Master of Poisons

by Andrea Hairston

Awa shrugged. “Anawanama have map-sense and storm-sense too.” She said what Kenu told her. “They read the wind, feel thunder in the dirt, but have no words for left and right.”

  “I can teach you Anawanama. They see more colors than Lahesh do.”

  Awa wondered: If a person learned Anawanama would she have a map of the world inside? Would she get a storm-sense and feel the wind and rain coming? “Can I learn both? And their stories?”

  “Yes.”

  Awa forgot throbbing feet and hugged this prospect to her heart.

  “This is my mission.” Yari sat down next to her and drew a crossroads in the dirt. “To be a bridge, from the ancestors to tomorrow.”

  “Is that why you had to buy so many Sprites?”

  Yari stiffened. Anger or terror flitted across vie’s face. Perhaps both. Awa wanted to take her stupid question back. Yari leaned close and spoke with a scratchy voice. “You all will conjure a new world.” Vie patted her hand, as sad as Father staring at sick fruit trees and dead goat kids, as fierce as Mother planting Smokeland herbs that resisted poison sand. “Men like high priest Hezram want to steal the future. We can’t have that now, can we?”

  Awa puzzled vie’s words and shook her head. “I guess not.” A Smokeland bee clung to a tight ringlet and buzzed.

  “You’re a bridge also.” Yari sounded excited. “Perhaps you can teach me bee-talk.”

  Bees liked Awa and she liked them. How could she teach that?

  7

  The Emperor’s Council

  Djola pulled off the blindfold and shrugged free of the scrappy guard. The vast Council chamber with its high ceilings and sky windows was tucked in the middle of the citadel. Djola counted twenty doors, each wide enough for two elephants walking side by side, and leading to who knows where. Only Emperor Azizi, his guards, and Lilot, the chief cook, knew the safe ways in and out. Treachery here meant a difficult escape. Stone walls were thick to hold secrets and traitor screams. Enemy blood was easy to mop up—the floor was polished marble, quarried up the coast by northlanders, which people no one would say. Lahesh tinkerers? Lahesh animal masks hung on the walls: a menagerie of fire-breathers about to pounce. Djola chuckled.

  The Lahesh say: Steel is sharper than any claw and only people spit fire. Nobody thought so-called savages had much to offer the Empire. But Djola knew better. If he mastered Xhalan Xhala, ancient Lahesh conjure, he’d wield the power of Smokeland in the everyday. He’d touch a withered tree and feel what caused void-winds to blow across the land. He’d clasp a man’s hand, taste his breath, and know his dreams. Djola would be able to see what might be, even call it forth.

  Dizzy at the thought of such power, Djola leaned into a Lahesh mask, a creature with metal-mesh hair, ruby eyes, and stone teeth in a maul the size of his head. The dusty fire-breather made him sneeze. Xhalan Xhala was a formidable challenge, a Lahesh spell of spells, a closely guarded treasure, conjure that might break a mind. Samina would not approve and Nuar never trusted wily shadow warriors who married their enemies, but—

  “Ignorance won’t save us,” he whispered to the mask. Wielding Xhalan Xhala to halt the poison desert, Djola could show Council, his wife and brother, and everybody that he was indeed a master of the impossible.

  Dinner candles dribbled away. A waste of beeswax, it was still light. The high priest of Arkhys City and Council masters sat in roomy chairs around the stone heart of a long dead cathedral tree. They held their heads and sulked in their beards. No one touched a feast of roasted goat, spicy tubers, seaweed, and nut butters except flies and a cheeky rat. Emperor Azizi had a strange fondness for rats.

  Djola slid into his chair. Anawanama spells carved in the arms tickled. A savage chair for a savage master. This used to irritate him, but his chair sat next to Azizi’s now. Djola tossed cheese at friend rat, a sable fellow who’d sat in his lap on occasion. Truth be told, Djola liked rats too. Masters groused, as if purple tides, crop failures, and thief-lord raids were the rat’s fault.

  “Don’t indulge the nasty beasts.” The Master of Grain stood barefoot on the warm hearth stones. A tent of wood piled shoulder high threw flames up into the chimney. Grain’s blue eyes sparkled against black skin as he soaked in heat like a panther gathering energy for the hunt. He was young, shrewd, and on the rise. A beardless northlander who’d disavowed his tribe (no one knew which one) to join the Empire, Grain had good reason for hating rats. He reminded Djola of himself, twenty years ago.

