The second thing was that one of the easterners sitting at the front of the cart was a woman. The man next to her—the bastard who’d punched Chase off the pyramid after nearly kissing Amadi—was the one driving, and he’d set aside his flute to bring the oxen about. But the woman, encased in some sort of many-ribbed wooden armor, was … beautiful.
The third thing was that there were three easterners, not two: the pair at the front of the cart and a third on a horse. The rider had a bow, and he was notching another arrow to fire into Chase.
The archer shouted something, no doubt ordering him to stay still. Complying meant Chase had a chance to study the man’s face and realize that this was the second part of the eastern tag-team, the fellow who’d knocked him out after he’d finished rolling down the pyramid.
He’d settle that debt first.
Flexing his fingers, he called for the warm looseness again, the fire he needed to ash this easterner and then do the same to his partner. “That’ll take more than a spark,” Chase murmured as the bowman dismounted and advanced on foot. “I’ll need a bonfire’s worth, if you please.”
Nothing.
Risking the second arrow, Chase plunged his left hand into his pocket and withdrew the little figurine, aiming it at the approaching easterner like the gun it used to be. “Focus,” he hissed. “The dragons were never even bloody loaded!”
Still nothing.
Until the easterner closed on Chase, paused for a moment to study the figurine, scoffed, and kicked it out of his grasp.
The next kick took him in the jaw, and the one after knocked him on his back, setting his shoulder howling as the embedded arrow shaft snapped beneath him.
“Am I not your vessel?” Chase begged of the sky. “Am I no longer your tool?”
Rough hands grasped him on either side of his neck, jerking his head up so that he came face to face with the first easterner, the one who’d knocked him off the pyramid. The man’s face was lean to the point of being gaunt, as if something consumed him from within. And his eyes blazed.
Chase apologized by smashing a potato into the easterner’s ear.
“Sorry I couldn’t cook it first,” Chase said, readying himself for the counterblow, the one that would end it. “But we like spuds in the morning around here, and I thought you might too.”
The response wasn’t what he expected.
Instead of hitting back or stepping aside so the bowman could finish what he’d started, the first easterner pinched Chase’s cheeks until his lips parted, leaned in, and breathed purple-tinged air into his mouth.
And from the cart, next to the beautiful woman, came the cry of a small child.
Chapter Three
Pursuit
Isaura waved away the rain, directing its nearby droplets to either side. “Enough,” she spat, her eyes leaking tears as they always did when she resorted to witchery.
“Enough what?” Amadi asked from behind her. They were riding double on Manuel, the great horse bearing the extra weight without complaint.
“Enough rain. It’s covering their tracks.”
“Can you stop it?”
Isaura knew she couldn’t, but tried anyway, releasing the reins so she could raise her hands, palms up, as if she were lifting the storm. After a moment, the rain in the immediate area reversed course, sending a thousand drops back toward the sky, where they crashed into drops moving the other direction and exploded into mist.
But it wasn’t enough. Rain still fell twenty feet beyond them, slowly erasing the wheel ruts and hoofprints from the earth.
Dizzy with the aftereffects of manipulating so much water, Isaura leaned against Manuel’s dripping neck. He raised his head slightly, supporting her as he always did. “Faster,” she whispered to him, squeezing her heels into his sides. “We need to go faster.”
Her horse responded without hesitation, quickening his trot to a near-canter. Never mind that he’d been carrying them for hours now, ever since Fochik explained that Shoteka had vanished sometime during the night—the old Kiksha woman had grown concerned when he didn’t cry out around midnight, as Isaura had warned her to expect. But when Fochik took a break from digging graves to check on him, she’d found his basket empty except for that terrible note in a language she couldn’t read.
When Amadi had asked about the cart tracks, she’d explained that three strangers had passed through earlier that night: two men and a woman (none of whom had looked like the diablo from the pyramid). One had been on a horse, the others in the cart.
