Master of Poisons

by Andrea Hairston

  Hezram dropped down beside Awa. Shrieks faded. Hezram peeked around the cauldrons, chuckling. Bees returned to their hive in a cathedral trunk tower. Hezram stood up and mixed tree oil with Awa’s blood before pouring it in a cauldron. “Why are you still sitting there?” Hezram looked ready to drag her into shadows.

  Awa coughed and cackled distress. A crow with a few white feathers in its blue-black wings flew in his face, scratching and pecking. “Zst!” He cursed and flailed. “I’m not dead meat yet.” The piebald crow flew to the window that looked out on a glacier. The cold gray eye of god glared down on priest, citizen, and transgressor alike. Hezram sighed. “The gods must love crows.”

  Awa bit her tongue. Ice Mountain gods loved only themselves.

  “They’re a plague.” Blood from a claw- or beak-wound trickled into Hezram’s eyes. “Afraid of a few bees and crows?”

  “I fear bees more than crows.” Awa spoke truth. The banana smell of bee alarm, a buzz of wings by her ears, or a drop of honey on her tongue might land her on the other side of smoke for hours, for days, for who knows how long. Hezram and his witchdoctors hunted smoke-walkers and turned them into empty-eyed spirit slaves. That would be worse than the transgressor huts.

  “Crows are welcome to my dead flesh.” She clutched the throbbing leg wound.

  “A crow with white feathers.” He pointed at the bird watching from an altar. “Everything is wrong today, upside down and inside out. Even the bees.” He scanned the rafters and grabbed a hot poker. “I hate omens.”

  “Stung to death might be better than a slow bleed.” Awa bit her tongue too late.

  “Your blood is precious. A shame to waste it.” Hezram pressed hot metal against her leg wound. She lost sense for a moment. He threw cold rags in her face. “If you must take your leave”—he pointed to a belt of snakeheads hidden in his robes—“venom is faster.”

  “Poison snakes are rare in Holy City.” A viper’s head with full poison sacs hung from a slim cord inside Awa’s shift and bumped her ribs as she bound the leg wound. “Dying slowly for god is redemption. Kurakao! I lose faith, sometimes.”

  “You hang on,” Hezram said. “This is grace.”

  “Yes.” Awa scrambled up. “Grace.”

  “You think I’m cruel, evil?” Hezram pulled Awa close. His breath was honey sweet, his sweat oily and red. “I won’t be a drum that someone else beats, a road they walk to riches and fame. I won’t be bled and boiled.” He grinned at her, eyes wide, fervent. “The world is evil. A wise man does what he has to. I’m strong enough to prevail.”

  “Yes, but—” Awa ground her teeth. The cauldron chambers were on the other side of the Nightmare Gates, so priests and acolytes could do what they wanted. And so could transgressors. Stabbing Hezram with the viper’s fangs would be easy. Afterward, she could follow the Dream Gates to the outside. Who would know she’d killed him? Not Jod, he never noticed her. Awa groaned. She wasn’t a killer. Imagining murder was easier than actually doing it.

  “What?” Hezram demanded.

  “Everything we believe could be false.”

  Hezram laughed. “One thing is sure. The gods are indifferent to our suffering.”

  “Perhaps we must be better than the gods.”

  “Perhaps you’re a coward afraid to give up ghosts and face death.”

  Awa met his gaze unafraid. “I seek redemption however it comes.”

  His expression hardened. “Then you shall find it. Get out of here.”

  19

  Basawili

  More breath to come. Not for Djola’s family. They were all dead. Or just Nuar? Nobody has seen the bodies. Not knowing was torture. They’d died a thousand thousand times in his mind, because of him. Djola had mourned them over and over. He was finished with torture, with hope and struggle.

  An icy wind grabbed his arm. Frigid air made him cough. The fleet must have hit an ice storm. Djola was too thin. He wasn’t eating enough. The cold got to him under anybody’s thick, hairy hide, and wrecked even drugged sleep. Actually, he’d taken enough medicine to stop his heart. Had the cold followed him to the death lands? He opened crusty eyes. White light blinded him. He blinked and squinted. The scent of almonds and raintree blossoms pierced woozy visions, organizing the view a little.

