The Burning City (Spirit Binders)

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  Her wing was too sore to allow much movement, and so she distracted herself from her pain and loneliness by delving into the black book with a single-minded intensity. Though she was increasingly fascinated by the story of Aoi, Tulo, and Parech, she still didn’t understand why Ino would have dared so much to give it to her. Aoi had lived and died more than a thousand years ago. The only possible connection was the spirit bindings. They had begun in Aoi’s time, and now, in Lana’s time, it seemed that they were unraveling. But surely any information about the great bindings would be better given to a guardian like Kai than to an ignorant witch’s apprentice like Lana. Was it possible Akua had managed to interfere with one of the three original bindings? Lana groaned and put her hands over her head. She found it difficult to focus on anything else the longer her mother stayed missing.

  “What is Akua doing?” she said aloud, just because she had been alone with these thoughts for so long.

  The death laughed outside the window. But as she had thought many times before now, the emotion behind it seemed almost affectionate. She had bound it, once, with the knowledge that it suffered from petty human emotion. But affection?

  “You are strange,” she said to it.

  “As are you, black angel.”

  And, even more oddly, the backhanded compliment relieved some of her misery. She puzzled a bit more over the black book. Aoi’s method of making the boat invisible to their pursuers had made her gasp just a little. Binding the death was an incredibly risky geas, but Aoi seemed to have no knowledge of her recklessness. Humans imitate spirits at their peril—that was one of the lessons she had learned from the book of postulates Kai had given her in the water shrine. And yet Lana kept coming back to that geas.

  She had never heard of any binding that conferred invisibility, let alone in such a dangerous way. Could she cast it now? She found her hand drifting to the bone flute. She hadn’t used it since she came to Essel and played that one time with her father. Something about that performance had kept the death bound for the last few months. She could feel that binding pulling taut and knew she would need another geas soon to keep it from killing her, but she worried. A sufficient personal sacrifice would be painful and exhausting. And there was no other way to bind it without using Akua’s flute. Sometimes she caught herself staring at the flute’s yellowing, smooth surface, and thought: perhaps it wouldn’t hurt. But she couldn’t fool herself any longer. Akua had kidnapped her mother, had led Lana to kill another person, and had destroyed her life in some complex game where the bindings were so deep and strong she thought she must have sacrificed a village to forge them.

  Or at least an arm.

  No, Lana would just have to sacrifice. She wondered for a moment if perhaps, now that Kai was here, he could help her. But then she recalled the frozen, remote expression on his face when she first balked at helping the rebels. And after that, he treated her with courtesy that always seemed to avoid both intimacy and proximity. She wouldn’t prey on his natural empathy by asking for his help now. She had that much pride.

  She dozed on the splayed pages of the geas book, and when she awoke the streets had plunged into a misty twilight and her mouth was sticky with thirst. It seemed like too much trouble to call out. After a moment, she carefully levered herself upright on the pallet and then placed her feet on the floor. The drag on her damaged wing muscles was painful, but not unduly so. She stood and then gripped the wall when the room wobbled. She waited until she was absolutely sure she wouldn’t fall down and then went downstairs to find something to eat.

  Eliki was in the main meeting hall, eating by the fire with one hand and reading some loose, handwritten pages with the other.

  “Lipa said you should stay abed for a week at least,” said Eliki mildly.

  “I think Lipa doesn’t have much experience with wings.”

  Eliki shrugged, indicating her polite doubt even as she acceded the point. Lana pursed her lips. If only she could manage even a fraction of that poised assurance, that withering disdain. Even now, she so often felt like an untutored child in a room of adults.

  “Would you like the rest of my meal? I find I don’t have much of an appetite these days.” Lana looked at Eliki’s plate: some local fish and boiled leeks. She was a little surprised by the latter—rumors had it that the rebels could get very little produce, since their control of the first district didn’t include access to any docks. Farmers in the decimated seventh district smuggled in what they could on foot. She thought to question Eliki’s largesse, but hunger overcame her objections. Eliki was silent beside her, occasionally reading and then scribbling on the paper. The food was bland and lukewarm, but even this small meal was welcome. As the cold set in, more and more would go hungry in the city.

