For a Muse of Fire

by Heidi Heilig

  Outside, the soldiers laugh again at some shared joke. For a moment I go still, but the man I can see doesn’t move, so I redouble my efforts, hoping they both stay there, by the fire. Their voices rise again into the ebb of their laughter.

  “The real question is,” Jian says, “do we want to go back?”

  “I’m hungry,” Bootless replies. “Not much left to eat around here.”

  “We could move on.”

  “Where? The jungle? You know what the rebels would do to us?”

  “The ones here didn’t have much fight in them.”

  “These weren’t rebels, connard. Not all of them.” Bootless spits into the fire, and something cold twists in my stomach. But then the rope falls free from my wrists, twitching and coiling on the ground. I pick it up, winding it around my wrist like a bracelet. “Stay,” I murmur, and it cinches up close. I’ll burn it later, when I’m back safe with my parents around my own cook fire.

  Taking one last glance through the door to make sure the soldiers are still there, I crawl across to the opposite wall and push my hands through the palm fronds. They rustle and I freeze again, heart fluttering, but the soldiers don’t stir. Moving more slowly, I slip my arms through the dry leaves in a wedge, letting the crinkle of the grass blend into the crackle of the fire. The edges of the leaves are sharp as razors, drawing little lines of blood where they brush along my bare skin, but I press forward—ducking my head, twisting my shoulders, slow and steady as the arvana scramble closer through the leaves.

  But I stop halfway through.

  My hands are on the rutted ground behind the hut, where rain drips down from the eaves and scores the earth, looking out on the gutted remains of a village. The smoke I had smelled came not from the cook fire, but from the smoldering ash of burned-out hovels. I am in one of the only ones left standing. Coals still glow dimly in the ashen husks: still-beating hearts in broken rib cages. Wisps of smoke hang in the air like memories, and everywhere I look, there are columns of cold fire: n’akela. The deaths here were not easy.

  I know without being told that I am in Dar Som.

  But why? Anger roils in my gut along with the bile. These weren’t all rebels—even Bootless had known that. The spirit with her rag doll, the orchid in the bowl—the people who lived here were families like mine. And Jian’s face comes back to me, twisted into a leering grin: No one escaped. As I clench my fists against the rocky earth, the n’akela drift closer, as though they can hear my thoughts. As though they know I am tempted to help them with their vengeance.

  Then a gunshot cracks like a whip—once, twice, thrice. I stifle a scream . . . but it came from the jungle on the far side of the hut. Nowhere near me. One of the soldiers is screaming too—Bootless, I think. “They’re in the trees!” Jian shouts, returning fire. “Get inside!”

  I hesitate. Who is out there? Rebels? The armée? Am I in more danger out in the open or back in the hut with the soldiers? In the dark, in a firefight, I don’t want to be caught between them. I struggle through the thatch, but I waited too long. As I slip through, a hand shoots out from the hut and wraps around my ankle. I hear Bootless cursing just inside. He pulls me back, but his grip is weak and slick with sweat or blood. “She’s getting away!”

  Frantic, I kick back through the thatch. The fronds slice my skin as my heel connects with his shoulder, his head, his jaw. A muffled grunt, and I am free. Scrambling to my feet, I careen toward the jungle—running headfirst into Jian coming around the side of the hovel.

  He lunges for me. I spin away. His fingers barely brush my back, but he grabs a fistful of my sarong and nearly jerks me off my feet. I stumble back, close enough to hear him snarl in my ear—no words, just a sound like a beast. He wraps his arm around my neck, so tight I can’t breathe. “Let go of me,” I whisper, clawing at his arm. The n’akela creep closer, hopeful. “I’ll kill you if you don’t.”

  He only laughs. “With what?”

  My blood and bare hands, I do not say. The souls of the dead and the damned. But the memory of fleeing La Perl, of Eduard’s screams—they still rattle in my head like dust in a dry skull. So instead, I tug the rope from my wrist and whip it back over my shoulder. The vana twists inside the fiber, wrapping tight around his neck.

