The pod is stuffed with krill, herring, and squid. Perhaps they won’t starve. They must eat enough to swim back to warm waters where, far from sharp-toothed killers, babies are born and grow fat on mother’s milk. If the pod keeps filling their nets like tonight, next year the river deltas will greet many young ones.
Djola’s song is intriguing. The pod approaches the boat, cautious but curious. They sound out an image of land creatures, tall tree trunks, and cloth waves rippling in the wind. Djola’s song is a short burst. The Behemoths try to make sense of his strong voice mimicking their songs. He adds new rhythms and melodies—a delight, a mystery. Two Behemoths circle under his boat and leap into the air, waving pectoral fins. Djola waves too, singing till he lays down on the deck.
A boat with singers is a good prospect. Some boat creatures are monsters, ramming hulls together and burning each other. They ambush sleeping Behemoths or those nursing young ones. Yet, these boats swim together, friends. Such a fleet might scare off the black-and-white killers who hunt weak or half-grown Behemoths. Surfing in the wake of a music boat is always fun. Singers twist the air with strings, blow hard shells, and beat dry, dead skin; they fling themselves around the decks.
The Behemoths hope to hear more music or play with the boat creature if he dives in the water. When the boats drop anchor, the Behemoths might even risk closing an eye to sleep. A grand day.
17
Calling Fire
Behemoths finished their song. Orca and Vandana took a woozy Djola down to his bunk, which was covered in drawings for Xhalan Xhala: a thousand thousand roads intersecting—the maybes and maybe nots of Smokeland. After pulling fire, he had to smoke-walk to the crossroads of crossroads, get there and back at the speed of thought—a mapmaker’s spell. He knocked the scrolls away.
Difficult to map what he could barely imagine, even with Anawanama craft. Orca and Vandana hovered. Wine and garlic on their breath made him gag. His right eye burned, his left hand ached, from botching Xhalan Xhala. Djola curled against the bulkhead. He wanted to be shadows and ash and feel nothing.
Vandana poked him. “You practice Xhalan Xhala where I won’t see. Foolish.”
“Better to rehearse in the night,” Djola explained. “No distractions.”
Vandana lit lanterns. “Ignorant man huddles alone in dark. Brilliant man reflects light from his friends.”
“I don’t need more wise words.” Djola smacked a barrel of books. He wanted to toss them into the sea.
“Every dawn, something is smoke.” Orca fingered a singed stronghold-map. “He turned a barrel of pitch to ash.”
“Xhalan Xhala should go beyond flames and soot to…” Djola sputtered.
“To what?” Orca whispered and massaged Djola’s cramped shoulder muscles.
“You rehearse a dangerous spell you don’t understand?” Vandana scowled.
“Understanding comes from doing,” Djola shouted.
“Not always,” Orca said. “I’ve seen you—”
“Do you report me to Pezarrat?” Djola pulled away from Orca’s strong hands. “Is that why you smile in my face and dig at my secrets?”
“Of course he reports.” Vandana sucked her teeth. “He wishes to breathe another day. I also tell Captain what you do. What does Pezarrat understand?”
Djola flailed. “Never underestimate an enemy.”
Vandana slapped whipcord braids in his face. “If it’s so bad, you need gods or heroes to save your world—”
“You’re already lost,” Djola muttered.
“No. It’s time to pull together.”
“All people are the same.” Orca quoted Pezarrat. “We live in a pirate world. Everyone is thief, liar, and cheat.”
“You don’t believe that.” Djola sighed. He’d sealed Vandana and Orca in his heart with Samina and the children.
Vandana poked his heart Vévés. “When you run to home, will you look to see if we follow?”
Djola gripped her hand. “I have no home to run to. They stole everything from me.”
“You aren’t the only one who suffers.” Vandana spoke Lahesh. Orca gaped at northlander talk. “Xhalan Xhala is warning. A rehearsal of spirit, not carnival show or vengeance.”
Djola spoke Lahesh also. “Anything can be turned into a weapon.”
Vandana licked dagger teeth. “Will you be weapon or something else?”
Djola circled her. “Griots say Lahesh have a stronghold across Mama Zamba.”
Vandana laughed. “Griots also say Lahesh live a full-bodied life in Smokeland and walked an ice bridge to beyond where the sky falls into the sea. Tall tales.”
