“She is.”
“Prove it in the morning, and she’ll have him back.”
Amadi’s toes dug deeper furrows. “You don’t really expect her to sit with his kidnappers until then.” He tried not to picture her in that same warded house, tied up across from Haru and Jie. The sight had rendered him speechless, and he couldn’t afford that now.
Jaxat exited the mosque and slipped on his sandals. “She was free to roam the village until she rushed my wife. No one made her do that.”
Isaura wasn’t free, though. The star on her hand had constrained her power in part or in full since Jaxat had placed it there, and the tattoo was excruciatingly painful to manipulate; she’d said she nearly blacked out trying to scrape away just one of its many dots. So when she’d seen Jaxat’s wife cradling Shoteka, and reacted as any mother-long-separated-from-her-child would by dashing forward, she’d had no way to fend off the Cimarrons who’d restrained her before she came within ten feet of her boy.
Amadi could still hear the noise she’d made when they’d dragged her away. Half sob, half scream, it was a sound that would haunt him even in the afterlife.
“You know who else divides families?” he asked as he followed Jaxat into Bayano’s main street. “Separating fathers from daughters and mothers from sons on the auction block? You know who else does that?”
“Demba knows,” the King’s Proxy said cryptically. Then he held up his hand. “It’s late, and I’ve been away for several days. There is much I must see to. We’ll resolve this in the morning. Sleep well.”
Amadi paused as Jaxat walked away, then hurled another thinly veiled demand at him. “I would talk to them—Shen Da and his party.”
Jaxat stopped for a moment but didn’t turn around. “Not the women. Leave Isaura to think about her circumstances. You may speak to the men, though. But if you bring anything other than words ...”
“I don’t strike defenseless prisoners.”
“Remember that, and you may see them. Good night.”
Jaxat resumed walking towards Bayano’s center, where his outsized house bordered the main square.
Amadi only just restrained himself from pounding his fist against the mosque’s tessellated wall. Tonight should have been a celebration. He’d found Shoteka. He’d held Shoteka, carrying him most of the way from the ambush site to the palenque, except when the boy needed to nurse on that lying, thieving Han woman. And when Jaxat’s wife, mother to a small child herself, had offered to feed Shoteka instead while Amadi went to recall Isaura from the site of the last (and furthest) well she’d dowsed, all had seemed well. Because he’d trusted the Cimarrons, these architects of the kind of sanctuary he’d longed to build but never been able to.
But now Jaxat was stalling, playing games atop games. And Isaura was still separated from her boy.
Amadi grimaced. “I shouldn’t have given Shoteka up, Oseye—not when his mother was so close.” The toddler should have stayed in safe hands. Instead, after months of being cared for by a stranger, he was with another stranger while his fate was decided by a third.
Yet Jaxat didn’t know everything. He’d branded Isaura’s hand, and—at Amadi’s suggestion—marked Da, Jie, Chase, and Haru. (The process was surprisingly simple: Jaxat pressed the back of his hand with a bit of bone carved to end in sixteen needle-sharp points. The points formed a star. When he had a bit of his blood on each point, Jaxat pressed the bone onto his target’s hand in the same location.)
But there were no new tattoos on Amadi as he strode toward the other end of the palenque. The Cimarrons didn’t know he had a power worth warding, didn’t know what he was capable of.
Time to start showing them.
“Good evening,” Amadi said to Bataru upon reaching the men’s confinement house, another heavily symbolled structure. This one looked especially out of place next to the elegant church built by Bayano’s Jaysus worshippers.
“Evening,” the Mandinkan replied. He didn’t relax his sentry posture, however, despite the friendship he and Amadi had struck up the last few days.
“Jaxat said I could see Shen Da.”
Bataru raised his eyebrows. “See him for what?”
“To talk.” It took several minutes and multiple promises to get inside, but eventually Bataru opened the door. And after Amadi shut it behind him, he was alone with the men he’d hunted for four months and hundreds of miles.
Neither looked worth the effort.
