“Huancavelica,” the Anglo translated flatly, extinguishing his flame. “In four months’ time. Bring the Afrii. Don’t be late.”
Then Chase smashed his blunderbuss over her head, and night came early.
Part II: Bayano
Chapter Twelve
Treetops
With a great, shuddering roar Kun died in his harness.
To that point, Jie had been enjoying everything about the morning, her first time sitting in the front of the cart since before Metica City. None of the healers they’d visited there—Han or otherwise—had been able to do much about the fever she’d caught somewhere north of New Espan. And like all the rest, they’d been confounded by the wasting disease that would kill her sooner than Da wanted to admit. Fleeing from Amadi hadn’t helped things, and mirroring Isaura’s ability with water had made matters significantly worse. For a week after, Jie had barely been able to raise her head enough to swallow the water Da insisted she drink.
But today, almost two months later, she felt better. Stronger. Free of fever and ready to sit next to her brother again as he gave the animals their head and played his flute. She’d stopped asking why he felt so compelled to take them on this mysterious journey to Huancavelica. He never answered, and the how was pleasant enough: just him, her, little Bolin, and two companions she’d come to like more than she would have expected. Chase continued to be kindness itself, happy to help her pass the time by playing “black stone, white stone” (as he called weiqi) in the back of the cart. And after some initial sullenness, Haru had proven to be a deft hand with Bolin. She’d be a wonderful mother someday … Thinking thoughts like these, and sitting in the front of the cart instead of lying in the wretched back, had made for a good morning.
Until Kun, the larger oxen and her favorite, had staggered right two steps, left two more, bellowed, and collapsed.
“Not now,” Da muttered, setting his flute aside and yanking on the reins, even though Hai and Lok had stopped as soon as they felt Kun’s weight dragging down their ends of the harness. “Chase, meet me outside, and bring your knife.”
The cart shook slightly as the Anglo hopped out the back, then shook again when Da jumped off the front. Both men looked tired. On top of their everyday struggle to clear a passable trail through the sweltering Panma jungle—which Chase accomplished with fire and Da with jing—the two had been up late working on something neither would describe in detail.
“What is it?” Haru asked from inside the cart.
“Kun died,” Jie murmured, easing herself off her cushioned seat. “Will you stay with Bolin?”
“Where else would I go?”
“Thank you.” Jie walked gingerly to the harness. Chase was struggling to unbuckle Kun.
“It’s no good,” the Anglo muttered. “The ox is as heavy as a damn ox. He’s pulling down the straps. I can’t undo them. We have to cut him loose.”
Da shook his head. “Cut the ox, not the harness.”
Chase grimaced but nodded. “We’ll want the meat anyway.”
“No meat. You cut him out. I’ll readjust the harness to fit Lok next to Hai.”
The Anglo looked surprised. “You really want to leave him? He’d feed us for weeks.”
“Comply.”
Chase’s eyes glazed over, and without another word, he drew his knife and turned back to Kun.
Jie traced her hand down the ox’s broad forehead, closing his eyes with her fingers. “Why don’t we want his meat?”
Da started—he must not have noticed her coming up behind them. “Are you feeling all right? You should be resting.”
“His lips are purple. Was he sick?”
Her brother exhaled heavily enough to suggest he was trying to vent his frustration as air rather than words. “It’s not your concern. Please go back to the cart and see to Bolin.”
“Why wouldn’t it be my concern? Can we at least—”
“Go back to the cart, Jie. See to Bolin.”
She couldn’t hold the purple haze off any longer. Seconds after Da changed his request to a command, she found herself in her cushioned seat and asking Haru about Bolin.
But the memory of Kun’s death remained, the first time Jie had managed to hold on to something through the haze. It felt good.
And troubling.
* * *
“We should get moving,” Haru noted later while Chase and Da struggled to readjust Kun’s side of the harness to fit Lok. The horse was tall, and resizing the oxen’s straps had proven to be more of an ordeal than expected. Especially because Da didn’t seem willing to use any more of his jing than he had to. He must be truly exhausted.
