“And I suppose you hit Fara because you can’t compel him either?”
“We’d be dead if I hadn’t. And we still will be if he wakes before we get these cursed blood stars off our hands.”
“And what if I don’t want you to be able to tell me what to do anymore?”
Da had glared at him.
“Glower all you want, but I’m tired of you snapping your fingers and shouting, ‘Comply, Chase! Do my ungodly bidding! My purply, purply fog commands it!’”
The Han had pinched the skin of his right hand with his left, as if he’d wanted to rip the blood star off in one go. “Jie needs your help.”
“Do you think I’d still be here if she didn’t?”
“I think you’d be here regardless. I see how you look at her.”
Chase hadn’t been able to help glancing at the cart, where Jie lay just as still as Fara and Amadi did on the ground—for now. “Then that’s all the hold you need.”
Da had considered this, the gears in that tinker’s brain of his almost audible as they’d clanked and spun. “Maybe so.”
“Give me your word you won’t purple my mind anymore. That you’ll ask, not order. And I’ll give you all the aid I can.”
Da had spent another moment calculating, studying first Chase and then the two Afrii.
“Fara doesn’t speak Mandarin,” Chase had noted calmly. “With Haru gone, you’ll need a go-between. Unless you want to pantomime all the way to Huancavelica.”
Da had scowled. “All right. I won’t compel you again. I didn’t even want to ‘purple’ Fara, but when Jie disrupted the deal …”
“Swear it. On her life.”
There had been a longer pause before Da agreed to make the stronger vow, but eventually he had, and it was on to cutting out the blood stars.
That had been a special kind of hell.
Da had borne his de-starring with deceptive stoicism. But Chase had nearly vomited during the extraction of the first dot. Removing it hurt far more than it should have, as if the star were defending itself. And when the rest of the dots scattered like fleas, he’d come close to bawling like Bolin.
After the last of the marks were gone, however, the fire had returned—even without a gun to channel it—and Chase had taken his revenge on Jie’s star. Sixteen little flames had ashed her tattoo in an instant, a far more efficient method than hunting and gouging with a knife. Even so, her eyes had fluttered open for a moment, glinting with pain. Or was it guilt? Either way, the fog had quickly reclaimed her, erasing the haunted look from her expression and returning her to sleep.
But Da kept his promise. Chase’s mind remained clear.
Clear and troubled.
“Are you up to watching Bolin?” he asked Jie, awake now and looking somewhat restored.
She nodded, a smile gracing her lips and warming his cheeks. Lord, she was beautiful.
“Thanks.” Chase tickled Bolin one more time, enjoyed the resulting peals of laughter and enthusiastic flopping, and hopped out of the cart to find Da.
The Han was checking Amadi’s bonds, a precaution that seemed unnecessary given how unnaturally the Afrii’s bald head drooped from his shattered neck. And for anyone else, it would have been. But since this was a man who might be fully restored—and furious, and unstoppable—by the time the hourglass next ran out, Chase started checking the knots too.
“I know why you want him,” he said. “I remember what you said before we joined the silver train. About the boy in Huancavelica, and his ability to transfer properties.”
Da grunted, no doubt wishing he could order Chase to forget it again.
“And I understand the need to keep Amadi constrained. Completely understand. You’d be daft not to.”
The Han closed his hand over one of the knots and squinted.
“But what I don’t get is why Fara has to snap his neck every bloody hour. It seems excessive. Especially after he agreed to come with us. If we give Bolin back to Isaura, maybe …”
Da opened his hand, and the knot was no longer a knot. He’d grown it into a single, impossible-to-untie lump of rope. “Losing Bolin now would kill Jie. We’ll return him when she’s healthy.”
“Very good. But Amadi—”
“You feel bad for him?”
Chase watched the Han reach for another knot. “No, but …”
“If you remember me talking about Huancavelica, then you should remember this man taking Jie by the throat. Twice. She’s lucky she can still breathe.” Da released what had become another rope lump and gestured for Fara to lift Amadi onto the cart’s rear platform.
