Haru smiled. Da’s lot and the overseers were going to lose. To make sure of it, all she had to do was find a way to defeat Fara. Maybe she could—
Something enormous and heavy crashed into the base of her spine.
Haru went flying. If Huitaca hadn’t spent half an hour braiding a shield spell into her hair, paralysis would have surely followed. As it was, Haru could feel an enormous bruise forming. It probably looked like someone had glued a purple plate over her tailbone. She was still able to hit the ground in a roll and somersault out of it, but her hair had loosened—the braids were untwining, their protective power spent. There would be no surviving a second blow like that.
A glance behind confirmed that Fara’s club had been the culprit. The big Afrii had caught up to her. Meaning that, for the first time since childhood, someone was faster than her. Haru’s humming faltered. How much extra muscle had Da grafted onto his monster’s legs? Enough that she couldn’t afford to keep running in a straight line—she’d have to be unpredictable.
Haru zigged to the side, but a knot-bomb explosion showered her with dirt and forced her to zag the other way. Two steps in that direction, and a near-miss from a flurry of musket balls had her veering back to the center. And all the while, she could feel the next blow coming, her lower vertebrae aching preemptively.
More peripheral chaos left only one place to go: straight ahead … and into the refinery. It was the last place she wanted to be, but if the kami favored her, she’d be able to run straight through.
All she had to do was make it there.
What had Chase said in Panma? That if she sang instead of humming, she might move faster? It shouldn’t work, not with Jaxat’s ward marring her hand. But she tried anyway, panting out a kagura song from the theater she used to sneak into as a kid.
Haru didn’t feel quicker as she neared the refinery. Yet she wasn’t dead either. Maybe there was something to this singing nonsense.
Even so, she still trusted her instincts more, and they told her to dive the last few paces. It was well she did. Fara’s club sailed over her as she slid through the door.
As she vaulted back onto her feet, the refinery’s heat hit her like a full-body slap, and she almost tripped over the first of many pipes leading from the central pots to those closer to the building’s perimeter. This must be one of the jabeca ovens Huitaca had described on their way here, a network of ceramic urns loaded with ore and heated by a central fire until the quicksilver vaporized, traveled through condensation tubes and a water chamber, and pooled in the collection vessels.
Haru skittered away from the pipes. Best not to dislodge any of the connections, or she’d be breathing even more of the mercury than she already—
Fara burst into the refinery and hammered his club at her. She dodged, but the Afrii’s follow-through smashed three of the urns and fractured the condensations tubes of another four.
Contaminating them both.
Haru clamped her mouth shut, imagining a seal forming over her lips and nostrils. She looked for an exit as she raced toward the other end of the refinery, but there didn’t seem to be another way out. How could that be? At least the jabeca oven took up the center of the one-room building, creating four corridors for movement, one along each side. A ring she could run around.
If she managed to evade a man who was faster than her, not to mention basically invulnerable. But what other choice did she have?
“This is what Da wants, not you,” she said when the big Afrii, stalking her slowly now that she had nowhere to go, advanced down the refinery’s eastern corridor. “Fight the haze. Find a way around it.”
Fara slapped his shoulder and came closer.
Ignoring the sweat starting to slime her skin, Haru stopped three-quarters of the way down the southern corridor. Fara paused too, as if waiting for her to tip her hand. But when she stayed still, he resumed walking, rounding the corner connecting the eastern and southern corridors.
Only when he was a third of the way down the southern corridor did she stir. Then she bolted in the other direction, rounded the southwest corner—and doubled back. He’d taken the bait, turning around and pounding toward the door to head her off.
But she was pursuing him now.
She sprinted on soft feet, hoping he’d overshoot the door and leave her a sliver of a second to dart through before—
Five feet short of the exit, Fara spun and swung, his club coming so close to Haru’s face that she could have licked the weapon’s tip. But she’d anticipated him anticipating her, and she was already retreating to the southern corridor, back to where she’d started.
