Of course, what really sped them down the Messippi was the energy the indomitable Espan kept directing into the great river to push them along. Every stroke of his oar was augmented by water Isaura funneled behind it to give the flat wood more force, and she maintained a steady pressure against the stern. Until she exhausted herself, which happened frequently unless Amadi made her take regular breaks.
“It’s been an hour,” he tried again. “At least. Time to rest.”
Isaura’s only answer was to continue massaging her temples.
Amadi pulled his oar into the canoe. “We lose more time if you pass out than we do if you take short breaks. This we’ve learned.”
For a moment, he thought he might have to let her run herself ragged again, but as he was about to give up, her hands fell from her head.
“Fine,” she murmured. “But don’t stop rowing.”
He nodded and dipped his oar back into the river. His spirit armor had gradually repaired itself as they journeyed; the leg the Red Wraith had broken had healed completely, and Amadi could exert himself for a full day again without tiring. But sometimes when his oar struck the water, he wondered: if he jumped into the river and drank deep, was the armor still strong enough to save him?
“What happened at Omnira?” Isaura asked.
Amadi nearly dropped the oar.
She glanced at him. “When Naysin was playing with our memories, I saw people fighting there. But it was mixed up with everyone else’s pasts, and I didn’t see the rest.”
Amadi regripped the oar, stronger than before. “Chase found us. He brought slave catchers, maybe a week after you dowsed the well for us. There were too many.”
Isaura flinched. “Did anyone else escape?”
He shook his head. His face felt like sun-scorched mud, hardened to the point of cracking.
“Amadi … I’m sorry.”
He forced himself to loosen his hold on the oar before it snapped.
“What about Oseye?” Isaura asked softly. “I hear you speaking to her—him?—at night sometimes. Was she at Omnira?”
The Espan was a shrewd listener. When he spoke to Oseye, he did it in Gbe. But he must have said the girl’s name enough for Isaura to recognize what it was. “No. She was on the ship that carried me over the ocean.”
Isaura nodded. He gazed ahead, focusing on the banks of the river and how far apart they were, farther than any he’d seen in Afrii.
“Who was she?”
He realized he was paddling too hard and evened out his strokes. “A girl. Young. Maybe ten.” He remembered how bravely she’d borne the branding in Ghelwa, when the white man who’d bought them had marked them as his property. Amadi’s brand had healed over, of course. How he’d wished he could have given his spirit armor to her instead. “She shouldn’t have been there.”
Isaura nodded. “None of you should have been there. It’s not your fault.”
If only that were true.
“Why do you speak to her?”
For a second, the banks of the Messippi became the coast of Ghelwa, and he was once more stumbling down the trail leading to the small boats that carried new slaves through shark-infested waters to the larger, ocean-going ship waiting offshore. “She helped me once. After I broke this.” He paused his rowing to tap the ankle the spirit armor had refused to heal. “I fell, and she helped me up. No one else would.”
“I see.”
Isaura didn’t. Couldn’t. But Amadi wasn’t ready to explain why.
She leaned over the side of the canoe and scooped her hand into the water. “Are you looking for her?” she asked as she splashed her face. “Is that why the invincible ‘Black Resurrection’ keeps raiding plantations, killing the owners and freeing their slaves?”
Amadi grunted again. He hated that nickname. “She may not even be called ‘Oseye.’ She was Whydan, and I don’t speak her tongue.”
“You’ll know her if you find her, though.”
It had been six years, and the girl would be almost grown now. But Amadi didn’t have any doubt. “Yes.”
“I hope you do.”
He wasn’t sure how to respond. Isaura was probably thinking about Shoteka now, had probably never stopped thinking about Shoteka. What was there to say aside from “Thank you”?
Isaura murmured something that might have been “You’re welcome” and pressed her fingers back to her temples. “Let’s keep moving.”
It wasn’t a long enough break, but Amadi didn’t see a way to hold her back any longer. So he paddled on.
* * *
The next day, they reached the end of the Messippi and the beginning of a battle.
