by Gary Kloster
"Believe you?" Jiri said, her anger flaring. But there was something in Patima's voice, in her eyes, that shook Jiri. The fire in her faltered, and all she had left was despair and the overwhelming truth that she was all alone—alone, except for this woman, kneeling before her, hand stretched out, her eyes so wide and beautiful and trusting. The anger in Jiri sputtered and went out.
"I..." she started, and stopped, confused, uncertain without her anger, but Patima's words were echoing in her head, believe me, believe me, and suddenly Jiri wanted to, as much as she wanted Oza back, and Hadzi and Thirty Trees and her life. "I do," she said, and took Patima's hand.
"Thank you." Patima rose, pulling Jiri up into an embrace, then let her go. "Thank you. What do I need to do?"
"Simple," Jiri said. "There should be a sharp piece of iron somewhere on the kindi. Draw a little of your blood with that, and smear it on its lips. That will pull you into its dream."
"That's it?" Patima said. "I was trying...everything. And that's all I had to do?"
"That's all," Jiri said. "But you must be careful. Kindi are dangerous. That's why they were sealed away."
"Then tell me about them." Patima sat back down and poured them both more wine. "Tell me everything."
Jiri took a deep breath, and did.
∗ ∗ ∗
"I should be there, when you try this," Jiri said. "That kindi. I never heard of them trapping a spirit as powerful as All-in-Ashes in one."
"I'll think about it," Patima said. "But you should rest. You need your strength back before trying anything like that." She was bent over the floor, spreading out a pallet that the guards had brought. "Sleep, and I'll talk to Amiro about getting you out of here. Tonight."
"Tonight?" Jiri stood, and felt the world waver around her. She didn't want to sleep, she wanted to help Patima, but the woman said she had other preparations to make, and Jiri was exhausted. "Tonight."
Patima patted the pallet and Jiri stretched herself out on it.
"We'll stop it," Jiri said. "We will. And you'll have your chance for revenge."
"I hope so," Patima said, her eyes distant.
"We will." Jiri watched the woman get up and walk toward the door. "Patima?" she called out.
"What?" The woman paused, a dark silhouette.
"Let me help. I know you hurt, but..." Jiri shook her head, feeling foolish, but she had to say it. She cared too much. "All I wanted, these past few days, was to punish you for what you had done, because I didn't understand. I know it's nothing like that with Usaro, but still. Revenge and rage and despair warp your thoughts. Be careful."
"Thank you, Jiri. I will." Patima swung the door shut, and darkness swallowed the cell.
In her blankets, Jiri closed her eyes, sleep rushing for her, despite her worries.
By all who came before, it's good to have someone I can trust.
∗ ∗ ∗
Jiri opened her eyes and blinked in the darkness.
She had been dreaming of curling in a hammock, Hadzi warm behind her, the familiar sounds of the jungle all around. Lying there, rocking gently, watching as the stars faded outside and the sky began to glow, crimson and gold, bright and beautiful with sunrise.
Except it hadn't been the sun, and when the tops of the mango trees had caught, Jiri couldn't wake Hadzi, couldn't get out of the hammock, couldn't cry out. All she could do was lie there and watch the flames roll out over the village, spreading like water, brilliant and beautiful, the ash dancing in their wake.
All-in-Ashes.
Patima.
The two names hung in her head, then intertwined.
I told her everything.
In the darkness, Jiri shoved herself up to her feet, her heart hammering.
"I told her how to use it. I told her everything. Why?"
Believe me.
Jiri remembered those words, so clear, remembered the way the world had twisted just a little when Patima had said them.
"Gods and crocodiles. She charmed me." They had caught her, questioned her, tortured her, then Patima had come, with her story and her sweet voice. She had used her magic to pull the information out of Jiri as easily as a honeyguide pulled bee grubs out of broken honeycomb.
Charmed me.
The door was thin lines of light, glowing in the darkness in front of her. Jiri was pounding on it before she could think.
