The Burning City (Spirit Binders)

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  Nahoa rushed through the nightmare of the past two days, but she didn’t know how to answer Lana’s second question. “It’s everywhere! None of the apothecaries knew what to make of it. She coughs, she can’t keep food down, her stools are liquid, she shivers. . .”

  Lana nodded and carefully rested her hands on Ahi’s chest. Lana hissed and drew them away immediately.

  “Her skin is boiling. How can she be so hot?” She paused for a moment. “But she was born in the fire. Of course.”

  The black angel stood with a rustle of wings and moved purposefully about her kitchen. She took a rough cloth and a knife with an edge so sharp Nahoa could see it glint from where she sat.

  “This will be messy,” Lana said. “I don’t think there’s enough time for more preparations.”

  Pano glanced at Nahoa, his worried expression conveying volumes. He knew about witches and sacrifice and was wary about what the black angel might be asking. Nahoa wasn’t sure she cared so long as it saved her daughter.

  “I offer myself!” he said. “If you need a sacrifice. It will be willing.”

  Lana flinched as though struck. Then, slowly, she walked to the table and sat beside it. Her shoulders shook as though she were furious or frightened.

  “I need no sacrifices but my own,” she said, harsh as Ahi’s breathing. “And I never will.” She stared at Pano until he looked down.

  “I apologize, Ana,” he said, though Nahoa didn’t quite understand why. She slipped her hand inside his. It was dry and warm. She was gratified that he would offer himself for the sacrifice, though she supposed it was good for them both that the black angel was not that kind of witch.

  Lana laid out the cloth, placed her arm on the table, and lifted the knife. With her wrist exposed, Nahoa finally noticed what Pano must have seen before: the row of barely healed scars inching up her forearm. She had done this many times before. Always at cost to herself. It had insulted her that Pano would have assumed otherwise. The black angel didn’t hesitate when she brought the blade down. Blood welled over the blade and stained the cloth beneath. Nahoa turned away and stared at Ahi. This was for her. For her. But she had to swallow bile at the thought of Lana’s deliberate self-destruction. She’d always thought it best to give the spirits a wide berth before, but she’d never had such a clear demonstration of why.

  “Fire, who so recently broke its bounds,” said the black angel.

  The hairs rose on Nahoa’s arms. Pano gripped her hand more tightly. The air seemed charged, like on the ocean before a thunderstorm. And Lana was utterly, imperturbably calm in the face of it. She might be incongruously young, but she really was an Ana.

  “I bind you with blood. I bind you with my knowledge of fire. Show me the cause of this child’s illness. She burns with your flame.”

  Lana’s pupils had dilated until her eyes seemed black in the lamplight. She gazed at something neither Nahoa nor Pano could see. Her mouth moved, but the only sounds they could hear were indistinct glottal stops unconnected to any vowels.

  “Yes,” she breathed, after several long minutes. She lifted her still-bleeding arm from the table and reached behind her. Again, without the slightest hesitation, she plucked a large feather from above her shoulder.

  “The wind’s sacrifice to brush it clear, to erase the other binding.” She dusted Ahi with the feather, starting at her feet and ending with the crown of her head. Nahoa fought the urge to slap the black angel’s hand away. The action looked primitive and sinister, but she had no choice but to trust her now. The air had grown stifling, making it a struggle to even breathe. Ahi’s body crackled and sparked. Lana’s hair floated in an eerie nimbus around her face, but she didn’t seem to notice. And then Lana released the feather above Ahi’s chest. It hung for an impossible moment, trembling, and then burst into flames.

  Nahoa shrieked and Pano gripped her arm before she could scramble forward. But it was all right. The feather was consumed and the ashes floated gently down, dusting the table. The heat dissipated and Lana slumped toward the ground, as though exhausted.

  “Is that—what happened?” Nahoa said. Lana gestured silently to Ahi, and Nahoa took this as permission to touch her daughter. As soon as she did, she realized that Lana had succeeded. Her daughter’s skin was cool, her breathing clear and easy. She slept peacefully, but when Nahoa tentatively pulled her to her breast, Ahi awoke enough to drink.