  “Here,” Eliki said abruptly, when Lana was finished eating, “how’s this? ‘The black angel herself, sent to us as a harbinger of the turbulent times to come, an avatar of the spirits who knows more of their ways than any other—”

  “You can’t say that.”

  Eliki paused. Her pale eyes flickered with the reflected firelight. “I believe we had an agreement?”

  Lana sighed. “But that’s not true. Plenty of others know more about spirits than I do. Kai, for one. Akua, for another.”

  “Akua the one-armed witch?” Lana nodded and Eliki shrugged. “Complete honesty, I have found, is not a particularly useful scruple in a campaign to rouse the populace, but fine. It works well enough without it.” She continued: “‘The black angel has confirmed what we have all suspected: the tyrannous bloody Mo’i lost his hand in a bargain made with the fire spirit. He sacrificed to loosen its bonds so he could come to power. And in so doing, he has destroyed this once great city and murdered several thousand of its citizens. Are we to swallow this betrayal when even now he imprisons and tortures us on no grounds, with no charges? The black angel has loaned her aid to the rebel movement, and who would know better than she the destruction of which Bloody One-hand is capable?’”

  Eliki put the pages back down on the table and looked at Lana expectantly. “Well?”

  If Eliki printed this, Lana’s fate would be forever bound with the rebels. But if she refused and left, Kohaku might assassinate her and Eliki might print it anyway. She sighed. “If you must. When does it go out?”

  “It takes two days to run the presses. We’ll start tonight.” She grinned, and for once the expression seemed to hold no calculation or malice. “Reluctant you may be, Lana, but you will help our cause immeasurably. And you must know we’re in the right.”

  Lana looked away, into the fire. “Yes,” she said quietly. But sometimes she felt that she would sacrifice “right” for “safe,” if she could. She never seemed to have that choice. And wasn’t she a coward for even wanting it?

  “There were waves,” she found herself saying. “Great waves caused by the eruption. They flooded other islands. Thousands more died, and with the crop failures the toll might go much higher. Kohaku caused that too.”

  “Waves?” Eliki breathed, sounding dazed at the thought of the destruction. “Did he truly?”

  She began to scribble furiously again. The night was growing frigid, so Lana sat on the floor, closer to the fire. She’d started to drowse when the flames guttered. She turned to see Pano, entering with the young rebel soldier who’d been scarred by fire.

  “There’s been fighting,” he said, his face haggard and grim. “Refugees from the seventh district farms bringing us supplies. One-hand got wind of it somehow and ambushed them.”

  Eliki went unnaturally still. “Casualties?” she asked, her voice crisp and uninflected.

  “Two of our own dead, three more shot with his arrows.”

  “The civilians?”

  “I’m not sure, Eliki. It was dark. At least twenty bodies before we got them through.” He seemed anguished.

  “How much food did they bring?” Eliki’s tone hadn’t changed. Well, she certainly had the constitution for sustained violence.
r />   “They’d raided what was left of the stores. Enough for at least two weeks.”

  Eliki nodded once and gathered up the loose sheets of paper. “This goes to the press immediately, Tope,” she said, handing it to the soldier. He nodded and left. Eliki and Pano stared at each other for an almost interminable moment. Lana held her hands to the fire, forgotten and confused. What was the history between these two? Why did it seem as though they were having a conversation without speaking a word?

  “This can’t go on, Pano,” she said softly. “We will lose this in a month, maybe two.”

  He shook his head with uncharacteristic violence and balled his left hand into a fist. “The people have already suffered—”

  “And they will suffer more before One-hand is through with them! We need that port, Pano. You know that.”

  “He has bows.”

