Master of Poisons

by Andrea Hairston

  Empire coffers are full, though few can afford taxes

  Azizi hoards money for the coming wars over water, grain, and tree oil

  I persuaded Council to build storm shelters throughout the capital

  Shelters are Zamanzi conjure against void-storms, and nobody sneers

  I waited, hoping we’d catch a culprit but after months of investigation Arms still cannot say who murdered your men

  Only six were found—I saw the bodies—they put up a good fight

  The other six are still missing

  I suspect they protect Samina and your children, wherever they hide

  Kyrie sends hope and power to your conjure hand

  Djola let the scroll fall to the deck. His heart hammered at his veins.

  Orca dug at tension in his back as Djola whispered, “They saved my life many times.”

  After he and Arms liberated Holy City, thief-lords surrendered and swore an oath to peace. Celebrating, Djola and everyone got drunk on tainted wine. Just a few warriors stood watch. Rogue barbarians mounted a cowardly ambush, no hope of victory, just terror. Sober Rano sounded the alarm and took a barbarian arrow in the shoulder pulling an unconscious Djola from a burning tent.

  “My best friend, murdered, because of me.” Djola gripped Orca’s shoulders. “Tortured for my family, my secrets.” Honorable to the end, Rano had died without revealing where Samina and the children were. He doted on Bal, Quint, and Tessa most of all—the children he never got to have. “Rano was a true friend.”

  Orca pulled Djola close, kissed his cheeks, told him to breathe.

  “Has Kyrie gone mad?” Djola trembled against Orca. “No more hope for rainbow fish or Rano.” His family must still be at the hideaway or on Mount Eidhou with Kyrie, who told nobody, not even Grain. “Basawili, Rano.”

  Vandana appeared. As Orca told her the news, Djola choked on sorrow. He was the fool Rano and his guard died for. Vandana grimaced. “Pezarrat says we’ll be in the floating cities in a few weeks.”

  “He lies.” Djola collapsed into Orca.

  “We’ll get there, eventually,” Vandana insisted.

  “Too long,” said Djola, mumbling. He fell asleep in Orca’s arms, grateful for the boy’s warm body.

  The elephant with a broken tusk trumpeted, flapped enormous ears, and spewed poison sand in his dreams. Djola shielded his face and called to her, bitter. “Did you hear? Rano and my men were murdered, but we’ll reach the floating cities.” Eventually.

  22

  Out of the Void

  Awa’s stomach gurgled at the smell of nut bread. Her head ached, burned, as if her hair was on fire. Bal caressed her cheeks and sang an ancestor song from the Smokeland talking books. Awa opened her eyes. They’d come through the border-void back to the everyday outside Yari and Isra’s goat-hair tent. Isra was a warrior-scout from the south, an Aido cloth weaver, the love Yari always returned to. Some Sprites claimed Isra was a reluctant Green Elder, yet vie was the anchor to Yari’s wandering spirit, to all their wandering spirits.

  Awa shook off void-smoke clinging to her hair and smiled. Swampy wetlands turned silver in the twilight. Twisted tupelo roots clutched the banks of a gurgling stream. Demon-flies flashed green and blue butts, making love, eating foolish enemies. The enclave had marched from the northern desert to old Anawanama territory.

  Yari and Isra carried their breath bodies around for weeks and set them on mats in this grassy knoll. A few moments in Smokeland could be days in the everyday. Moans and grunts poured from the tent. Bal pointed at a tangle of shadows. She and Awa giggled. Yari and Isra were noisy lovers. Both used many voices.

  “Yari would kill me if I left your breath body unprotected and went off for a roll in the sand with a lover,” Bal said.

  Awa poked Bal’s bony chest. “You don’t have a lover.”

  “But if I did…”

  “You don’t!” Awa was jealous of Bal’s shadow lover. “How long were we gone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A wild dog shoved a cold nose in Awa’s face and licked her hot forehead. They wrestled in the grass. The dog pinned her down and nipped her nose. She rolled him over and tickled his mottled tummy. Her headache faded and jealousy burned off.

  Bal laughed. “Stray dogs always smell Smokeland on you.”

  “He trailed us from the border.” The dog sprawled by Awa’s side. She scratched his big smoke-gray head. “What did you see in the void?”

  Bal broke off laughing, her breath suddenly short.

  “Never mind,” Awa said. “Shall I tell you how I was sold to the Elders?”