Except she couldn’t hold her breath any longer.
Nothing about the air tasted different as she took it into her lungs, but she knew it was poisonous now, and an image of Chasca’s son kicking at nothing filled her mind.
“Fight the haze!” she called, trying not to sound desperate. “Your friend Bataru said you were a good man!”
Fara slapped his shoulder again and advanced.
They played their game of toxic cat and mouse twice more as sounds of combat continued to filter in from outside. With each cycle, the impossibly fast Afrii came a little closer to catching her.
“This isn’t you,” Haru insisted. She was breathing hard now, sucking in far too much of the tainted air.
As before, Fara slapped his shoulder and came forward.
Slapped it in the same place. Not in the middle, but to the side, just above his collarbone. It was an odd place to strike … Unless it was a signal.
Was he trying to communicate something? Was this his way of getting around whatever restrictions Da had imposed? It wasn’t much to go on, but it was better than anything else she had.
Haru felt less confident when Fara leapt onto the blazing-hot jabeca oven.
He bellowed in pain—the first noise he’d made during their fight—and Haru immediately smelled burnt flesh. But that didn’t stop him from churning ahead, sweeping ceramic urns and their condensation tubes out of the way as he forged a direct path to her.
She broke into a run again, but she knew it was too late this time. Fara had changed the rules of the game, and with the head start he’d given himself, there would be no escaping. Not without fighting.
“I hope you were listening,” Haru muttered as she pivoted and readied her bone-naginata. “Da doesn’t deserve another victory.”
Fara was on her a second later, spilt ash, ore, and liquid mercury swirling behind him. Launching himself off the jabeca oven, he jabbed his club at her like a giant spear, giving no indication that he intended to provide her the slightest opening.
She had to survive until one appeared, though. He was too close now. This was it, one way or another. She had to dodge and feint and wait. But he was so fast. And she felt so slow. And the air was—
Fara puffed his chest out.
Only a little, but enough that his collarbone came forward as he tried to crack her open with his battering ram of a club.
Haru ducked and jabbed up with her bone-naginata. The blade caught Fara beside his neck. But instead of bouncing off, the tip dug in and carved out a chunk of muscle.
He roared, even louder than before, but that didn’t stop him from slapping his shoulder again, right on the wound.
Haru bared her teeth. That was the spot, then. She just needed a better angle.
When Fara unleashed his next titanic swing, Haru went over it instead of under, kicking off the wall to maximize her height. As she rose, she flipped her bone-naginata so that she held it in an overhand grip; as she descended, she buried the entire length of the blade into the opening she’d gouged above the big Afrii’s collarbone.
He fell immediately, dropping the club as if glad to let it go. “Thank you,” he whispered, his eyes darkening faster than a night sky at sunset.
Haru felt the adrenaline draining out of her just as quickly. “I’m sorry,” she said. But he was already dead. And the battle still raged outside t
he refinery.
After bracing her foot against Fara’s shoulder, she yanked her bone-naginata free and sprinted for the door. It was hard to say how much mercury vapor she’d inhaled the last few minutes, but the consequences wouldn’t manifest until later. And right at that moment, she felt fine. Tired, and bruised where Fara had struck her, but far better than she’d expected when she’d learned how quickly the big Afrii could move.
She felt even better when she finally exited the refinery and saw Huitaca’s ropes flying about in every direction, like airborne snakes undulating after their prey. The battle must be close to—
“Burn it off,” Da ordered from the side.
Before Haru could process the words, a globe of Chase’s fire consumed her right hand.
The flames only burned for a second. Not long enough to do serious damage, but more than enough time to blacken her skin and erase Jaxat’s star ward. “No,” she breathed as bands of purple fog encircled her thoughts once more, chaining them together.
But even worse than losing control was the sight of Da bending over a woozy Isaura and breathing pollution into her open mouth.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Desperate Bargains
“I’m late, Oseye,” Amadi muttered.