Chapter Seventeen
New Skins
What?"
The voice was deep and male, speaking with a Kibwe accent. Maybe one of the guards that had dragged her around this cell yesterday.
"I want to speak to Patima!"
"You already did. Now stop beating on that door or I'll beat on you."
Jiri pulled back her fist, but stopped. That bit of defiance would be worse than useless. She wanted this guard gone. She made herself move instead, walking around the perimeter of her cell, hand brushing against the stone walls.
How long have I been asleep?
There was no way of knowing, but the answer was obvious.
Too long. She's used the kindi, or is using it now.
Jiri walked and turned, moving around the small space, crowded now with table and chairs and pallet. Thinking and moving and trying to keep her anger in her in check. I don't know what it will do. Neither does Patima. Maybe it can't control All-in-Ashes. Maybe it will kill her.
Maybe she'll succeed.
Jiri stopped moving. The rough wood of the door lay beneath her hand, solid and unyielding. A barrier between her and the woman who had stolen everything from her. Her village. Her life. Oza. Her secrets.
Jiri felt the fire moving in her, rushing through her blood, making her want to burn.
I could burn this, she thought, and the wood was hot beneath her hand.
And choke to death on smoke before I got out.
Locking her teeth against her anger, Jiri made herself look at the door. Burn it? She could do so much more, with the help of the spirits. She could turn these stone walls to mud or sand. She could make the wood of this door twist itself out of her way. She could pull a spirit animal into the world with her, and have it tear down the door and drive the guards away.
I could. But I can't.
That knowledge didn't help Jiri keep her anger in check. She had no magic, not now. The pacts she had made with the lesser spirits had all frayed away, undone by time and the shifting of the planet, the sun and moon and stars. To do anything now, she would have to still herself and sink into the waking dream of the spirit world, where she could bargain for magic again.
And that would take time.
Time I don't have. Jiri faced the door, both hands fists, and ground her knuckles into the uncaring wood. Her eyes were shut against the darkness, and behind her lids she could see fire dancing, so bright and eager. The only spirit that still clung to her.
It would never leave her.
"I can't," Jiri groaned. "I'll burn, too."
But I want to.
Jiri forced her eyes open, staring at the darkness and the bright lines of light that marked the edges of the door. There were lines at the bottom of the door, too—thin seams of light that edged a smaller rectangle. Crouching, she examined them.
There was a slot cut into the door where it met the floor, wide but short, probably a way to slide trays of food in to a prisoner. She hadn't noticed it before because the slot had its own little door, which swung up into the cell. She could feel two simple hinges but no handle. Still, it would be easy enough to get her fingers under it and pull it up.
Why? I could barely slide my arm out it.
But she could see. Dropping to the floor, Jiri wormed her fingers beneath the bottom of the door and pulled up on the little wood panel that covered the slot. It swung open, and she blinked, blinded for a moment by the light in the hall outside. When she could see again—
Jiri jerked back, letting the little door fall shut, her heart hammering. Eyes. Someone staring at me. Little eyes.
Like a chi
ld.
Gritting her teeth, she carefully lifted the flap again and stared out into the hall. Just a few inches away, on the other side of the door, Mikki sprawled comfortably on a folded blanket, looking back at her.
"It was worth lying here, just to see that," the halfling said, smiling.
"What are you doing?" Jiri said. There was nothing else out there that Jiri could see except a stone floor and walls.
"I told you, I come down here sometimes. It's cooler. When I heard you yelling at the guard, I thought I'd come visit."
"Where's Patima?"
Mikki rolled onto her back and stretched like a cat. "She's busy with her new toy." Mikki pulled an orange from the pouch on her belt and drew a long acacia thorn out of it. "She magicked all your secrets away, didn't she?" When Jiri didn't say anything, Mikki shrugged and started picking at the orange with the thorn, tearing open the fruit's skin. "That's so unfair. Here you were, all ready to fight me and Corrianne and Amiro, to bravely stand against us while we did our worst, and she just waltzes in and sugar-talks it out of you with a story and a spell." Mikki dropped the orange peel. "It's like when you're getting ready to take on some big fellow, and you're all worked up for a long, hard go, and then they only last a second. So disappointing. And you don't even get to slit a throat after as consolation."