“What did they look like?” Amadi had asked.
“The rider looked like an old warrior,” Fochik had answered. “He carried a bow and a blade. The man in the cart was younger—maybe twenty winters—but skinny, and the woman even thinner, although she wore wooden armor. They weren’t pale ones, but they weren’t original people either.”
“Were their eyes narrow?” Isaura had said. She’d felt so cold she should have been shivering, but her hand wasn’t shaking when she rested it on the handle of the pistol at her waist.
“Yes.” The old woman’s voice had quivered with shame. “Do you think they took Shoteka?”
“They’re Han,” Isaura had answered. “From Chin, a land to the East. Amadi says it’s their script.” She’d tapped the flowing characters on the note. “They’ll die for taking my boy.”
Without wasting more words, Isaura had fetched Manuel from the village’s horse pen and kicked him into a gallop. She’d slowed just enough for Amadi to swing up behind her and then thundered to the cart tracks.
“They go south,” he’d said quietly.
So had Manuel.
He’d run for all he was worth until Amadi threatened to seize the reins if Isaura didn’t ease up. She’d slowed to a canter initially, but after they’d searched the only drivable path for an hour, she’d allowed Manuel to trot.
Then the rain had begun. The storm was moving north, which seemed like a blessing at first. Within short order, the ground ahead softened enough to reveal hoofprints other than Manuel’s in the early morning light, as well as parallel lines of wheel ruts. But a few minutes later the rain began falling harder, and the tracks started to fade.
They were still visible when Isaura and Amadi reached a crossroads, but only barely—and not at all down any of the three diverging paths.
“They can’t just disappear,” she breathed.
Amadi was already dismounting. “I’ll take the left path, you take the right. Look ahead for a mile. Then come back. If one of us see tracks on our path, we follow it together. If not, we go down the center.”
Isaura nodded. Numb didn’t come close to describing how cold she felt now.
Amadi put his hand on her foot. “If you see tracks, you come back,” he repeated. “You come get me.”
She shook loose of his grasp and galloped down the righthand path.
The rain pelted them with its endless tiny fists as Manuel leaned into his run, lowering his head to punch through the sheets of water trying to block their way, to keep them from Shoteka and his kidnappers. But Isaura would catch them. Whether she had to run one mile, or two, or a thousand to find their trail again, she’d catch them.
And then she’d make the Han pay.
But after another hour of racing in the rain, she’d found nothing. And it was all she could do to stay in the saddle.
Manuel was blown too. She’d used him too hard. His heart was immense, but he was a draft horse, ill-suited for long runs at high speeds.
Slipping to the ground, she walked him slowly, forcing him to cool down before he dipped his head to graze. She noted absently that her face was dry. When had they cleared the storm? Ten minutes ago? Fifteen?
Did it matter?
Finally, convinced that Manuel wouldn’t colic if he ate and drank, Isaura let him loose and sank to the ground.
Now she was shivering. Now her hands shook with a tremble that started in her fingertips and worked its way up and down her body in a silen
t spasm that didn’t stop. Not until she screamed. Not until her face was no longer dry, tears shaking loose from her eyes like bricks from a collapsing castle.
Not until Amadi found her hours later.
Despite his two bad legs and the ten or so years he had on her, he approached at a trot, bringing his dauntless presence close enough to steady her.
“I checked the other paths,” he said quietly once she’d stopped shaking. “Left and center.” He didn’t say anything more.
He didn’t need to. She knew without asking that the only tracks he’d found were hers.
* * *
“Fort Krenshaw,” Isaura said later, once the rain had subsided and Manuel had recovered. “It’s close, and there’s a master tracker there.”
Amadi nodded. He refused to ride double, though. He said he could run fine now, and his leg seemed better—the one the Wraith had broken. The other still had a slight limp, despite his healing prowess. He’d had the limp when she first met him. Had he always had it?
