flinching, he said something in Mandarin to Jie.
She shook her head, and he hung his.
“What are they saying?” Isaura asked.
“She means to do it,” Haru answered. “I think it’s real.”
Amadi spat out another mouthful of blood. “And if you’re wrong, and she takes the spirit armor for herself?”
“She won’t,” Chase insisted. “She’s willing to die for Shoteka. And this is as close as she can come to making amends.”
Isaura wasted another precious second studying her. This woman had stolen Shoteka—twice. The first time she could blame on the purple haze, but not the second. There was no “making amends” for that.
But she also might be Shoteka’s only chance.
Isaura glanced at Amadi. “You can’t do it?”
His reply packed acres of shame and regret into a single syllable: “No.”
“Then let the Han puta try.”
Chase nodded, took the final steps required to bring Jie close enough, and positioned her so she could reach one hand to Shoteka and the other to her brother.
From there, the change was almost instantaneous.
Where Amadi had needed several attempts to trade with Shen Da, Jie managed in one—Shoteka was inhaling before Isaura had time to doubt her decision.
“Thank God,” Chase murmured.
Isaura agreed, but she couldn’t verbalize her gratitude just then, couldn’t say or do anything except hold her boy and watch his eyes flutter open. She was the first thing he saw, and there was recognition in those perfect little pupils. Recognition and joy.
So much joy. Enough to make her dizzy again, but not because of her head.
“You’re safe,” she breathed. “You’re with your mamá.”
Amadi’s wet cough brought her back to the present, where she stood amidst several badly wounded witches and warlocks on the doorstep of the Mine of Death.
She gazed at the Afrii, the wonderful man who’d crossed two continents and suffered battlefields’ worth of pain for her. He looked relieved, but he also couldn’t be far from bleeding out. And that arrow was still inside him. “Have Jie give the spirit armor back to Amadi.”
“No,” Chase said.
Isaura turned to rebuke him but stopped when she saw his expression.
“She’s gone,” he clarified, tears budding on his lower lashes.
Haru, bone-naginata still at the ready, moved out of the way as Shen Da extended his arms. After Chase passed Jie to him, the Han sank to the ground, cradled his dead sister, and wept.
Isaura didn’t. “Can you take the spirit armor back?” she asked Amadi softly, urgently.
Haru nodded. “Maybe it’ll be easier to put it back in you than it was to transfer it to someone else?”
“Here,” Isaura said, kneeling next to Amadi so suddenly it startled her son. “Take his hand.”
The Afrii studied her for a breath, then gripped her son’s hand with a father’s gentleness. Urcon hurried over to join the connection, but the result was the same as before: “I can’t,” Amadi said eventually, looking weaker by the moment. “And I’d rather Shoteka have it anyway.”
“No! He’s healthy now. Try again.”
Instead, the Afrii—the tall, handsome legend—closed his eyes. “He deserves it more than I do. It will be true for him.”
“Pollas en vinagre, Amadi, you need to try again!”
His lips twitched. “No, Isaura of the Espans. What I need to do is tell you how graceful you are when you gallop on a horse. How strong you are when you press your fingers to your temples and summon a storm. How bright you are when the morning sun strikes your hair on the open water.” He opened his eyes to look into hers, his voice faltering. “And I need to tell you about Oseye. About why I—”
Isaura cut him off with a kiss, packing everything—her thanks, her grief, her love—into the pressure of her lips against his.
And with a surprised, glad smile on his face, the Black Resurrec
tion died at peace.
Epilogue
Urcon hesitated as Huitaca offered him the end of the long, endlessly knotted rope.
“Take it,” she said. “The Huaca of the Mine of Death should be the one to destroy it.”
He considered the rope, noting again how it zigged and zagged like the mountain’s switchbacks before disappearing into the mine. He’d served as Huitaca’s guide while the old woman laid out the cord, pieced together from scraps she’d found in the overseer’s storeroom. The combined length stretched as far as most pickmen walked during a day’s work, and ran past his Colors Room twice.
Urcon didn’t have any way to get them back—the ability to trade had died with Amadi. And he couldn’t easily explain what and where they were to Huitaca and the others. But destroying his old image felt … upside down. With the mine ending, he could finally be that person again. Instead, he’d bear its mark for the rest of his life.
Huitaca jiggled the rope. “Last chance.”
“I’ll do it,” Isaura said.
Haru put a hand on the Espan’s shoulder. “I think Huitaca should. She nearly died to make this happen.”
The old woman shrugged and bent to pick up more of the rope, moving easily even though her chest and head were wrapped in bandages. Neither injury seemed to bother her much. Urcon hoped he’d be half as tough at her age.
“Stay clear,” she warned, tugging the rope as she straightened.
The lead knot unraveled slowly, but the next loosened faster, and the one after that faster still. By the time the unwinding reached the mine entrance, the knots were flying apart quicker than Urcon could follow in the early morning light. The rest of the process took place out of sight, down the toxic tunnels and rickety ladders that had claimed so many lives.
The mine would claim one more in a few minutes. If it hadn’t already.
Urcon imagined Da playing a sad song on his flute and shuffling back to the same umpe pocket that had briefly laid out Amadi. Or maybe the Han had found a place to sit and wait? He knew what was coming. Huitaca had made no secret of the rope’s purpose. But after he’d been allowed (under guard) to bury Jie and leave Chase instructions for watching over her spirit, Da had started walking toward the mine. Isaura had moved to stop him, but Haru had convinced her to let him go. Now he was somewhere in its depths.
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