Jiri had no idea if the halfling was talking about sex or battle, and didn't want to. "You can't let her do this."
"Why not?" Mikki chewed on a wedge of orange.
"That kindi might kill her."
"Yeah, we'd both cry. You have anything better than that?"
"Better?" Jiri said. "I have something worse. Patima might succeed, might get control of that thing. What do you think she would do with it? Do you think her destruction would stop with Usaro? Do you think that spirit would let her? How much of the world would she burn?"
In the hall outside, Mikki chewed her last piece of orange, staring up at the ceiling. Then her eyes slid over to Jiri's. "Not enough."
"Well." The halfling sat up. "I suppose I should get your toys. The ropes and mitt and gag and dreamless. Can't have you casting your way into trouble down here. Patima and Amiro both want you alive, for now." Mikki stopped gathering up her blanket and bent enough to look through the slot at her again. "Don't worry, though, me and Corrianne will keep you company. They said that's all right, as long as we didn't do anything too permanent to you. I'll go get her and your things now."
The halfling stood, but Jiri could still hear her just fine. "Use your bucket, if you need to. We might be here awhile, and you wouldn't want to shame yourself like you did last time, would you?"
Jiri let the little door fall, cutting off the light from the hall and plunging her into darkness.
Patima is using the kindi, and I'm trapped with these poisonous spiders. And I don't even have the magic to make a light.
Jiri's hands were fists, pushing hard against her thighs, the angry heat pulsing through her and gathering in them.
No.
Forcing her hand open, Jiri pulled at the sleeve of her robe. On the skin of her arm, she could still feel the outline of Corrianne's serpent's scales, pressed into her bruised flesh. Jiri traced her finger over those marks and settled back on the floor. A bruise was nothing like the bone fetishes from Oza's necklace. But it was something to focus on. Hand on her arm, Jiri thought of snakes: The thick black one that Corrianne had conjured up came first, but that thought brought fear, hate, anger. Heat. No. Jiri focused instead on the memory of a boa, curled in a knot in a tree, eyes open but dreaming. Jiri could see the snake clearly, and she pressed her hand against her bruised skin and tried to be it, to call its spirit to her so she could borrow its shape, could slip away, could escape.
Could do something, anything.
She felt it. A feeling in her arm, like the ghost of scales pressed to her skin, into her skin, and she fought to connect that feeling with the image she held in her mind, to string them together with a thread of magic and weave that feeling through her and change— Jiri fought for it, the fingers of her mind clutching again and again at that cobweb-thin strand of magic, but it kept slipping away like smoke. Crowding close to that faint slip of magic was Jiri's fire. It danced, eager to be held, wanting to be used. Jiri tried to ignore it, but its light and heat were distracting, overwhelming, and she felt her concentration burning in the flames, and that thread of change was gone.
"No!" The anger Jiri had been trying to hold was loose now, set free by her frustration, and she shouted again. "No!" She lunged up off the floor, and her hip cracked against the side of the table, flipping it over. Dishes and glasses, the remnants of the meal Patima had brought her before she betrayed her, shattered on the stone. Jiri shoved the table away; her hands caught one of the stools and she spun, throwing it at the bright lines that marked where the door stood. Wood hit wood, a solid boom, and from somewhere beyond she thought she heard something, something like laughter, high-pitched and merry.
