“Not Shoteka.”
“No. I think it was Chase’s son.”
Two more men in various phases of immolation splashed into the water. Amadi thought the Anglos were winning, but it was hard to be sure whose ship was alight. “That hateful jackal has a son?”
“Had.” Isaura covered her carving of Shoteka and Rowtag with both hands. “Did you see his first moment of magic? When the Red Wraith rummaged through our memories?”
With a start, Amadi realized Isaura had probably seen his first moment of magic, and what preceded it. But if she had, she’d never brought it up. Was now the time? “I saw him burning many innocents,” he hedged. “And himself by accident.”
“That came later. The first time, before he knew what he could do, he lost his temper when he found his brother sleeping with an original girl. And that anger manifested as flames—flames that burned his brother and his son, sleeping in a crib in the corner.”
“It doesn’t excuse what he did after.”
“No. But it might explain it.” Isaura watched the smoky chaos for a few heartbeats. “He wasn’t filled with hate right away. He saved me once, in LaFlorida. Did you know that?”
Amadi stared at her in amazement. “Chase Harper?”
“Before he was scarred. He had that same ropy blonde hair, though, and an awful sadness in his eyes.” Isaura kept gazing at the battle, yet it was obvious she saw something else. “We didn’t speak. But he distracted the Espans that had imprisoned me … Terrible, brutal little men. Cowards, not countrymen. They’d been holding me for almost a year.”
Amadi froze. “I’m sorry.”
Isaura waved this off, but it wasn’t a casual gesture. When she spoke again, her voice was lined with too many emotions to count. “Not your fault. Although I did hold all men accountable for a while … Chase was the first man to do something decent for me in ages. He set that god-forsaken settlement ablaze while I stole Manuel and rode him into the night.” She squeezed the carving of Shoteka and Rowtag, then stuffed it back in her pouch. “He wasn’t always the Firebrand.”
“Even so,” Amadi said, then paused as an enormous explosion sounded. The burning ship’s powder magazine must have ignited. “That still doesn’t excuse what he did once he became the Firebrand.”
“No,” Isaura agreed. “Not at all. He was a rage-filled bastard when I saw him next, at a church in Fort Kaska. Scarred and spiteful. He tried to burn me because I was talking with an original man. The Red Wraith, as it happened.” She laughed darkly. “Did you know I saved him? I stopped Chase’s fire from incinerating Naysin. Blocked it with my water. Would the world be a better place if I hadn’t?”
“Original people would still be dying of plague.”
“I know. But …” She shook her head. “Some days I wish I’d just let that fire burn us all to ash.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Amadi murmured as the Anglos began picking off the remaining Francs—it was indeed the latter’s ship that had caught fire and erupted.
“Thank you.” Isaura watched the final stages of the battle for a while before speaking again. “I was already carrying Shoteka. I didn’t know it, but if I’d let that fire through …” She trailed her hand in the water as several Francs tried to swim for it, provoking a barrage of gunfire from the Anglo ship. None of the Francs made it anywhere close to shore. “Why on earth is Shen Da taking him to Huancavelica?”
Amadi grimaced. They’d been over the possibilities again and again. None of them made sense. If the Han was after a ransom, there was no reason to drag everyone on a six-month journey. Yet if he and his companion desired the child for themselves, why leave a note? No, there had to be something in Huancavelica Shen Da wanted, some reason for them all to go there. But what? “I don’t know.”
Isaura lifted her hand enough to bend the surface of the water without breaking it. Then she touched her braids with her dry hand. She’d been knotting them in ever more intricate patterns of late, in what Amadi had come to recognize as a calming exercise. “I wish I at least understood how that Han puta beat me.” The Espan balled her wet hand into a fist, squeezing ocean out to either side. “Frail as she looks, she was strong. Strong enough to take me by surprise. And Shen Da can do something with plants. Then there’s Chase.” Isaura opened her hand again, took in more water, squeezed it back out. “We have to be smart in Huancavelica. We’re only two against three.”
“Two against four. Haru is fast. Faster than I’ve ever seen. Too fast.”
