The Drowning City

by Amanda Downum

  “Come on,” Jabbor said, tugging her away. “I’m sorry.”

  They only made it a few yards before Isyllt collapsed onto the rain-soaked road.

  Chapter 18

  Even unconscious, a trained necromancer was never truly helpless. It certainly felt that way, though, as Isyllt watched Jabbor carry her limp body into the forest. She was lucky he didn’t leave her in the mud, especially since Zhirin was in no condition to argue for her safety.

  On the other side of the mirror, Sivahra’s forest rose thick and dark. The sky was a low ceiling of gray and violet clouds, twilit gloom. Spirits chattered in the trees and the breeze twisted through the leaves in silver and indigo ribbons, beautiful and disorienting.

  Vertigo struck quickly, the familiar dizziness that came of casting her spirit free. On its heels came the wild rush of freedom, the longing to run and fly unfettered by meat. It was the most dangerous part of ghostwalking, more dangerous than any lurking spirit—if she abandoned her flesh too long, she might never return to it. She held on to the echo of her heartbeat until the urge passed. At least, she thought bitterly, as a ghost she had two good hands.

  At the Tigers’ safe house, Jabbor carried her inside and laid her body on a bedroll, less gently than she would have liked. The living glowed blue-white with heat and life, distorted as if she watched them through water. Her own flesh was clearer and dimmer, the light drawn in. She hadn’t realized how awful she looked, blue as milk and hollow-eyed. She could return to her body, perhaps even wake, but she needed rest and this might be the safest place to find any.

  Zhirin sank onto a pallet in the far corner. Jabbor tried to speak to her, but she wouldn’t answer and after a moment he left her alone, closing the bamboo door behind him. When he was gone, she began to cry.

  Isyllt turned away from the girl’s grief. She’d known Jodiya wasn’t dead but hadn’t acted in time. And while it was true that she’d been so exhausted she could barely walk, that wasn’t a particularly good excuse. Not one Zhirin would want to hear, at any rate. Even the memory of the assassin’s heart stilling beneath her hand was a hollow one.

  She made sure her pulse was steady and wrapped her body in webs of wards. She needed to rest her spirit as well as her flesh, but not just yet. And she didn’t want to fall asleep listening to Zhirin’s tears. The diamond flared as she touched it with spectral fingers, but the girl didn’t notice.

  Deilin Xian appeared, lips curling. On this side, the ghost was clearer and more solid than the living. A frown replaced her snarl when she saw Zhirin. “What’s happened?”

  “Khas assassins killed her mother.”

  Pity looked quite ghastly on the dead woman’s face.

  “Leave her to her grief,” Isyllt said. “Walk with me.”

  They stepped through the wall, a queer scraping sensation that Isyllt always hated, and emerged on a narrow walkway. The building was set on stilts and wrapped around a broad and towering tree. Lights flickered among the branches, green and gold firefly flickers.

  “What are you doing?” Deilin asked as she followed Isyllt over the rail, landing silently on the leaf-strewn slope below.

  “Looking around. I thought I’d take a native guide.” It was all she could do not to spin around like a child; the absence of weariness and pain made her light-headed.

  “You’re in my world now, necromancer. Do you think you could best me so easily here?” More curiosity than threat in the question and Isyllt turned to face her, taking in the honor-blade at Deilin’s hip, the easy warrior’s grace of her stance. She was younger than Isyllt had first thought, perhaps thirty-five when she died. A bullet beneath her right breast had killed her; the wound bubbled and slurped when she spoke and her face and hands were tinged blue. Not a quick or easy death.

  “I think I’d win,” Isyllt said at last. “But it wouldn’t be easy. And if that happened, I’d never let you out again. Do you want to risk it?”

  Deilin smiled; she was lovely when she wasn’t frothing mad. The resemblance to Anhai and Vienh was clear. “I won’t warn you if I do.”

  Isyllt smiled back and turned her eyes to the forest sloping around them. “What do you call this place?”

  “The Night Forest. The unsung dead remain here, with the spirits.”

  “Where do the others go?”

  “East, or so we’re told. The songs and offerings carry them to the cities of our ancestors, on the far side of the mountains.”