Regardless, the tall, bald Afrii kept pace with Manuel’s trot, Chase’s blunderbuss in one hand and the double-femur in the other. Never stopping, despite the day’s heat. Never asking for a break. Just forging ahead.
Which was what she had to do. Forge ahead, keep going, and don’t lose hope.
Never lose hope.
“Naysin could probably read the note,” Amadi said after they’d covered several miles. “He speaks many tongues. Maybe he reads them too.”
Isaura considered this while a distant portion of her mind marveled that Amadi wasn’t even breathing hard. “Maybe … And the Wraith owes me that much. But we’d need to find him first, and I’ve no idea where he’s gone. Do you?”
“No,” Amadi admitted.
“Traders pass through Fort Krenshaw now and then. I heard a Han merchant stopped in a few months back. We might find another there.”
“Why does he owe you?” Amadi asked once they’d cleared a steep hill. “Naysin. What did he do?”
Images from a forsaken forest filled her vision: bodies ripped asunder, wounded men screaming, crimson leaves … “The Wraith killed Rowtag—Shoteka’s father.”
Amadi’s stride faltered, his first stumble since they’d turned towards Fort Krenshaw. “I’m sorry,” he said when she didn’t offer anything more.
Her fingers tightened on Manuel’s reins. Even now, with crisis coursing through her veins, she could suppress the memories of Rowtag’s death; she’d been building that wall for a year and a half. But she had no experience shutting out Shoteka.
And his face was everywhere she looked.
She saw him in a field of tall grass, giggling in delight as the wind made the green stalks shimmer. She saw him crawling up the next hill, putting on a burst of intrepid speed as he scrambled over a rock. She saw him leaning against a log, steadying himself with both hands so he could totter along its length. And she saw his reflection screaming in a puddle, howling as he had when he’d emerged from her womb, when she’d given birth to him alone.
But that wasn’t entirely true. The Wraith had ensured Rowtag couldn’t be present, so Isaura hadn’t let anyone else be. But her witchery—her quenching, as she still called it when she preferred a less-damning term—had been with her. And it had saved her son.
Mostly by letting her see what was happening when she tried to push. One of the midwives she’d consulted in advance had suggested a mirror, but at the outset, Isaura hadn’t liked the idea of witnessing any more of the process than she had to. In the throes of labor, though, it had made sense. She’d known so little about what was happening to her. The more she could observe, the better.
So she’d caused the moisture in the air to coalesce into a small waterfall just beyond her legs. The effort had nearly undone her, but the reflection had been exactly what she’d needed. Her baby’s head had started crowning, and the visual had provided the focus she’d needed to sync her pushes with the contractions.
From there, it had taken only a few minutes. Her child had come out healthy and whole, and as he’d sucked at her breast, she’d kept quenching long enough to divert the waterfall and use it to clean them. Then she’d let the water go, unconcerned about the red lake it had formed beneath her bed. All she’d cared about for hours after was nursing Shoteka, a name she’d chosen several weeks earlier.
A Kiksha name, to honor his father’s heritage.
“I’ll reckon with the Wraith one day,” she said, soft enough to sound mild yet loud enough for Amadi to hear. “Reckon fully. But right now, we need to catch those damn Han.”
* * *
“He died yesterday morning,” said Mahieu, the commander of Fort Krenshaw. “Fell to the ground, thrashed about, and leaked black sludge everywhere. Same as our other two originals. We burned them there.” He pointed through the window of his mess hall to the smoldering remains of a pyre.
Isaura bit back a scream. Nashoba, the master tracker she’d been hoping to find here, had died of the Wraith’s cure. The supposed immunization he’d forced her to have a hand in on the earthen pyramid.
“Anyone else around who tracks?” she asked in her fledgling Franc. (Although it was better than she remembered. Maybe her language abilities—like Amadi’s—had been improved by the connection with the Wraith. Had there ever been a sharper double-edged sword?)
