“She’s fine. I need you to take her for me.”
Malie lifted Ahi and frowned. “Are you going somewhere, my lady?”
“Only to see Kohaku. He came a little while ago.”
“Is this for Pano? What he’s asking isn’t safe.”
“What is safe these days? And anyway, it’s not for Pano. Or not just for him.”
Ahi began to hiccup, and Malie absently held her over her shoulder, rocking to ease her discomfort.
“Nahoa. You’re not going to. . .you can’t go back to him.”
“If it will stop this war? What right do I have to let all these people die for my own comfort?”
“Kohaku is unpredictable. What if you go back and the war doesn’t stop? What if he hurts you?”
Nahoa shook her head. “He won’t hurt me.” But perhaps she said it with a little too much conviction?
“And what about Ahi?”
“You’ll take care of her.”
“And what if you die?”
Nahoa had to wipe her eyes, but she didn’t waver. “You’ll take care of her.”
Malie sighed. “I could kill Pano. Truly, I could, for dragging you into this while my back was turned. He knew I’d never approve. That’s why he found you alone.”
This was news to Nahoa. “I never thought of you as the protective type,” she said.
“Someone needs to be.”
Ahi had fallen asleep, so Nahoa just kissed the crown of her head and left before Malie could make her change her mind. She knew she had to do this, but that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it.
Kohaku had yet to finish his meeting with Makaho. Nahoa waited impatiently outside the secondary fire room, where he and the head nun conversed about their horrifying schemes in absolute privacy. She was too nervous to even want to spy on them. Pano hadn’t contacted her since the battle started, and she was sick with worry for him. She had even gone to the stables to find Sabolu, but the girl had been gone on some errand that the other one, Uele’a, had been at a loss to explain.
Finally, frustrated past endurance, Nahoa nodded at the guard standing outside the door and pushed her way inside before he could stop her.
“And the other?” Kohaku was asking.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I do. There’s nothing definitive just yet.”
And then they both noticed her. Kohaku’s face lit up in a way that made her stomach clench, but Makaho just frowned. “We were just finishing, my lady. What’s your business?”
It was unusual for Makaho to be so short with her, but Nahoa was too agitated to mark it. “I’d like to speak with my husband,” she said.
Makaho narrowed her eyes at the both of them and then shrugged. “You may use this room, in that case. I will contact you soon, Mo’i.”
The head nun left the fire room and then the two of them were alone. Kohaku looked at her and took a few tentative steps closer. “How is Ahi?” he asked.
“Good. Happy as ever. She can suck on a screwpine wedge for hours.”
This seemed to make him miserable, though he still smiled. “I’m glad. Makaho tells me she was sick.”
“She’s fine now,” Nahoa said, made terse by her confusion. Of course Kohaku couldn’t be responsible. She felt horrible for even suspecting him.
“Nahoa. . .” He cleared his throat. “Do you think you might come back. Eventually? I miss you. Both of you.”
Great Kai. Nahoa couldn’t even speak. She knelt with shin-jarring force on the marble floor and turned her head away from him. She could not cry. Not on top of everything else.
“I’ll do it,” she said. Her throat was dry—her voice was barely a whisper—but Kohaku still heard her.
“Nahoa? You and Ahi. . .”
She coughed and forced some strength into her words. “I’ve got conditions.”
He had been about to embrace her, but he stopped now, confused. And perhaps a bit angry.
“Not Ahi. She stays here. Just me. And you have to call off this war. And the disappearances. All of it.”
He stared at her for so long she had to fight just to breathe. Her heart pounded so hard it would have woken Ahi. Great Kai, please let this work.
Her husband stood with frightening speed and knocked plates and remnants of food from the table. A flush was livid on his cheeks. “They’re the ones fighting a war against me! What am I supposed to do? Let them take over the Mo‘i’s house and start passing laws?”
“Yes! If that’s what it takes to end the violence. Haven’t you made us suffer enough?”