  Jian’s hands fly to his throat, and I am free. He reels sideways, falling against the wall of the hut, eyes bulging, struggling to breathe. His fingers gouge at the soft skin of his neck as he sinks to his knees. In my chest there is a feeling, distantly familiar, like the applause after a show, like the thrill of having all eyes on me. It is power.

  All around me, n’akela gather, a rapt audience. But this is not a shadow play—death is not a puppet, here. Still, something dark tempts me . . . could I play this role? Doesn’t he deserve it?

  I am caught between shadow and flame, hesitating, but the rope only wraps itself tighter. Jian’s lips turn blue, and the n’akela drift closer still, waiting for the vengeance that is their final purpose. If Jian dies now, what color will his soul be? Will I be watching over my own shoulder for a flash of blue light?

  “Stop,” I whisper to the spirit in the rope, and just like that, it falls away. I snatch it back as Jian drags a single breath—ragged, desperate, eager. Then another shot rings out from the jungle, and a spray of red explodes across the wall of the hut.

  With a strangled scream, I turn away—but not before the image is pressed into my mind in shards of bone and teeth all red with blood. Jian’s body slides sideways to lie against the rutted earth. Nausea hits me again like a punch to the gut, too fast to fight. This time I retch, tottering away from the body, spitting, gasping, gagging. A man crashes out of the tangled greenery behind the hut, a gun in his fist. “Jetta?”

  “Leo!” I wipe my mouth on the back of my hand, stifling a sob—relief, and dread. I want to run to him, I want to run away. Instead I try to breathe. His hair and eyes are a little wild and his shirt is in tatters under his jacket, but otherwise he seems unhurt. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to save you,” he says—an echo of Maman’s words. I’m always trying to save you. Where is she now?

  I look behind him, toward the trees, but all I see are the n’akela, drifting away; the show is over. “Are my parents with you?”

  “I made them stay with the roulotte, in case . . .” He doesn’t finish his sentence—and I don’t want him to. His lip curls as he glances over my shoulder, at the soldier slumped on the ground. I do not turn; I do not follow his gaze. I do not want to see Jian’s body or his soul. “Did they hurt you?”

  “A bad headache,” I say. “But nothing worse. They were going to bring me to their lieutenant. They said I’m wanted for questioning on a . . . a recherche.”

  Leo frowns, pushing past me; out of the corner of my eye, I see him crouch beside Jian’s prone body. He rifles through the dead man’s pockets, drawing out a few étoiles, some cigarettes, a crumpled piece of paper. Then another howl cuts through the night—much closer.

  “We should go,” I murmur, winding the rope back around my wrist for safekeeping, but Leo’s still staring at the page, swearing softly. “What is that?”

  “The recherche, like you said.” He looks up at me, almost hesitant. “They have a description of you, and of the roulotte.”

  I suck air through my teeth—a description printed on paper? I’ve only ever seen those for the Tiger. How much of the armée is looking for us? Has word reached Nokhor Khat? But before I can ask, the palm thatch rustles, and the tip of a bayonet slides through the wall of the hut. Leo twists away—too late. The bright blade lays open his jacket and cuts a scarlet line across his chest. With a grimace, he raises his gun and fires back through the thatch; inside, Bootless’s scream cuts off in a gurgling sigh.

  Wincing, I turn away. All I can smell is blood and smoke and bile. But another howl floats through the air along with the smoke. I see her then—the ke’cherk, standing in the village square, pale as bone. Her sleek muzzle is raised toward the ni
ght sky, the white fur stained red. The silvery scales on her slender legs gleam in the moonlight. Can she smell Leo’s blood above the rest?

  My heart pounding, I pull him toward the trees, plunging into the jungle along a muddy track. Leo’s face is pale; he presses his fist against the jacket, over the wound, trying to stanch the bleeding. Another howl floats through the air—but surrounded by thick greenery on both sides, I cannot tell if it comes from behind us or up ahead. I stop to get my bearings, but Leo keeps going. He is only maybe a wagon’s length away from me when I hear him yelp.

  “Leo!” I whirl, but he has vanished . . . though ahead, there is splashing and cursing in Chakran and Aquitan. I take a step toward the sound, and the smell of blood grows stronger, mixed with the sweet taint of rot. There, where he disappeared—the track ends suddenly in a deep shadow before a wall of jungle. “Are you all right?”

