The Burning City (Spirit Binders)

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  “She drowned. Her ship capsized in a storm. Almost everyone was lost.” Eliki said this so brusquely Lana didn’t dare offer condolences, and Pano forestalled them anyway by offering her a stool.

  “So, I didn’t think you’d take me up on my offer so soon,” Pano said, once they’d all settled. “What brings you here?”

  Eliki raised her pale eyebrows. “He means, what do you want?”

  Lana swallowed. She was obviously a curiosity to them, but she didn’t want to think of what they would do if they perceived her as a threat. “I’m trying to find my mother.”

  Lana expected this to surprise Eliki the way it did everyone else—as though just because she was the black angel she must have sprung from the earth fully formed—but Eliki just nodded.

  “And you think we can help?” she said.

  Lana explained her search for Akua and her suspicions of Kohaku. “I think he saw something, but he won’t say. I know Makaho is involved, but she’ll never give anything away.”

  Pano stroked his chin thoughtfully. “A one-armed witch? I haven’t heard of anyone like that, but I could poke around. Ask some questions.”

  “I’d be incredibly grateful.”

  Eliki rapped Pano’s thigh with the edge of a book. “Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she said. “And what are you going to do in return, if we help you?”

  “I have some money. It’s not much—”

  “We don’t want your money. It isn’t much use out here, anyway. We prefer barter.”

  Lana hardened her expression. It wouldn’t do to let this woman see how much she intimidated her. “I don’t know what else to offer you.”

  She laughed. “You’re the black angel! There’s a thousand things you could offer.”

  “I don’t have any power here. Sometimes I think I’m a hairbreadth away from being thrown out of the city!” Pano nodded. “It’s true, Eliki. We met when I saved her from a mob.”

  “I know how you met, Pano. But listen to her. She waltzed up to the Mo’i’s house and they took her in to see him just like that. That is power. Now, the question is, what can it do for us?”

  Lana didn’t like the direction this was heading at all. She shook her head. “No, you don’t understand, I doubt Kohaku will want to see me again anyway. We had an argument before I left.”

  This seemed to interest Eliki even more. “An argument? With Bloody One-hand? Explain.”

  Lana felt her cheeks get warm. This wasn’t going very well. She started to regret her impulsive decision to come here. Why had she thought they would help her when Kohaku wouldn’t? Because Pano had seemed kind when he saved her on the street? But still, she’d already come.

  “I told him I knew what he’d done,” she said. “I mean, that I knew how he’d lost his hand. And he tried to deny it, but great Kai, he was talking to someone who’s made geas with two of the great spirits. As though I wouldn’t know exactly what bargain he made? I was furious. I stormed out.”

  Eliki and Pano shared a shocked look. “You are sure?” Pano said after a moment. “There’s no doubt in your mind that he traded his hand to become Mo’i?”

  “And weaken the binding in exchange. But everyone knows that. I can’t go down the street without hearing someone say it.”

  “People say many things they don’t really believe,” Eliki said carefully. “They curse the spirits, and then bring extra large wreaths for the solstice fires. Just because some people suspect doesn’t mean they believe.”

  Lana’s skin prickled. They seemed so surprised. “Well,” she said uncomfortably. “They should, because Kohaku is responsible for all of this. I mean, he might not have known. . . .I’m sure the fire spirit misled him, minimized the danger. It isn’t as though he went into the chamber vowing to burn 20,000 people to death, but. . .”

  “He’s responsible, nevertheless.” Eliki’s tone was hollow and clipped, like when she’d described her daughter’s death.

  Pano stood and walked to one of the windows covered in fresh oil paper. “This is amazing,” he said, running a hand through his salty hair. “Amazing.” He whirled on Lana. “Explain everything. Step by step. I’ll write it down so I don’t miss anything.” He took a few long strides and knelt before her. “The trouble was we all thought he must have, but it didn’t make sense. Everyone gets burned to death in the great fire. That’s the whole point of the ritual. To sacrifice the penitents and keep the fire spirit bound. In return, we get a leader. So, how was One-hand’s sacrifice different from all the others? Why did it go the other way?”