“I have one that’s not bad,” Mahieu allowed. “But he’s out hunting. I don’t expect him back for another week.”
She tamped down another scream. At this rate, her stomach would be filled with nothing but bile and wails. “What about Han traders? Someone who can read this?” She pulled the note out. By all the angels, how she wanted to rip the hateful thing to pieces.
“Not since last fall.” The commander tugged his oily beard. “But I hear New Espan has a sizable Han population. Mostly in Metica City—that’s where the trader from last fall hailed from. You’d certainly find someone there who could read your note.”
“Isn’t that a thousand miles away?”
“More like two.”
“There must be something closer.”
“There are outposts in between. You might get lucky at one and run into another Han trader.”
Luck. He thought she might be able to just take some luck. Pluck it from a tree, maybe. When she hadn’t had any since the Wraith butchered Rowtag a year and a half ago.
“I might have a map you can purchase.”
A map and a journey that might stretch to two thousand miles. That was the type of luck she had. “How much?”
His eyes named a price by roving up and down her body.
“Need a well?” she countered, even as part of her wondered if this was worth it, or if she should just call Amadi in to beat the map (and impudence) out of the oily little Franc man. “Cut me a forked branch, and I’ll find you water. Then you find me a map, a second horse, and supplies.”
Mahieu seemed reluctant to abandon his first offer, but he knew her reputation as an unerring dowser, and a fort could always use a second water supply. “I can’t spare a horse,” he said after tugging twice more on his beard. “But I can do the map and supplies. In the morning, I’ll get you a branch and some men with shovels.”
“No. You get the men and shovels now.”
“Mademoiselle … The sun is setting, and you look exhausted. Surely a night’s rest and a fresh start in the morning would be best.”
He wasn’t wrong. Isaura could feel the two days’ and one night’s worth of riding with each lift of her eyelids. But Shoteka drew further away with every second. “You get men, shovels, and torches now, or you get no well.”
The commander studied her for a moment, tugged his beard as if he wanted it to come out, and gestured toward the door. “As you wish.”
* * *
It was the first dowsing Isaura had ever cheated.
Not flagrantly. There was water beneath the fort’s dusty courtyard. But she’d caused a small stretch of the ground stream to rise high
er than its forty-foot depth. Mahieu’s diggers had scarcely dug far enough for a decent grave before the hole started puddling.
Isaura had also never rushed the first drink, her due as a dowser, but she downed the cup of grimy water as soon as the stunned commander passed it to her.
“You might have to go deeper to get steady flow,” she warned him as she tried to hide the strain of continuing to raise the stream; hopefully he’d attribute any signs—like her leaking eyes—to general fatigue. Or her feminine nature. Whatever kept him focused on fulfilling his end of the bargain.
As soon as the map and packs of food were ready, Isaura loaded them onto Manuel, motioned to Amadi (who seemed not even a little tired, damn him), and rode out of the fort. A few hundred yards later, the furthest extent of her range for something like this, she let the stream fall back to its regular depth.
And didn’t regret the trickery one bit.
“What’s the map of?” Amadi asked as Isaura steered them back towards the crossroads.
“A trade route to Metica City.”
“Ah. Quecxl’s home.”
Isaura blinked. She’d forgotten that. Quecxl had been a subject of the Metica empire in the south before Cortez took it for Espania.
A commotion at the fort caused Amadi to glance behind them. “Is it far?”
“A month’s journey. Maybe two.”
“Then we should get started.”
Despite everything, she smiled. She hadn’t even asked if he’d come. “I’m hoping we don’t have to go the whole way. And I want to recheck the crossroads—in every direction. But if we don’t find anything … then we go south.” She nudged Manuel off the path and into the woods. “Quickly. We might be followed.”
* * *
If Mahieu sent men in pursuit, Isaura never saw them. Maybe his best trackers really were all dead or absent.
The Black Resurrection Page 3