“Runaway slaves are thick in these parts,” Haru continued. “So are hostile original people. Sometimes they ally with each other to raid Espan silver caravans and other travelers.”
Jie watched Bolin toy with a bit of vine Haru had cut for him after clearing a play space behind the cart. The two women sat off to the side, giving them lines of sight to all three males. Jie was sewing a shirt for Bolin while Haru re-knotted a length of rope she’d claimed the day after they’d left Metica City. “Do you really think they’d trouble us?” Jie asked.
“Any Han and Nippons they’ve seen before were probably guarding one of those caravans.”
“Like you.”
“Like me,” Haru agreed, cocking her head as if something had just occurred to her. “Which means they might assume three ‘easterners’ have something of value in their strange little cart …”
“I see.”
Chase swore a powerful-sounding oath in Anglo and yanked his hand back from the harness—he’d pinched his finger on a buckle. Lok whinnied in what almost sounded like a laugh.
“Maybe you could help them?” suggested Jie. “You’re good with knots. That design you string together every morning is beautiful. Is it a shrine?”
Haru nodded. “Thanks, but I’m not sure they’d welcome it.”
“Maybe not. But if Chase burns the harness, we’ll be here even longer.”
Da motioned for the Anglo to put his blunderbuss away. He did, but only after swearing another oath.
Haru snorted and pointed at a sprawling tree overhanging the cart. “At least someone finds this entertaining.”
Jie followed her finger and saw a black monkey observing from a low branch. The animal’s limbs and tail were long, and its face was bright red. “What kind is that?”
“A spider monkey. Big one too.”
“He doesn’t seem very impressed.”
Haru grinned. “No. Not at all.” She glanced at Bolin, who was still winding and unwinding the scrap of vine around his wrist. Her mouth flattened. “Will I be able to return to Metica City when this is over—when we reach Huancavelica? There are people there who need me.”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t you?”
The Nippon studied Jie for a moment, then shrugged, as if judging something to be inevitable but attempting it anyway. “Because of what your brother did to me. The mind pollution—yes, that’s the stuff. Hell. You can’t even hear me talk about it without glazing over …”
A purple cloud swallowed Haru’s words, but echoes of them lingered when Jie became aware of her surroundings again. “Talk about what?”
The Nippon had pulled her legs to her chest; she was resting her chin on her knees. “Forget it. Oh wait, you already did.”
“Please. I hate losing myself like this. What were you asking me about my brother?”
Haru shook her head. “I think I know the answer. Try this instead: am I really wu? Can you talk about that?”
Jie nodded. “I see you—when I look for wu. You’re faint, though.”
“And that means I’m weak?”
“Not necessarily. All it means for sure is that I haven’t mirrored you yet. Those ones are always brighter. But you are wu.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. We’ll learn what you’re capable of soon enough.”
The Nippon wa
tched Lok evade Chase and the harness again, raising his head at the last moment to keep the halter off. “You can ‘see’ the Anglo, then. And your brother, Amadi, Isaura …”
“All of them,” Jie confirmed. “Every wu I’ve met or mirrored, whether I realized I was doing it or not.”
Haru looked thoughtful. “So you’ve mirrored Amadi before?”
“I must have, but not long enough to get me out of these braces. I can see Bolin, though, ever since the earthen pyramid. He’s—Haru! The monkey has him!”
The Nippon turned a split-second after Jie had, in time to see the spider monkey swing back up into its tree, one arm holding her boy tight against the beast’s dark stomach.
“Da!” Jie yelled as Haru leapt to her feet and sprinted to the tree. “Chase! A monkey’s taken Bolin!”
The thief looked down at the same time the men looked up, Chase’s handprint scar turning almost as bright a red as the beast’s face. “Well, that’s bloody absurd,” the Anglo noted.
Da grimaced and quickly finished fastening Lok into the adjusted portion of the harness. “Burn the trees to either side. Don’t give it anywhere to go.”