  “Come with me.” The scar moon spoke, a red slash on a gray horizon above hills and valleys of water, not land. He was still at sea. “Come to Smokeland. We have so little time.”

  Not the moon talking, but Samina—her words tugged him away from the everyday. He was thrilled and frightened. “No worry. Vandana and Orca stand guard.” How could Samina know their names? “Hurry!” She used the voice not to be argued with, so Djola left his breath body on Pezarrat’s ship and flew over a sea of behemoth eyes. Their icy geysers lifted him high.

  “This way,” Samina shouted.

  Djola groped the cold, trying to touch her, pull her close. In one achy heartbeat, he passed through the border-void to Smokeland, going too fast for despair.

  “I would spend these last moments with you,” she said.

  His last moments or hers? She drew him along a bridge of blurry starlight past icy comets to a winter region. “My realm now.”

  A stream, frozen midair as it rushed over a precipice, shimmered. Light from a hundred hundred surfaces bounced everywhere. The shadows of snow-dusted trees danced against the side of a white mountain. One hazy form blended into another. Leaves rustled and tinkled, and Samina whispered and whistled. Djola wished he hadn’t swallowed a bottle of seed and silk potion. Suicide suddenly seemed foolhardy, cowardly.

  “Where are you?” he whispered.

  “Walking beside you.” Her face was a snow squall, her heart lightning bolts. “And also in a transgressor hut, where my breath body burns.”

  He tasted ashes, but was calm. Knowing her fate would be relief. “Are you dead?”

  “I’m not sister Kyrie. Still, I cheat death.” She whirled about him. “I set fire to the transgressor hut before drinking a lethal potion and traveling to Smokeland. I smell that Lahesh potion on your breath and see the haze in your eyes.” Her voice was gentle, sweet. “What are you doing, my love?”

  He choked. “Kyrie sent me letters, but only from Grain, not from you.”

  “I wrote you many angry words, and love too, but I burned the scrolls. I’m not Kyrie. She found you with Grain’s map-sense.”

  “You find me now.”

  “We find each other. Smoke-walking.”

  “Grain said you were in mortal danger—” Djola slipped on ice. “I’ve mourned you.”

  “What good was that?” Her voice echoed around the mountain. Snow rumbled in reply. Avalanches awaited her command. “I won’t be sacrifice, spirit slave, or victim. I’m a guardian.”

  “You’ve found your way,” Djola whimpered. “I’m lost.”

  “End torture in the huts, on the sea, in the woods and fields.” Her icy words tickled his ears. “Do this to honor me. You’re the Master of Weeds and Wild Things.”

  He almost sneered. “No one masters Weeds and Wild Things.”

  She sighed a gust of wind that blasted him over a cliff. He tumbled through snow and ice then gripped a branch and dangled over a ledge. “At first, failure is the map.” She used his words to their children. “Come visit me here, where the dead linger and watch over the living.”

  He dropped to snow-packed ground. “What happened to Tessa, Bal, and Quint?”

  “You abandoned us, that’s what happened.”

  “Quint would be so grown up. Are they dead?”

  “I burn to ash in a hut. Why ask me?”

  “A mother’s duty—”

  “What of a father’s duty?”

  “Council stole my future and yours. I mourned the children too.”

  “What if our children live and you waste heart spirit?”

  Djola didn’t want to fight with her or hope she was right. “Still…”

  “Enough mourning. Promise me.” Icicl
e spears crashed around her. “I won’t speak of the children or revenge. Kill nobody in my name, not even yourself. Live, for love of me and the children.” Dying in a hut and she was asking him to be reasonable. “Use the heartbeats you have left to do what you set out to do. Basawili.”

  “How? Poison sandstorms travel faster than thought, like a void-wind from Smokeland devastating green lands in the everyday.”

  “You know more than you think.”

  “Stopping the void is impossible.” Djola shook his head. “It travels through wise-woman corridors.”

  She drew him close. Cold lips brushed his forehead. “I should have taken the children to Mount Eidhou, but like a fool, I went to Arkhys City to find you.”

  “Not your fault,” he whispered. His fault.