  “You’d tell me that?” Garden Sprites were usually too ashamed to tell who sold them or why. Poison desert turned good citizens into slavers who stole children, who sold their own daughters or even sons to buy food or passage on a pirate ship to the floating cities. Sprites imagined horror scenarios for each other. “Are you sure?”

  Awa shrugged. “It’s what I saw at first in the void.”

  “Why risk the ire of—”

  “It’s not bad luck for Sprites to trade stories. Cowards made up that tale. Crossroads gods are tricksters, but they don’t care what we say to each other.”

  Bal looked unconvinced. “I guess…”

  “I want you to know me.” Before she lost heart, Awa blurted her saga in coarse detail, no music or dance embellishments, no poetic flourishes. Even such an awkward telling made her feel better. Sold to save a farm and send her brothers to study in Holy City wasn’t the worst Sprite saga. “Mother was right about Yari and Smokeland—traveling through the regions, understanding the rhythms, a treasure. But—”

  “What?” Bal hugged away Awa’s sadness. “What?”

  Awa savored Bal’s sweetgrass and iron scent before answering. “My family is a wound, but you’re a balm.” She stroked her friend’s bold cheeks. “Now you tell.”

  “I can’t,” Bal stammered.

  “Why not?” Awa trembled. The wild dog whined and licked them both. “Don’t you trust me?” She loved no one more than Bal, except maybe Yari. “I told you everything. Even older brother Kenu’s cowardice.”

  “I can’t tell you, because—”

  “Were your parents desperate savages selling daughters?”

  Bal snorted at her. “Savages don’t sell their daughters.”

  “Everybody sells their children. To slavers or brothels or enclaves.”

  “Empire citizens tell this lie when they steal Zamanzi or Anawanama daughters.”

  Awa didn’t believe this, but decided not to argue. “Were you stolen?”

  Bal shuddered. “My mind was blank in the void.” She looked away, embarrassed. “I have no memories of before joining this enclave.”

  “Oh.” Awa took a breath and scratched the dog. “What’s that like?”

  “Like carrying a bit of void inside you all the time.”

  “Zst!” Awa rarely cursed. Bad memories were probably better than none. “No memories at all?”

  “Conjurers took my memories. It’s supposedly easy when you’re young. Somebody gave me to Yari. I wasn’t sold. Perhaps Yari knows who I am, where I’m from, who my people are, yet even when I beg, vie won’t tell me.”

  Awa almost said, that’s awful, but kissed Bal’s cheek instead. “Green Elders are your family and mine too. You can invent a past for yourself if you wish.”

  Bal took a breath. “A bold idea.”

  “Memory is a story written on your body, who you mean to be, now.”

  “What about truth?”

  “Truth is what you do with the story.” Awa jumped up and danced around the tupelo trees. Blue berries and purple leaves littered the ground.

  “Yari says one of your gifts is weaving strong story cloth from a few threads.” Bal hunched her shoulders. “Griots conjure the unknown from the known. Not me. I’m lost in the void, without a map.”

  “I love making maps,” Awa declared. “I could help you craft one.”

  Bal ju
mped up beside her, smiling shyly, an unusual face for a fierce warrior. The wild dog wagged his hind parts, smacking them with a bushy tail. “Go ahead.”

  Awa observed Bal, as if she’d have to write her down in signs and ciphers, as if she’d have to mold her from cloud-silk and drum beats. “The green in your eyes is from far away, northland mountains or the floating cities. Long limbs belong to cloud forest folk. You sweat little, always cool, a child of the desert too. So, one parent from high, one from low, and whether Zamanzi, Anawanama, or barbarian, they risked all to shield you from pirate assassins or Empire thugs. Your parents sacrificed your memories of them to save you. Kurakao! They are to be praised, for if their daughter knew her true identity, conjurers would find her in dreams and betray her spirit to enemies.

  “Powerful people feared you might grow into yourself, into your power, and come for them. Your parents wanted you to have your own life, your own story, not perish in theirs. Assassins hunted you and would have killed you when you were a child. It’s too late now. You’re a shadow warrior, well protected, even in dreams. Your parents gave you to Yari. Their wise plan triumphed. They loved you, saved you, and even if they’ve gone on to the death lands, their wisdom watches over you still.”

  Bal’s eyes shone with moonlight. “You really believe that might be true?”

  Awa nodded. “Why not?”