  Eliki drew herself up, so that in the low light her pale skin and blond hair seemed to glow like that of an angry spirit. “And we have the heart of the people. Wait until they read what One-hand has done to them, Pano. We can reach the old docks, even without arrows.”

  The old docks were the ancient ship port in the lesser bay at the top of the sixth district. Rebel territory ended at the northern border of the first district. Perhaps they could smuggle some shipments through, but how did they hope to control it? Lana gasped when her clouded mind finally made sense of their subtext. Eliki meant to conquer the sixth district with arms, and use Lana as a rallying point from which to do it.

  “I never said you could use me to start a war!” The two of them turned to the fire, so startled she realized they both must have forgotten her presence.

  “You agreed to help our cause,” Eliki said, her voice shot through with venom. “We’re in rebellion against a tyrannical government. How did you think we would use you? To weed the garden?”

  Pano was slightly more diplomatic. “We’ve already fought with the Mo’i’s forces, you know that, Lana. If we have to fight for the docks,” he said, shooting a glance at Eliki, “we’ll do everything we can to minimize the damage.”

  Lana wrapped her arms around her knees against her sudden shivering. Pano was right. She’d known this wary alliance with the rebels would involve some violence. But a full-blown civil war?

  Still, Pano had told her of the mysterious house where Makaho had sent supplies and two mandagah jewels. He had access to dozens of people and institutions across this city that could help her find Akua and her mother. Was she willing to give that advantage up for an increasingly abstract principle? So that she could stay on the sidelines in a war that was almost certain to happen anyway? Surely if she had to choose a side, it was better to be here with the rebels than with Kohaku, who had already done so much damage. She wished that Kai were with her. He would be able to navigate this morass better than she. Sometimes she felt that her love for her mother was the only thing keeping her from sinking entirely.

  “The longer you continue fighting, the greater the chance that the spirits will break free and take away all of our choices. You know that, right?”

  Put so starkly, this seemed to startle Eliki. But Pano merely shrugged in that quiet way of his and Lana thought that he had spent much time dreading precisely that. “If we let One-hand win, after all he’s done, because of the threat of the spirits—we may have imprisoned them, but we would still become their slaves.”

  Lana closed her eyes. She was exhausted and her back hurt. She would need to leave tomorrow and search out that house in the seventh district. She would need to find her mother and find Akua and bind the death. She was a black angel. She was the witness to the start of the first war in five hundred years. Kai could hardly bear to look her in the eye.

  She did not notice when she slipped into sleep, or when Pano draped a blanket over her shoulders. Something roused her when the moon had set and the only light came from the embers of the dying fire. She saw him as a gray shadow, at first—his hair a mix of black and glowing orange. He had been staring at her, though she couldn’t see his face or read his expression. She had to speak to him. It would be easier this way—deep in this twilight unreality, his face hidden in shadow. So she couldn’t see his contempt or indifference.

  “I know what I did to Pua was wrong,” she said softly. “I don’t think I’m a good person anymore. Maybe I never was. Maybe most people aren’t, Kai, and their lives don’t force them to realize it. I’m selfish and I care about some people’s suffering more than others and I know all this, I just can’t change it. I know. . .” Her voice caught. He still hadn’t moved. “Won’t you please say something? Say you don’t hate me?”

  Kai was still for several painful moments and then moved jerkily, like a doll brought to life. He lowered his head, shook it, and then knelt before her. His eyes were black and absorbed the dim firelight like a sponge. She felt the urge to caress his cheek and stopped herself.

  “I don’t hate you. You know that.”

  “But you don’t love me?”

  “Would I be here if I didn’t, keika?”