Maybe a day. Maybe two. It was hard to say. He just knew he should have been here sooner.
The feeling had sunk in when Capac left him at the base of the mountain that bore Huancavelica. The original man had come further than he meant to, and Amadi didn’t begrudge parting ways when the path forward was so clear. But after they’d said their goodbyes, urgency had poured through him like spring rains sloshing down a dry riverbed.
Not that he’d dawdled before. Since reaching the mainland, he’d run as hard as his spirit armor—strong some days, flickering others—had allowed, even carrying Capac for stretches when the original man needed rest.
Yet it hadn’t been enough. Amadi was sure of it as he charged up the trail. The Chincha Islands had delayed him for too long. Could he have left them sooner? Not without—
No. Doubt was its own waste of time. The only question worth asking now was whether he could still stop Shen Da. And the only answer lay at the Mine of Death.
So Amadi ran on.
* * *
Halfway up, a short, scruffy Espan with a wooden nose stepped out from some brush and fired a pistol toward the sky. Capac had insisted that the wild-llama path was little used—the perfect way to approach the mine undetected. But the Espan’s shot had exploded into a red signal flare which was probably visible for miles.
Not a good start.
“You are the undying one?” the man asked skeptically. “The one they call the Black Resurrection?”
Amadi slowed. Not because he wanted to talk, but because he’d lost the element of surprise, and the mine was still nowhere in sight. Where was it? Higher? “I seek a Han named Shen Da. Have you seen him?”
The Espan whistled. “So you are him. Amadi, yes? Da’s waiting for you up there.” He nodded at a point nearer the mountain’s peak.
Amadi watched the flare’s last traces dissipate in the wind. “And now he knows I’m here.”
“Indeed. And if you don’t come with me, he’ll start taking toes off that cute little boy.”
The urge to pummel this wooden-nosed fool was overwhelming. But Da didn’t seem like the type to make idle threats, and since the Espan had already alerted him, it would be best to reach the mine with as much information as possible. “You’re working for him?”
“Not by choice. He—”
Without warning, the Espan’s eyes went dead. Expressionless, glazed over, and vacant … just as Haru’s had been in Metica City before she’d turned traitor.
“Follow me,” the Espan said a second later, his tone as dull as his pupils. “I’ll take you to Da.” He turned and jogged in a new direction—not up, but across the mountain.
At least he was running. Amadi was willing to go along with that. For a while. Until he knew where all his foes were and the final reckoning began. Then he’d stop keeping their pace and start setting his own.
* * *
They came across the first body soon after.
Mateo, the wooden-nosed Espan, had led Amadi through a town and onto another steep trail. And within its first hundred yards, they had to step over a bug-eyed corpse with rope coiled around its neck.
“What happened to him?” Amadi asked, noting that the body was that of an original man.
Mateo positioned his feet with oddly specific care—he seemed more afraid of touching the rope than the corpse. “He was on the wrong side.”
“So the locals attacked the mine?”
“Them and your friends.”
Friends. Not one, but multiple. “Which friends?”
“The red-haired woman and the Nippon.”
Isaura. Her presence made sense—and thank the vodun she’d made it. But Haru? Had she fallen out with the Han? “And where are they?”
“With Da.”
Amadi exhaled. Isaura was still alive. Knowing that was enough to stem his questions until the next body. It was more emaciated than the first, but just as bug-eyed and strangled. “Did you hang them all?”
Mateo shook his head, avoiding the rope around this original man’s neck too. “Jie did that.”
Amadi remembered how weak Da’s sister had looked in Bayano. Deceptively so: she’d moved like lightning to snatch Shoteka. But still. “How?”
The Espan shuddered. “I don’t know for sure. The originals were lobbing explosive ropes—knotted things that blew up soon after their ends were pulled. We were losing. Then Jie stuck her head out of the cart, and suddenly the ropes were turning on those that held them. They tried to run, but … I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Amadi nodded grimly. Isaura had said the Han bitch had copied her water magic on the beach outside Metica City. Maybe he was wrong to think of Da as the biggest threat. “How much longer?”