  Nahoa looked back up. Lana was smiling at them both, and Nahoa wondered why she had been so ambivalent about the black angel before. She’d love her forever for saving her daughter. “Thank you so much,” Nahoa said. “I don’t know what I can do—”

  “Keep her safe,” the black angel said. “That wasn’t a natural illness. It was a geas. I couldn’t tell who laid it—it was clumsy, so probably not someone very familiar with binding. But they bound your daughter with fire.”

  Pano released her hand and leaned in closer to the black angel.

  “You’re saying. . .this means that someone in the fire temple tried to assassinate an infant.”

  “It could have been anyone. I’m no politician, but I don’t see what advantage the fire temple gains by killing the one thing that gives them a hold over the Mo’i.”

  “They’d still have me,” Nahoa said quietly.

  But Pano was shaking his head. “And if your husband thought you and your daughter weren’t safe there, he’d start a war with them to get you out. The only reason he hasn’t already is because he thinks he can still convince you.”

  Nahoa stared at him. “Start a war? Another one? You’re crazy.”

  “No, he is. And whoever tried to kill Ahi knows it.”

  Ahi, as though objecting to the topic of conversation, stopped drinking and started to wail. Nahoa lifted her up and started rocking her back and forth, making meaningless noises and struggling to hold back sudden tears. She had come so close. . .it had come too close.

  “How do I stop it from happening again? How can I protect her if I don’t even know who wants her dead?”

  Lana held a clean edge of the bloody cloth to her wrist. She winced now, though she hadn’t given any indication that she felt the pain before. “Someone might have spent enough time with her to recite a geas. You would have noticed if you’d been in the room. Or they touched her with an object already bound to a spirit.”

  Pano caught her eyes, and she was again startled by how serious he looked, how worried. “If you must go back there, Nahoa, then you can’t let anyone else touch her but you. You can’t accept any gifts.” “What about Malie? I can’t do this all myself.”

  “Do you trust her?”

  After a moment, Nahoa nodded. “I’d never have made it without her. I think she’s loyal. She’d never hurt Ahi.”

  “And send word to me if you think that anything is wrong,” Lana said.

  Nahoa realized then that they had to get back or risk Makaho discovering she’d left. Pano thanked Lana and tried to give her some coins, but the black angel refused. Nahoa thought she might have accepted them if Pano hadn’t insulted her earlier. Which was stupid, Nahoa thought. As if pride should stop this girl from taking care of herself.

  Lana walked with them as far as the docks, and the air was warm enough that she didn’t seem to notice she’d forgotten to don a shirt. Nahoa bound the sleeping Ahi to her back with a shawl, and wrapped another around her head. Pano didn’t want anyone to recognize her out here. Nahoa hadn’t realized she was so famous.

  The same canoe was waiting for them when they arrived. Pano stepped into the boat and held out his arms to help Nahoa inside. She had gripped his hands when she noticed an oddly furtive movement at the other end of the darkened street. She shook free of Pano and peered closer—it was a man, and he was raising some sort of strange object shaped like a crescent moon and he was pointing it straight at the black angel, whose back was still turned to him.

  Nahoa gave a wordless cry and yanked hard on a clump of Lana’s loosened hair. Nahoa stumbled to her kne
es and Lana’s shriek of surprise turned to a gasp far more ominous. Lana tumbled sideways. Pano was already out of the boat and sprinting down the road, but Nahoa didn’t think he’d catch the attacker: the man was fast and too far ahead.

  What was that strange weapon? Nahoa had never actually seen a bow and arrow before, but she guessed that’s what the assassin had been using.

  Lana groaned at her feet, but at first Nahoa couldn’t see any injury.

  “It’s her wings, miss.” Nahoa looked up, startled. The boatman had climbed up to the docks and was kneeling beside her. He was right: an arrow, like a tiny spear, had pierced Lana’s left wing dangerously close to where it met her back.

  “What. . .what happened?” Lana gasped. She attempted to turn over and stopped, trembling. The cobbled street beneath her wings was running with her blood. Quickly, Nahoa unwrapped the shawl from her head and held it to the wound. She prayed that the boatman wasn’t one of those who would recognize her.