“Nahoa, you can’t, not even you. . .”
“Everyone knows,” she said mercilessly. “It’s no secret now. Not with the black angel and the guardians.”
That last made Kohaku dash forward and grip her face between his hands with enough force to make her tremble. She wasn’t really afraid—not even now—but she had never seen him so furious before. Not with her. “What do you know about the blasted guardians?”
“Everything! I know what they said you should do. I think you’re a coward for refusing them.”
Always afterward, she would wonder what made her say it, when she had never once thought such a thing. Why had she lashed out at him with such cruelty? They stared at each other in shock. He sat back on his heels. His eyes were wet.
“Oh, sister,” he said. And again, “Oh.”
She had started this, and she would finish it. “My conditions, Kohaku.”
“It’s too late. I wish you could see that, Nahoa. The war is started. I must finish it. If I could give all this up, I would. But I’m the Mo’i and I have obligations. You wouldn’t understand. You’re just a sailor.”
That hurt, like she supposed he intended it to. “You don’t want me back?”
The tears flowed freely down his face. “More than anything.”
“But not more than war.”
He raised his chin, his face the mask of blind stubbornness she knew so well. “I will win this, Nahoa. And there will be peace in Essel, and you and Ahi will come back to me. I promise.”
There was such self-delusion in his gaze, so much fear. She wondered how long he had been out of her reach—if perhaps she should have made this offer sooner.
“Goodbye, Kohaku,” she said, and fled the room.
The corridors of the fire temple were eerily silent, given the hell Nahoa knew must be exploding outside. Makaho had agreed to care for some of the wounded in the dilapidated southern half of the complex, but the casualties so far had not been half as large as they’d all feared. Nahoa understood why when she looked outside: the snow that she had marked as a curiosity a few hours prior had turned into an awesome white blanket, falling over the charred city and softening its hard edges. She had only ever seen snow on her trips as a sailor to the inner islands, and even then, nothing like this. A true inner-island winter made it far too dangerous to sail, though she had heard from those who lived there of these piles of frozen water. It looked like a spirit-borne ashfall to Nahoa, something entirely otherworldly. She huddled, chilled, before the clear glass windows overlooking some of the better-kept gardens and pagodas. The snow obscured all but the tallest plants and weighed down the trees, but it melted before it reached the steaming hot springs. She knew the pools were much too hot for bathing, but they still looked inviting against the backdrop of so much cold.
This snow had to have stopped the fighting for now. Perhaps it could stop it forever? Or perhaps Kohaku, better equipped and far more ruthless, would merely wait for the rebels to starve and freeze to death before going in and killing the rest of them. Perhaps Pano would get a special, public execution to honor the occasion.
She shuddered. “He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.” But it was like Malie had said—she wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Only Ahi made sense to her, and even she would grow inscrutable as she got older.
She heard the familiar smack of Makaho’s calloused, scarred feet on the floor, but she didn’t turn around. Nahoa
wished she would just go away. But she wouldn’t, any more than Kohaku or his war would.
“What do you want?” Nahoa said, and almost winced at her own rudeness.
“I was worried for you,” she said mildly. “The Mo’i was quite upset when he left.”
Nahoa could imagine. “Well, I’m safe,” she said, still looking out at the snow. She could see Makaho’s distorted reflection in the glass, though she tried not to focus on it. Makaho’s expression was diffident and obsequious as always. As though that fooled anyone. She seemed disinclined to leave and so finally Nahoa sighed and turned around. She attempted to walk straight past her, but Makaho took a discreet step to one side so as to block her passage.
“I thought I should tell you, my lady,” she said. “With the state of affairs outside being what it is, I’ve taken the liberty of assigning a guard. Your husband agrees with me. I don’t expect any harm to come to you while you’re here in the temple, but still, we can’t be too careful about you and the baby.”
