“You knew Shen Da stole Isaura’s child,” he hissed, unleashing a vicious set of jabs and kicks. “And you joined that snake anyway!” His punches felt wrong, too light without anything beyond his wrists. But the bloody swings served their purpose. Haru continued her retreat, counterstriking here and there but mostly staying outside his range.
Until Shen Da shouted something from up the street, and the Nippon turned and ran.
Amadi followed doggedly, the sword-spear wobbling inside him and shredding his insides a little more with each stride. Running with it still in him was absurd, but what could he do? Stop to ask someone to pull it out?
No. Not yet. Not until these bastards led him to Shoteka.
And so Amadi ran on, impaled and handless, but gaining ground nonetheless.
“The northern causeway,” he shouted after several minutes of hard pursuit made it clear where Shen Da was headed. “Isaura, they’re going for your boy!”
They were out of Chintown now, terrifying a whole new set of Metica City inhabitants. Haru had caught up to Shen Da and the woman in the chair, and Amadi was maybe twenty feet behind. But he came no closer, even though he could see his quarries’ growing fatigue. He needed to keep them running.
“You will not escape!” he called at their backs, as much to justify his suffering as to instill further fear. “I will catch you, and you will pay for what you’ve done!”
His quarry said nothing in response, but Shen Da picked up his pace as he and Haru rounded an administrative building and made the last turn onto the northern causeway.
Amadi increased his speed to match, the bobbing of the sword-spear in his stomach somehow becoming even more excruciating. “You can’t outrun me, Shen Da. I don’t tire. I don’t sleep. I don’t stop. You will never—”
As he veered around the administrative building’s corner, Haru slid by him, skidding across the cobbled road and slashing at his ankles with her knife. When he stumbled, she landed another blow, this one to his right hamstring, which snapped before his spirit armor could reinforce it.
Amadi pitched face-first into the street, grunting as the sword-spear’s blade hit a cobblestone and twisted anew. The Nippon was on him in an instant, straddling his shoulders so she could yank her long weapon free and jam it back in, humming all the while.
But he rolled before she could land another hit, and Haru sprang away, running after Shen Da and the woman in the chair again, who were on the causeway proper and making steady progress.
“Isaura!” Amadi shouted through the newest helping of agony as he tried to heave himself up. Neither leg would take his weight. His right was useless from the knee down, and it felt like Haru had cut the big tendon in the heel of his left. “They’re getting away! Where are you?”
Not for the first time, he wished he hadn’t left his bone-spear in the canoe alongside Chase’s blunderbuss. Isaura had thought the weapons would be too conspicuous, but Amadi would have given anything to throw the one or fire the other into the Nippon’s receding back.
Of course, to do either, he would have needed hands.
Yet he could still use his stumps to pull himself forward, still pump his thighs and force himself to crawl while he waited for his faltering spirit armor to get him upright again. For years, he’d wanted to be rid of the thick energy, to give it to someone else. But now he needed every ounce of it to make him whole enough to carry on. Needed it quickly.
Luck was with him. Up ahead, Shen Da was cursing at the bridge-minders as they raised a section of the causeway to let a long line of boats pass. Amadi doubted the Han would risk swimming like he had—not with the sick woman. They were stuck for the time being.
But Amadi still couldn’t walk, much less run. He was crawling at a good clip, though, already having pulled himself stump-over-stump onto the causeway. It hurt every time he braced his empty wrists against the bridge, but everything hurt. At least his stomach was starting to close. It only left irregular smears behind him now, instead of a steady stream of mixed fluids.
A canoe slipped through the opening in the causeway. That left seven more boats and six sections of the bridge to go. Shen Da looked back at Amadi, noted his position, and cursed again at the bridge-minders. A Metican crouched to lend Amadi a hand, but he waved it off. What he needed right now were legs—working, running legs.
He tried to stand again, and again he wobbled and fell. The thick energy was swirling in his knee and heel, but not fast enough.
Six more boats to go, and still six sections of the causeway. He wasn’t going to make it.