  Lana suddenly understood. The mechanisms of the spirits and their bindings were as natural to her as the tides, as the phases of the moon. Her mother had explained it many times as she was growing up. In the outer islands, the spirits were very close, and life wasn’t stable or easy enough to forget what must seem like a rustic superstition here in this city. And then all of her time with Akua had ground it deeper into her bones. But most Esselans didn’t understand how anything worked, no matter that it had become central to their very existence.

  “The power of the geas depends on your desire, what you invoke, which spirit you invoke it for. A geas is a binding, but that power is in the unbinding as well. A black angel’s sacrifice released the wind spirit, remember?”

  Eliki gasped. “Of course! How could we have forgotten that story?”

  Pano shook his head. “I never heard it told like that. I heard she killed herself over the grief of loving it.”

  “This goes in the next pamphlet,” Eliki said. “All of it. The details about how spirit bindings work, all confirmed by our very own black angel.”

  Lana bolted to her feet and backed away. “Oh no,” she said. “You can’t use me like this. I need to find my mother, not get stoned on a street corner.”

  “Why would they blame you when they can blame the Mo’i?”

  Lana grimaced. “You can’t. I need Kohaku. Yelling at him is one thing. If you print this, I may never find her.”

  Eliki stood, her erect carriage radiating every bit as much anger as Lana felt. “So, is this the thanks we get for helping you?”

  “You’ve done nothing for me yet!”

  “You doubt our word?”

  “Of course!”

  Pano put a hand on Eliki’s shoulder. “She’s right,” he said softly. “We need to give her something. Earn her trust. This news can wait.”

  Eliki glared at Lana with those disconcerting eyes for a moment longer and then nodded to Pano. “Fine. You see if you can find the one-armed witch. And this one should pray Kohaku doesn’t find some way to take her like he has all the others. You may be the black angel, child, but anyone who cares to look can see you’re still just flesh and blood.”

  Ahi was dying. Nahoa couldn’t think of any other way to say it. The infant had started to lose her appetite at noon the day before. By that evening she cried in agony at the slightest touch and was so hot Nahoa had to bathe her in ice water. Ahi grew weaker by the hour, no matter what she and Malie did to ease her suffering. She knew children died all the time. Illness took them harder and carried them away faster. Nahoa’s own mother had lost her first child to a wasting sickness. But Lei’ahi had always been so strong and healthy—Nahoa had never even thought to worry over the danger.

  Nahoa had screamed at Makaho, begging and demanding the horrible, useless woman to do something to save her child. The nun had sent for several apothecaries, but they’d prescribed tinctures of herbs that Ahi had quickly vomited back up. Then Makaho had merely shaken her head and said, “It will be as the spirits will it.” Which was the worst sort of hypocritical piety, Nahoa knew, since the whole reason for the fire temple’s existence was humans taking the spirits into their own bloody hands. But what did Nahoa know of bindings? How would a spirit stop the horror that was even now sucking her daughter’s life away?

  It was midnight again, and Ahi had finally fallen into a fitful sleep. Her breathing was like iron rasping against stone, and h
er skin was so hot that Nahoa wrapped another damp cloth over them both.

  “Ahi, sweet Ahi,” she whispered. “Come on, girl. You can make it. You were born in the fire, weren’t you? A little fever can’t hurt.”

  Ahi sighed with a painful wheeze and hiccupped. Nahoa kissed the crown of her head, too exhausted to even cry.

  “Would you like me to take her?” Malie said.

  Nahoa shook her head. Malie looked as tired as she felt. The two of them had taken turns caring for Ahi since she fell ill, but neither had gotten more than a few minutes of sleep. She still might resent Malie’s role in bringing her to the fire temple, but now she couldn’t imagine anyone she’d rather have with her. Malie had borne the endless misery without complaining. If she hadn’t been there, Nahoa might have let grief claim her hours ago.

  Malie slumped against the wall beside her, eyes lidded but not quite shut.

  “I think you should contact him,” Malie said.

  “Who?”

  “The Mo’i. If Makaho won’t help. . .”