  “But not you.”

  Deilin shrugged, one hand on her knife hilt. “I wasn’t given to the Ashen Wind. The Assari left my corpse to rot, and scavengers have long since eaten my bones. I might have walked, climbed the Bone Stair, but the way is long and dangerous and I was afraid. Even if my granddaughters were to sing me on, my wounds will never heal. And I doubt they would, now.”

  The soft bitterness of the last turned Isyllt’s head. “Why did you do it?”

  Deilin didn’t answer for a moment and Isyllt wondered if it was worth compelling her to answer. In the silence, she heard the soft, wet sounds of the woman’s ruined lung flopping inside her chest.

  “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I wandered in the forest so long—I was already half mad when Chu Zhen found me.” Dark eyes flickered toward Isyllt. “Kaeru, she called herself to you. She was the last of the Yeoh clan, or at least of those who didn’t sell themselves to the Assari. We were close as girls, but she fled south when her family died and I married soon after.

  “She found me only a few seasons ago—I hadn’t realized so much time had passed till I saw how old she’d grown. She told me of the city and the Khas and the Dai Tranh, how we lost more children and warriors every year, to death or despair or the lure of Assari decadence. She told me of my granddaughters, and my half-blooded great-granddaughter. And the more she told me, the madder I grew, till my blood burned and all I knew was the need for flesh, for revenge.” She touched her wound absently; the blood faded from her fingertips as she pulled them away.

  “It’s anathema, of course, for the dead to possess the living, but no worse so than for children to forget their ancestors. I remember thinking that, just before Chu Zhen broke the seals and summoned me into the house. Then the madness took me and everything was blood and hate until I woke up in your stone prison.”

  Isyllt’s hand tightened around the ghostly reflection of her ring.

  “You argued with her, though, on the boat.”

  Another shrug. “It’s anathema, and I was calmer then. Being bound gives one plenty of time to think.”

  “What do you think about?”

  “Revenge.”

  Steel hissed and Isyllt spun, turning just in time to watch Deilin’s knife sink into her gut. It burned like ice, colder and cleaner than living pain. Deilin bared her teeth as she twisted the blade.

  Silver-blue light spilled from the wound. Not blood, but life and magic. It hissed and steamed down the blade and Deilin jerked her hand away as it burned her fingers. The hungry ground swallowed what fell.

  Isyllt touched the hilt and grinned. Light surrounded the phantom blade, dissolving it, absorbing it. An instant later, blade and wound vanished, leaving glowing drops on her fingers. Deilin gaped and Isyllt laughed.

  “Not so easy, I’m afraid.” She reached out and touched the ghost’s face with a whispered word of banishment. Deilin vanished with a curse on her lips.

  With the woman gone, Isyllt let go of her bravado and staggered to one knee, grunting with pain. Leaves crisped and crumbled where her unblood struck. Kiril’s voice rose in her mind, the echo of long-ago lessons. Take care of your soul as well as your flesh, or you’ll find yourself with neither.

  Pride drove her to her feet, pride and the too-close growl of a spirit-beast drawn by the smell of shed magic. She reached for her heartbeat, and in the space of one found herself beside her body.

  Zhirin slept, her face stained with tears. Some priests taught that death was an end to pain, but that was a lie. Sleep, at lea
st, might keep it at bay for a time. Isyllt sank into her weary, aching flesh, bound herself with blood and bone, and let the darkness take her.

  Xinai and Riuh made better time on the way back, marching through much of the night and finally reaching Cay Lin near midnight five days after they’d set out. Her legs ached to dragging from the pace she’d set and cramps twisted her guts—the sight of the ruined walls filled her with bittersweet relief. Perhaps Selei would be asleep, Xinai half hoped, and she could deliver the news in the morning.

  But when the guard escorted them to her makeshift house, a light glowed inside. Xinai didn’t recognize the broken building and didn’t try to recall who had lived there so many years ago. Selei sat cross-legged on a bedroll, maps spread in front of her and the remnants of a meal set to the side. The old woman looked up as they entered and Xinai frowned—Selei might have aged years in the days they’d been gone. Unhappy lines seamed her face and her eyes were sunken and red-rimmed.

