The Burning City (Spirit Binders)

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  Tulo and Ile will stay here. Parech and I will travel to the inner islands, one of the ones not taken up by the fire or water bindings. I will sharpen his metal blade, because such a huge binding will require a like sacrifice. He will not know what that sacrifice is until his refusing would kill us both. And then, in the event, the death spirit will be bound, his life will be saved, and he will know how I’ve deceived him.

  Then he will remember what we did in Okika to that poor Maaram soldier, almost certainly dead. He will remember that he taught me all I’ve ever needed to know about using others to get what one wants. Some may say Parech is immoral because he does this without qualms to those he does not know. But I know I am the worse person, because I am doing this to a man I love more than my own life.

  A man I love.

  I love.

  Aoi is dead.

  PART V

  Ipa Nui

  14

  HIS SISTER HAD BEEN JOINED BY A NEW GHOST, but at least this one didn’t speak. How could she, when he had ripped out her throat with his own hand? Emea regarded the bloodless, voiceless ghost of the stablegirl with distaste.

  “Was that truly necessary, brother?” she had said, when he staggered back into his rooms, his hair and clothes still wet with blood. His servants had taken one look at him and ordered several baths drawn. It always took that many when he got like this.

  “You told me to do it,” he said, running his hand through his hair long after all the blood had been rinsed away. Before, with Nahe, it had never been this hard. Even after Nahoa left, his deeds had never seemed to cling to him. His nightmares were of losing his wife and child, not of the horrors revenge had driven him to deep in the bowels of the house. But now he saw that sad little girl everywhere he went, and he felt her blood on his skin long after he had scrubbed it all away.

  “You told me to do it,” he said again, when Emea didn’t respond.

  Her blue-flame eyes had never seemed more inhuman. “No one told you to tear out her throat like some animal.”

  “She nearly killed my child.”

  “She was how old? Ten, eleven? The old nun told you she didn’t act alone.”

  “I’ll get the one truly responsible. I will win this war, and I will punish the ones who have hurt my daughter and then this nightmare will be over and Nahoa will come back to me.”

  Emea snorted. “Come back? You truly believe that, brother?”

  “She will. She said she would, once I stopped all this. And I will stop all this as soon as I win the war.”

  The little girl’s ghost shook her head and began to cry. Her lips shaped words, but he didn’t try very hard to read them. Emea turned and pushed her aside, but her hands went straight through. She clucked her tongue.

  “Win the war, will you?” she said. “Better get on with that, dear brother. Because it looks to me like you’re losing. Funny, those Okikans seem to have long memories.”

  “This isn’t the Maaram war.”

  “Not yet.”

  Neither of them would leave him alone, so he fell silent and scowled into the heat of his hearth fire. The old harbor had been well and thoroughly lost. He still had the superior army, superior weapons, and control of the majority of the island. But the fact that the rebels had managed to carve out even a sixth of the city for themselves filled him with baffled rage. He ought to be discussing plans with his chiefs or fielding parlay requests from whoever styled themselves the leader of the rebels these days. He ought to be combing his list of prisoners for informants and spies he could send back out into the shockingly porous rebel army. Instead he sat and brooded, alone save for his ghosts.

  She had screamed, but not very loud. She had offered him secrets and said something about sennit braid, which had gone utterly unremarked at the time but kept coming back to him now. A stablehand had offered the Mo’i her entire life’s savings, and it amounted to little more than a few ropes of cord.

  Why did I kill her? he wondered now, far too late. What was that incoherent rage that had come over him, blotting out even the semblance of rational thought? Why not just imprison her like he had the others who crossed him? And if he had to kill her, why like that? Why like some mad animal in need of a mercy killing?

  He recalled Senona Ahi and Kaleakai, the two guardians who had told him so starkly that he needed to kill himself to secure the great fire. He would have assassinated them, too, if it weren’t for their power and influence. The stablehand had been his to kill, because she meant nothing to anyone.

  He shivered. He reminded himself of Nahe, coolly calculating the misery he could inflict on people by virtue of the power they held. Emea had meant nothing, and so Nahe had treated her like nothing for all their years together.

