The Well of Prayers

by Anne Boles Levy

  But there was no time for contentment. Mami and I raced out the gate Babba had left open in his haste, toward where fierce curls of smoke lifted into the receding night.

  20

  Surely the stars will sputter out and the sun extinguish before people turn from wickedness.

  —from Verisimilitudes 5, The Book of Unease

  A fire horn blared in short, clear bursts as Mami and I sped along Callers Wharf toward the Customs House. Even from a distance, we could make out flames licking through the roof of the warehouse I’d left earlier that night. Hot ash stung my throat and I rewove my head wrap as a veil across my nose and mouth.

  At the sound of the horn, men raced across Pilgrim Bridge holding wooden buckets brought from home. They formed hasty lines to fill and pass the buckets along to splash at the warehouse. I tried to plunge into the crowd toward where I thought Babba might be, Mami’s hand in mine, but yellow-clad constables blocked our path and redirected us back to the pavilion. Once there, we had to scoot out of the way as Feroxi poured from the Azwans’ ships moored beside us.

  They didn’t have buckets, but they were tall and could reach the spots the human men couldn’t. For a time, it looked like humans and Feroxi together might succeed in getting the flames under control. Dawn was sending its first weak beams across the bay, and I began to feel unsure why I’d come. Mami wrapped an arm around my waist and whispered in my ear.

  “Did you have anything to do with this?”

  I shook my head.

  “You swear?”

  I nodded. “I left here ages ago.”

  “Tell me about this Feroxi of yours.”

  “I don’t think he did this, either.”

  A small crowd of onlookers had gathered around us. I didn’t want to have this conversation with so many people about. A rumble through the group turned my focus toward the wharf. Guards parted the crowd to make way for both Azwans. Their faces were stony and set on the warehouse roof.

  S’ami hesitated as he swept past us, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge that he’d seen the two women with golden eyes. Mami pulled me back from the crowd, which seamlessly filled our places.

  “Alright,” she said. “Your Feroxi.”

  “Mami, he didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “That wasn’t my question.”

  I sighed. How could I possibly explain how I felt? My eyes burned from smoke and sleepiness. What was I supposed to say about Valeo and kisses that seemed a hundred days ago already?

  “Well?” Mami shook my elbow. “Do you love him? Nihil help you if you do.”

  “I don’t know, Mami. Do I know what love is?” I knew the corners of my mouth were turning down and I was tearing up. I drew a deep breath to keep a hiccup down.

  I became aware of another sensation, but couldn’t pinpoint it at first. I uncomfortably shifted when it hit me: some sort of music played at the edge of my awareness, like a soft chime. It vibrated within me in a way that felt all too familiar. This was S’ami’s magic. I could sense it without seeing it, without having to stand where I could watch it flow from his fingertips. This was some new power, or a boost to my existing one. Either way, it was unwelcome.

  “Do you hear that music?” I asked, on the off chance there was a more ordinary explanation.

  Mami looked over her shoulder toward the warehouse, where the flames leaped to new heights. “Now? Where would there be music?”

  I cursed my queer ability. I was feeling more foreign to myself every moment. “There’s something wrong.”

  The fire wasn’t going out, but up. Something S’ami was doing was making matters worse. I grabbed Mami’s hand and tugged her along after me.

  “Hadara, we can’t go over there.”

  “We have to, Mami. There’s something wrong.” I felt it—a sour note in the music, a ferocity and anger to the magic that twanged to my awakening sense of it.

  I pushed against the stubborn constables, shouting that I had to see the Azwan, right now, very important. Enough people recognized me to let us squeeze through to where the Azwans waved their arms above the bucket brigades. The water was going where they directed it, but stronger flames answered them. Sparks flew to other rooftops, including the Customs House. It was only a matter of time, maybe moments, before neighboring buildings caught fire, as well.

  The closer I got, the better I could sense the other Azwan, Reyhim, also channeling in his weaker way. The beams of sparkling spells clashed in mid-air, the two magic users working at cross-purposes, fighting each other. Whether that was deliberate, I couldn’t tell.