That sound made Jiri hotter. She found the other stool and threw it, tangled her feet in the blankets of her pallet and kicked them away, spun to face the door as glass bit into the bottom of her foot. She barely noticed the pain, because there was light in her cell now. Bright, golden light, running up her arm and dancing in her palm, and Jiri threw the fire as hard as she could at the door. It burst and fell, leaving a black mark that glowed with a few embers, but the wood didn't catch. She threw another, and another, the light flashing through her cell, blinding her to everything but the sparks and the flames. Another, and she stood, chest heaving, streaming sweat, and now there were flames. They flickered on the door, small ones, and on the floor beside it. One of the thin blankets from her pallet had caught, the little flames running fast over to the tangled remains of her bed, all of them quickly catching.
"Oh, ancestors weep," Jiri breathed, watching the blankets go up. In the light of the growing fire, the door stood, charred but still solid.
The smoke rose, twisting, filling the top of the room, and Jiri dropped below it. The fire was growing fast, hot and bright in this tiny space, and Jiri shoved herself away from it, pressed herself to the wall.
I don't want to die like this.
"I don't want to burn," she said, dropping to her belly beneath the smoke.
Then don't. The words echoed in her head, but not in her voice. Over her, the smoke twisted, and Jiri thought she saw something through the stinging tears that poured from her eyes, something like a face. Like Oza's face.
You know how to escape this, Jiri. You just need to understand what's stopping you, and why.
How.
The snake.
"I tried that," she choked out, and started coughing. I can't. She couldn't draw enough air to speak. Over her, the smoke swirled, Oza's face forming and falling apart, his eyes staring down at her, waiting for her to find the answer.
Or join him in the spirit world.
The how is the snake. The what, the why...What's stopping me? Why can't I do this? Jiri clutched her fingers around her bruised arm again, tried to picture the snake, but all she could think of was fire, the flames in her and around her.
It's the fire. It's what stops this. She shut her eyes against the heat. And why does the fire fill me?
Because of my anger.
She felt that anger tighten in her. What was she supposed to do? Stay helpless, trapped? Her anger, her fire, were the only things that she had.
They are tools. Her voice, but Oza's words, repeated to her so many times over her childhood. But all tools have their place. Your anger and your friend fire must learn theirs. You must learn to put them down as easily as you pick them up.
Put them down. Jiri rolled, lay belly-down on the cool stone floor, breathed in the clear breeze that was flowing from under the door. My anger is my tool, and I don't need it now. In her head, she pictured a snake slipping along a branch. She held the picture and breathed, steady, in and out, ignoring the heat, ignoring the pain in her feet an
d back as the table caught fire. Fire is my tool, and I don't need it now. I put it down. She breathed, and pushed away the panic fueling her rage, breathed and searched for the thin, almost invisible thread of magic connecting the memory of scales on her skin to the image in her head. For a moment, she saw it, then it flashed away, vanishing into flames. Her anger sparked, tried to spread. I put it down. A whisper in her mind—not a shout of defiance, not a bellow of command. I put it down.
In her head, spinning with smoke, she saw it, the thread of change, so slim but there. She reached her hands for it, physical and spiritual, and caught it.
The change slammed through her. Not pain, but a twisting kind of vertigo. Jiri's body went horribly, sickeningly wrong for a moment, then that feeling was gone. She was herself again, scales and tongue and long, looping body. A body that she quickly tightened up and pulled away from the flames that crackled behind her. In front of her loomed the door, stretching high overhead. At its base was the slot. Her way out.
Shut now, of course.
With a low hiss, Jiri wrapped her tail forward and pushed the end beneath the door flap. She jerked her tail and the flap popped up, letting her jam her head underneath. Flattening herself to the ground as much as possible, she slid her length out into the passage.
The cool stone beneath her sucked away the heat, and she curled in the hall for a moment. It was empty, just three closed doors on one side and two more closed doors at either end. Jiri flicked out her tongue, tasting the air, but all she could taste was the smoke that poured out of the top of the door behind her, pooling at the vaulted top of the hall. But she heard something. Voices, hollow and strange, as if the speakers were underwater. She could barely make them out—a high one, Mikki, and a low one, chattering about something.