  “Kurakao!” Too heavy to stand, Bal dropped to the mats, dragging Awa with her. Bal cried fat tears. After a moment Awa cried too and they leaned together. Their hearts beat slowly and breath was minimal. The moon vanished from the sky, and stars emerged, challenging the dark. Dew prickled skin, ants nibbled at knees, and the dog fell asleep, head and paws in their laps. When birds hopped close and sang morning rites, Bal stood up carefully. After such a long meditation, muscles might forget themselves. She pulled Awa up. The dog had disappeared.

  “A past to guide my future,” Bal declared. “I shall live in this story.”

  “Good.” Awa liked Bal’s story better than her own. “We shall live in it together.”

  So many spirit slaves wandering Smokeland was a bad sign—high priests perverting Lahesh conjure—but Yari was thrilled that Bal and Awa had returned to the everyday with ancestor songs, a new rock dance, and plans for the future. They never mentioned the golden wheel and marble eye from the iron horse, or the past Awa conjured for Bal. These secrets were theirs alone.

  Yari rejoiced to see them so changed. Vie gave them each a Lahesh timepiece. Awa’s was a waterwheel sculpture, Bal’s a candle contrivance. They were thrilled to have such rare treasures. Yari was Lahesh, a tinkerer, fashioning whatever wim-wom came to mind. In days gone by, thief-lords and warriors had raided Lahesh markets stealing everything, even snatching people from themselves. Few Lahesh spoke their ancestor tongue anymore, but Lahesh tinkering, craftwork, and wisdom were coveted. Awa and Bal felt lucky to have Yari—the crocodile lover, the dream tinkerer, the trickster shadow Elder—bring them into the enclave.

  “You won’t be Sprites forever,” Yari said, sucking down sadness. “You should think on who you want to be: Green Elder, Iyalawo, good Empire citizen, griot storyteller, shadow warrior, or something of your own invention.”

  Father had claimed story weavers were useless, lying windbags. She had proved him wrong. Griots made the world.

  “At the crossroads, why choose only one role?” Bal said. “Why not be everything we want to be?”

  Awa nodded, excited. “Like Aido cloth, every color strong.”

  Yari grinned. “The ancient languages have a word for sacred shapeshifters. I shall find this for you in time for your crossover ceremony. I promise.”

  Out of the void and into tomorrow. Of course, the void could follow you to tomorrow, but Awa and Bal danced for their good fortune.

  BOOK

  II

  1

  Visions of Fire

  Djola guzzled a flask of cathedral seed and cloud-silk potion, a perversion of Lahesh conjure, but time was a demon tormenting him. Days on the flagship rushed by, like white water over a cliff, or dragged on and on, endless torture: ships, villages, and cities plundered, the taste of acid-conjure lingering in dead air as the pirate fleet chased a good wind. Almost three years lost to the sea.

  Djola scratched a patchy beard. Shaving was too hard. No longer the clean-shaven northlander, he looked like a rogue pirate, scruffy and merciless. He stared from a cracked mirror to the book-booty scattered on the floor. Probably nothing he hadn’t read. No word of his family, no word from Yari. Perhaps Yari was against him. Djola burped sour bile. A double dose of seed and silk was merciful, but hard on an empty stomach. His mind was as ratchety as a broken windcatcher. Vision blurred; sounds were muffled. He closed his eyes and let the pirate world fade.

  Mangos on Mount Eidhou would be ripe this time of year, a second crop turning the air sweet. Samina and the children would help sister Kyrie with the harvest. All the refugees and renegades helped. Quint must be nine, Bal a fierce fifteen, and Tessa a grown woman of eighteen, ready for husband and babies of her own. Djola was missing their lives. Samina would have to be mother and father. Kyrie’s towers were hot and dank, but Samina would fashion windcatchers and Lahesh wim-wom. She’d play talking books and her twenty-one-stringed kora harp till she melted stone mountain hearts.

  Howling winds interrupted Djola’s drugged reverie. He focused again on the porthole. Kaharta, the southern harbor city the pirates had just raided, smoldered on the horizon: red, orange, and purple, like a setting sun. Pezarrat still torched the bigger cities. Seed and silk blunted Djola’s emotions, yet allowed him to focus on details at a distance—a good warrior drug. He peered out a porthole. A child on a shaky dock hugged a sooty goat and wailed. “Hush,” someone yelled, “nothing to be done.” Pezarrat raided Kaharta for Djola. “The best library outside the floating cities.” It was Djola yelling. He kicked useless books. Three years and he’d learned almost nothing.