  Mami leaned close to me. “I don’t like getting this near to these men. What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to help,” I said. Though I wasn’t sure how yet.

  I pushed closer to S’ami, who turned his head to watch me. I reached one unsteady hand toward the flashes of colorful sparks that emanated from the wisdom knot, a rainbow of power that I knew only I could see. With Mami gently trying to tug me away, I managed to lay one hand atop the Azwan’s. The same charge coursed through me as when I’d opened the lock on the same warehouse doors.

  S’ami gave me a wary side-eye. “I trust you aren’t holding my hand because you like me.”

  I held my hand steady, frowning, and waited. S’ami returned his attention to his spellcasting. I realized he was waiting for me to do something, anything. This was a test, then. The thought crept up that perhaps he’d started this fire, or made it worse, but I returned my focus to the static that flickered between the palm of my hand and the back of his. I didn’t think anyone around us could see, except Mami, who was keeping her eyes trained on my hand against the Azwan’s.

  The pulsing from the totem grew stronger and more flames shot through the warehouse roof. He was adding to it, then. My emotional state was already too raw to take in this new fact—that one of the highest of all high priests could be endangering the city to make some sort of point or probe the limits of my weird talent. I flinched, distracted by my knot of irritation, as the flashes of magic ceased. They balled under my wrist and imploded, leaving behind only a tingling. The flames on the roof died down as the buckets of water finally reached their mark, helped along by an oblivious Reyhim’s spellcasting. The brigades brought the flames under control again.

  S’ami again eyed me sideways and gave the shortest of nods before withdrawing his hand from mine. “You were supposed to tell me when you developed any peculiar new powers.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Don’t undo any more warding spells of mine.”

  With that, he turned his back to me, leaving me with Mami all wide-eyed and clingy. “What new powers?”

  “I’ll explain later, Mami, please. Let’s go.”

  “What did you just do?”

  “I can’t explain it exactly. I can undo some of the magic … not all, I don’t think,” I stammered. How could I ever explain to her, especially with her staring up at me with such a worried look? “This is the wrong place, Mami. I can’t explain it here.”

  “But you wanted to come!” She scowled at my change of heart. “We should at least find your father. Then you can tell us both.”

  I nodded. Yes, Babba. Exhaustion caught up with me then, pounding between my ears, making my head nod and my lip quiver and my shoulders droop. I rested my cheek on Mami’s shoulder and let her fold her arms around me. “Hadara, if something was going on with you, you should’ve told us. Were you afraid we wouldn’t understand?”

  I nodded, my cheek brushing the fabric on Mami’s wrap. I never, ever cried, yet here I was, a sniffly, hiccupy mess, and this time dissolving in public, no less. I could only muster up enough dignity to let my mother dry my eyes and lead me toward where she thought Babba might be.

  “There’ll be an inquest,” she said. “If you were in that warehouse, you’d best say so.”

  “I swear, I—”

  “If your father doesn’t make an example of you, he’ll be accused of favo
ritism. Corruption, even.”

  “But Mami, I—”

  “My instincts are never wrong on such things,” she said, though not really to me any longer. She was focused on the crowds ahead, and on some distant spot where my father might be. “And then we must address this new talent. It must be related to your sacrifice. It is, isn’t it? That’s why the Azwan wasn’t surprised. How complicated this makes things.”

  We both lapsed into silence, me sullen, Mami thoughtful, both of us worried. I didn’t hear my name being called in the Gek tongue at first, a low croak that couldn’t get its long, narrow tongue to hit the “d” in my name. The voice came from somewhere behind me, and I paused, tugging Mami’s sleeve to stop.

  “Do you see him?” she asked, meaning Babba.

  “It’s a Gek, Mami.”

  “What would a Gek be doing here?” She peered into an alley where we’d stopped. I couldn’t see it either, and it didn’t sound like Bugsy’s frantic chitter. This was deeper, lower, more adult.