  “Another poison storm ripped through the capital. Two dead.” Grain shuddered.

  “So much unrest.” High priest Ernold rubbed crimson tattoos on his brown bald head. Gravy stains on his priestly robe looked like blood. He strode among Azizi’s helmet-mask collection: a hundred warriors with thick necks and bulging eyes, all stolen from vanquished northlanders, tribes whose names had been lost. “Hezram in Holy City offers Dream Gate conjure to Azizi. Blood sacrifice would stop poison sand and bring order. Security.”

  “Kurakao!” The Master of Water praised the gods. A handsome rascal, yet this evening his silver eyes were dull gray, his strong back and shoulders hunched, his smooth skin sallow. “We should accept Hezram’s offer.”

  The Master of Money, Water’s twin brother, also had a sickly pallor and a hoarse wheeze as he agreed. “The price will only go up.” Hard to tell Money and Water apart. Both were Hezram’s toadies on Council, Ernold too, though he’d deny it.

  Djola smacked the table and rattled empty plates. “You’d suck blood from our people, our children, to make spells for order?”

  “Transgressors who offend the gods aren’t our children,” high priest Ernold said.

  “Hezram does blood conjure with children in Holy City?” The Master of Arms tugged a red beard frosted silver. An incurable idealist, he burped sour breath and patted a belly poking up from broad hips, a dumpling burial ground. “Shame.”

  “Yes, but…” The Master of Books and Bones worried crumbs on his plate. The knotty beard on his sagging jowls was egg white. His eyes were black beads. He hugged a coarse cotton robe. “Griot storytellers claim freak storms never touch Holy City. Inside Dream Gates, weapons or weapon-spells turn on the men wielding them.”

  Grain snorted. “Half the city lives in huts, bleeding for these impregnable gates.”

  “And the glory of god. Bleeding is an honor for the fallen,” Ernold declared. Grain laughed outright at priestly nonsense. Arms scowled. The other masters squirmed.

  “Mixing blood and tree oil to conjure Dream Gates is illusion solution. Outside Holy City, poison dust still blows, devastating the land.” Djola was losing patience. “From the mines to the farms to the forests, we must work together to reclaim the land, change our ways.”

  Money shook a mane of black hair. “We can’t afford change.”

  Djola rolled his eyes. “You’re against change on principle.”

  “Hope enchants you.” Water shook his own mane and guzzled wine. “You step in dung and see the next harvest, not shit on your boots. Transgressor blood is cheap.”

  Djola poured water in his cup. “Cheap like a poison oasis in the desert.”

  Water stiffened. He’d stab Djola in the back if he could. “Speak plainly.”

  “That wasn’t plain enough for you?” Djola downed his cup in one gulp.

  “How much spirit debt for a Dream Gate?” Books and Bones worried waist beads.

  “Only the conjurer of the gates incurs a debt.” High priest Ernold squirmed in his chair. “He’d be an honored hero-soldier sacrificed to win a war.”

  “You don’t believe in spirit debt. You piss on the old religions.” Grain poked the embers. “You burn sacred cloth, cut tongues out, yet people still believe.”

  “War is brutal and pointless.” Arms picked goat from his teeth. “I hate war.”

  “Are you joking?” Money and Water hooted together.

  “War is a joke, but peace is more entertaining.” Arms leapt in the air, twisting his hefty torso, flapping his cape like
wings—an agile dancer, a formidable warrior. He landed by the goat cheese, chased rats away, and stuffed a creamy ball in his mouth. Grain smiled at his antics. Arms punched Grain’s shoulders. Flirting? They whispered to one another and laughed.

  “We must be serious.” Money shoved his picked-over feast away. Water mirrored his brother’s disdain. They spoke together, an irritating habit. “War is coming.”

  “May catastrophe come when I’m dead,” Books and Bones sighed. “Why struggle? What comes, comes.” Djola had hoped for the old librarian’s support, not philosophical farting and groaning. “We aren’t gods. Tomorrow belongs to them.”

  “Gods don’t care about time.” Djola gripped the librarian’s ink-stained hands. “Tomorrow never comes and today belongs to us.”

  “True.” Books and Bones bit his chapped lip. “And the past hasn’t gone anywhere. Still…” He’d rather be in the shelves with his books.

  Djola had to keep an eye on his mood. “We count on your wisdom and insight.”