  “A bow, I think,” Nahoa said.

  “Who was he aiming for?” Lana said. “Which one of us?”

  Nahoa thought back to the confused glimpse she’d had of him aiming the weapon. She hadn’t been afraid for herself, though now she realized she should have been. But his aim had been steady, not following her progress. He’d been focusing on an obvious target.

  “You,” she whispered.

  Lana closed her eyes—in either pain or shock, Nahoa didn’t know. She looked back down the street and saw Pano returning, panting and empty-handed.

  “He was too far ahead. I couldn’t get a good look at him. How is she?”

  Nahoa adjusted the pressure on the shawl she held pressed against the wound. Lana groaned and then went completely limp, her head lolling against Nahoa’s shoulder. She and Pano shared a worried glance.

  “We have to get her off the street. Someplace safe,” he said.

  “Her father?” she asked.

  He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “There’s too much blood. I don’t think he knows…there’s nothing for it. You go. I’ll take her.”

  “Take her where?”

  “Sea Street. Rebel territory.”

  The black book

  Tulo hated the city. She’d never been to one before, but even I had to admit that the smell of accumulated shit on the packed dirt roads—not to mention some of the people walking on them—could be fairly unpleasant. She hated the crowds, too, and the bustle and the noise. What she hated most of all, though it took Parech and I nearly a day to understand, was how much more of a handicap her blindness was in the city. The humans cast too much light, she said. Trying to see the spirit paths was like holding a torch close to your eyes and then trying to see the stars. Everything had turned to a featureless haze. She cried herself to sleep for three nights after we arrived, and the other travelers who shared the cramped room with us would huff loudly until she fell silent. Parech would stare at me after she slept and I knew what he was asking, Should we go back? Should we stay in the forest for her? But I didn’t want to go back. I liked this city. I liked its laughably abundant food, sold by people from all over the islands. They made a kind of fried bread with spices that made me cry the first time I tried it. I’d never tasted anything better in my life.

  I wanted to be selfish, but Tulo’s misery dragged at me, too. I didn’t know how I would have survived in her situation. It seemed cruel to make her suffer more. Finally, I told Parech that we could leave, and I almost winced at the relief in his face. He cared for her more than me, I thought. Well, I could manage. But it still hurt.

  We told Tulo together while we sat on a hill of pampas grass that overlooked the bay. We’d thought she’d be overjoyed, but instead her shoulders went up just like they always did when we offended her.

  “I agreed to come here, didn’t I? What am I, some baby for you to indulge and discuss in the middle of the night? Yes, I like the forest better. I know the forest. But I lived for a year without the spirit sight, and I can make do here. I will. And don’t you two dare tell me I can’t just because I’m blind!”

  I glanced at Parech and was rewarded with his surprised laughter. “Tulo,” I said, “we never. . .”

  “You thought it!” she said, glaring at me.

  And I had. It didn’t really seem fair for her to be mad for my thoughts, but she was right. Perhaps we should have just talked to her instead of assuming she’d want to deprive us of this adventure.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. Her expression softened, but her carriage was still haughty.

  Parech reached out and took her hand. “I forgot for a moment you’re a princess.” Which was the precisely right thing to say, because she suddenly gave both of us a bright grin and leaned against his shoulder.

  “See, now, everything will be all right. We’ll all find something to do. And it’s getting better, the longer I’m in the city. I got so used to the spirit roads being so clear it was like I couldn’t see them at all when they got fainter. I’ll use a stick and we’ll stay. It’ll be all right.”

  I hugged her. “You’re sure?”

  She laughed. “Of course I am. You think I haven’t noticed how fat you’ve been getting on those spice cakes?”

  “The princess is very observant,” Parech said. “Our Ana may turn into a real beauty yet. She was too skinny to see before.”

  I blushed so furiously at this that Parech laughed again.

  “I know you had some reason to bring us here, you fool soldier,” I said, when the wind from the ocean had grown chilly. “It can’t just be to sweep streets and weave baskets.”