  “Will you swear an oath on my last breath, to work for change, not revenge?”

  Who refused a dying wish? “I will live for change not revenge.” Djola wanted to hold her, comfort her. He reached out and hugged a frosty wind. “I’ve been practicing Lahesh conjure. Xhalan Xhala will be the proof I offer Azizi. For you, for the children.”

  “Good. Survive! Visit me whenever you can.” Samina stabbed his back with a hot barb, and, in a blink, he was back in the everyday, sprawled under a porthole in sick bay, soaking wet and shivering. Wounded men groaned around him.

  “You were sleepwalking again.” Orca wiped his face. “Too much medicine. Fever.”

  “We found you on the upper deck, behemoths singing, waves splashing you.” Vandana gave Djola a hot brew.

  Djola gulped it down. “How long was I sleepwalking?”

  “Days. I worried you might never return from the border-void,” Vandana whispered.

  Orca rubbed Djola dry and held him till he was warm. He asked a hundred questions about frost in Djola’s mustache, the wound in his back, and the raintree aroma on his hands.

  “Samina is the chill at my neck, the cold in my bones,” Djola said.

  Vandana nodded. Orca blinked, confused. “From now on I live for change,” Djola declared and with the last of the brew poured a libation to the crossroads gods.

  BOOK

  III

  1

  If the Way Is Open

  Amplify now

  Every yesterday lives in today

  We have many futures and each changes the past

  Don’t lose possibilities in the void

  Imagine freedom and it is yours

  Djola was patient, methodical, relentless. He let Samina’s chill sink into him, and every day he pulled more fire without burning himself. Calling on Elder discipline, he glimpsed the crossroads of crossroads, a haven of possibilities. In sick bay, he brought more rogues back from death than ever before. Only a scar moon put him in a foul temper. Otherwise he was calm, a landscape smothered in snow.

  The plunder pirates acquired using his conjure lulled Pezarrat. The captain praised ingenious weapons that took out defenses, killed nobody, and left survivors who urged quick surrender. Djola joined victory celebrations. He ate fire, called behemoths to sing, and disappeared in bright light. Everyone enjoyed the carnival display and the tonics he brewed from fermented herbs and roots. They marveled at his transformation.

  Pezarrat hounded Orca for secrets, threatened to find a prettier boy to replace him, but other whore-spies were afraid of Djola’s bed. “What if you turn them into rats, or worse make them wind in the sails?” Vandana chuckled. “At least a rat still lives. Who knows about the wind?”

  Djola taught Orca shadow-warrior tricks and told him to sneak off in the night to a real lover. “I lust for no one,” Orca said. “I want to study at night with you.”

  After every village or city raid, Djola spoke humbly with local conjurers and toured libraries that he’d saved from a pirate torch. He deciphered stone tablets until fingers blistered and bled. He read music cloth and memorized singing books until he was hoarse and wheezing.

  Vandana filled her small bag with books, maps, and clown acts for when I finally go to home. She wrote scrolls that she never showed Djola. She was on a secret mission too, another snake in Pezarrat’s house. Djola could hold her danger. She could hold his. Orca was a diligent student since being touched by a star-demon in a sky window. He catalogued everything in Vandana’s small bag. He invented a spell that let her find any scroll, seed, book, or weed root. He even sorted her weapons.

  “We almost have a good life,” Orca said, yet—

  More freak storms harassed the fleet, coming too fast and often sinking boats. Djola danced in snow and lightning, trying to make sense. He swam naked in cold seas whenever behemoths swam near. Stuck in a cove waiting out gale winds, he made Anawanama outlaw armor, impervious to wild winds and most weapons. Few conjurers still knew this ancestor craft.

  Djola fashioned deep-throated djembe drums and a kora—a calabash harp with twenty-one strings like Samina’s. His music kept spirits high. Pirates thought his trance dances were harmless carnival acts or Green Elder jumba jabba. Orca knew better. He pestered Djola and Vandana to teach him Lahesh. “You asked what I wanted? A trickster’s tongue.” Djola warned that every language changed the mind. Orca shrugged. “You say ignorance won’t save us.”

  “Since when do you want to save the world?” Djola asked.