He had to stand. He would stand.
Amadi slammed his stumps onto the bridge, pushed against its surface with all his remaining might, and rocketed up, ignoring his screaming core so that his arms could do the lifting and let his legs balance. Balance and hold.
To his surprise, they did.
Both his hamstring and the tendon in his heel felt strained, as if they might burst again at any moment, but the spirit armor had advanced their healing to the point that Amadi could take a step forward.
And another.
And another.
Three more boats to go, and the same six sections of the causeway. But he was walking. After a few more strides, he risked a jog. And when he cleared the fifth section, and his legs hadn’t fallen off, he accelerated into a sprint.
There were no more boats to go now, but the hunt was back on.
And smoke rose on the coast.
Amadi noticed the first tendrils when the bridge-minders finished lowering the raised section of the causeway and Shen Da surged ahead, his head level with the back of the wheeled chair as he shoved it forward. Haru ran close behind, casting frequent dead-eyed glances over her shoulder.
They were only twenty feet ahead of him again, a distance Amadi intended to maintain. But that smoke … It was coming from one of the areas he’d searched earlier in the day. He’d felt eyes on him as he’d checked to either side of the causeway, hoping to see wheel ruts or some other sign that a cart lay hidden in the forest. He’d found nothing, but he should have looked harder—as Amadi studied the point where the smoke originated, the sun’s setting light skittered across something metallic, and a jet of flame from the same area caused yet more smoke to billow up.
Chase Harper, firing one of his dragonhead blunderbusses.
Perhaps he was creating a signal for Shen Da. Maybe the Anglo was burning away the shrubbery they must have used to camouflage the cart. Either way, it meant Shoteka was close.
Amadi considered diving into the lake and swimming for the smoke, but Shen Da made it a moot point by sending Haru sprinting back to block Amadi’s path. The closest bystanders gave them a wide berth as soon as the Nippon swung her sword-spear in a warning arc, her movements defensive again.
“I know your tricks now,” Amadi said in Gbe as he slowed to consider the best way around his humming adversary. Trickles of blood still dripped from his wrists, another sign that his spirit armor was overtaxed. His first injuries of the day had been grave, but they should have at least stopped leaking. How much more punishment could he endure?
“You’re quick,” he continued, deciding his legs were the key. He couldn’t afford to waste time crawling again. “And skilled. But you’re not willing to sacrifice.” Lunging forward, he used his upper body to block the inevitable strikes from Haru’s sword-spear, and for the price of a lacerated forearm and another cruelly gouged shoulder, he made it inside her reach.
The fistless uppercut he landed beneath her chin to shut up her humming felt glorious.
“I’m used to pain,” he panted, jabbing her in the stomach with his other stump before tackling her to the causeway’s wooden surface. “I am pain.”
Yet the impact hurt him more than it did her. One of his ribs cracked where it collided with Haru’s collarbone, and the snapping sound was terrible to hear.
Not because of the injury itself. A fractured rib was nothing compared to everything else. But Amadi sen
sed what the pop portended. His spirit armor, pushed to the breaking point, had finally done just that: broken.
Instantly, he felt the thick energy drain out of him. And without its sustaining, buffering force, he couldn’t move.
Couldn’t stop Haru from wriggling out from under him.
Couldn’t keep her from reclaiming her sword-spear and stabbing its blade into his chest.
Couldn’t prevent her from humming while she kicked his useless body into the lake.
The water’s chill roused him for a second, long enough to manage a few feeble strokes and see Shen Da shouting at Haru from further up the causeway. A second later, the Han paled, crouched so fast it nearly unbalanced him, and whipped his hands back and forth along the bridge. Amadi could also smell more smoke from the coast, but he couldn’t turn his head to look for Chase.
And then everything was blue.
Blue in his ears, blue in his nose, blue in his mouth—the lake was all around him. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. But he could see the bottoms of boats sliding by, and fish swimming below, and …
Bubbles. Thousands of them, surging from the city like a giant arrow of angry air.