  “Don’t come any closer!”

  “What’s wrong?” I say, my heart pounding in response to the panic in his voice. I take another step. Where is he?

  “Stay back!” he calls, but I ignore him. As I approach, the shadow on the track resolves itself into a hole dug in the earth—as wide as the roulotte, and several times as long. He must have slid down the side.

  “Leo!” My heart drops as I teeter on the edge of the pit. I think I see him then, lying in the mud, half submerged by the rainwater that fills the bottom of the ditch, but I’m wrong, so wrong. It isn’t him at all.

  Leo is scrambling up the side of the gully, clawing at the white roots that worm through the fresh-cut earth, eyes wide and shoulder bloody, but alive. And at the bottom of the ditch, a body. And another, and another, stacked like cane—men and women and children and even babies, the whole village, sinking in the muck, a mire of the dead.

  * * *

  AVIS

  DE RECHERCHE

  “Jetta of the Ros Nai”

  A Chakran girl in her teenage years with dark hair just past her shoulders, medium height and build, burn scars on her left shoulder. Traveling in the company of her mother and a moitié man aged eighteen. Fled Luda in a covered roulotte, carved and painted, and pulled by a white water buffalo.

  * * *

  Chapter Sixteen

  So much death. I knew it was happening—I’d heard the stories. The rebels attack, the armée retaliates, back and forth, blood in the jungle. But this is not a story, and these are not rebels. I can’t get the images out of my head—the bobbing backs and bloody limbs and the hair of a girl, drifting round the cracked porcelain of her shattered skull.

  I should have killed Jian myself. Bootless too.

  The anger is like a flame inside me, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. Instead Leo and I stumble through the trees, away from the murdered village of Dar Som, though the smell follows me. It may never leave. I forget to scan the shadows for the flash of white fur, the ripple of silvery scales, the eyes that shine green in the dark. But the next time I hear the ke’cherk howling, they are farther away—back where death tempts them like souls to the god’s lamp.

  I shiver as I walk, but I tell myself it’s only the cold night air. As we press through the jungle, moonlight barely penetrates the thick greenery, but the spirits are bright. Where Leo hesitates, I lead the way; in following the soldiers, he had tied strips of white cloth to branches at eye level, torn from the tail of his shirt.

  His jacket is ruined now too, stained with blood that seeps from the wound on his chest. His own pants are soaked with the filth from the ditch, plastered to his legs—he must be cold. His face is pale, but he keeps pace with me until we’ve gone far enough that I can no longer hear the howling. Still, the scent of smoke clings to my hair like a dark crown. But we stop—just for a moment—to catch our breath. I am nauseated, and my head is pounding; Leo must see it on my face. “Are you all right?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say, not trusting myself to nod, and he sags back against a tree, as though relieved—or exhausted. “You?”

  His lip curls, dismissive. “I’ll be fine. I’m just . . . tired.”

  “Let me see.”

  “I don’t know how you can see anything in these shadows.” He turns toward me, letting his head fall back against the tree and his eyes slide shut. Peeling back the blood-soaked linen of his jacket, I inspect the cut by soullight—a deep slash, just below his collarbone: pale skin, red flesh.

  “You’re going to need stitches,” I say, but he only nods. Still, his jacket is filthy—it hasn’t been washed for days. “Infection is the real risk.”

  “Can’t do much about that out here,” he says grimly, but I frown, scanning the trees. Under the leaves, the souls swirl and dance, a cloud of vana buzzing in the bromeliads, the spirit of a moonrat lingering over a fallen piece of jungle fruit. They illuminate a winding fall of heart-shaped betel vine, crawling across the earth.

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” I reach out, stripping a handful of leaves from the vine. “Here.”

  He takes them between his bloody fingers. “What are these for?”

  I cock my head. “You need to make a paste from the leaves,” I say slowly, but his look is blank. “Chew on them a bit.”

  “Oh. Oh!” Leo grimaces, but he tucks the leaves into his cheek. “You know, I like our way better.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “What way is that?”