  “Grandmother?” Riuh knelt in front of her. “What’s wrong?”

  “More of us dead.” She shook her head, hair tangled and streaked with ashes. “The Khas attacked a Dai Tranh boat last night—no one survived. One of my oldest friends was aboard. My sisters, my cousins, my friends…So many of us fallen. Nearly a generation lost to Assari blades, or living clanless and alone in the city.”

  Xinai knelt beside Riuh and took the old woman’s hand. So fragile and light in hers, and she swallowed around a sudden tightness in her throat.

  Selei smiled, brief and bitter. “But grief is a luxury I shouldn’t indulge in yet. You found it.”

  “Yes.” Xinai stripped the diamond charm off her neck, and only manners kept her from flinging it into the fire. She dropped it on a map instead. “On the eastern side of the mountain. They fish the stones from the river. It’s as you feared—prisoners die there and rot unsung.”

  “Father might still be there,” Riuh said. “Or his ghost. We have to find out.”

  Selei shook her head sadly. “This is greater than one family’s grief.”

  “What, then?”

  Her mismatched eyes narrowed, gleaming in the firelight. “We destroy the mine.”

  “How can you destroy a river?” Xinai asked.

  “I don’t know yet. We’ll find a way.” She slid a map out of the stack. “Show me where it is.”

  Xinai leaned forward to mark the spot with a smudge of charcoal. “They’ve hung ghost-wards all around, but they’re only a distraction.” She fought a grimace as she rocked back on her heels; she’d begun to bleed.

  Selei stared at the map, at the sinuous curves of the river and the sharp lines of the mountain. One thin, calloused finger tapped Mount Haroun slowly. “I don’t think we’ll need to worry about that.”

  The Ki Dai gathered at dawn. Xinai had never been introduced to the rest, or even known their names, but it wasn’t hard to guess—all those around her wore charms or witch-marks, and a chill followed them, greater than any one ghost. Shaiyung kept close, till Xinai’s arm tingled with cold.

  A few protested at first as Selei laid out her plan. It was madness. If the mountain erupted, it would easily destroy the mine and the Kurun Tam mages responsible for it, but the jungle was sure to burn as well. But the more Selei talked, the more sense it made. The Assari had bound the mountain with magic as they’d bound the land with steel and stone—what better way to teach them the strength of a free Sivahra than to unleash the fire they tamed? The forest would grow back, unlike all the clansfolk who had died in the mines.

  Soon the assembled witches nodded to the argument, and murmurs of assent rippled through the crowd. Their breath hung in shimmering plumes.

  When the gathering dispersed, she escorted Selei back to her makeshift house. The fire had left her, and the old woman seemed frailer than ever, leaning on Xinai’s arm as they walked.

  “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll be on the mountain tonight, to make sure the bindings break. When you’re done with the wards, join me at the eastern rim of the cauldron.”

  “Are you sure that’s safe? It’s a long climb—”

  Selei snorted. “I’m not infirm yet. And I’ll have warriors with me, don’t worry. But I want you there as well. And your mother.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  “Thank you.” The woman’s fingers squeezed Xinai’s arm. “I’m glad you could be here for this. The more clans we have, the stronger we are.”

  “Not much of a clan, are we?” She shrugged a shoulder toward Shaiyung.

  “You don’t need to take the gray yet. You’re still young. More than one clan has been renewed from a single scion.”

  Xinai chuckled. “Those stories were more heartening when it wasn’t my womb needed for the renewal.”

  “It isn’t so bad. And I think you’ll find no few men willing to help you.”

  “Now you sound like my mother.”

  They passed a cooking fire and the smell of pork and curried lentils wafted around them. Smoke stung Xinai’s eyes and for an instant it was like looking through time. People moved in Cay Lin, cooking and talking, walking between the houses. She almost thought she heard a child’s high laughter. But was it the past she saw, or the future?

  She shook her head and the illusion vanished, leaving only warriors breaking camp in the iron dawn.

  Zhirin drifted in and out of sleep, surfacing at the sound of voices or footfalls or the clack of a tray, only to sink again. Dreams waited for her, circling like nakh in the deep—bright dreams and dark, ordinary and terrifying, till she couldn’t tell what was real.