“And I hate him for that. I do. Yet—”
“I don’t care about your history with him.” Da began molding the cart’s wood around Amadi’s wrists and ankles, embedding them in organic shackles. “How you’ve wronged him, or how he wronged you. It doesn’t matter. All that does is healing Jie.”
“But how does this help?”
Da stepped back to judge his work, nodded as if satisfied, and began walking toward the front of the cart.
Chase kept pace, as did Fara, hulking and silent. “You promised me answers, Da.”
“I promised not to ‘purple’ your mind. That’s all.”
“I can do more. I want to. But I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on.”
Da stopped by Hai, running a hand along the ox’s neck. The animal had lost weight of late. They all had. (Da could only coax so many crop seeds to maturity each day before he ran out of energy.) “All right. You want a clear mind? Use it. Can Jie mirror at will?”
How was this relevant? “Not as she explained it to me. She used to be able to, but once she got sick, she lost control. Now it happens by chance, often from a source she’s never met.”
“But not always. When is she most likely to mirror?”
Chase thought back to the times Jie had reflected his fire, Isaura’s water, Haru’s speed … “When the source is nearby.”
“And usually when the source is actively doing whatever makes them a source.”
The neck snapping finally made sense. “You want Jie to mirror Amadi’s healing.”
Da moved to inspect Lok and patted the horse’s head. “It would simplify things. I wish I’d been able to take him on the pyramid. Or on the causeway at Metica City when Haru beat him, before Isaura and the soldiers came. I even asked him to cut himself on the way to Huancavelica … You can’t force the mirroring, though. I’ve tried compelling it, but the fog has its limits. If you can’t do something of your own free will, you can’t do it ‘purpled’ either.”
“But you think she might do it randomly?”
“Maybe. It’s just a probability, and not as large of one as I’d like.”
“What do you mean?”
“The other times Jie mirrored a nearby source, there was a sense of urgency involved. Bayano being the prime example. To create that pressure now …”
“What? She’d have to be in danger? Isn’t she already?”
Da shrugged. “I don’t know if that’s enough, but I hope so. She’s too weak to push it further. Which is why we’re still going to Huancavelica. That was in her vision. It’s a surer thing.”
Chase frowned. Surely the Han wasn’t suggesting he’d hurt his sister to provide a “sense of urgency” for her to heal?
“How are you feeling?” Da asked, eyeing Chase’s reinforced forearms.
“Ready to be done with the ague,” he answered quickly. He probably wouldn’t have to weather another cycle of malarial symptoms until at least tomorrow. But the sicker he seemed, the less likely Da was to try and graft dead animal parts on him again. “I wish I had his resistance,” he added, nodding at Fara. “They’re less susceptible. It’s why they’re in such demand as slaves.”
Da considered the big man, appraising him in a way that was nine parts unsettling and one part diabolical. “He’s certainly a strong one.”
Chase started to imagine what Da might graft onto Fara,
then shook his head. He shouldn’t be worrying about one runaway Afrii, much less two.
* * *
But an hour later, when Da stopped the cart so Fara could hop down to deal with Amadi again, Chase couldn’t help wincing anew at the sound of splintering vertebrae.
“What do you think of this?” he asked Jie, who was lying along the other side of the covered portion of the cart, cuddling a sleeping Bolin, and rereading another of her fanciful novels. Journey to the West, it looked like. The best of the lot.
“Think of what?” She slipped her bare feet beneath her blanket. She’d hinted that she thought they were enormous, but Chase had never seen smaller on a full-grown woman.
“Of bringing Amadi with us.”
Jie looked up with telltale placidity. Chase wouldn’t have been surprised if tendrils of purple fog started floating out her ears. Hell’s bells, it hurt to see her like that.
“I think it’s noble of him to volunteer to come to Huancavelica with us,” she said.
“You think he volunteered?”