  “Alcohol.”

  “Next time, arrange to be rescued by a dancer,” I say loftily, and he tries to laugh as he chews. The leaves are a good antiseptic, and a natural painkiller. But what to use for a bandage? I reach into his breast pocket, where I’d seen him tuck a handkerchief before—was it only days ago? When I pull it out, it’s already soaked through. But behind it, the gleam of silver . . .

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for something to cover the wound,” I say, but he shrugs his jacket shut, putting his hand over the cigarette case still tucked in his pocket.

  “It can wait.”

  I want to ask him what’s the matter—why he’s glaring at me like he’s afraid I’ll steal his silver. But there is pain in his eyes, deeper even than the cut on his chest. So I don’t press the issue. Instead, I toss the bloody handkerchief aside and unwind the cloth belt from my sarong—only a little dirty. “Here. Use this.”

  As I offer him the folded cloth, he spits the paste almost delicately onto the fabric. Then he hisses through his teeth as I press the cloth against the wound. “This isn’t some kind of joke, is it?”

  “Like how the Aquitans think we eat bugs as a delicacy? No. Take off your jacket,” I add. “I need to tie this over your shoulder.”

  He narrows his eyes, but he obeys, slipping his left arm free, and I wrap the cloth around his chest, up over his shoulder, down under his arm, making a bandage of my belt.

  “No one ever taught you these things?” I say as I move behind him to tie off the fabric.

  “My mother wasn’t very traditional,” he says softly. Then he sighs, shifting his shoulders under the silk. “But I learned other lessons.”

  My hands still . . . not only at his tone. I might not have noticed it, if not for the light of the souls, but there is a mark on his back, just over his left shoulder blade. Nothing fancy, just a line and a dot—the symbol of life—in blue ink under his skin. But it takes my breath away. “I thought you didn’t follow the old ways,” I say softly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tattoos are for monks.” I step back, confused, but he turns, quickly, as though to hide the mark from me.

  “Tattoos are for sins,” he corrects softly.

  “Is life your sin, Leo?” I ask the question without thinking, and see the answer on his face. But he pulls the jacket shut again.

  “It’s every bastard’s sin,” he murmurs, staring through the trees. Then he shakes his head, laughing a little. “A moitié man.”

  “What?”

  “The recherche. ‘A moitié man,’ it said. But Xavier saw me, driving the roulott
e. My brother,” he explains at my look. “The capitaine. He didn’t list my name.”

  “Do you think he was trying to protect you, somehow?”

  For a moment, a wistful look crosses his face; quickly, he mars it with a grimace. “There are few things he cares about more than doing the right thing. The family name is one of them. That’s all he was protecting.”

  “Ah.” What else can I say? I search his eyes, his pale face, the bandaged wound, still bleeding. His rambling worries me. “We should get back,” I say, and he doesn’t argue.

  It is only another hour till we see the smugglers’ hut under the pearl-pink light of dawn. When I see the clearing through the trees, tears come to my eyes; all I want to do is go inside and sleep. But I take a deep breath, hesitating in the shadows beneath a stand of elephant ears. “Don’t tell my parents.”

  “Don’t tell them what, exactly?”

  At first, the answers come not in words, but feelings—the red rush of power as I watched Jian struggle to breathe, the sickening spray of blood as it spattered the wall of the hut. The girl’s hair in the muddy water, drifting like ribbons in the wind. “About how bad it was. In the village.”

  “D’accord,” he says softly, rolling his wounded shoulder with a grimace. “But when we get to the main road I’m sure they’ll put it together.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He nods at the little hut. “Nuriya and Das fled. They won’t be the only ones.”

  I pause with one hand on the door to the roulotte, remembering the families following the armée, pushing wheelbarrows full of bedding and valuables. And the crowd on the docks in Luda after the last attack. How many people will be traveling south to try to avoid the fighting? “We better hurry to the capital, then.”

  I am rummaging through the back of the roulotte for a needle when my parents come boiling out of the house. Papa rushes toward me, but there is a grim look on his face, and Maman has tears in her eyes. “Are you all right?” she murmurs into my hair. “Did they hurt you?”