The great river’s end wasn’t a surprise. They’d known from the map to expect the coming of the Gulf of Metica, and Amadi had seen a seagull earlier that morning.
But the battle was unexpected. As their canoe rounded the river’s last bend, a long, flat ship came into view a hundred yards ahead. Seconds later, several leaner vessels slipped out of an intervening tributary and rowed with predatory speed towards the first ship.
“Go around them,” Isaura murmured as Amadi stopped paddling to assess the situation. Floating logs and other debris speckled the water between their canoe and the other vessels. The larger ship was clearly crewed by white men, and the canoes by original people, probably Chata. But in the center of the white men’s ship, were those …?
Slaves. Chained together and huddling close as arrows and bullets began to fly. “It’s a slave ship.”
Isaura hunched down in their canoe, and Amadi felt the current surge behind them. “I know, but it’s not our fight.”
He tightened his grip on the oar, gauging its worth as a weapon: not ideal, but heavy enough to knock a man into the water. “They’re looking at the Chata. Bring us close. I don’t need long.”
She shook her head. “This isn’t our fight. Get down.”
Amadi pointed his oar at the slaves. “There are children on that boat.”
Isaura smacked the bottom of the canoe. “And there’s a little boy on a cart somewhere—my boy. That’s my fight. If it’s still yours, get down so we can slip by.” She jammed her fingers back to her temples, her hands shaking. She wouldn’t be able to rocket the canoe forward like this much longer.
The slaves were maybe fifty feet away now, with the Chata’s canoes all around them. “I fight for all those taken against their will. Please, just—”
“Damn it all!” one of the white slavers yelled. “They got the Black Resurrection with them!” The man grabbed one of his comrades and pointed at Amadi. “See ‘is tattoos? That’s ‘im! That’s the bastard ‘imself!”
Amadi braced himself. It was well he did—the other slaver reacted by whipping his rifle up and shooting Amadi through the chest.
He felt the bullet bore between two ribs and into his heart, which sputtered, stopped … and resumed beating a moment later as the spirit armor’s thick energy flooded his chest, competing for space with the pain.
Well, that answered that question: he still couldn’t die. But the same couldn’t be said for Isaura, and the slavers were firing as much at Quecxl’s canoe now as they were at the Chata.
Amadi paddled furiously. “I’ll get you clear,” he said to the Espan. “Then I’ll come back and …”
Her hands fell away from her temples, and she slumped forward. Blood dripped from her side, mingling with the water rushing into the canoe through three perfectly round holes, one of them opposite where she’d been sitting.
Swearing, Amadi realized the extra current behind them had subsided. They were powered now only by the Messippi’s natural flow and his oar. And they were sinking.
“Stay with her, Oseye,” he muttered in Gbe. “She can’t join her ancestors yet. Keep her here.” Ripping the oar through the water, he stroked twice on either side of the canoe before another bullet struck him, this time in the neck. He let the impact knock him sideways, then pretended to go limp as he stretched out and pressed a hand
against Isaura’s wound. Another shot thudded into him, sending blood spraying from his shoulder, but he forced himself not to twitch more than a dying body would.
“Got ‘im!” someone exulted from the ship.
A few seconds later, the canoe crashed into the roots of the upturned tree he’d steered them toward, and he remained motionless until the sounds of combat drifted further down the Messippi and into its turbulent junction with the Gulf of Metica. “I’m sorry,” he whispered once it seemed safe to act alive again. Isaura didn’t respond. Neither did the slaves on the ship.
None of them could hear him.
* * *
It might have taken hours to get the canoe free of the tree—whose far end was caught itself on something in the shallows—if the Chata hadn’t fought the current and doubled back.
Amadi hadn’t been sure of their intentions initially. They’d failed to take the slave ship, and probably didn’t want to go home empty-handed. But he’d been too busy tying a bandage around Isaura’s torso to bother playing dead again. “She needs help,” he said in Anglo as the first long canoe approached.