  There. A pink tongue flicking in the shadows. I stepped forward, Mami beside me, the two of us peering into the grayness where the first rays of sun had yet to reach. It could probably see me standing in the twilight, so I signaled a greeting.

  A Gek crept forward, crouching, flicking its tongue in every direction, its hide camouflaged a dusky gray. It held a large, brown package in its arms, which it shoved at me before darting back to the safety of the alley. It was a book, and not just any book.

  The warehouse ledger had found its way back to me.

  Before I could react, the Gek chirped from the shadows. “Shaman-daughter is with us. We come to show we can burn nests, too. Then the star will come back to us. It was a mistake to let you leave us.”

  I stared after it as it retreated to the safety of the alley, wondering how on all Kuldor I was supposed to warn everyone.

  “Was that a Gek?” S’ami’s voice boomed behind me. I nearly dropped the ledger.

  S’ami peered into the alley. “What’s it want? What did it hand you?”

  Mami spoke up, and I wished she hadn’t. “It gave Hadara this book of some sort.”

  A moment later it was in S’ami’s hands, the pages flipping under his fingers, his eyebrows crinkling as he studied the contents. It snapped shut in my face as he spoke. “It would seem the warehouse isn’t a total loss.”

  “We have to go,” I said. “We have to leave here now.”

  S’ami kept staring at me. “What did the Gek say?”

  Mami shook her head. “It didn’t give us any signals, Most Worthy. It just shoved the book at Hadara, croaked at us, and ran.”

  I swallowed. “We have to go. All of us. Now.”

  S’ami nodded, slow, deliberate, understanding. “Then let’s go.”

  He turned toward the crowd by the warehouse, the bucket brigades having disbanded to a loose gathering of sweaty, panting volunteers. “We’re under attack. Guards, your weapons.”

  Men looked at S’ami in confusion.

  Then flaming arrows rained on the surrounding rooftops, sparking a half-dozen small fires. The alleys and walls erupted with Gek and their crude weapons, unleashing sudden streams of human blood.

  21

  The warrior’s life is one of constant readiness, or it is his death.

  —Feroxi proverb

  “Fall back! Fall back!” The commander’s voice rang out from beyond the throng of men. Mami grabbed and pulled me toward the waterfront. People around us screamed, tripped over long skirts, women pulling children to their feet and scrambling together toward the Azwans’ ships. There was nowhere else to go. The Gek popped up from what seemed like every rooftop in the commercial half of the city, backing us into the Grand Concourse with a hail of arrows and javelins.

  The fire horn sounded again and the commander ran near me, shouting. “Stop that Nihil-blasted thing! It’ll only bring more unarmed men. Don’t you have a battle signal?”

  The horn changed its call to a complex rhythm I didn’t recognize. No one in Port Sapphire did. I whipped around to see a score of men racing across Pilgrim Bridge toward us, unarmed and unready. We’d never heard a battle horn here before. The crowd by the Grand Concourse waved them back, frantic, people pushing and shoving their way to the bridge.

  An arc of blue light caught the corner of my eye. It shimmered above a crowd of men by the Customs House. S’ami and Reyhim had erected a shield of light, but I remembered from the swamp how it had singed everything it touched. It would be no help if it saved the Azwans but razed half the city.

  I began weaving back through the crowd as Mami tugged at my dress. “What are you doing?”

  “Something’s wrong again.”

  “How would you know? Hadara, what kind of power are you supposed to have?”

  I halted, the panicked crowds shoving me back, parting and dodging around me. I took in their panicked faces, the smell of sweat, the soot on damp foreheads, the trickles of blood on limping, staggering forms. These were my people in the only home I’d ever known. I couldn’t bear the thought that the Gek had come here because of me. Had I brought this disaster on my own city? A part of me answered a solid yes.

  Mami whirled me around and shook me by the shoulders. “Hadara, you’re going into shock. Wake up. We have to go.”

  “Mami, no. It’s the demon.”

  “What crazy talk is this? The demon’s gone.”