Even in the dim starlight let in by the open window, Amadi could see how fatigue had further mottled Chase’s scarred face, and that Da’s expression was ugly with anger. Both men’s clothing was worn, and they reeked of sweat caked atop grime caked atop more sweat.
But the ropes binding their wrists and ankles to the house’s central post were glorious to behold.
“I remember when our positions were reversed,” Amadi said in Anglo to Chase. “On that plantation in the Carolines, after I hit an overseer and he threw me in the root cellar until he could find the mighty Firebrand. Do you?”
The Anglo shifted awkwardly. The rope was probably too tight to sit comfortably.
Good.
“You claimed my people ‘are known for their savagery,’” Amadi continued, “and that our ‘pagan rituals involve so much human sacrifice that our king closes each ceremony by sailing a bone ship down a river of blood.’ Those were lies. But unless you do what I say, I will make them true for you.” He tapped his forehead where the palmprint scar marred Chase’s brow. “And this will seem like a lover’s kiss compared to what comes next.”
The Anglo cleared his throat. “What do you want?”
Amadi pointed at Da, who was staring balefully at the star on the back of his filthy hand. “Does he speak Anglo? Or Espan?”
“No. But I can translate.”
“Then tell him what I said. Every word.”
In a resigned tone, Chase rattled off several sentences in a tongue Amadi didn’t recognize. Da replied with what sounded like a question.
“He says, ‘What do you want?’”
“That tomorrow, when Jaxat—the runaways’ leader—asks you to make your claim on Shoteka, you deny it and say Isaura is his mother.”
Chase relayed this and listened to Da’s response. “And in exchange?”
Amadi dug his toes into the floor. He didn’t want to make this concession, but he couldn’t see another way. “In exchange, I won’t build a ship from your bones and sail it through your blood.”
More translation, and more throat-clearing from Chase. “We have a counterproposal.”
Amadi snorted. “I’m not sure this is a negotiation.”
“It is if you’re asking us for help. We’ll renounce our claim to Shoteka—”
“One you never had to begin with.”
“—if you come with us to Huancavelica.”
“Why?”
Chase turned back to Da, who said something that made the Anglo sit up straighter, as if he’d remembered an important fact. “Jie is sick. You can help heal her.”
Amadi chuckled darkly. “You’d need Quecxl for that. Or the Red Wraith. I can’t heal others on my own.”
“There’s a way in Huancavelica.” Da prompted Chase again, and the Anglo nodded. “Or maybe before then. But you have to come with us.”
“And Isaura? Shoteka? What about them?”
“They can stay here or go back north. Whatever they want.”
“Shoteka isn’t part of this? Da doesn’t need him to heal Jie?”
“No.”
Amadi clenched his toes again, and this time he couldn’t help balling his fingers as well. How they itched to hold the bone-spear he’d lost when Fara overturned Quecxl’s canoe. “Then by all the vodun, why did you take him?”
Da gave a lengthy answer to Chase, but it was relatively short in translation: “Because Da thought there was no other way to draw you to Huancavelica. It was wrong, and he apologizes.”
Amadi studied the Han. Yes, there was
guilt in his eyes. But there was also defiance. “I don’t believe it.”
“It’s the truth.”
“So why didn’t he just ask me? He didn’t need to kidnap a child and drag him through the jungle.”
“He panicked. Got into a bit of a tussle with me on the pyramid, actually. And then one of the demons the Red Wraith exorcized from himself got in the way. Da’s truly sorry.”
“Camel shit.” But if it secured their promise to tell Jaxat that Shoteka was Isaura’s … “And what’s your role in this, Chase Harper? Why is the Firebrand, hunter of original people and runaway slaves, playing guard dog for two Han and a Nippon?”
The Anglo tensed, as if bracing for something. But whatever it was never came, and he spoke with a hint of wonder in his voice. “I want to help Jie.”
“Then tell Jaxat who Isaura’s son is,” Amadi said, suddenly sick of the games and mysteries. All that mattered was getting Shoteka back. “And I’ll go with you to Huancavelica.”