“Lahesh walk among us, changing us from the inside.” Djola spoke Yari’s words.
“Truth, yes.” Vandana held up her small bag, a Lahesh wonder of folded space. “Lahesh have not vanished. They live in everything we do.”
“Will you teach me this talk?” Orca spoke Empire vernacular.
“So you can be a better spy?” Djola arched an eyebrow. “Or a master of stories?”
The sick bay door burst open. An arrow whistled past Vandana and nicked Djola’s ear. Orca shoved Djola to the ground as a second bolt headed for his heart and landed in the old healer’s eye. He’d been spying behind a barrel. He screeched and fell over dead.
Before the assassin let loose a third arrow, Vandana knocked the bow from his hand and ripped his throat with dagger teeth. The assassin crumpled, clutching a bloody neck. Shock and disbelief would be his death mask. Behind him, an old woman in a greasy apron carried pots of glowing coals. Jibber jabber drooled from her lips.
“Another assassin cook.” Vandana wiped blood from her chin and pulled diamond-tipped blades from her small bag. “Bowman was telling you to burn our bodies and speak lies to Captain: Djola misplaced wits. Almost set fire to ship, yes?” She waved blades at the guilty look on the cook’s face. “Alive, we don’t go following bowman’s plan.”
“What you say against what I say,” the cook declared.
Djola scrambled up. “Who paid you?”
“Halt.” The cook held up the pots. “Or you’ll burn with your savage books.”
“I don’t fear your scullery fire,” Djola shouted, but Orca held him back.
Vandana crept toward the cook. “What if you die and can’t say anything?”
Eyeing Vandana’s blades, the cook edged toward the ladder to the deck. She missed Orca throwing a bola. The iron balls tangled her legs in tough leather strands and smashed a knee. She stumbled and fell back against the ladder.
Djola snatched the fire pots and smothered the coals with mesh-covered hands. The cook bashed her head against several rungs as she slid to the floor. Her breath rattled to a halt. Orca looked horrified as he untangled his bolo from her legs. He was inured to death, not killing.
“I’ve saved that bowman’s life twice. The cook too.” Djola set the hot pots in his sandbox. “How much money did Council pay them?”
Orca pulled purses from their bodies. “Gold, more than a triple share.”
“The Master of Money is generous,” Djola said. “Keep it. Buy your freedom.”
Orca covered his face in kisses.
“Three dead.” Vandana’s swords had disappeared into her bag.
Djola shrugged. “The old healer was Pezarrat’s spy.”
“Still a waste of spirit.” She raced up the ladder and retched over the railing.
“Ripping throats out doesn’t agree with her,” Orca said without irony.
“I think she’d rather use a blade than her teeth,” Djola replied. “Who knows? She’s from beyond the maps.” He and Orca hauled the bodies to the upper deck and heaved them overboard. Pirates up early to clean and sharpen blades stopped work to stare. One clutched his neck and swallowed a curse.
“Assassins,” Vandana explained and vomited again. Orca stroked her back. She sloshed wine in her mouth and spat. “Who but tigers likes the taste of dead men?”
Two behemoths burst into the air, barnacled
mouths agape. They sprayed Djola with foul-smelling water. They plunged under the ship’s belly and lifted it on their backs. Pirates tumbled to the deck and screeched—farm boys and blacksmiths, new to the sea.
The behemoths cheered Orca up. Even Vandana managed a sigh. The behemoths carried the ship several minutes, spiraling and zigzagging, making a crossroads Vévé in the waves. Djola was full of wonder. Weeds and Wild Things were sealed in his heart with Orca, Vandana, and his family. Djola sang to the behemoths. They set the ship back in the water, sang a long high note, and swam away.
“Friends of yours?” An ashen pirate gaped at Djola. He and the others backed away.
“I fill the sea with poison, how am I a friend?” Djola replied. Grain’s letter burned against his chest. He dashed back to sick bay and sank down on his bunk. After a few calming breaths, he neutralized Kyrie’s conjure. Silver-mesh gloves made it hard to break the seal and unfurl stiff bark-paper. He almost ripped it.