Isaura.
Chapter Eleven
Lake Texco
Isaura had known something was wrong when she’d started to circle back to the scribe’s stall and seen a gawking crowd, slashes of blood, and two dark, severed hands. Red footprints had led away from the scene, as did two parallel lines.
The type of lines a wheeled chair might make.
Before anyone could stop her, Isaura had darted forward and stuffed the hands in her pack, heedless of the mess they’d make. Then she’d followed the tracks north, running until her lungs threatened to burst from her chest. If only she’d waited longer for Amadi outside the scribe’s stall, instead of tearing off to investigate a worthless lead that took her halfway across Chintown. Now she was playing catch up, and the parallel lines were petering out and giving way to intermittent streaks and drips of blood, and she was starting to doubt her heading, and—
She saw them.
Shen Da, his ill companion, and Haru, who was fighting poor Amadi. They were several sections of the causeway ahead, with scores of people in the way. So Isaura filched a board from a pile of construction materials and made her own path—over the water. Her little makeshift raft sped forward fast enough to startle Shen Da, but not in time to stop Haru from beating Amadi.
“No!” Isaura screamed as Amadi slipped beneath the surface of Lake Tecxo.
She changed course immediately, sending the board surging towards the red ripples that had claimed the Afrii. All those months of practice channeling water behind Quexcl’s canoe paid off: she reached Amadi within a fifty-count.
He’d already sunk deep. But she was coursing with two months of deferred rage, and the energy made her strong. It was a simple matter to wrap a current around him and fish him onto the causeway, where people gasped at the sight of her magic and the ruin of a man it produced.
A network of wounds crisscrossed Amadi’s body, slicing through many of his tattoos and spewing blood with petrifying speed. His chest wasn’t moving, and where his gentle, powerful hands should have been, there were only stumps.
Why wasn’t he healing? She’d seen him survive more than this, heard tales of “The Black Resurrection” overcoming worse. Were his abilities still diminished from the events on the earthen pyramid? But he’d thought them restored …
“Help him!” Isaura yelled at the bystanders who kept looking uselessly from her to Amadi and back again. “Get him to a doctor!”
She would have done it herself, but Shen Da and the Han woman were just ahead. And on the coast, a gust of wind framed Chase’s scarred forehead inside a swirl of smoke.
“Forgive me,” Isaura murmured to Amadi, her eyes leaking from more than just using her magic. “I’ll come back for you.”
“Shen Da!” she called as she rebalanced on the board and jetted away from Amadi’s silent form, shouting over the latest round of gasps and exclamations her witchery provoked. “Turn and face me, damn you!”
Whether or not he heard her, the Han remained crouched, focused on something at his feet. A few breaths later, the causeway broke around him, and he and his companion floated away on a rectangular wooden chunk of it. Haru leapt aboard before they’d traveled more than a yard. Her momentum sent the makeshift raft surging toward the coast, and she maintained their speed by dipping her polearm into the water and rowing with its blade, washing off more of Amadi’s blood with each stroke.
The fools.
Taking to the lake might have been an effective means of escaping Amadi. Isaura had no doubt he’d pursued the kidnapping scum relentlessly—the evidence was painted in red strokes across at least a mile of Metica City.
But water was her domain.
“Shen Da!” she shouted again, and this time he turned to look at her. When he saw her stand up on the board, rising from the water like a shark’s fin, he blanched.
As he should.
See your fate, you sniveling kidnapper. See it roaring up behind you.
Shen Da barked something at Haru, and the treacherous sellsword paused her rowing to draw a long knife and hurl it at Isaura. Sneering, she called up a wave to intercept the spinning blade and funnel it down to deeper waters, out of sight and reach.
The Nippon didn’t flinch at the loss of her weapon, but Shen Da uttered what was surely a curse and began scooping his hands through the water, frantically trying to move his raft a little faster, a little farther.
To little effect. Isaura was on them in seconds.