Chase exhaled audibly.
“I’m not finished.” Amadi pointed at Da again. “This is not a limitless deal. After we’ve healed his sister, if it can even be done, our agreement will be at an end. And I will give you one day to run before I follow.”
Da didn’t seem disturbed by this when Chase translated it for him. The Han just looked Amadi in the eye, smiled grimly, and nodded.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” Amadi said, and left the house.
Chapter Eighteen
False Leaders
The purple haze was finally gone, but Haru still couldn’t leave. All she could do was fume.
For two months, she’d used her enclosing rope to mark out a pure space every morning so she could pray to the kami for a clear head, a mind free of Da’s manipulative fog. Joining a silver train likely to be ambushed had seemed like the best option, and the attack had occurred just as she’d hoped … Except that Da had survived, and so had his pollution.
But then one of the raiders had pricked her hand with a star-shaped piece of bone, and the fog had vanished.
Of course, this was after she’d already surrendered her ko-naginata and submitted to having her arms bound. So while she was somehow free of Da, she’d had no choice but to march several hilly miles to the runaways’ palenque while shouldering a pack filled with silver ingots; several of the train’s mules had died in the fighting, and the Anglo pirates had forced the surviving guards to carry what they could (except for Jie, who’d been allowed to ride in the cart). Even so, a large portion of the loot had been left behind, buried in a secret trench for retrieval by future expeditions. If Haru could get there first, though … Even just one of those ingots would feed her little samurai for a year.
Yet the coarse rope around her wrists was too tight to slip, and her waist and feet had been lashed to a post in the one-room house she’d been confined in with Jie and Isaura earlier that night.
“Tell her I’m sorry,” Jie said again.
Haru tensed and relaxed her arms for the thousandth time, forcing herself to believe the repetition would eventually loosen the rope. “We already tried that. She won’t listen.”
Isaura was tied even more comprehensively than they were, lashed to a second post by at least three cords. Yet that hadn’t stopped her from radiating retribution. Haru couldn’t meet the Espan’s gaze for more than a few seconds, and Jie had winced so often she seemed to have contracted into one prolonged flinch.
But that was the star-bone’s work as much as anything. Jie’s version of the mark had dispersed her purple fog as well, and with it Da’s illusion about how Bolin had come to be in their care.
“Please, tell her I’m sorry,” she said again. “Or tell me how to say it.”
“She doesn’t believe us.”
“What else do you have to do?”
Escape … If only. “Fine.” Haru tensed and relaxed her arms another three beats before switching languages. “Isaura, I realize it sounds crazy to blame everything on a purple fog, but Jie and I both want you to know that we didn’t—”
“Were you always in the kidnapping business?” The Espan cocked her head, a motion that would have been playful if her tone weren’t suffused with so many violent promises. “Was Shoteka your first, or are those children in Metica City an ongoing collection?”
Haru tensed, but now it was her whole body that felt tight instead of just her arms. “Those are orphans. Believe it or not, I help children when I’m free to do so.”
“How noble of you.”
“It’s the truth.”
“And why would I believe anything a mercenary like you has to say?”
“Because I used to be one of those children in Metica City.”
Isaura rolled her eyes and looked away.
“Look, I feel terrible about my part in this, but I just want you to understand that—”
“Understand that my boy was taken from me. By her.” The Espan jerked her head at Jie, who recoiled as if there had been actual contact. “That puta and her brother. And you took their money and helped them, knowing full well what they’d done.”
“They didn’t pay me anything!”
“I doubt that. What was your price? A peso? Two? Greedy as you are, it couldn’t have been more than three.”
Short of swearing, Haru wasn’t sure how to respond. But she didn’t have to. The opening of the house’s front door ended the conversation.
A second later, the runaways’ leader stepped inside. Jaxat, someone had called him, the King’s Proxy. A man who reeked of arrogance. In his right hand, he held a cup. In his left, a knife.