Chase nodded and fumbled for one of his pistols. Haru was already halfway up the tree, ascending almost as fast as the monkey.
“Watch yourself,” the Anglo called before following his words with a gout of flame. The focused stream seared through a branch the monkey had been reaching for, causing it to screech and scramble higher still.
Jie flinched, but Bolin … Bolin didn’t bat an eye. Her baby seemed to be having the time of his life. Despite being a slip away from a long fall and a landing she didn’t want to contemplate—couldn’t contemplate.
“Do something,” she begged Da.
“The sides,” he ordered, striding next to Chase. “There, and there—anything that overlaps another tree.”
“Right,” the Anglo said, aiming his streams where Da directed.
In short order, the monkey was cornered, stuck at the top of a smoking tree with every escape route turned to ash or blocked by Haru.
She’d paused ten feet below the monkey to draw a knife, her lips pursed. She was probably humming. The Nippon was always humming.
“What now?” Chase asked.
What now indeed? The monkey had nowhere to go, but the beast still had Bolin, and if Haru tried to grab it …
Jie leaned against the tree, refusing to acknowledge how tired scrambling to it had made her. “Please, Da. Can’t you move the branches? Wrap one around Bolin to keep him from falling? Anything?”
“Not quickly—it’s a long way up. But I’ll try.”
“And I’ll see if I can mirror you.”
She couldn’t, though. No matter how hard she tried to summon the doubling sensation, to feel what Da was feeling and mimic its effects. She’d known she couldn’t—not on command. Not like she used to. But she’d never wanted to more badly.
“Keep him there!” she called to Haru. It was a pathetic contribution, but the most a useless invalid like herself could manage. “Da’s going to send something to help!”
The Nippon nodded, holding her knife in her mouth to free up both hands.
Jie looked from her brother to her boy. The former had closed his eyes in concentration, his hands gripping the tree’s trunk so hard she thought his fingers might bore through it. The latter was hugging the monkey as if it were a giant toy, unconcerned by the height, or the smoke, or the very real possibility that he might die.
“Hold on, little one,” she breathed. “Hold on.”
She hadn’t meant her words to be so well-timed—with abrupt, terrifying speed, the monkey swung down a branch and dangled Bolin by his armpits.
For a moment, no one moved. But then Haru reached up and took the boy, accepting what seemed like an … offer.
“What in blazes?” wondered Chase as the monkey scampered back to the top of the tree.
Haru didn’t question the sudden turn of events. She just spat out her knife and back-climbed, leaning against the tree’s trunk so she could spare an arm to press Bolin tight against her side, just as the monkey had. As they drew closer, holes opened in the trunk wherever a handhold or foothold wasn’t readily available—Da had finally managed to master the tree.
Jie rejoiced when Haru was finally low enough to pass Bolin to Chase, who immediately gave the boy to her. His mother.
“I’ve got him,” she said when Chase kept supporting Bolin. “I’ve got him.”
“Jaysus,” the Anglo said, pointing his blunderbuss at the top of the tree again. “Should I bring that little bastard down?”
“It’s a she, actually,” Haru said as she dropped the rest of the way to the ground. “I saw her breasts oozing milk.”
A mother herself.
“And I swear Bolin was talking with her. Right before she lowered him, he babbled something to her, and she … agreed.”
“He’s wu,” Jie murmured, squeezing her boy as tight as she dared, cherishing his smile, his lack of fear, his wholeness. “That’s why I can see him.”
Chase used the muzzle of his blunderbuss to scratch behind his head. “So he can speak ape, then? That’s his ‘gift?’ But then why did the monkey take him?”
“Maybe he asked it to,” Da said, removing his hands from the tree. He sounded drained. Had he been using the trunk for support after he finished pocking it with holes? “But that’s for later. For now, we get in the cart.”