Grain dispensed with salutations:
Five years and the griot of griots has not come to Council
We could use Yari’s wisdom
Ernold, Water, and Money poisoned Nuar
Your half-brother died a traitor’s death on cold stone at Council
This morning, I carried Nuar’s body to the foothills of Mount Eidhou
I led a mourning parade to Kyrie’s gates for an Anawanama ancestor ceremony
Money and Water protested an honorable, if savage, burial for a traitor
Azizi refused to interfere with northland rituals
Arms and his warriors accompanied me to Kyrie’s gates to guard the ceremony
Rebels, Green Elders, Anawanama, elephants, and other wild things were in attendance
Nuar dead. Djola’s fortress heart raced. His hands shook. Half-brother Nuar and Djola had often clashed, yet they loved each other. “Basawili.” Djola spoke the Anawanama prayer for the dead. “Not the end. I will live in your spirit.” Nuar was the first northland chief Djola talked to the peace fire. With Djola in exile and Nuar cut down, many northern tribes would walk away from the Empire. An honorable funeral would forestall desertion only a short while. “Reckoning fire is how I’ll mourn you, brother.” Ernold, Money, and Water were dead men.
While Urzula, Arms, and I were gone, Ernold condemned Samina to a transgressor hut
Money and Water marooned your children in the desert
Ernold proclaims that Samina and the children have perished
I have searched everywhere
Nobody has seen the bodies
Money and Water blame Zamanzi warriors or veson-rebels
Arms insists the masters lie
Azizi doesn’t know who to believe or what to do
The Empire could come apart
Kyrie communes with her mountain and sends hope
The letter burst into flames. Djola had called fire without meaning to.
18
Snatched from Herself
The temple at Holy City was an extension of Ice Mountain, built from stone and wood around ledges and caves. Inside high walls, a hundred cathedral trees strained toward the light. Gray leaves hung from flaccid branches. Rope and wood balconies connected the sparse crowns to Ice Mountain’s cliffs. Hardly anybody worshipped in the temple. Most people climbed stone stairs and talked to the gods at the icy peak, as the ancestors did.
Awa trudged up temple steps with transgressors about to be bled. She never believed in angry mountain gods. Entering the temple, she chanted Yari’s words: You’re the mapmaker, the storyteller. You’ll make a way.
Dream Gates glowered in the dark behind the temple trees. The gates’ silver-mesh intrigued Awa: interlocking roads and spirals, shooting stars and spiderwebs—Vévés to call down crossroads deities, a dangerous lot on nobody’s side. A continuous circle of gates enclosed the entire citadel in Dream Gate conjure. Beyond the gates in the mountain proper, cauldrons of blood and oil bubbled in caves with holes in the ceiling to carry away smoke. Awa spat out the foul taste.
Griots claimed life in Holy City transgressor huts was worse than death. Awa tried to tell her own story. She let her mind go blank rather than take in horror. Survive. One day had blurred into another for several months, and she’d managed to forget blood and stench and pain. But she was also forgetting the touch of grace in Isra’s loom and the call to truth in Yari’s talking drum. She even found herself doubting Bal’s tricky harmonies. Could anybody have that many voices in them? Griot tales for children.
Awa did remember Mother promising to poison Father—yet for a moment, she thought she saw him, squatting in the temple, then her vision clouded. Acolytes sliced Awa on the stone floor. The pain was sharp at the slice but faded to a dull ache as blood oozed from her good arm into a metal bowl. Acolytes rarely cut her burnt arm for fear of tainted blood. Crows flew in the high windows.
“Probably hoping for dead meat.” An acolyte chortled.
Awa knew these crows. She fed them berries to spite priests whose flimsy bows and bad aims were no match for crafty birds. “No berries here,” she said.
“She’s delirious.” The acolytes laughed.
An inept or cruel acolyte jabbed Awa’s leg. Blood spurted on his stub nose. She fought to stay conscious. Father’s voice jolted her mind clear. Droopy-eyed, sallow, and paunchy, he haggled with Hezram, high priest of Ice Mountain and witchdoctor of dreams. It was Father. Here. Real. Awa swallowed an urge to yell, Save me, take me home.
A conjure woman had gotten her lover out of a transgressor hut. She taught Hezram a gate-spell, and he released the lover, a veson. Father hated Green Elders, but their spells were his treasure. He’d never part with a spell to rescue Awa. She closed her eyes on his haggard face. Fury would take too much energy. Calm helped her survive.
The acolytes dumped icy temple water on her head. “No sleeping.”