  Nahoa clamped her teeth down on a sob. Malie was right. Kohaku would do anything to save his daughter. He loved as fiercely as he hated. If anyone could find a witch, someone to wrest her daughter from the death’s grip, it would be him. And yet, the moment she asked for his help, she would once again be entirely in his power. How could she do that after she’d given so much to be free? And yet how could she deny her daughter this one last chance?

  “Oh crap,” she said, feeling a tear slide down her warm cheek, and then another. “Crap, crap, crap. Malie, I don’t know if I can bear it—”

  The maid put her arm around Nahoa’s shoulder. “Shh,” she whispered. “It’ll be all right. I’ll go with you. It’ll be all right.”

  The three of them fell asleep like that, exhausted and hurting, and Nahoa only awoke when Ahi did. She was coughing again. Nahoa adjusted her arms to relieve some of the pressure and glanced up.

  Pano was in the room, staring at her like he’d seen a spirit.

  “Nahoa,” he said, his voice so low she could hardly hear it. “What’s the matter with Ahi?”

  She was so tired that it did not seem very odd to find Pano here again, though she had not expected it. She figured he’d leave her alone after she helped him free those people. “She’s sick. She’s very sick. Pano—I think she might. . .”

  Pano took a few quiet steps across the floor and knelt before her. His bushy, dark eyebrows drew together, deepening the lines on his forehead. He touched Ahi’s head with his large, gentle hands, and the child relaxed beneath them. His eyes grew tight as he met hers. He nodded slowly.

  “You must come with me now,” he whispered. “If we move quickly, it may be a few hours before Makaho notices.”

  “Come with you?” Nahoa repeated. This was an option she hadn’t considered—putting herself in the rebel’s power instead of her husband’s. But would it be an improvement? “Can you save her?”

  “I don’t know. But there’s someone we can ask.”

  “A witch?” she asked, for she knew her child was beyond the skills of a mere apothecary.

  He nodded. “An Ana.”

  “What are you doing here?” Malie’s voice was rough with sleep, but alert and distrustful. She had known Pano from before the eruption, in those long-ago months in the Mo’i’s house.

  He acknowledged her with a nod. “I came to ask your lady for a favor, but now…”

  “Now you just want to kidnap her?”

  Nahoa gave Malie a sour look. “Not so different from how you got me here, is it?”

  “The Mo’i is insane,” said Malie defensively.

  “So’s Makaho. He says he knows an Ana who can help.”

  “We have to leave now,” Pano said. “Just trust me enough for this, Nahoa. I promise. I’d never let any harm come to you or Ahi.”

  It was strange, because the last year had taught her that everyone played politics, even the girls who emptied her chamber pot. Yet she trusted Pano. She trusted the crinkles around his eyes, the smell of dirt that never seemed to wash off his hands. She trusted the terror in his voice when he said Ahi’s name—as though it meant nearly as much to him as it did to her. She knew that he would help her, and though his help might come with strings, they wouldn’t bind as tightly as her husband’s.

  “I’m going, Malie. Stay here.”

  “But Naho—”

  “No,” she whispered fiercely, as Ahi started to whimper. “If anyone comes, they have to find you here. You have to make sure they don’t know I’ve gone.”

  “You’re going to the rebels without me?” she asked.

  “I’m coming back,” Nahoa whispered. “I need you here for me when I do. Makaho has to think you’re still loyal.”

  Malie nodded slowly, and despite everything, Nahoa felt an odd sort of pride. It had taken some time, but she was learning this game. If life forced her to be a player, she wouldn’t be the first piece scuttled off the board.

  When Nahoa had slipped on her sandals and wrapped Ahi in a shawl, Pano nodded curtly and held out his hand. She took it. He led her down the silent hall and then up another flight of stairs, pausing occasionally to check for guards or any nocturnal wanderers. He stopped before an open window overlooking an overgrown part of the temple grounds. The pagodas here had been given up to the creeping vines that made quick work of the ancient stone carvings. It was a sad, disturbingly beautiful sort of destruction. He looked out over the edge and touched the sturdy vines that crept up the temple walls.