The Espan grimaced. “I suppose we should assume it’s two of their witches for every one of ours.”
“We’ll be ready.”
“Only if we get there in time to lay a trap.”
“We’re going by boat. They’re traveling by cart through this.” Amadi gestured at the jungle lining the banks of the cove. “We’ll beat them.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I believe it.”
“What if we’re delayed again? Or if this happens again?” Isaura tapped her side where she’d been shot on the Messippi, then pointed at the rapidly concluding battle on the Pacific.
“Then we move faster.”
“If we can. Do you think it’s safe to go by them now?”
Amadi nodded. The Anglos were sailing away, using the surviving Francs for target practice as their ship sank from view, too damaged to salvage.
But he didn’t want to leave the cove yet. He ached to hold Isaura, to caress away the pain she’d hinted at, the horror she must have endured in LaFlorida. On a different day, he thought she might have welcomed the contact, even encouraged it. In addition to their drinking ritual, they’d brushed hands and legs in the canoe often enough to suggest more than just coincidence was at work. Touching her now, though … No. It would be the exact wrong reaction.
“Isaura,” he said instead as he raised the oar and pushed the canoe off the cove’s bank. “What happened to you in LaFlorida … I wish—”
A gray blur plummeted into the water next to the canoe, rocking it so hard they nearly capsized. At first Amadi thought the Anglos had lobbed a parting cannonball at the shore, but no report accompanied the shot, and when the enormous splash finally receded, a voice spoke in Espan from the other side of the cove: “Is she your mistress?”
Amadi turned to see six men and two women pointing a mix of spears, bolas, and bows at Isaura. Most of the group were Afrii, but two were original men and one was Han. The largest Afrii—a man as tall as the vodun from the earthen pyramid and almost as thick—had bent to lift another massive stone. The strength it must have taken to throw the first …
“The white woman,” a regular-sized Afrii clarified. He looked Mandinkan. Were these runaways? “Is she your mistress?”
Amadi regarded the man calmly, remembering how honesty had seen him through the Messippi encounter with the Chata. “Her name is Isaura, and she’s my friend, not my mistress.”
“But she is Espan?”
Isaura answered with a simple “Yes.”
“Then you’ll need to come with us.”
“No.”
The Mandinkan hefted his spear. “The King demands it.”
“And what king would that be?”
He flashed a fierce grin. “The King of the Cimarrons. He passes judgment on all Espans in these parts. If your ‘friend’ here will vouch for you, you have little to worry about. Tie these over your eyes.” He reached into a sack hanging from his waist, removed two strips of cloth, and tossed them into the canoe.
Amadi caught the strips and tossed them back. “No disrespect to your king, but we don’t have time to await his judgment.” He took hold of the oar again and pulled it through the water in a long, deliberate stroke.
The Mandinkan shrugged. “Poor choice. You’ll still come blindfolded, but now you’ll also be bound and bleeding. Stop them, Fara.” He nodded at the big Afrii, who roared and hurled the second mini-boulder at the canoe.
The stone never struck.
Isaura caught it with a geyser of water, fountaining the missile up over the canoe and onto the other side of the cove, where the rock embedded itself in the soil as deeply as any cannonball. Smaller plumes intercepted the arrows the runaways had fired while their jaws dropped, and Amadi used his oar to block the bola one of the original men threw at him.
“As my friend mentioned,” Isaura said into the ensuing silence, twin streams of water spilling from her eyes. “We don’t have time for this. Save your arrows for Espans who deserve them.” The plume-shields bent at their bases, funneling the arrows they’d snatched to the shore and setting them in front of their casters.
Keeping an eye on the bemused runaways, Amadi dipped his oar back into the water and paddled steadily toward the mouth of the cove.
He would have made it if three Francs hadn’t stumbled over the opposite bank.
They all looked at least half-drowned, but when they splashed next to the canoe, they remained alert enough to grab its side and push down, causing the canoe to nearly capsize for the second time in as many minutes. The bastards wanted another ship.