  “I’m scared,” someone blubbered at Djola. The wounded had arrived. Djola gathered a bloody pirate in his arms as the fellow gasped his last breaths: “My spirit debt, too high.” A boy of fifteen, nobody should blame him for his life so far. “Will I suffer in the death lands?”

  “No.” Djola lifted his head so he wouldn’t drown in his own blood. “People say, ‘Living is free. No debts to pay at the end, just a legacy to leave behind.’” Djola repeated Zamanzi lies, excuses warriors invented for bad behavior. He wasn’t a proper healer like Vandana. She knew stories to ease a body into the death lands.

  The boy shivered. “Who could believe such a thing?”

  “Zamanzi—”

  “Savages believe anything.” The boy came from a city like the one that burned, that had killed him. Kaharta was in a necklace of rich barbarian market centers around the Golden Gulf. A confederation of proud thief-lords, they’d seen better days.

  The boy tugged Djola’s sleeve. “Do you believe we carry no debts at the end? You’re a Council master, a wise man—”

  “Just a pirate like you and a savage even.”

  “No.” The boy convulsed. “A wise man.”

  Djola flinched and surveyed the wounded. This lot had been burned or hacked so badly, they were only ten breaths from—

  “Death costs everything you’ve got,” the boy mumbled. “Nothing left to pay a spirit debt.” He expired. Djola might have saved him if he’d gotten to him sooner.

  “We lose everybody. Zst!” Vandana cursed at familiar faces who yesterday danced on the deck to djembe drums and calabash harps, who bragged about their exploits on land and sea, who drank wine from Djola’s cup to prove they didn’t fear assassins or anything.

  Djola had wanted to poison these fools himself or rescue them: too late to do anything. Vandana closed her eyes on tears. Why mourn pirate rogues? They should mourn Kaharta’s dead. Yet, Kaharta and the barbarian confederation looted villages on the Empire’s southern border. Thief-lords fished out the Golden Gulf and filled it with
toxic spew. Why pity anybody? Djola let the boy’s body down gently. In exile, a man might lose his wits and nobody would notice. Sanity was an elusive shapeshifter.

  “Too many,” the old healer said. “What can we do?”

  “Search for an antidote,” Djola mumbled to the dead boy. “That’s what I do.” He yelled to the crew. “Don’t bring in corpses, throw them overboard.” In the swell of a storm wave, the dead boy slid against the bulkhead, eyes fixed on Djola. “You don’t add to my debt.” Djola stumbled over to books taken from Kaharta’s library and jammed them in a barrel.

  “We’re lucky.” Vandana glowered at Djola. “Plunder from best library on the Gulf offers ballast. Kaharta was unlucky.”

  He replied in Anawanama. “All Kaharta had was last year’s smoked fish and wormy grain stolen from somebody. Gold nobody can eat.”

  Vandana smacked him with a book wrapped in Lahesh metal-mesh. “So many dead. For secrets we should leave hidden, forgotten.”

  In metal-mesh, this codex could have survived poison sand. Why protect what should be forgotten? Djola drew a bark-paper conjure book from the mesh and whispered its title. “Amplify Now. Xhalan Xhala. Lahesh Reckoning Fire.” Words leapt at him: no progress without sacrifice. His heart jolted.

  “A good one?” Orca stroked Djola’s hand and passed fresh bandages to Vandana.

  “Yes. The gods of the crossroads are tricksters.” Djola read on, eager.

  Lahesh jumba jabba was easier to understand than he’d expected.

  2

  Lovegrass

  In the middle of a chilly night, camped north of Kaharta near the Bog River Gorge, Awa and Bal donned Aido cloth robes for camouflage and drank a midnight berry potion—fruit and herb conjure to see clearly in the dark. They warmed naked toes at the cooking coals and giggled. They were barely fifteen, untested, yet going out with scouts to defend the enclave—after the Elders got done squabbling.

  Plump Isra, spiky white hair exploding from vie’s scalp, pinned lanky Yari down on bed cushions in their goat-hair tent. Yari always returned to Isra, the lover never too dazzled by Yari’s charm to argue. Isra had will and vision to match Yari’s and insisted Awa, Bal, and other Sprites were ready to join seasoned shadow warriors on a scouting venture.