Haru slashed at her with that vicious polearm, yet Isaura parried with another wave and the Nippon went twisting into the water, unwilling to release the shaft as it spiraled down to join the knife. Shen Da stepped in front of his companion, shielding her from what they both deserved. But there was no blocking the whirlpool Isaura opened beneath them, overturning their raft and dunking a Han to either side, the woman’s chair bobbing furiously behind her. Nothing to save them but—
A child’s cry.
“Shoteka,” Isaura whispered, recognizing his voice even though several other people were screaming and the smoldering bit of the coast remained a hundred yards away. “I’m coming!” she yelled. “Mamá is coming!”
Letting the whirlpool lapse, she channeled everything she had into rocketing her board towards the point where she’d last seen Chase. There was only smoke there now, but he couldn’t have gone far, and her baby’s voice had definitely come from that direction.
“Chase!” she shouted in Anglo as she drew close, her eyes streaming their witching water behind her like a set of transparent reins. “Give him back. That’s my boy. You hear me? That’s my boy!”
Smoke continued to shroud the coast, but Isaura could make out details now, like protruding branches, puffy bushes, and the remnants of a campfire.
“I know you’re here. I don’t know why, but I know you’re here. Just do the right thing and give him back.”
Nothing, damn him.
Gliding to a stop a few feet from the beach, Isaura drenched its rocky surface with a sheet of water, hoping to wash away the smoke. Most of it disappeared, but some of it was replaced by steam. Even so, she could see better. The elusive cart was here all right, dripping and surrounded by a pile of wet ash. And the Anglo stood next to it, equally soaked and pointing one of his dragonhead blunderbusses at her head.
“Where is he, Chase?”
He didn’t answer, but he didn’t shoot either. His face had a wooden quality to it, as if someone had carved his emotion away slice by slice. Was that his way of suppressing guilt?
“Is he in the cart?”
Chase didn’t so much as twitch, even when an ox bellowed from further in the woods.
But then something rustled in the back of the cart, and a small, special voice cried out for his mamá.
Isaura and Chase reacted in tandem. She tens
ed to leap off her board and onto the beach. He sent a stream of fire pouring forth from his blunderbuss. She countered with a plume of water.
And steam was everywhere.
The searing white cloud hid Chase and his fire from view and threatened to turn her watery buffer into scalding death. But Isaura ignored the darkness gathering on the edges of her vision—the fatigue that had no claim on her yet, not until she’d claimed Shoteka—and maintained a protective screen as she sped the board a few feet to the left. Chase wouldn’t be able to see through the steam any better than she could. He wouldn’t know where she’d gone.
Someone else did, though. As Isaura raised her leg to step onto the beach, a hand grabbed it and yanked back, pitching her into the surf. No, not a hand she realized as she spun around and looked behind her. A weed.
Shen Da, reseated on his broken piece of the causeway, held the long plant’s other end like a whip. Next to him lay the Han woman, her eyes leaking … not tears. The fluid flowed too fast for that.
It was witching water—the woman was a witch too, and she was taking the lake.
Isaura fought to reassert control, to call a new current up to flip the jagged raft again. But despite her illness, the Han woman was strong, and much fresher. She only needed a few seconds to reduce Isaura’s screen to mist, leaving Chase’s renewed fire hovering inches from her face. Shen Da’s weed was just as fast, twining around her and binding her more effectively than any rope. She strained against them anyway, thrashing in the sand so hard that she dug herself down to water level. But she was still bound when Haru brought the raft closer, flutter-kicking behind it until she could stand in the shallows and push the improvised boat the last few feet.
“Why?” Isaura asked, the only word she could choke through the exhaustion and anger clogging her throat as Shoteka wailed from the cart. Oh God, he only cried like that when he was hungry. But she couldn’t see him, couldn’t reach him. She was so close!
Shen Da looked back at the causeway, where Amadi had heaved himself up on an elbow and vomited as a troop of heavily armed Espan soldiers gathered around him. Nodding grimly, the Han spoke something in Mandarin and Chase stepped through the dissipating steam.
The Black Resurrection Page 10