  “Take your shawl,” he whispered, his mouth close to her ear. “Tie Ahi to my chest. I’ll climb down with her. You follow.”

  Nahoa did this without objecting. She was too exhausted to trust herself with Ahi’s weight if she had to climb down the side of the temple. Pano went first, and she waited until he was halfway to the ground. Then she heard a faint scuffling on the stairs nearby—so light it could have just been a rat or a mongoose—and she scrambled onto the vine outside with hardly a thought. A shadow fell on the sill a few moments later. Her breathing caught in her throat. That had been too close. She went down carefully, but the vine here was sturdy and old, with plenty of places for her feet and hands. She wondered why no one had thought to cut it down, but perhaps no one but a gardener would know to trust its hold on the crumbling stones.

  “Come,” Pano said, when her feet touched the ground. She thought to ask for Ahi again, but her daughter was sleeping so soundly against Pano’s chest she thought it better to leave her. It didn’t even occur to her that Pano could run off with Ahi, putting her permanently in his control. They walked until they reached the water and Pano hired someone to take them to a small local dock in the fourth district. She fell asleep on the tiny canoe, her head on Pano’s shoulder and her hand resting against Ahi’s foot. His shoulder smelled nearly as nice as his hands—of lye soap and sweat and ashes. She dreamed the two of them were the points of light floating on the waves and Ahi was laughing at the moon. He woke her what seemed like a year later, though it couldn’t have taken very long. She found she barely had the energy to walk when they climbed back on land, but thankfully the building where they stopped was close to the docks.

  The front door was locked, but Pano just pounded until someone opened it. It was an older man, gaunt like so many others these days, and glaring at the two of them through tired eyes.

  “Do you know how late it is?” the man said.

  “I apologize,” Pano said. “But we need to see the black angel. It’s urgent.”

  “The black angel?” The man tilted his head in sleepy befuddlement. Then some sort of horrified awareness gripped him and his shoulders slumped. “Oh,” he said. “You mean Lana. Yes. Follow me.”

  The black angel had a name? But of course she did. The girl who had stared at her so frankly across the courtyard that day hadn’t been belched from the ruins on the wind island. She was a person, with a home and a lover.

  “Papa?” the black angel s
aid when they entered the apartment. She was wearing nothing but a pair of short pants, holding a lamp that partially illuminated her sleepy face.

  Not a lover. A father.

  “You have visitors,” the father said.

  The black angel peered at Pano and Nahoa and then brought the lamp closer. Her eyes widened. “What are. . .” she trailed off and then looked at them more closely. “What happened?”

  “Nahoa’s daughter is sick,” Pano said, gesturing to Ahi who had started coughing feebly against his chest.

  Nahoa thought he might have to explain more, but the black angel looked so immediately grim and competent that Nahoa knew she must have done this many times before.

  “You can go back to bed, Papa,” she said, her voice far gentler than her expression. “I’ll take care of this.”

  “But, the child. . .shouldn’t I fetch an apothecary?” He caught his daughter’s look and stopped. “Of course. I’ll see you in the morning, Lana.”

  He avoided Lana’s eyes and shuffled into the other room in the apartment, closing the door behind him. Nahoa took in Lana’s dark skin, her broad accent, and realized what should have been obvious from the first: she was an outer islander. A rustic outer islander, of all people, had become the black angel? It certainly explained her utter lack of self-consciousness at meeting them shirtless. On the outer islands, women only covered their breasts for ceremonies. It was too hot otherwise.

  Once her father had left, the black angel cleared the low kitchen table of utensils and told Pano to rest Ahi in the center. Even an hour ago, Ahi would have cried at the lack of human contact, but now she just twisted weakly and struggled to breathe. Nahoa knelt beside the table. How much longer did Ahi have? Would the only worthwhile thing in Nahoa’s life vanish forever?

  “You don’t have much time,” Pano said to the black angel.

  “I can see that,” the black angel snapped, and Nahoa wondered, distantly, how these two knew each other.

  The black angel knelt and lifted one of Ahi’s limp hands. “How long has she been like this?” she asked gently. “What part of the body does it most affect?”