Amadi cracked one on the head with his oar, and Isaura summoned a current that swept the other two off their feet and back out to sea. Yet her attention was diverted long enough to give the runaways an opening. She snatched their second round of arrows with more mini-geysers, but another bola made it through. And this one wrapped around her face and cracked her in either temple with its weighted balls.
“Isaura!” Amadi yelled as she slumped over the side of the canoe.
The Espan was out cold, helpless to prevent Fara from launching a third stone, the largest yet—where did he keep finding them? Amadi grabbed Isaura’s ankle just before the rock landed in the front of the canoe, flipping it in an instant.
For a moment, Amadi thought he might be able to hold on to the Espan and swim them to safety, but a giant hand encircled his ankle and yanked him out of the water.
“You will come with me,” the Mandinkan said once Fara had Amadi dangling by his foot. “Or I will pass judgment on your shaman ‘friend’ in the king’s stead.”
Amadi blinked ocean out of his eyes and saw that one of the original men was holding a knife to Isaura’s throat while the women of the group tied, blindfolded, and gagged her. She was soaking wet and bleeding from both sides of her head, but she breathed.
“Do you agree?”
There was only a sliver of light between the original man’s blade and Isaura’s throat. Too little space to risk fighting one-on-eight. He’d have to wait until she came to. “Yes.”
“Good. Shut your eyes.”
Amadi did, and after a cloth was wound around them, he saw nothing more for hours.
But he marched a long way.
Chapter Fourteen
Compromise
Da coughed, wiped the blood from his mouth, and coughed again.
It was bad this morning, as painful as it had been since he’d started hacking up purple phlegm a few weeks ago, when they’d been traversing Panma’s hellish mountains and he’d lost the breath to play his flute. The puppet spores affected him differently than they did other people, acted slower. But they still affected him.
And now time was running out.
Da studied the jungle as he waited to see if another cough would wrack his lungs. There were a host of intriguing plants here, enormous flowers and twining vines he would have enjoyed harmonizing in the gardens of the Forbidden City—in a different life. Now he had to save his strength, ration it carefully so he could make it to Huancavelica without revealing to Jie what he’d done to himself … and to her.
Following the silver train’s trail had helped. According to Haru, the Espans and their guards were restoring an old path to Nombre de Dios as they went, and the results were generally smooth enough for the cart. Da didn’t have to spend all his jing shaping a path out of the jungle, and as long as they stayed at least a half day behind, the risk of interaction was low.
“Are you all right?” Chase asked as he walked over from the cart.
Da grimaced. Some interactions were inevitable. “I’m fine. Are Jie and Haru ready?”
“Haru’s praying to another of those rope shrines she keeps rigging up, and Jie’s nursing Bolin. But neither should be much longer.”
“Was Jie able to map Amadi and Isaura?”
Chase swatted an insect on his forehead, his hand momentarily fitting into the palmprint scar that marred his face and scalp. “Every time I think I’ve seen the biggest possible mosquito, along comes a larger to suck me dry.” He wiped the bug’s remains from his skin and frowned. “No, she couldn’t map them.”
It had been the same for weeks now, an indication either that Jie’s wasting disease was progressing, or that the spores were affecting her too. And the Tao help him if the latter were the case. If she started coughing up blood … Well, then he’d have let her down in every way possible.
The Anglo studied the same swathe of jungle Da had, but the white man’s eyes went higher. The adults in their party had been on high alert for baby-stealing monkeys of late.
Da directed his gaze lower: no fresh stains on Chase’s sleeves. That was good. “How do your arms feel?”
The Anglo flexed his fingers. “Better. A bit heavier, but stronger, I suppose.”
As they should—Da had armored Chase’s forearms with cross sections of Kun’s horns. Grafting them to the Anglo’s skin hadn’t been clean, however, and Chase had oozed blood and pus for days.
“I’ve a question for you,” he said after a pause filled only with jungle sounds and a giggle from Bolin. “And in light of how I’ve served you and your sister, I’d like you to answer it without purpling my mind to mush and making me forget I asked.”