The foremost Chata tapped his ears to indicate his lack of comprehension, but the dead-eyed man behind him rose so fast he nearly overturned the canoe. His shoulder was crooked and his skull noticeably dented. Neither injury looked fresh.
“I have a message for you,” the man said, shaking off his companion’s attempts to make him sit down. “Cut yourself.”
Amadi blinked. “What?”
“Every day, on the way to Huancavelica.” The man’s lips kept moving, but nothing more came out. After a few seconds of this, his face crinkled in confusion, as if he’d forgotten the rest of what he wanted to say. Or was too damaged to vocalize it. “I have a message for you,” he eventually repeated. “Cut yourself—”
A scarred, hulking warrior of middle years interrupted with what sounded like an order in his native tongue. His canoe was larger than the first and crewed by two more rowers.
“Every day,” the dented man continued. “On the way—”
The big Chata barked another order, and this time the dented man’s companion pulled out a cloth. “I’m sorry,” the big Chata offered once the dented man was thoroughly gagged. “But that’s all Hattack says now. He’s been muttering it since we found him this morning.”
Amadi nodded respectfully. “My friend has injuries of her own. I endangered her, and she needs help. Men of honor would give it to her.”
The Chata snorted. “Men of honor don’t play dead to escape a fight.”
Amadi’s cheeks burned, but the surrounding Chata had nocked several arrows at him, and several more at Isaura. This wasn’t a moment for pride. “Maybe. But whatever man I am, I honor my word. And if you help my friend, I’ll tell you what happened three weeks ago, when your people fell down and weeped black sludge.”
One of the other Chata murmured at this. He must understand Anglo too.
The large Chata considered Amadi. “And how do you know what happened?”
“Help my friend, and I’ll tell you.”
The large Chata chewed this over a moment longer, then motioned at the upturned tree and said something in his own language. Looking surprised, several other Chata relaxed their bowstrings and leapt onto the tree, producing knives and hatchets to cut through the roots entangling Quecxl’s canoe.
“You’ll tell us,” the large Chata said as one of his men threw Amadi a bag of clay and indicated he should use it to plug the leaks in the canoe. “And then, depending on what you say, I will help your friend.”
The large Chata’s tone was dark, guaranteeing nothing, but Amadi nodded anyway and bent to apply the clay.
* * *
At first, Minco—the large Chata—didn’t believe the Red Wraith had immunized all the original people. But Amadi made his case by shattering his right hand with a tomahawk.
“You see how the bones knit back together?” he asked, gritting his teeth as his fingers began to straighten and realign, setting off a fog of murmurs from the onlookers. The pain was immense, but he hadn’t seen a faster method of convincing Minco. “My spirit armor is what the cure’s based on. This is what the Red Wraith put a small piece of in you.” With his good hand, he pointed to a group of children playing in the Chata’s riverside village.
Minco’s eyes stayed on the reforming hand. Eventually, he shook himself and crouched next to Isaura, who lay unconscious on a pallet next to—but not yet in—the house of the village’s healer. “Was she part of it too?”
Briefly, Amadi weighed the benefits of lying. Would the Chata leader be more or less likely to help the Espan if he knew she was involved in the cure? But her breathing grew shallower by the minute; she didn’t have time for more doubt and debate. “Yes,” Amadi said softly. “She can channel water. The Red Wraith used it to wash out the plague.”
Minco considered this, then pointed at one of the playing children. “Kinta there was the first to fall to the ground when the ‘cure’ came, thrashing and screaming. Her mother fell a moment later. We were all in the dirt after that, fire in our veins and corruption spilling out of us. ‘The Day of Black Pus,’ some call it now. I’ve never felt such pain, and I’ve taken more wounds than I can count.” He tapped a jagged scar on his shoulder. “Yet we are a hardy people, and most of us endured. Most … but not all.” He nodded at a scaffold supporting a small platform at roof-height in front of a nearby house. There were many such platforms scattered about the village. Most looked recently constructed. Some had personal items set around them in ceremonial fashion.