  “How did this happen?” he said aloud, though not to his ghosts. “When did I become like him?”

  “Don’t flinch now, brother,” said the apparition who was certainly, absolutely not his sister.

  “You aren’t real,” he said.

  Her blue flames crackled. “Real enough to kill for. Real enough to die.”

  “But what can we do with her?”

  This was not the first time this question had been asked this night, among these three. And, Lana thought, each set of answers seemed more tepid and unworkable than the last. She and Nahoa and Pano sat close to the fire, with the table Eliki always used for her work pushed aside. As the night wore on, Lana kept expecting their erstwhile leader to put in an acerbic, cool-headed suggestion that they would all argue with and then agree to. But now two of Yechtak’s soldiers guarded her in a house one street away while she stared with a stern, unnerving distance at the wall. No one had thought to restrain her. It had seemed unlikely she could overcome the guards.

  “Can’t you just let her go?” Nahoa said wearily. “What can she do now, anyway? There’s three armies in this damn city and she doesn’t control any of them.”

  Pano, who had hardly spoken since the rebels had secured the old docks, regarded Nahoa with bleak intensity. “You don’t know Eliki,” he said. “We could turn her out with just the clothes on her back, and she’d return with an army in a year.”

  “But why would she want to?” Lana asked.

  “She doesn’t trust anyone else to win.”

  “Haven’t you already won?” Nahoa said.

  “You think your husband will just let us stay in the heart of his city?”

  Nahoa bit her lip and fell silent. Pano added another log to the fire, though it seemed to Lana that the flames were plenty bright. Some rebel leaders we make. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to cry. She still didn’t understand how all this had happened.

  “What would Eliki do?” Lana said, in a creaky attempt at humor.

  Pano didn’t even bother to smile. “She’d kill her,” he said. “And if I objected, she’d lie and do it anyway. Eliki is fond of elegant solutions.”

  “Like with Ahi,” Nahoa said, and then they both fell silent.

  “We have to tell Yechtak something in the morning,” Lana said finally. This was also not the first time she had said this. As before, they both glanced up and then away, incapable of speech, let alone finding a solution. She couldn’t stand it. She stood up and started to pace.

  “We can exile her,” she said. “Some place far away and hard to reach from Essel. The Kalakoas. We’ll give her likeness to all ship’s captains so they won’t take her back here. We will publicly condemn her actions and prove that we are not just another version of Bloody One-hand. And we will send a message to the Mo’i and Makaho to negotiate a truce.”

  They both stared at her. As well they might. Lana felt as she had earlier that day, when she declared herself the commander of the rebel forces. As though she were on a precipice, staring down at her certain death. Like casting a geas, really. She felt for the red mandagah jewel beneath her shirt, so much a part of her now she hardly noticed its warm presence on her skin. She had been given responsibility once and had done all she could to avoid it.
Perhaps this would work better. It could hardly turn out worse.

  “Why would Kohaku agree to a truce? Pano just said he’ll keep fighting.”

  Lana glanced at Pano, and it was clear from the intent way he watched Nahoa that he had already guessed Lana’s solution. “Ahi is no longer at the fire temple, right?” she said.

  Nahoa frowned. “I told you, Malie took her to her mother’s house in the fourth district.”

  “So you—” Lana began, but Pano shot her a warning look and took Nahoa’s hand.

  “If you agree to help us, my lady,” he said, “we could end this.”

  Nahoa blushed from the roots of her hair to her neck. Pano controlled himself better, but there was a certain quality in his stillness, like he might explode if he didn’t move very carefully. Lana finally realized what should have been obvious from the moment they sat down together in this room.

  “You want to use me with Kohaku just like Makaho did,” Nahoa said.

  Pano flinched, but he just said, “Yes.”

  “But he’ll know you’d never hurt me.”

  “And what if one of his soldiers’ arrows does?”

  Nahoa opened her mouth, yanked her hand from his, and started to curse roundly and fluently. “Damn it, Pano! Why does it always have to be like this? Everyone twisting me any way they damn want for their own stupid reasons? Even you! Why can’t you all just leave me and Ahi in peace? I wish you’d all go away forever.”