Da took in a deep breath. His lungs felt clearer, but he wouldn’t mind another few minutes to be sure. Even if he had to spend them with Chase. “All right.”
“What’s in Huancavelica?”
This again. Jie had asked three days ago, and Haru the day before. They’d stopped when told to think about something else, but not immediately. Did the spores’ mental effects wear off as the physical symptoms worsened? Kun had grown stubborner before he died, less willing to push himself at the required pace. And the surviving animals turned a little surlier each day. But Da didn’t want to risk sporing anyone a second time. And he’d held his own counsel for so long now. “Huancavelica holds the key to healing Jie,” he found himself saying.
Chase nodded. “I guessed as much. How, though? What’s there besides quicksilver?”
“A boy.” Da took another deep, phlegm-free breath. “You’ve seen Jie map and mirror.”
“Yes.”
“During the journey from Chin, Jie mirrored five times. Four of them lent her paltry, irrelevant powers—changing the color of an object, or seeing around corners. But the last power, the one she borrowed from a gray-skinned teenager in Huancavelica, was fascinating. Jie was able to move the warmth from a hot cup of tea to a cold cup.”
“ … I see.”
“You don’t, but think on it. Transferring the properties of one entity to another is an extraordinary gift.”
“If your tea is cold, I suppose.”
Da frowned. “I haven’t ‘purpled’ your mind, so don’t use that as an excuse. Listen and think. Who have I compelled to meet us in Huancavelica?”
“Isaura and Amadi.”
“And what properties do they have?”
Chase’s eyes widened, his rising brow distorting the scar on his forehead. “Will it work?”
Da felt reluctance clogging his throat again, damming it with the habitual secrecy that had guided him for so long. But it felt good to break through his walls, to let the truth flow freely. “Jie had a vision it would.”
“A vision?”
“While she was mirroring the Red Wraith’s companion.”
“Ah. The one with the milky eyes?”
“Yes.” Da relived his own visions for a mom
ent, these ones much more mundane: a flood of memories that left him aching. “Did you know Jie used to be faster than me? Stronger too, even though she was younger. She won every race, beat me at wrestling more times than not. An athletic marvel … until the wasting disease took hold.”
He spat to the side. “Before I understood what was happening, I welcomed the change in our dynamic, resentful little brat that I was. I even thought it was me who’d changed—that I’d become faster and stronger. As was my right, my due as the older brother. But then our mother took Jie to the first of many ‘doctors,’ and we learned of the imbalance that had befallen her … and that there was no cure.
“I did everything I could for her after that. Gave her a shoulder to lean on when she needed it, pushed her wheeled chair when she couldn’t walk. Later, after our parents died and I came into my powers, I grew braces for her, tried to make medicines no one else could. I experimented with other methods too: blood swaps, bone transfers, grafting. Always on test subjects first. Animals marked for slaughter, or men condemned to die. I even tried to make a dragon for her—a real one that could be her guardian. Some of it worked after a fashion, but never how I wanted.” He tapped a pouch on his belt. “For a while, this was my greatest hope.”
Chase glanced at the pouch but didn’t interrupt.
“Spores,” Da continued. “From a fungus that takes over the minds of ants and changes their behavior. It took years, but I was able to adapt the spores to influence people.” The key had been infecting himself—until then, he hadn’t been able to command his subjects. Yet when the spores incubated inside him, grafted by his jing to bits of his essence, he retained a connection to anyone who breathed in the modified fungus. “But the effects never go deep enough. I couldn’t make my subjects believe something so strongly about their body that it came true.”
“That they weren’t sick, for instance.”
“Now you’re listening.” Da began untying the pouch. “I wasn’t for a while, though. I didn’t see that the spores still had a flaw.” A fatal, unforgivable flaw. After a certain amount of time and manipulation, the original fungus invariably killed its hosts. “I thought I’d fixed it, but …” Once he’d freed the pouch from his belt, he tightened his fist over the small sack, turned away from Chase, and whipped it into the jungle. “No more.”
The Black Resurrection Page 12