  “Maybe you’re worried about me having sex with someone else. Maybe you’ve decided you need an heir so we can be rid of each other, maybe—”

  He leaned forward and kissed her. She held still, surprised at first. Then what felt like a lifetime of desire crashed through her and she was a raft loosed upon it. She forgot her terror at losing him, the gnawing guilt that had prompted her confession, her mother, Akua, war, death. She forgot the earth had exploded and she’d become a black angel and that she’d killed the aunt of the man she loved for the sake of her mother. There was only this room, this fire, this half-charred floor. His hands in her hair, and his lips, and then his tongue in her mouth. A passion she’d all but forgotten she could feel.

  The soldier cried when the news came back to the Mo’i’s house that the black angel still lived. And was now an agent of the rebels, no less. “S-someone pushed her, your honor,” the man said, his voice cracking on the honorific. “I couldn’t get a clear shot. . .please, I have a family—”

  “Who were the ones with her?” Kohaku interrupted, with a most uncharacteristic mildness.

  “Who?” the soldier said, startled into coherence.

  “Yes, who? Who does the city have to credit for saving the black angel’s life? For allowing her to help the rebels with this?” He lifted the flimsy paper of the rebel pamphlet and let it flutter gently to the floor.

  The soldier knelt so quickly that Kohaku thought he must have bruised his kneecaps. “Please your honor,” he said again, “I have—”

  “Who?” repeated the Mo’i.

  And now the soldier appeared to grasp that his frightened babbling might be giving the Mo’i far greater cause to be displeased than his failed assassination attempt. “I don’t know, sir. It was dark. There was a woman. In a hood. That’s the one who pushed the black angel. And a man. That’s the one who chased me away.”

  “A man. Perhaps you noticed what this man looked like?”

  The soldier blinked, but, to Kohaku’s relief, refrained from begging for his life again. “A bit taller than me. Dark hair, graying. His clothes were common and worn. A laborer of some kind.”

  Kohaku considered this. “Yet, I wonder what sort of common laborer would be on speaking terms with the black angel? Or daring enough to chase down a provincial soldier?”

  Said provincial soldier opened his mouth and then closed it, belatedly recognizing both a rhetorical statement and a trap. It was just as well. Kohaku had long grown tired of the more brutal necessities of this job. What had started with Nahe had never truly seemed to end. The spirit of his murdered sister always spurred him on.

  “Did you make out the man’s face?” he asked the soldier, finally. “Well enough for someone else to draw it?”

  The soldier, having finally decided he was unlikely to be killed or tortured, gave a shaky nod. “I believe so.”

  “Good. Consult with your commander for the details. I want a r
ecognizable drawing by the end of the day.”

  The soldier stood. Kohaku looked back down at the sprawl of papers littering his desk. Maps, mostly. Areas of the city decimated by fires, streets rendered inaccessible by lava flows, neighborhoods full of people sickened due to contaminated water supply. Death and destruction everywhere. Why, then, would even his sister’s relentless spirit desire even more?

  “And the black angel? I mean, should I try again?”

  Kohaku looked up, and something in his expression made the soldier take an involuntary backward step. “I’m sorry I—”

  “No,” Kohaku said, confused and unhappy with the sensation. “No, you’re right to ask, and no, please refrain for now. The rebels have her. We’ll gain no more benefit from trying to kill her.” Not after she’s already accused me in public. “Let’s see if we can’t devise a more useful strategy. Killing is very wasteful.”

  A pained smile froze on the soldier’s face as he bowed and exited. Wasteful, indeed.

  Kohaku suspected that the man the soldier had seen was one of the leaders of the rebel movement. If he could get a good enough likeness, this misadventure with Lana might bear some fruit after all. The thought, innocuous enough, brought back the same rush of sick dread he had felt ever since he gave the order to have her assassinated.

  “You can’t afford to let her live,” said his sister—or at least, the fire spirit’s tormented representation of her.

  Kohaku had not seen her in several days, but he was unsurprised at the timing of this visit. He’d long ago resigned himself to the knowledge that she would never leave him. He had destroyed this city for the sake of his love and thirst for revenge—and yes, not least for power. He deserved to be haunted by the ghost of his dead and beloved sister.