Chase asked again about the would-be-kidnapper, and Haru said something about a silver caravan she’d seen while up in the tree, a procession whose guards were cutting a wide, inviting trail. But Jie shut it all out.
Because Bolin was safe. Her boy, her beautiful, baby boy, was safe.
And no one was going to take him from her ever again.
Chapter Thirteen
The Cimarrons
“Is that a Nethern ship?” Isaura asked as Amadi steered Quecxl’s canoe into the shelter of a small cove lined with thick, concealing brush.
“Franc,” he said in Espan, the latest language he’d been practicing with her to pass the time. “The other is Anglo.” A hundred yards off the coast, the two large, heavily armed vessels were maneuvering themselves to exchange what promised to be a massive broadside.
“How can you tell when neither’s flying their colors?”
“When I was taken as a slave, I waited by the ports of Ghelwa for almost a year before I was sold. I saw ships from many nations.” He’d seen slavers at other times too, but he still wasn’t ready to admit why. Not until they had Shoteka back. “No flags means these two are pirates.”
Isaura nodded. “I guessed that much. They probably rounded Cape Horn to raid silver shipments from Toposi to Panma City.”
“Probably.” One of the merchants they’d spoken to in Metica City had gone into aggravating detail about the New Espan silver network and its vulnerabilities. The slow-moving llama and mule trains from the Toposi mines to the Pacific Coast. The under-guarded ships from the Pacific Coast to Panma City (or Manila). And the even slower-moving mule trains from Panma City to Nombre de Dios, where the silver was shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to Espan proper. If bandits or pirates hadn’t intervened by then.
“You don’t think we can slip by them?”
Amadi steered the canoe onto the cove’s nearer side and pulled his oar in. His wrists rarely pained him anymore. After he’d evaded Metica City’s soldiers and found Isaura—but no further sign of Shen Da and the cart—she’d lashed his hands to his stumps. They’d healed within two weeks, a lengthy convalescence that indicated just how close his spirit armor had come to breaking. During that period and for several days after, the Espan had only allowed him to lie on his back in the canoe, drape his legs over the side, and kick with his feet as she floated them out to the Pacific. Eventually, she’d let him row again. But now that their maps placed them near Panma City, they were both exhausted. “Best to wait. Some of those cannonballs are coming near the
shore.”
To his surprise, Isaura shrugged and massaged her temples. She was as determined as ever, but since their failure in Metica City, she seemed more accepting of the need to pace themselves, to run the race for distance—and not speed—by taking occasional breaks and reducing risks when they could.
But he was still shocked whenever he convinced her to slow down.
“Would you like a drink?” she asked after a moment, already swiveling around to face him.
He nodded, and she cupped her hands beneath his. A few breaths later, enough water filled his palms for a long, cool drink. In truth, he hadn’t been thirsty. But he treasured the hourly ritual, especially now that he’d realized she didn’t have to touch him to summon the water—she was choosing to.
Her thoughts were elsewhere, however. He could tell from the faraway look in her eyes.
“We’ll get him back,” he said as she drew out her carving of Shoteka and Rowtag for the thousandth time. Naysin had left it next to her on the earthen pyramid. As a gift, they thought. A peace offering. (Amadi’s gift had been a promise. “I’ll find a way to help them,” Naysin had vowed in Amadi’s dreams, meaning the slaves. All of them, it sounded like. Every slave from Afrii in the New World. Amadi intended to see that promised honored.)
When Isaura didn’t respond, he turned back to the sea battle, which had morphed into a booming, indecipherable cloud of smoke and splinters.
“Did you know the Red Wraith gave Chase one of these?” Isaura asked several minutes later, tapping her carving after one of the ships caught fire and a cluster of flames spiked to towering heights.
Amadi winced as a burning man plunged through the smoke and disappeared into the ocean. “On the pyramid?”
“Yes, after the immunization … the Day of Black Pus. That was the Wraith’s gift to him. His is metal. From one of his blunderbusses, I think. It also shows a baby boy.”
The Black Resurrection Page 11
