The Burning City (Spirit Binders) (18 page)

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Authors: Alaya Dawn Johnson

BOOK: The Burning City (Spirit Binders)
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“Well, there she is, Wolop, and now you can surely stop scowling because her tale is perfectly true.”
Wolop didn’t even acknowledge his friend. “Your brother made me promise to look after you, Taak. And no offense to the lady, but this does seem like another one of your disasters.”
I bit my lip, since that fit both my persona and my own desires, and contrived to look both hopeful and confused. “Pardon, sirs, but could you speak in Essela? Maaram is hard for me. . .”
Wolop nodded, but otherwise didn’t seem inclined to believe me. So I hurried on, “Taak, is this the trader who is to take me back to my father?” I asked, smiling at the scowling man.
Taak gave Wolop a speaking look and shook his head. “No. I’m sure he’ll be here shortly.”
Ze’s flight, I hoped so. I didn’t know how much longer I could stand this man’s scrutiny alone. I tried a different tack. “I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am for your generous, selfless aid, sir Taak,” I said. “If only I could pay you back in some greater way than the paltry figures you requested.”
I almost pushed my breasts against the table so they’d swell against my tunic, but realized that Taak’s suspicious friend would see through this quickly. Taak smiled and waved away my gratitude. “Well,” he said to his friend. “Satisfied? She’s who she says she is. What more evidence do you need?”
Wolop cocked his head and offered me a drink from his half-drunk cup. Sensing some sort of test, I demurred. This seemed to satisfy him, though I was by now so nervous I could feel the sweat trickling from my armpits. “The family crest on your arm,” he said. “What spirit does it represent?”
Inside, I cursed in every language I knew and attempted, desperately, to think of what Parech had said of the marks. Family crests, he’d said, but they were symbolic like clan and warrior tattoos, not pictographic like some religious tattoos.
“Spirits?” I ventured, wide-eyed. “Why, I’m sure I don’t know sir. My father never said anything about our family knot representing spirits. I’d think we sacrificed enough for them already!”
It took all my effort to meet his narrowed gaze. Finally he shrugged and leaned back. “True, I’ve never heard the head families speak of their symbols as such.”
I could have cried when Parech finally walked inside, making a great show of looking for Taak. Neither of us could know that his arrival would only make our problems worse.
“
You’re
the trader?” Wolop said, not bothering to disguise his incredulity.
Parech smiled, like an uncle indulging a strange child. “And is that so surprising, officer? Perhaps I seem young to you? But I was raised into the profession by my father, so I have much experience.”
“Yet you seem so familiar,” said Wolop.
Taak looked exasperated. “Of course he is. We’ve seen him often at the cockfights this past week. He’s waiting for favorable winds to head for Essel.”
“No,” Wolop said, shaking his head. “I never got a good enough look before. The light was too low. I’ve seen him somewhere else.”
I didn’t dare meet Parech’s eyes, and his posture remained entirely as relaxed and faintly amused as before. Yet I wondered: had Parech known Wolop in his prior life? He’d been a soldier, and it wasn’t impossible that this man had commanded him.
“Perhaps here in Okika?” Parech suggested, as though they were determining if they shared a kin relation. “I often trade from here.”
“And what do you trade?”
“Cloth, mostly. And the Esselans have the most violent passion for Maaram spirit dolls, so I usually carry a few of those. But if you have need of a trader, officer, you’ll have to look elsewhere. My berth is full.”
Wolop pursed his lips and refused to say any more to either of them. Taak seemed to take this as acquiescence, and I was happy to believe him. Parech and I were formally introduced, and I struggled to maintain my role in the face of his sardonic gaze. We arranged for my passage on Parech’s vessel tomorrow. He’d stood and was bidding us all good day when Wolop sat bolt upright.
“The northern division!” he said. “The bands fighting the Kawadiri. There was a soldier there—commended to me—and you look remarkably like him, trader.”
I felt Wolop’s words like a giant wave crashing over my body, but Parech only looked mildly confused. After a moment his face cleared, as though he understood; his mouth turned down in what even I would have taken for genuine grief. How had I never known Parech was so skilled at these games?
“My brother fought in your army, officer. But I got word not two weeks ago that he perished deep in the forest on one of your battlefields, and I’m sure the boars are even now trampling his bones. It’s good to know you’d remember one such as him, though. It’s a great honor.”
Even Wolop looked contrite in the face of this revelation. He mumbled vague condolences and an apology, and Parech sauntered out. I left soon after, once I’d collected the baskets of fungible goods from Taak. Wolop made no more suggestions.
We had done it! Or at least I thought so. But Parech sensed something amiss, even if I didn’t, and insisted Tulo board the boat before the two of us and made us both wear our costumes. He had reserved passage on another trader’s sea canoe and paid an extra bag of salt for the trader to insist the boat was Parech’s in case someone asked. We had boarded, and the trader was just about to cast off, when a furious commotion of pounding feet and raised voices sounded from down the street. Parech and I gave each other a single, wary glance, and he had a quick word with the trader.
“Stop! Stop! In the name of the great Maaram king, stop!”
We were drifting out to sea, but it would be easy enough to turn around. The trader, crouched low to hide, looked as though he was considering the option. If they recognized his canoe, after all, he might never be allowed back into the city.
On the dock, the approaching figures became clear: Taak, looking confused and hurt, Wolop, red with righteous fury, and a third man, more finely dressed than the others, who looked as though he wanted to spill someone’s blood. I guessed that this must be Taak’s famous brother.
“What on earth is all this?” Parech asked.
“That soldier, the one who died on the field? He was Akane, not Maaram. And no one in his family was ever notified.”
“And so I spoke to his spirit? I assure you, sir, my brother died on that field. If I resemble another dead soldier, then you’ll have to forgive me, because last I checked resemblance is not a crime.”
This speech, masterfully delivered, made Taak look at his brother triumphantly and Wolop hesitate. But the brother shook his head. “Pretty words won’t save you now, soldier. You’re a deserter and subject to water’s mercy. Turn around now and perhaps we’ll show leniency.”
Parech gave me a soft kick on the ankle, and I realized that my silence was beginning to look suspicious. “No!” I wailed obediently. “No, I must get back to my father! Taak, sir, don’t you see this man can’t be the soldier? It’s his ship!”
The brother smiled thinly. “Actually, this ship is registered to another trader altogether. But perhaps the records are out of date. Just turn around and we’ll settle the matter.”
Only now did I notice that several soldiers had arrayed themselves behind the three officers, and they were holding the bows and arrows that had so decimated the Kawadiri. I looked at Parech in utter panic. His expression was grimmer than I’d ever seen it, and I remembered Tulo, hiding in the hold with the supplies. What would they do to her once they realized she’d been part of the grift? Suddenly Parech grabbed me by my hair and dragged me in front of him. He held a flint dagger to my throat and my scream was only partly fake.
“Will you kill her, then?” he said. “This innocent girl? A chief’s daughter?” And I realized how Parech had gambled. Apparently, they suspected him without guessing my role. And if he could convincingly play the villain, we might all get out of this alive.
The real trader leapt up. “Oh no!” he said. “I’ll have no part of this.” The wind puffed into the untended sails, and we drifted a little further into the bay. Parech took one look at the trader, muttered an apology, and planted his sandaled foot neatly into the small of the other man’s back. He tumbled over the side with a satisfying splash, and the soldiers on shore, thrown into utter disarray at this turn of events, scrambled to rescue him.
“I suggest you scream,” Parech whispered into my ear. It didn’t take much effort to wail and moan. “Please don’t shoot,” I shouted. The wind was picking up and I realized we were soon going to be out of reach of their arrows.
“But their boats can still catch up with us,” Parech said, finishing my thought.
I closed my eyes. We were going to die. Surely there was no way out of this now. And this plan had seemed so clever when Parech first conceived it. Amoral, but clever.
I felt him tense behind me. “I’m going to toss you over the edge,” he hissed. “They don’t know your part in this. Tulo will claim she booked passage and then hid when the soldiers came. Act innocent. They won’t want to harm you even if they have suspicions.”
“No,” I said angrily, “No, I won’t leave—”
“There’s no time—”
He gestured with his head. The soldiers had hastily commandeered another sea canoe. It was larger and more unwieldy than ours, but then again, they probably knew how to sail it.
“Tulo,” I called out, “what spirits are near?”
I heard her crawl out from the hold cautiously. “Water and death,” she said quietly, adding after a brief pause, “Death is always near you, Aoi.”
That should have frightened me, but at this moment, it made me feel powerful. Like a true Ana. “Cut me,” I told Parech. “On my arm. Deep.”
I could feel his shock, but he said nothing. We had come this far. And unless I did something drastic, he might die.
“I call on you, death,” I said softly. Parech kissed the back of my neck, and my head swam so much from the gesture I hardly noticed the bloom of pain and blood from my arm. I sensed the power like a tide, like a dam inside me had been breached. I saw death as I had seen it on the battlefield beside Parech. It was less substantial this time—I did not have the Maaram Ana resin to aid my sight into the spirit world, and there were no dying for it to feed on. Still, its mask seemed to regard me with curiosity.
“And what do you call me to do, Aoi?” said the death.
“As you are out of the world’s sight, so make us. Let us travel in the spirit world for a time, so we are invisible to the real one.”
Tulo gasped. The death inclined its head. It vanished, but then, so did the boats in the harbor and the city beyond. The ocean itself seemed made of light and not water. The vision of the world was now as deep and confusing as anything I’d witnessed back on the battlefield. Only the three of us looked the same, and the boat we still sailed.
“Ana,” Parech said, his voice stretched so taut with awe it cracked on the last syllable. Tulo staunched the wound on my arm with a strip of barkcloth.
“Aoi?” she said, her voice hoarse.
“What is it?”
“I can see you.”
PART III
 