“Da said Amadi regretted how he’d hurt me before and wants to do his part to help us.”
“Ah. And when Fara goes and … Well …” Chase made a choking motion with his hands.
Jie wrinkled her nose. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s why we stop every hour. So that Fara can—”
“Oh, the pruning! Da said Amadi is healing too fast and needs to be pruned regularly. Otherwise he’ll grow out of control. Like a weed.”
“Right … the pruning.” It didn’t make a lick of sense. But Jie’s purple-fogged mind clearly believed it, and Chase couldn’t stand to keep her in that state much longer. “Where are you in the book?”
“The Buddha is about to capture Monkey and imprison him.”
“I love that bit.”
“Do you want me to read it aloud?”
“Please.”
As she began, speaking words he’d heard her melodic voice recite at least five times now, the cart sank several inches lower, signaling that Fara had swung back onboard. A second later, they eased forward. Da was always careful not to let Hai and Lok start with too much of a jerk.
Still, that first pull was never entirely smooth, and Chase tried not to picture how the motion had set Amadi’s head bobbing and dangling from his freshly ruined neck.
* * *
The cracking sound was even more hideous the next day.
Da had called a halt beside a small but swift-flowing river, and he’d taken Jie and Bolin upstream to help them bathe. That had left Chase with Fara and Amadi, and when the hourglass ran out, he’d forced himself to watch the grim ritual, despite being in the throes of the ague’s latest sweating phase.
“He ever wake when you do it?” Chase asked in his ragged Espan, his brow dripping.
Fara shook his head. The hour interval must be short enough to prevent Amadi from fully recovering.
“That’s good, I guess.”
Fara snorted. “None of this is good,” he said, using more words than he had since they’d left Bayano. “Every hour, I kill my friend. During the night, I stay up to make sure I don’t miss a chance. During the day, I nap in the front of the cart until that little Han tells me it’s time. And if I try to do anything else, my mind goes—”
“Purple,” Chase commiserated, surprised by how articulate the big man had revealed himself to be. For days now, he’d seemed little more than brooding muscle.
“Yes.” Fara flashed him a look of tortured companionship, the shared pain of a fellow prisoner. “I feel more a slave now than I did when I had shackles on my wrists.”
Chase grimaced. That used to be how it felt for him, back before he’d started searching for ways to help Jie instead of hindering her brother. “Lapdog,” Haru had called him. “Vassal.” The terms were hard to dispute, especially now that he was free of the fog.
But not as far as Fara knew. And there was no reason to disillusion him.
“Take a break,” Chase suggested. “Swim in the river. I’ll watch Amadi.”
Fara studied the water and wrinkled his nose. “Too many snakes. But thank you. I’ll rest for a bit.” He clasped Chase’s sweaty shoulder—the first time a non-white man had ever gripped him like a friend—and went to lie across the cart’s front seat.
Leaving Chase alone with Amadi. Or rather, Amadi’s broken and battered, brutally bound shell of a body.
“There was a time when I would have given anything to see you like this,” Chase murmured. “The Black Resurrection, the dark legend who scarred me on Jacob’s plantation.” He ran his fingers along the snarls of wood Da had shaped around Amadi’s limbs. “I would have gloried in this.”
A series of deep, rhythmic snores announced that Fara was already dozing. Da, Jie, and Bolin remained out of sight, but they would be back soon. And Jie would still be sick.
But murdering Amadi over and over hadn’t accomplished anything. And Chase wasn’t sure he could bear the sound of it anymore … It was almost as bad as the screaming had been that day in Omnira, the day he’d led a band of slavecatchers to the runaway encampment and laid waste to it, killing everyone they could find.
Everyone but Amadi, who’d fought like a lion to protect those under his care, and when there was no one left to protect, fought even harder to avenge them.
He deserved better.