  The door beside the warrior masks creaked and swung open to the Council antechamber. Yesterday this door opened on to a dim tunnel. Azizi’s guards claimed citadel rooms changed places and hallways shifted also. Djola laughed at himself for believing tall tales for a second. A simple trick to make identical rooms and fake hallways—Empire illusions.

  In the antechamber, blindfolded petitioners waved scrolls and shoved each other. They were penned in by ropes and surrounded by guards. Djola gasped as half-brother Nuar barged to the front of the mob. Gray hair puffed around his blindfold. Anger was chiseled across his sharp chin and high cheekbones. Djola bristled. A home ambush had proved insufficient. Chief Nuar had come to argue with Djola in front of Azizi and Council.

  The black and brown mudcloth cloak draped over Nuar’s long limbs matched stolen drapes hanging at antechamber windows. A provocation. Under the mudcloth, he wore a leather and copper-mesh tunic, outlawed Anawanama armor—another provocation. Nuar carried a sweetgrass basket with braids of green and brown bark undulating along the sides and across the top. The beautiful design irritated Djola.

  “Collect petitions, then guide them out,” Arms commanded. Petitioners threw scrolls in the air. Most clattered against the walls and landed in the antechamber.

  “Wait.” Djola turned to Nuar and spoke Anawanama, their mother’s tongue. “What can you say that I don’t know?” The crowd veered toward his voice, toward an echo of the ancestors. Djola flinched as they pleaded: Bad things are coming. Save us. Save me.

  A few petitioners elbowed Nuar. He drove them back and boomed in Empire vernacular, “Master of Poisons, we intend to survive.” Nuar scrunched his face under the blindfold as if at a bad odor. “You feel too good about yourself”—he leaned over the ropes—“standing in the path of a deadly storm like an idiot.” Perhaps Nuar saw Djola on the annex wall watching the mob chase a wild elephant.

  “I would learn the storm’s secrets,” Djola said. “Ignorance won’t save us.”

  “You gave up the old ways hoping to be worthy, more than a savage.” Nuar switched to Anawanama. “Where are the women? How do you decide the world without them?” He shook his head. “You call down ruin. I should sit at the stone-wood table. The Empire has made you an enemy to yourself.” Older brother had found a good argument.

  Djola sputtered, caught off guard. “Get to your petition, man.”

  Nuar lifted the basket high and spoke Empire vernacular again. “I don’t bring words for Azizi and Council to dismiss. I bring the bones of my great, great, great grandchildren in a basket of the ancestors.”

  Petitioners shouted curses and threats. Arms signaled an end to the audience. Nuar tossed the basket. Bouncing off the closing doors, the basket landed at Djola’s feet. Money toed a braid of green and brown bark. Djola snatched the basket up and hugged it.

  Nuar was the first northern chief Djola talked to the peace fire. Nuar gave up ambushing Empire caravans for farming. Other chiefs followed his lead. Empire crops ruined the land in ten years. The soil was now unfit for basket trees. Only sweetgrass held on. If nothing was done, it would all be desert soon. Nuar came to Council to warn them, to speak for the ancestors and the unborn.

  “We’d make a fortune selling sweetgrass baskets that hold ancestors and the future,” Money said. “But savages won’t sell sacred vessels.”

  “Anything might be in that basket,” high priest Ernold said. “Nuar’s an old scoundrel.”

  “He tells us to choose carefully or suffer high spirit debt,” Grain said.

  “Jumba jabba,” Ernold muttered.

  “You could sell other baskets,” Djola said, “and avoid spirit debt.”

  Azizi was late. His esteemed masters argued over heroes and debts, over a glorious past and a ruined future, over untamed northlanders and rebels rioting outside the citadel. The Master of Water proposed conquering barbarians south of Holy City, but the war chests were empty. Arms wanted to collect back taxes, but who could or would pay up? Money and Water wanted to sack a floating city across the Salty Sea. They suggested masquerading as barbarians. Arms laughed. The Empire had no conjure against the superior defenses of the floating cities. The best Arms could do was send warriors to die in a futile siege.

  Djola said little and listened for truth underneath their words. Hope had become a bad habit. The alternative was despair, and Samina prevented Djola from indulging in that. She’d probably encouraged Nuar to come to Council.

  “Xhalan Xhala!” Djola murmured. He would bring Smokeland to the everyday, conjure truth from illusions, from possibilities and maybe-nots.