  Lana started to speak and then thought better of it. Pano looked as though Nahoa had stabbed him through the chest. He took a few gulping breaths.

  “We can,” he said, “if that’s your wish. You only have to ask. We’d never. . .I’d never. . .”

  Nahoa’s fury, so immediately potent, vanished in the face of this. She took both of his hands in hers. “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s just hard sometimes. It seems like it will never end.”

  “Everything does eventually.”

  “I’ll help you. Of course I will.”

  They were staring into each other’s eyes and neither had made any move to separate their hands. Lana backed away abruptly and mumbled some excuse about needing to tell Yechtak their decision. They didn’t acknowledge her. She almost ran outside, her eyes stinging. No one had seen Kai in four days. She’d gone through the stacks of dead bodies slated for the pyres, but there was no sign of him. She didn’t think he was dead—he was the water guardian, after all, and surely his premature death would cause more havoc than this constant, barely tolerable constriction in her chest. But where could he have gone? The snow had stopped, as Eliki had promised it would, but the powdery drifts still towered above the cleared roads. She couldn’t imagine how much of a sacrifice it must have taken for Kai to bring that much snow. Maybe he had gone to the ocean and drowned? But that was ridiculous. Kai was water.

  Shivering, Lana walked over to the house where they had temporarily sequestered Eliki, Yechtak, and the Okikan commander. The guards posted outside the door let her in after a moment of surprise. This house was small and all on one level. Eliki was under guard in the small private room, while Yechtak and the commander slept on pallets in the common area. In theory, anyway. The commander slept, but Yechtak knelt in front of his pallet, his arms raised. He didn’t seem to hear her when she came in, so she called his name gently.

  He whirled around and fell back against the sheets. “Iolana,” he said. He was the only person besides Okilani, the head elder on her native island, who used her full name. And he always used it as though he were naming a treasure.

  “I thought I would speak with Eliki,” she said.

  His eyes widened but then he nodded. “Of course. Wait here. I will wake her.”

  Lana thought about letting her sleep, but then shrugged. She was responsible for this disaster. She could deal with the consequences. Knowing Eliki, she would only be expecting it.

  Yechtak entered the other room and then beckoned for her to follow. It seemed that Eliki was having as sleepless a night as the rest of them. She sat in her solitary chair, staring at the pages of a book but not, Lana thought, actually reading it.

  “The black angel would like to speak with you,” Yechtak said.

  Eliki raised her eyebrows but did not look up. Yechtak frowned.

  “It’s fine,” Lana said. “You can leave us.”

  He hesitated, but then just bowed his head and left. Yechtak had told her some of what had happened in the year since they last saw each other. Apparently, the wind spirit itself had named him her ambassador. Lana had never heard of anyone like that in the legends of the other black angels, but given the almost worshipful way Yechtak regarded her, she could believe it.

  “I take it you have judged my fate,” Eliki said, almost amiably. She shut the book without marking her place and coolly met Lana’s eyes.

  “I didn’t want this,” she said.

  Eliki waved her hand. “Of course you didn’t. You couldn’t have made your reluctance to serve our cause more clear if you’d thrown a tantrum. And since I can’t blame ambition for our sudden reversal of fortune, I suppose I can only blame fate.”

  “You chose to kill Ahi.”

  “Choice,” Eliki said, “is overrated. Sometimes the other choice is too unbearable to contemplate.”

  “A baby, Eliki.”

  “Is that what you came here for? To prick my conscience? You’ll have to try harder than that. I’ve had to make mine stronger than iron to get this far.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have.”

  “I suppose you think that was a choice, too.”

  They stared at each other, silent and calculating, two enemies far out on a narrow ledge. Who would push first?