“I’m sorry about the ropes,” His Proxiness said in Espan to Isaura as he closed the door with his foot. “But when a woman charges a man’s wife …”
Isaura hit him with a look every bit as vengeful as those she’d afforded Haru and Jie. “Why are you doing this? I hadn’t seen my son in four months. I just wanted to hold him. You know your wife wasn’t in any danger.”
“That’s not how it looked. And my wife was only nursing him because he was hungry, and you were away at the third well. Its water is excellent, by the way.” He raised the cup and tilted it toward Isaura.
She shook her head.
“Have it your way.” He drained the cup and set it on the central table. Then he sat cross-legged on the floor and laid the knife across his lap.
The bastard.
Even in the moonlight, Haru recognized the haft—it was Mingli’s blade. He must not have survived the ambush. Hopefully Loth and Eita had either escaped or had the sense to join the runaways.
Isaura gave Jaxat another hair-raising look. “What do you want?”
“My son is the same age,” His Proxiness said, seemingly unbothered. “He cries more than I’d like, but he has the look of my father, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him.”
“Then you understand why I want my son back.”
“I do.” Jaxat tapped his fingers on the flat side of Mingli’s knife. “Or at least, I would if he had the look of his mother.”
Isaura grit her teeth. “I told you, his father was Kiksha. Shoteka has his look.”
His Proxiness continued tapping Mingli’s knife. Haru stopped tensing and untensing her arms when she realized she’d begun matching her rhythm to his.
“You have traveled far for this child,” Jaxat said eventually, as if he’d been weighing the logic of her actions. “I can’t imagine you doing that for an original boy who wasn’t of your blood.”
Isaura nodded grimly.
“Still, the difference in skin tone … What else would you do to prove he’s your son?”
Haru couldn’t see His Proxiness’s expression fully—he’d sat at an angle to her—but she didn’t like what was visible.
The Espan’s eyes narrowed, but her voice was steady. “What would it take?”
Jaxat said nothing for a moment, then stood and walked toward Isaura, closing the gap between them until his face was inches from her
s. He held the knife in his left hand again, but out to the side, and with his right hand he reached up to caress her auburn hair. “Most men would take this,” he murmured, trailing his fingers down her cheek, around her jugular, between her breasts.
Mentally, Haru urged Isaura to spit in the lecher’s face. She didn’t, though. The Espan looked … frozen.
Haru had seen that expression before. For several weeks after she’d taken in Sofia, the first of her little samurai, the girl had gone stiff like that every time a man passed by. It went beyond fear. She kept being reeled back into a bad memory, unable to separate what was happening from what had already happened.
Except in this case, whatever had happened to Isaura seemed all too close to happening again.
“Don’t touch her,” Haru hissed at Jaxat.
He ignored her, but the warning seemed to break through Isaura’s temporary paralysis. “You don’t strike me as ‘most men,’” she said after shooting Haru a grateful—if grudging—glance.
His Proxiness dropped his roving hand and stepped back. “I’m not.”
“Then what does a man such as you want?”
“Justice.” Jaxat returned to his seat in front of Isaura, Mingli’s knife once more on his lap. “Demba was a true leader when he formed Bayano. Strong, decisive. He deserved to be king.”
“But now he doesn’t?”
“He wants to make peace with the Espans.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“It’s the worst thing, a tired old man’s wishful thinking. Panma City will never honor an agreement with ‘runaway property’ like us. They’ll just bide their time.”
Haru resumed tensing and untensing her arms. Jaxat’s back—instead of his side—was to her now. If she could get free, he wouldn’t see her coming …
“Do you know why we call this palenque Bayano?” he asked.
Isaura shook her head, her expression admirably defiant again. She must have mastered whatever dark memory Jaxat had triggered.
“Years ago,” His Proxiness explained, “a Mandinkan named Bayano led the first Cimarrons to freedom. He formed palenque after palenque and organized them so they could stand against any raid. The governor of Panma sent three expeditions to destroy them, and all three failed. So the governor turned to a mercenary: Captain Pedro de Ursua.
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