  What else could he do with the bones of the future?

  8

  Iyalawo

  “You know every other spell.” Emperor Azizi’s voice echoed from a hallway. “You must know Dream Gate conjure.”

  Azizi stormed into Council followed by Kyrie, Iyalawo—wise woman—of Mount Eidhou and Samina’s older sister. The masters jumped to their feet. Azizi barely acknowledged them. He focused on Kyrie.

  “You’re as bad as mobs rioting at our gates.”

  Lank gray hair fell over rheumy hazel eyes and made him look older than Djola, yet he was scant thirty-nine. War stole his youth, treacherous peace his middle age. His bones ached and his vision blurred. Azizi had become a bitter old man, seeing enemies and traitors even among his staunchest supporters.

  “Why do you thwart me?”

  “I am for you.” Kyrie lowered her head.

  She trailed Azizi as he limped to the stone-wood table. Short, round, and crisscrossed with silver tattoos, Kyrie was a fortress of knowledge and power. Jewels nested in a cloud of silver hair. Silk tunic and pants floated over an agile form. Her moon face was nothing like Samina’s, yet her voice was almost identical to Djola’s wife’s.

  “I’ve never conjured Dream Gates.” Kyrie’s musical accent made Djola ache for Samina like a youthful lover. She nodded at chief cook Lilot lurking in the shadows. Older brother was wrong—the women were here! Kyrie was Djola’s staunchest ally. She’d support his map to tomorrow. “Hezram perverts Lahesh conjure.”

  Azizi turned and loomed over Kyrie. “Do what you can do.”

  “Arkhys City shelters too many citizens and foreign refugees.” Kyrie used Samina’s inflection for a fact not to be argued with. “We can’t feed them all from Mount Eidhou.”

  Azizi hissed, a pot about to boil over. Masters shuffled their feet, tugged beards, and rubbed eyebrows. Azizi contemplated friend rat whose cheeks bulged with goat meat and seaweed. “Be reasonable.” He feared Kyrie might let Arkhys City starve to save her mountain people and wild land. “Be generous.” He dropped into a Lahesh waterwheel chair at the head of the table. “The fire’s gone out. It’s cold in here and dark.”

  “Iyalawo Kyrie, esteemed wise woman,” Djola spoke over grumbling masters, “we ask for no more than your people, your land can spare.”

  “In Anawanama Eidhou means all rivers flow from my heart.” Kyrie scratche
d a fingernail across a rock wall and lit a candle with the sparks. “Plundering my mountain—”

  “Eidhou is not your mountain, it’s the emperor’s,” high priest Ernold said.

  “Actually, nobody owns the mountains.” Kyrie lit candles around the room. “I speak for Eidhou, as guardian and—”

  “So do I.” Ernold had been after Kyrie’s mountain realm for years. If not for the conjure in her Mountain Gates, he’d have strip-cut sacred forests and declared Kyrie and her people transgressors who should bleed for the glory of the gods. “I know the mysteries and all that is sacred. Witches and witchdoctors make a carnival of faith.”

  Everyone went stone still, even the rat. Kyrie blew sparks from her fingertips into the fireplace and flames burst through a smoldering woodpile. “You’ve danced on the moon’s cool white face and seen elephants fly.” She called Ernold a liar to his beautiful face. “Yet I walk Eidhou’s glaciers, taste the breath of cathedral trees, and cloak myself in wind and rain and snow. The mountain is my backbone. I—” She stumbled to a halt at Azizi’s left side. Her stool was missing, her goblet face down, her plate empty.

  “Kyrie always comes after supper,” Djola said, swallowing panic. “Guards!”

  “No sweets tonight.” Water sneered as guards appeared from the shadows.

  “In times of turmoil many believe that a woman at the stone-wood table is a sign of weakness,” Ernold said, rubbing the crimson tattoos on his bald head. He’d persuaded Azizi to do this. “Even an Iyalawo of Kyrie’s stature.”

  Grain frowned at Arms. “Besides Council, who knows she is here?”

  Kyrie had conjured a wise-woman passageway through mountain forests to come and go from Arkhys City without notice. The best emperor-spies couldn’t find her almost invisible path—a great escape route for an Iyalawo, elephant, or any Wild Thing.

  “My men removed the beaded monkey stool last month, after Kyrie left the citadel,” Arms muttered.

  “Last month?” Grain glared at him, like a lover betrayed.