  “Have you thought,” Eliki said finally, “about what it really means for you to do this? I helped start this war. I armed our people and developed the strategy and launched them against the far superior force of our tyrannous Mo’i, utterly sure in the knowledge that hundreds of them would die and we might not even win with their sacrifice. And when I realized that our bows were breaking and might destroy us before we even began, I convinced your lover to take the wonder of a snowfall and turn it into a deadly weapon. You have flown over the city, black angel. You must have seen the bodies of those frozen in the snow. I have almost destroyed this city so that I might save it. I believe utterly in the choices I have made, because they are the only ones I could have made. And if you disagree with me, if you feel that I have crossed a line that should not have been crossed, if you think I am like Bloody One-hand, mad with violence and all unknowing, then disagree with that, with those hundreds dead who should not be, and not some babe I did not even succeed in killing.”

  Lana leaned against the wall because she was trembling and did not wish to show it. What masochistic impulse had made her come to Eliki this night? She should have known what moral labyrinth she was inviting herself into. And now, how to get out?

  “I saved her,” Lana said, and then more loudly, “Ahi is only alive because I used a stronger geas to break your own.”

  Eliki’s lips twisted. “Yes, I know. For a conscience, Pano has always been remarkably active. But, fine, my intentions were clear. If it were up to me, the child would be dead by now. Tell me, black angel, why her death weighs so much more than these other hundreds you have witnessed? Why not lock your lover in here with me for the innocents he killed with his blanketing snow?”

  Lana swallowed carefully. She hated Eliki more than she had hated anyone in her life right now, even Akua. At least Akua’s sins were unmitigated by this awful, twisting self-justification. Kai was gone, spirits knew where, and here this woman claimed, with horrifying accuracy, that they all shared the blame for innocent deaths.

  “You ordered it.”

  “But you’re the one who believes in the primacy of choice. He should have known what would happen.”

  But Lana considered how briefly Kai had been in this city, how little of his life had been spent around humans,
let alone in a place packed with hundreds of thousands of them, and wondered how he would feel when he discovered what had come of his sacrifice.

  Lana wrapped her arms around her shoulders. She felt helpless, like when she was very young and her mother had yelled at her for forgetting to take off her sandals before she came inside. “Eliki, I can’t argue with you. You’re smarter than me and you know it. But killing a baby for political gain is wrong. You have to know that.”

  “Sometimes there are only wrong choices. But there, at last, we agree—there’s no use arguing this. I have finally done something even Pano cannot forgive, and so you must do something about me. Knowing you both, I very much doubt it will be an execution, though perhaps One-hand’s young wife is feeling particularly vengeful?”

  “She wanted to let you go.”

  Eliki laughed. “Did she? Well then, we have three fools at the head of this army. You should kill me.”

  “Pano said that’s what you’d do. He said you preferred elegant solutions.”

  “Ah, Pano. He should have stayed with his plants. I never should have sent him to co-opt the Mo’i’s wife. The oldest lesson in the world, and I forgot it: beware handsome men and young women. So what is it, then? Keep me in this room and hope I die quietly? Don’t tell me you’re actually going to let me leave?”

  “You’ll be on the next ship to the Kalakoas. Every captain will find it in their interest to never give you passage to our shores. You can try to disguise yourself, but I think it will be difficult.”

  “Yes,” Eliki agreed, but absently. She turned back to face the wall. Her throat worked, but no sound came out. “Yes. That will work quite well.” Now Eliki was shaking, though Lana could think of no reason why. She’d sounded positively sanguine at the discussion of her death or permanent imprisonment. “If you have the woman and the baby, you know you can use them to defang the Mo’i. He’s reliably protective of them. It would be touching, in other circumstances. Be careful with the Okikans. I’m not sure what they want, but you can be sure it’s not the liberation of Essel. If you can negotiate a steady enough truce with One-hand, try to make them leave. No one would survive an inter-island war. You’ve at least convinced me of that. Our greatest weapon is our cause. No one likes the Mo’i, Lana. Some are just more afraid of him than others. It might take years, but eventually the people will all be on our side, so long as we behave like the just and equable government he’ll never be. Don’t. . .no matter what, don’t underestimate Kohaku’s danger. He is smart and he is mad, and he has no empathy for those he hurts. Whatever follows him will be even worse. You should kill him, if you can.”