The way she said “baby” was so pointed that Nahoa blanched. What did she know about Ahi’s illness? Was she implying that she knew its geas origins? And if so, did that mean she had caused it? But then why threaten her with it now? Nahoa’s head hurt with the puzzle that no piece of information seemed capable of teasing out.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Nahoa said. “It’s hard enough around here without some soldier following me around all day. I’m sure Ahi won’t like him.” Actually, her daughter was far more likely to love the new face, but no need to admit it. A guard would make it much harder to hear from Pano safely.
Though perhaps that was Makaho’s true purpose?
Makaho shrugged apologetically. “I understand the inconvenience, truly. But we only have your well being in mind. I hope you’ll bear with it?”
Pretend I have a choice. “Of course.” She attempted to move forward, but Makaho still blocked her way. She gave Nahoa an appraising look.
“I trust Ahi is well?” the head nun asked.
“Yes. Fine. Perfect. And she’s probably very hungry by now, so if you don’t mind. . .”
Makaho smiled and moved aside with a little bow. Nahoa walked away, her pace a hair short of a run. The guard was already stationed outside the antechamber doors when she arrived, and Malie was arguing with him in a whisper.
“This is absurd,” she was saying, with the air of one who is repeating herself. “We have no need for further protection here in the bowels of the fire temple.”
“There’s a war on, miss,” he said, also with an air of repetition. “The head nun wants you to be safe.”
“Does she imagine the rebel hordes are going to storm the gates?”
The guard pursed his lips, as there was no safe answer to this question. Nahoa shook her head and grabbed Malie by the elbow.
“Come on, he won’t move, and you know it. The old bag sent him.”
The man lowered his eyes and seemed about to stammer out some sort of apology or introduction before Nahoa slid the door shut. They walked into the inner chamber, shut that door, and knelt against the far wall.
“I don’t think he’ll be able to avoid a guard,” Malie whispered.
“I know. Do you think we should warn him?”
She rolled her eyes. “Please. Pano’s been sneaking around where he doesn’t belong since you were sucking on screw pines. Don’t worry about him.”
But Nahoa did worry. She worried if he was safe, if the rebels had actually made the bows and arrows she’d given them the plans for, if he’d eaten, if he’d come back. But now he couldn’t.
“My lady, ” Malie paused, her eyes as wary as the guard’s. “Do you know why she’s guarding us, after all this time?”
Nahoa thought back to her strange conversation with Makaho. “I think she’s worried. About Ahi. Like she knows something about what happened and she’s afraid for her.”
Malie took this in. “You don’t think she did it.”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you’re right. I think she has too much to lose, and she must have learned something that made her afraid for you.” Malie paused, and then said pointedly, “Something about the people you’ve been consorting with?”
“About. . .but Pano would never—”
Malie held up her hands in preemptive surrender. “I know, I know. You trust the gardener.”
Nahoa had never understood Malie’s consistent distrust. She’d just attributed it to her generally wary and sour nature toward other people. But now, so closely echoing Nahoa’s own private worries, it made her furious. “What’s so damn wrong with the gardener, Malie?”
“He used to work for the old bag, you know. Not when you first met him. A few years before that. Half the gardens you see on the bayside are his.”
No wonder he could sneak through the temple so easily. Nahoa had never even wondered. Her stomach felt curiously tight. She reached for Ahi, but the child was sleeping. “So?” she said. Her voice was small.
“Well, isn’t it funny, my lady? That he used to work for Makaho herself and then he worked in the Mo‘i’s house, and now suddenly he’s some flaming revolutionary?” Malie spoke as quietly as ever, but her words seemed to fall from her lips like embers.
“Not suddenly,” Nahoa said, remembering. “He was writing pamphlets against the Mo‘i when I was there.”
Malie rolled her eyes. “Yes. Pamphlets. Not wars.”
“Well, things have changed, haven’t they? Half the world blew up! It’s not as though he could have kept tending the Mo‘i’s orchids while half the city starved, and my own bloody husband responsible!”
Malie froze. She seemed surprised. “It never was just about Pano, was it? Why you agreed to help.”