Transgressors had to know their pain to earn redemption. Awa’s thin shift clung to damp skin. She pressed ice on her burbling leg wound. The acolytes smacked her nipples and poked fingers in her navel. She let the ice drop. Bleeding out in the temple would be easy. “Death is a doorway,” she muttered in Lahesh.
“Jumba jabba.” The acolytes chortled at Green Elder nonsense.
“Nobody cheats me,” Father roared and startled Awa and her tormenters. “Not even you. I’m a good Empire citizen.”
“I know what you are.” Hezram shook his silky brown beard and mane of hair. He was muscular and handsome, in his prime. Awa wanted to curse him to a slow death.
“You stingy barbarian, I deserve more than a few sky rocks.” Father shook a bag of turquoise. “To build gates around the capital city will take more than a year. You must pay three times this much.”
Father built stone bridges and cathedral-tree towers for priests and barbarian thief-lords. He hewed transgressor huts from mountain rock. He’d learned in an enclave to build anything with stone, metal, or wood. Perhaps he’d made the hovel Awa lived in. She wanted to curse him along with Hezram. Resisting the urge made her flame hot. The acolytes let her go and shook burning hands.
Father thrust the bag in Hezram’s face, distracting the acolytes again. “You need me.” He was foolhardy to challenge Hezram, who cheated everybody and locked up or tortured those who protested. Maybe Father had lost his wits. Mother could be using a slow poison, a few mushrooms in the bread each day.
“If you didn’t need me, I’d already be dead.” His eyes were bleary, his words slurred, maybe he was drunk. “I knew you when you were a common witchdoctor peddling tricks at carnivals.”
The acolytes smirked and jabbed each other, hoping for torture. They dragged Awa to the caldrons. They meant to take her in a cave on the other side of the Gates while Hezram dispensed with Father. Tembe, Iyalawo of Ice Mountain, found a mutilated dead girl yesterday in the temple—she was stripped naked with a head wrap stuffed in her mouth.
Priests claimed transgressors had done this. Awa knew better. Acolytes liked to cut souveni
rs, brag about their exploits, and leave transgressors to bleed out. Awa wasn’t dying like that. She cackled alarm at crows roosting in the crisscross of high beams. They cackled back. Swooping low, several shat on bald acolyte heads.
Awa observed the scrambling and shrieking placidly until she recognized snub-nosed Jod, grown muscular and bearded. Jod’s lion eyes glowed in the dark as he punched the shock on her face—yet he didn’t remember her from Sprite days. Awa wasn’t Bal.
“Enough.” Hezram hauled her away from them. “Tembe says you lot go too far. In the temple!”
“Just a bit of fun,” Jod said.
“No more fun like that,” Hezram replied.
Jod stood eye to eye with him. “You have Tembe to cushion your bed.”
“Iyalawos marry their mountains.” Hezram circled him.
“A stout-hearted woman could love a mountain and a man, if…” Jod took a breath. The other acolytes cringed. “If the man is worth the risk.”
Hezram smiled. “Do you think you’re worthy of mountain love?” Jod shrugged. Hezram sniggered. “I like your grit, but you’ve got blood and bird shit on your robe. Clean yourselves. Leave her be.”
Awa clicked thanks at the crows. The young men grumbled and filled basins with water then removed outer robes. Hezram dumped Awa near the cauldrons. Pots bubbled day and night, filling the temple and Rainbow Square with a nauseating smell. Spirit slaves had to be fed constantly to maintain Hezram’s Dream Gates, Nightmare Gates, really.
“No one will do what I do,” Father said. Hezram held up another bag. Father snatched it. Sky rocks spilled out. Whatever he did was worth a fortune. “Why the same dance every time?”
Collecting turquoise nuggets from the ground, Father caught sight of Awa. Blood drained from his face; his lower lip trembled. Did he recognize her? Awa wasn’t a plump child anymore. Still, the snake birthmark was hard to miss. Brother Kenu had one on his cheek. Where was Kenu now? Perhaps he also built transgressor huts and Nightmare Gates.
Rage ambushed Awa and she spit anger at Father. Sentinel bees from the temple hive swarmed him. He took off with his bag of sky rocks, barging through half-naked acolytes. Awa crawled in a recess behind a blood cauldron and hugged her knees. She tried to calm herself and friend bees. Nobody should lose a stinger over Father. He and the acolytes scrambled outside trailing a trickle of angry sentinels.
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