Kings
 
5
 
K
AI HAD ALWAYS INTENDED TO FIND HER. His conscience wouldn’t let him rest otherwise, though when he thought of what she’d done, what she’d said, he felt an overpowering urge to weep, and let all of his power ebb through his tears into the vast ocean. He found himself in a peculiar situation: in love with a woman he sometimes hated, and only death would free them of their obligation to each other. He knew what chased her. He was beginning to have some idea of the deep game she was embroiled in with the great spirits. And he worried about her. The witch Akua had taught her so little about the true mechanisms of geas. She’d survived on her own until now, but how much longer? She could travel beyond the gate, out of his reach forever, and he might not even know for months.
That week after she had left, Kai had loitered in his solitary palace, alone save for the sprites that had been his friends and enemies his whole life. He had dissolved into the water and experimented with his new powers. Deep on the ocean floor, he had been seared by vents that pushed boiling, sulfurous water into the ocean like smoke from a chimney. He had lost his eyes and maneuvered through a world he could breathe through his skin, his smell a kaleidoscope of colors for which he’d never know the words. He saw as the spirits did, the ancient roads and connections that his ancestors had always navigated. He saw the gate it was his duty to guard as a towering wall of black that pushed up from the sea floor and made the spirits cry out in fright. Having deliberately abandoned so much of his human side, he felt the same primal fear, the same confusion at this great wall encircling the world. He understood something that had made only a vague impression on him before:
every
spirit and sprite, in some way, had been bound during the age of the spirit bindings, not just the great ones in their frigid prisons on the inner islands. Humanity had devised a method of controlling them all, because otherwise they could control nothing.

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