And atop those that were further away, Amadi could see noses, knees, and toes—the telltale tips of bodies laid on their backs.
“Kinta’s mother lies up there,” Minco said, nodding at the closest platform again. “The bone-pickers visit her now.” His jaw tightened. “She was my daughter.”
Amadi winced. This didn’t bode well. Nor did the fact that several of Minco’s men stood nearby, still holding their bows. The strings were loose now, but they could be made taut again in an instant. And while the spirit armor had dealt with worse than arrows just an hour ago, Isaura had no such protection. “The Wraith didn’t say that would happen,” Amadi tried after a moment. “Maybe he didn’t know.”
“Maybe you should have asked,” Minco said, rising forcefully and inclining his head to the archers. “Maybe you should have stopped him.”
“The Red Wraith also took my son’s father,” Isaura whispered as an arrow appeared on every bow.
Amadi looked down at her, beyond relieved to hear her speak. The Espan had grown paler in the last few minutes, but her eyes were open, and she was gazing at the platform Minco had indicated.
“At the Battle of Edgeland,” she continued, her tone sharper now. “When he sprayed the bullets of the Anglos and Francs back upon them, and caught some of their Hellani and Kiksha allies in the process. He may not have meant to, but he did it anyway … And my son’s father—my Rowtag—paid the price for the Wraith’s ‘greater good.’”
One of Minco’s archers took a step forward, but the Chata leader held up his hand.
Isaura inhaled haltingly, as if she could only fill her lungs a little at a time. “I couldn’t stop it … couldn’t save him. But I could still love him … I could still honor him.” Her eyelids fluttered shut, and she rotated both wrists so her fingers pointed at the platform holding Minco’s daughter.
A moment later, twin rivers sprouted from the ground in front of her hands.
They were small rivers, nothing like the mighty Messippi sprawling less than a hundred yards to the west. But they were rivers nonetheless, tiny streams that followed the contours of the earth to the platform, then spiraled up its scaffolding and washed over its surface.
At first, the water that dripped down was brown and black. But after a minute or so, during which the archers murmured what sounded like prayers and Minco stared in wonder, the platform’s little waterfalls turned clear.
A few breaths later, the rivers receded, twining back down the scaffolding and into the soil.
“I washed his body,” Isaura whispered. “I washed his body, and I said goodbye.” Her eyes, still closed, leaked a second set of rivers down her cheeks.
Minco’s face glistened with a similar pattern as he knocked on the healer’s door.
* * *
In the days that followed, Amadi learned several things from the Chata while they tended to Isaura.
He learned that some of the Chata had thought themselves invincible after what the Red Wraith had done to them. “Those of us who woke felt stronger,” Minco explained. “And the sick were sick no longer. Some of the foolhardiest thought that meant they were unkillable and became reckless in their raiding. They found out soon enough that arrows and bullets still take their toll. A horse probably trampled that one.” Minco pointed to Hattack, the sick house’s other patient.
“I have a message for you,” Hattack said as fervently as before. “Cut yourself—”
“He knows, Hattack, he knows. Peace, brother. Lie back and be at ease.”
Amadi also learned that, with careful strikes from a hammerstone, the tip of the double-femur he’d kept as a curiosity could be turned into a blade. It made for a short spear, and a primitive one at that. But he had no doubt he’d find a use for it.
And on the fifth day of Isaura’s convalescence, he learned that the Chata had spotted a cart.
“A week ago,” he summarized for the impatient Espan. “At a trading post to the north. Fort Towlens.”
“Shoteka?” she asked immediately.
“They had a babe with them,” Amadi confirmed. “And it didn’t look like a Han child.”
“Get the canoe. You said it’s patched, right? I’m fine now. I’ll float us back upriver. We can be there in a day if we—”
“They were bargaining for a ferry across the Messippi,” Amadi interrupted. “They’re probably already on the other side, hiding their tracks again. We won’t find them.”
The Black Resurrection Page 5