  Eventually she woke, blinking till her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Her head felt stuffed with wool, sticky and dreamsick. She sat up with a wince, neck popping; her right arm tingled from being pinned against the floor. Rain rattled softly against the thatch roof.

  She rubbed her face, pausing at the salt and snot crusted on her cheeks and lips. Rust-colored crescents darkened her fingernails and the heavy heron-ring gleamed on her hand. The bird’s topaz eye glittered coldly. A sick, hollow feeling opened in her stomach, and for a moment she thought she might vomit.

  Cloth rustled and she started before recognizing Isyllt’s pale face in the gloom. The necromancer sat against the far wall, a blanket draped over her shoulders.

  “There’s food,” she said softly, nudging a tray with her foot.

  Zhirin shook her head, swallowing sour spit. “What time is it?”

  “Just past dawn.”

  She touched her head, frowning at a strange lingering tingle behind her eyes. “You spelled me.”

  Isyllt shrugged. “I thought you needed it.”

  With unsteady hands, Zhirin poured a cup of water. The first swallow eased the taste of salt and sleep and reminded her of her aching bladder.

  “Are you all right?” Isyllt asked.

  Zhirin’s hands tightened around the cup till she was surprised the clay didn’t shatter. “I’d rather not talk about it,” she said. It came out harsher than she intended, but she didn’t think she could stand either pity or heartless pragmatism at the moment.

  The door scraped open and she flinched, slopping water over her hands. Gray light washed the room and she squinted as a woman leaned inside.

  “You’re both awake? Jabbor says I’m to look after you. Do you need anything?”

  Zhirin clenched her fists so she couldn’t see the blood under her nails. “A bathhouse?”

  The woman nodded. “Follow me.”

  The Jade Tigers’ compound was a collection of thatch-and-bamboo buildings bounded by thorny canebrake and a rough stone wall. Zhirin didn’t recognize the forest, nor could she remember the twisting paths they’d taken to get here. She couldn’t remember much of anything after her mother—

  She buried the thought deep, concentrating on the sway of the Tiger woman’s braids as they walked. The jungle offered her no comfort, and the river was faint and far
away. The rain had slackened, but water still dripped from the trees and ran in muddy channels down the sloping ground.

  The bathwater was cold but clean, with soap enough to wash away the last of the mud and blood. Zhirin scrubbed her hands raw before she was satisfied. The woman, Suni, found them clothes and ointment for Isyllt’s wounds. Zhirin watched in pity and horror as the necromancer changed her filthy bandages, burns and stitches stark and ugly against white skin. The clarity of her ribs and hip bones made Zhirin regret skipping breakfast.

  After they dressed, Suni took them back to the room and found tea and fresher food. Zhirin forced herself to eat rice and jackfruit; wasting away with grief wasn’t something she could afford to do, not until they were truly safe. She wasn’t sure she could even imagine that anymore.

  They were free to roam the camp, Suni assured them, but Zhirin was happy enough to stay inside. Isyllt was content with silence; she doubted Jabbor would give her that luxury.

  Neither, as it happened, would fate. No more than an hour had passed before voices rose outside and the door opened again.

  “A council is gathering,” Suni said. “Jabbor says you’re both to come.”

  The rain had returned, drumming on the roof of the long council chamber. Benches and mats lined the edges of the room, and nearly all of them were taken. The gathered spoke in restless mutters, half drowned by the rain. Zhirin braced herself for Jabbor’s pity as she sat beside him, but his face was grim and he only squeezed her hand quickly. Voices rose in anger and curiosity when the Tigers saw them.

  “Who are they, Jabbor?” a man called, not quite a challenge.

  “Some of you have met the Lady Iskaldur,” he replied. “She offers us aid from Selafai. And more of you know Zhirin Laii, first daughter of Cay Laii.”

  She wasn’t first daughter anymore, she realized, but silently thanked Jabbor for the omission. She didn’t think she could recount the story yet.

  Jabbor cut off the next question with a raised hand. “This isn’t the time. We have something more important to discuss now. Are we all here?” he asked the guards at the door.