  “Aren’t I part of the world?” Orca kept Djola company, reading in the night and arguing as the sun rose.

  “You use too much tree oil in your lamps,” Pezarrat complained.

  “You keep track of all my debts,” Djola replied. “I pay you in enemy blood and gold for a bit of light in the night. Why pretend to be angry? Are you teasing me?”

  Pezarrat laughed. “You’ve become so affable and amusing. Orca claims a good spirit reasons with you in your dreams, and Vandana says only Basawili.” Pezarrat licked his teeth. “I don’t believe in good spirits or Anawanama jumba jabba.”

  A chill wind tickled Djola’s neck—Samina, saving Pezarrat’s life. “Basawili means we survive to change—”

  “The gods of the crossroads are tricksters!”

  “Vandana makes sure Orca and I always have good to do.”

  Djola never set foot in the Arkhysian Empire or any of Azizi’s protectorates. His chair at Council remained empty. According to Grain, Masters groused, yet Azizi refused to name a new Master of Poisons while Djola lived. A good sign. Kyrie still provided Azizi with mountain herbs and secret counsel while smuggling reports from Grain to Djola. Most of the news was bad: poison desert encroached; grain stores dwindled; rebels raided and citizens rioted. Kyrie’s Mountain Gates held as did her hope. Nobody had seen the bodies of Djola’s children.

  Djola practiced patience. Whenever he drank a mild seed and silk potion and flew to Smokeland, Samina spoke of days to come. She swore greedy fools had yet to conquer the future. She loved the world and held to hope like sister Kyrie. Samina never let Djola apologize for past arrogance or terrible decisions, never let him talk of revenge or speak of the children. She’d made peace with their actions and insisted all was not lost.

  One smoke walk in the middle of Djola’s seventh year in exile, Samina put icy fingers on his lips. “You know the cause of the poison and a cure.” Djola gaped at her. “You wrote a scroll of spells long ago.” She used the voice not to be argued with. “You still whisper that spell in dreams.”

  “I can’t remember my dreams.”

  “Do what you need to do, then come to me, at Mount Eidhou.”

  “If I knew what to do, I’d already be free.”

  “To be free, you live for change, not revenge. Conjure the future as if it were past.”

  He gasped. “To dance Xhalan Xhala for Pezarrat I should see the gold dust or turquoise his plunder brings?”

  “That’s one future.” She put icy fingers on his heart. “You say we do this to ourselves. There are other futures. See these as well. And offer void-smoke to crossroads gods.”

  Smokeland was what might be, what could be, yet never very far from what
was happening right now. Xhalan Xhala brought Smokeland to the everyday and the void too, the lost possibilities. Before they could speak more, Djola was rushing across the light bridge, swirling through a comet’s icy tail, his mind reeling, his heart quaking. He came back to himself shivering and sweating on his bunk.

  The sick bay was empty. Vandana and Orca had left his breath body unprotected. Somebody could have killed him or worse, poisoned him and made him a spirit slave. Djola jerked up. Vandana and Orca were spies, but loyal to him, always on the lookout for assassins. Something was wrong.

  His Aido bag, kora harp, and mountain of books had disappeared. Vandana’s bag sat next to him in the sunlight from a porthole. The blades Orca had confiscated from Djola circled the bag, tips pointed outward. A scroll and Djola’s latest maps for Jena City and Bog-Town lay on top of the bag. A message was scrawled in Lahesh on the scroll.

  If the way is open, run.

  I should have left sooner, but didn’t want to abandon you and Orca.

  Now you go to home and I have good to do elsewhere. That is living.

  I am too sentimental to face farewell.

  I hold your Kora harp and Aido bag. This Lahesh bag, your bag now. A library.

  Keep it safe. Add to it. Pass it on.

  Remember, these are good people on the wrong ship.

  Dochsi, you do love the world.

  Dochsi—the Lahesh no to negativity. His heart pounded; blood sang in his ears. Aside from Weeds and Wild Things, Orca and Vandana were the only ones living who touched him inside the fortress he’d made of heart and mind. Djola hid the knives in boots, sleeves, and belt, then snatched up bag, scroll, and map. He tore through the ship, searching for his friends.