“Lord,” Chase muttered at the sky, “if this is against your will, you stifle my fire. I don’t mind being impotent when it comes to something like this.” But he had no trouble summoning his flames or shaping them into the little balls he’d used to burn out Da and Jie’s blood stars. With the same precision he’d employed for that unpleasant task, Chase seared through the rope and wood lashing Amadi to the cart. Then he hefted the Afrii’s limp form and dragged him to the river.
“Last chance,” Chase growled, perspiring so much he felt he might drown in his own dampness. “You trip me if this is the wrong thing to do, or make my arms give out. I don’t want Da to purple me again for no reason.”
But nothing—not a stray root, or a sudden cramp in his biceps, or a shout from Fara—stopped him from setting Amadi in the water. And when Chase let go, the current readily accepted the Black Resurrection and swirled him away.
“Too bad you won’t remember this the next time you try to murder me,” Chase murmured. “See you in Huancavelica.”
Part III: Huancavelica
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Chincha Islands
Amadi smelled the islands before he saw them.
Their acrid foulness was so pungent he stopped swimming to gag. The pause dropped him beneath the water, but it was almost a relief to have his nose and mouth sealed by an impermeable barrier. Yet he couldn’t stay idle for long. Early that morning, he’d been dragged out to sea by a fierce undertow, and it or one of its cousins held him still, pulling him farther away from the coast—and Huancavelica.
He knew he’d been close. The map he’d seen in Lima had put him within a hundred and fifty miles of the mine, and he’d decided to follow the coast for another day or two before turning inland. But while swimming around a particularly rocky stretch of beach had seemed like a shortcut at the time, he’d been a prisoner of the waves ever since, unable to come closer than shouting distance to the shore. Now he was miles out. So, intending to breathe only through his mouth, he raised his head above the water and swam east for all he was worth.
To no avail.
At first, he thought he was at least holding his ground. But when he glanced behind him, he could see the three white islands in greater detail: none were more than a mile across, and each was about a half mile from the next. When he looked back a few minutes later, the islands were even closer, and he could make out the sweeping lines of the northernmost’s many cliffs. And when he checked a third time, he found he’d drawn near enough to witness three men join hands on the highest cliff and jump.
For a moment, they hung in the air like a hu
man kite, a many-limbed ribbon of hope. But then the Earth staked its claim, reasserting its dominance over flightless creatures and yanking the poor fools the hundred feet to the water below, where they splashed out of sight.
Amadi had already swum five strokes toward them before he realized he’d changed his heading.
He didn’t turn around. Fighting the undertow had proven impossible. And while he was fully recovered from whatever had happened to him in Bayano—all he remembered was something striking his head, a lengthy darkness, and waking sore-necked in a strange stream near the west coast of Panma—he still tired faster than he’d like. The passages between the trio of islands appeared to be rife with ships. Perhaps he could beg or sneak a ride to the mainland.
But more than that, he thought he’d recognized a second emotion in the three men’s leap from the cliff: resignation. A tiredness that spoke to their need to end something unendurable. Maybe he was projecting, but he’d seen it before, in the eyes of Omnira’s last inhabitants before they’d killed themselves to avoid becoming slaves again.
He hadn’t been able to do anything then, but perhaps he could save someone now.
Amadi was less optimistic when he reached the water beneath the cliff. Getting there had taken too long, even with the undertow at his back. If any of the men had survived the fall, they’d have surfaced by now. He should have …
Bubbles. There, rising from the deep. Amadi dove immediately, swimming hard until he saw a hand stretching up from the shadowy layer of water the sun couldn’t penetrate. Grasping it, he yanked a man into view—and nearly let him go.
Because he looked like Quecxl.
Stop that, Amadi told himself as he tightened his grip on the stocky original man and surged toward the light. Quecxl died on the pyramid. You don’t have time to pretend he didn’t.
The stranger was insensible when Amadi dragged him onto the stinking shore of the nearest white island, and Amadi had to pump his chest a dozen times before breath returned to his body. Then they both lay there for several minutes, the original man spitting up water and Amadi trying not to let the islands’ biting stench make him sneeze.
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