“About Pano?”
“I’ve seen how you look when you think he can’t see.”
“Ahi likes him,” she said, though this seemed inadequate.
“Ahi likes everybody.”
“He likes Ahi. He’d never—” Nahoa stopped herself because she seemed to be trembling. Her throat felt tight, like she might cry. “He’d never.”
Malie’s expression—previously so hard and cold—melted like a handful of the snow outside. She embraced Nahoa, a gesture so unexpected she could only submit to it. The tears began not soon after. “Shh,” she said softly. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I hope you’re right.”
13
THE SNOW FELL AND FELL UNTIL the afflicted citizens of Essel likened the blanketing white to a shroud. Even the children were admonished not to play in the towering drifts, lest they lose themselves in the powdered ice. What little food had been available vanished for all but the wealthiest, those with servants to pay or admonish into braving the weather with armfuls of sennit braid. People disappeared and were discovered hours or days later, frozen, eyes closed and bodies gently curled as though they had simply lain down for a nap. Some claimed the water spirit was punishing them for giving too much to fire. Essel’s solitary water temple—never well kept and in recent years close to collapse from disuse—drew crowds so large they had to line up in the street.
There was a war on. The Mo‘i’s soldiers had marched through the streets some days before, when the snowfall had just been a pleasant novelty and not a sure sign of the apocalypse. For the first time since the eruption, no one could see Nui’ahi. Bereft of their sentinel, the citizens of Essel watched the low-grade war being fought in the heart of the city with apocalyptic fatalism. The northern borders of the rebel encampment were slowly expanding, largely by dint of the fact that the Mo’i’s army had unwisely chosen to burn the buildings that might otherwise have provided them with cover.
But who could have guessed that the ragged rebel forces—largely composed, it seemed, of seventh-district farmers and firstdistrict beggars—would have found some way to arm themselves with Bloody One-hand’s most deadly weapon? It had to be that black angel, the soldiers whispered, as did the townspeople nearby. That strange girl who had co
me to their city and never left. The harbinger of the great sentinel’s fire now seemed to carry the snow like a mantle over her great black wings. She flew over the city, silent as a nightmare. A shadow was all the warning anyone had through the enshrouding whiteout of the snowfall. And looking up, the black angel’s face was never quite visible, though her eyes seemed to glow like embers.
On the third night the snow fell, the angel circled thrice overhead, sending those of the Mo’i’s soldiers who saw her plunging to their knees, heads bent, palms out in supplication. Edere kept his head tilted up, and for a moment it seemed she held his gaze before vanishing into the misted night. His unnatural calm gave way to unnatural terror. He clutched the ax the Mo’i had given him and muttered, “Ancestors grant our souls mercy,” a half-remembered prayer whose meaning he only dimly understood. His grandmother had said it sometimes in extremity. But she was from a deeply rural island on the outskirts of Okika and prone to rustic superstition. He’d heard that the black angel made any man she touched shrivel like a withered vine. He’d heard that she’d been seen cavorting naked with the fire spirit on the rim of Nui’ahi. He’d heard that she used to be a girl, a diver who had traveled from one end of the earth to the other in search of a spirit to give her wings. He didn’t believe any of the stories. He didn’t care who she had been or what she did or said—she was the black angel, and her presence meant death on a scale his rustic grandmother could never have imagined.
She was lucky to have died all those years ago. The home her father built had burned down in the second wave of fires. Edere had joined Bloody One-hand’s army to save his mother and sister from starvation. And it hadn’t been such a bad job so far. Edere and his cadre of the Mo’i’s soldiers had been waiting in uneasy truce for days. Sometimes a stray rebel arrow would land perilously close to their front line and sporadic fighting would break out until cooler heads prevailed on both sides. Two of Edere’s friends had been wounded that way—medical runners took them both to the tents, but he privately wondered if he’d see either of them alive again. Wounds festered, particularly the deep punctures made by the arrows.
The Burning City (Spirit Binders) Page 26