  “It’s not.” I knew that had to be true, that everything S’ami had said and that the Gek had wished for was real. The Gek wouldn’t be interested in taking over our warehouses. This was about clearing a path back to the demon. To me. I knew that as certainly as I could see the fleeing forms around me, thrown into crisp relief by the sun’s first rays. The Gek knew the star was within me—they’d intended that, and they wanted it back, with its human host intact, or else I couldn’t explain why they’d warned me of their attack.

  Mami shook me again. “Stop that. You’re scaring me.”

  “The demon didn’t die, Mami. Not completely. I need to find S’ami.”

  I let Mami’s shock register for a moment before grabbing her again and pushing forward. I wasn’t used to seeing her befuddled and it bothered me. I almost preferred the angry Mami with the switch to the lost Mami huddling against me as I forged a path with my elbows and shoulders against the tide of bodies. It took longer than it should’ve to go the dozen body lengths to where the Azwans had retreated beneath their shield of glowing cyan. The Feroxi were regrouping behind them, pouring off their ships with armor and weapons. The commander was everywhere at once, urging with his voice, his face reddened in fury.

  “No snake defeats a Feroxi. No scaly vermin wins a second time against Nihil’s own.”

  A familiar voice boomed beside us. Valeo dashed in front of us, fully armored, sword at his side. “Lady Lia, this is no place for women right now. Take your daughter across the bridge to the Ward.”

  Hearing her title stiffened Mami’s back and she regained her bearing. She leveled a cool, detached gaze at Valeo. “My other children are behind enemy lines, it would seem, as is my husband. And you’ll not tell me where to stand in my own city when it needs me most.”

  “You are needed at the Ward, Lady.” Valeo didn’t budge.

  I put a hand up to stop him. “I need to get to the Azwans.”

  “You’ll go no further.”

  The commander’s voice interrupted us, blasting above the crowd. “Guardsman Valeo, get those women out of here and take up your position.”

  Valeo thumped his chest in salute. I saw my chance and darted around him, making a break for the flash of amethyst amid the crimson-clad soldiers. I dodged other soldiers as they scrambled into place behind the blue shield that covered much of the pavilion. Beyond it, the Gek warred on the merchant ships, a number of sails already ablaze, decks crawling with their lithe forms. The roofs of warehouses either sported scores of Gek or flames.

  I wanted to scream at them that we should all be
on the same side. We all wanted the same thing, Gek and human, swamp dweller or Sapphiran. We wanted the Temple out of our lives. But it was to the Temple I had to turn.

  I reached S’ami out of breath just as Valeo lunged for my elbow and missed. “It’s me they want, Azwan. If you give me to them, I think they’ll go.”

  I was between both Azwans and both cocked their heads toward me. Reyhim spoke first, breaking off in the middle of a mumbled spell.

  “And how would you know this?”

  I turned to S’ami. I didn’t know how much he’d ever told his colleague about me, given their rivalry. He stopped his musical chanting. “She knows, Reyhim. They’ve already approached her.”

  Reyhim shot me a quizzical look. “They hand-signaled you? Here? This morning?”

  I nodded. That was mostly true, after all.

  The two men continued their spellcasting for a moment. Valeo edged me aside. “My apologies, Son of the Second Moon. She got away from me.”

  S’ami didn’t take his attention away from his task. “She’ll go to the Ward. The healers will need her.”

  I shook free of Valeo. “No, please. Listen.”

  “You listen,” S’ami was curt. “We are not surrendering you to the Gek for any reason.”

  Mami spoke up from behind me. “What is this about the demon being inside her?”

  Reyhim whipped his head around. His section of the blue shield sputtered. “Who says this?”

  “Hadara does, Most Worthy.” Mami didn’t change the tone of her voice. “I thought it was something you both knew and were keeping from her father and me.”

  A hail of javelins shot across the hole in the light shield, some clattering near us.

  S’ami’s voice cut off Reyhim’s reaction. “Your spellcasting, brother.”