Mateo glanced further up the trail, where another rope-choked body awaited them. “About twenty more of those.”
* * *
The final tally was twenty-three. It probably saved Mateo’s life.
Amadi had seen more than his share of death, but something about the string of stranglings made him reluctant to add to their carnage. Yes, killing the wooden-nosed Espan would even the odds a little. But not enough to risk the consequences for Shoteka. And this didn’t feel like a trap. If Da had wanted to spring an ambush, somewhere along the trail would have been perfect. The Han must want to meet first.
Mateo had made that much clear when Amadi asked. “He’s impatient for you to be there,” the Espan had said. “I think he was worried you wouldn’t come. He kept yelling at Chase about it.”
Asking why had triggered Mateo’s dead eyes again. So Amadi contented himself with ascending as quickly as possible.
He was impatient too.
Catching his first sight of the mine only increased his sense of urgency. There were at least three times as many bodies here, scattered between fresh craters, myriad scorch marks, and splatters of blood.
An epic battle indeed.
But where—
Amadi saw Isaura and Shoteka, and everything else fell away.
The son was watching something hidden behind a cart—the cart, the one Amadi chased in his dreams—clapping and giggling.
The mother was watching her son from a few feet away. She was even thinner than Amadi remembered, with sharper lines. But still every bit as beautiful. Creamy-skinned, fiery-haired, and …
Dead-eyed.
Her eyes were glazed over. Just as Mateo’s had been a few minutes earlier, and Haru’s in Metica City.
“Shen Da!” Amadi roared. “What have you done to her?”
The rest of the mine rushed back into focus. Mateo slipping off to the side to join a few of his countrymen. Chase stepping forth from behind the cart, using a pistol to conjure a dancing llama out of sparks. Haru eme
rging from the other side, one hand holding a modified version of his bone-spear, the other black and oozing. And Da, sliding out the back of the cart.
“Come closer,” the Han warned in halting Espan, “and Chase burns the boy.”
Chase, as glassy-eyed as Isaura, raised his pistol to send the fire llama hopping in front of Shoteka. The boy stared at the image for a moment, then tried to touch it. Chase pulled the llama out of reach, and Shoteka chortled.
Amadi didn’t. “You said Isaura and her son weren’t part of this,” he spat from where he’d stopped, about twenty feet from the cart. “That you didn’t need them. Only me. Well, I’m here. Take me and let them go.”
Da started to respond, grimaced, and said something to Haru.
“There’s no time for that,” the short Nippon translated. “Jie’s on her deathbed. She put herself there ending yesterday’s battle. If we can’t save her, Da won’t save anyone else.”
Amadi’s muscles spasmed, begging to hurtle him forward, to close the gap. He’d come so far, and everything he wanted was within a few strides. But Chase’s fire llama was inches from Shoteka’s face. “If you so much as—”
The Han cut him off with an explosive cough. It didn’t last long enough to provide an opening, but it clearly hurt, and Da’s sleeve came away red when he wiped his mouth.
A second later, Chase coughed too.
“None of us have time to waste,” Haru emphasized after Da fed her another line. “Which is why you’re going to stand there, no matter what’s done to you.” Lips curling into a frown, she lowered the bone-spear until its point lined up with Amadi’s heart.
He grunted, remembering what Hattack of the Chata had told him: “Cut yourself, every day on the way to Huancavelica.” Had that message—or what Hattack’s damaged head could remember of it—been from Da? “That’s it? We traveled thousands of miles so the Han could put a blade to me?”
“I don’t think this was the preferred option.” Haru took the bone-spear in both hands. Gripping with the burned one must hurt, yet she didn’t flinch. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. But you have to stay still.”
The Black Resurrection Page 24