  Tulo seemed surprised at this. “Does he?” she asked. “You have a plan, Parech? What is it?”

  Parech tossed me a wry expression. “You really are a witch.”

  “You’re cute when you think you’re being mysterious.”

  “‘Think?’ I am mysterious, I assure you. You two will just have to be curious a little while longer. It’s not quite ready yet. But I promise, this plan will make our fortunes.”

  Parech’s plan, as it turned out, involved deceit, fraud, theft, and a serious possibility of violence. It started with Tulo, who would pretend to be a blind soothsayer (“I know you’re the Ana, but she looks the part,” Parech explained). Since she was obviously Kawadiri, she would play on what Parech called “people’s preconceived notions.” I gathered this meant speaking halting Maaram with a heavy accent, baring her chest, and wearing some absurd costume Parech cobbled together out of feathers and straw and ragged monkey pelts.

  “It doesn’t feel like anything Kawadiri,” Tulo had said doubtfully, and I’d glared at Parech and informed Tulo that as little as I knew of her people, she could be assured that not one of them had ever worn anything at all like it.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Parech said airily. “It’s only important to make them believe you’re Kawadiri.”

  “I am Kawadiri,” she said indignantly. “Why can’t I wear my own clothes and speak Maaram like a properly educated person?” And then Parech was off again about his “preconceived notions.” I stormed off to get some food.

  As for me, I was to play the wealthy daughter of an Esselan chief whose canoe had capsized somewhere off the coast. Only by the grace of the ancestors had I washed ashore in Maaram. I had struggled to reach the city. (“That explains why a rich woman would be as skinny as you, Ana,” Parech said, and I nearly punched him in the stomach.) Now that I was here, I needed some “kind soul” (Parech for “rich fool”) to help me get back to my people, whereupon I would send him a generous reward for his aid, and perhaps some information about the Esselan army. Parech would play a middling Maaram merchant, just returned from Essel, who just happens to recognize me and verify my tale of woe. And how did Tulo fit into this master plan? Well, Parech had one particular “rich fool” in mind: A soldier named Taak, whom he’d encountered several months ago while on leave in Okika. This man was the spoiled youngest brother of the Maaram war canoe chieftain. And accordin
g to Parech, this wastrel had a peculiar weakness for prognosticators and omens. Once, apparently, he’d forced all the soldiers out of the city house and made them sleep in the street because some soothsayer had told him he’d have better luck if the spirits had their privacy.

  “Maybe he’s repented of that foolishness,” Tulo said.

  Parech grinned. “Oh no, not that one. A spirit talker could tell him there’d be high tide at midnight in a quarter moon and he’d take out his canoe.”

  It took a few extra days while our store of scavenged salt and sennit braid dwindled and Parech wore down our resistance with wild yarns of all we could do with a fortune—“a house in Essel all to ourselves, and coconuts and eels every night. We’ll make you fat yet, Ana!” Despite ourselves, we started to see the possibilities. And what was the harm? The fool wouldn’t be harmed for parting from his wealth, and the three of us could go on to the glittering city of Essel. Early the next morning I awoke to find Tulo asleep in my arms and Parech gone. I covered her with the blanket and wrapped a shawl around my shoulders before I went outside. Parech was perched on the low wall of mud bricks that overlooked the boarding house’s pond. The fish seemed as drowsy as I felt as they nipped at the crumbs of stale panbread that Parech was tossing on the water.

  His face was uncharacteristically solemn, and I caught myself observing him while he still hadn’t noticed my presence. He’d changed from his soldier’s wrap as soon as we’d entered the city. Now he wore a knee-length skirt of red-dyed barkcloth and a vest he’d left undone this morning. From my viewpoint I could see his swirling black tattoos, which seemed etched into his muscled flesh like chisel marks into sandstone. The wound that had nearly killed him had scarred into a pale welt than ran from his navel around to his back. I thought it might still hurt him, but he always laughed too much to let it show. I watched him there, with his salolightened hair and downturned mouth. Right there, I decided that I’d agree to his mad scheme and convince Tulo to do the same.