The Burning City (Spirit Binders) (13 page)
Read The Burning City (Spirit Binders) Online
Authors: Alaya Dawn Johnson
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 said 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?”
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.
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
.
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.”
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