by Heidi Heilig
“Move aside.” Akra shoulders me out of the way. First he touches her hands. “Her fingers are warm,” he says. “Good circulation. Can you check her feet?”
I struggle with her boots—they are not tightly tied, but my hands are tender. Akra gently probes her skull, running soft hands behind her ears and through her hair. He hisses.
“What’s wrong?”
“A knot like a lychee. She hit her head. How are her toes?”
“Warm. That’s good, right?”
“Better than the alternative.” Akra sits back on his heels. “We’ll know more by tonight.”
“What happens tonight?”
“Hopefully she’ll wake up.”
A pit yawns in my stomach. “What if she doesn’t?” Akra looks away, and the only answer is the sound of insects in the jungle. Panic rises in me. “We can’t just wait and hope, Akra.”
“That’s actually all we can do,” he replies. “And we have to do it somewhere else. Can you take her feet?”
“What?”
“We have to bring her back to the flying machine,” Akra says, slipping his hands under Maman’s shoulders. Her head lolls against his arm. “We’ll pull it down and load her in, if you can get it back into the air.”
“And then what?” I chew my lip. “Maman wanted to go to Aquitan, but there’s no way we could make it across the sea like this.”
“Aquitan? No,” Akra says, shaking his head. “We need to go north. Back home.”
I open my mouth—but what to say? How to put the last few years into a few words? Home feels even farther away than Aquitan. “Akra . . .”
But before I can say more, the leaves stir again, and a Chakran woman steps out from the shadows.
“Bonjour, capitaine.” She’s dressed in a traditional sarong, the tail pulled up between her knees and tucked into her belt. She’s also holding a rifle, and she aims it square at Akra. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
Rebels. My heart starts pounding. All the stories come back to me—the sabotage, the torture, the executions. “The uniforms are stolen,” I say quickly. “We’re only shadow players. Performers. Trying to escape the capital. We just want to get home to Lak Na.”
She narrows her eyes, glancing from my too-large boots to my baggy armée jacket. “You, maybe. Not him.”
“I swear,” I say, widening my eyes, lying through my teeth. “Ask him for a story, let him craft you a fantouche—”
“I recognize him, girl!” The woman swings the barrel of the gun around, jabbing the butt of the rifle into my stomach. My lungs seize as I double over, wheezing. But Akra lunges for the gun, grappling with the rebel, trying to wrench the weapon from her hands. He almost has it when another rebel dashes through the brush, his own gun raised.
“Hands up!” he shouts, and Akra falls back, breathing hard. The woman kicks him in the stomach and he stumbles back against a tree, sliding to the ground.
“I’m not a capitaine,” he gasps, clutching his broken ribs. “Not anymore.”
The rebel woman sneers, her teeth bright. “Demoted?”
“Deserted.”
“You betrayed your own people when you put on that uniform,” she says. “I’m not surprised you would betray theirs.”
At her words, rage burns on the back of my tongue—suddenly I want to tell her exactly why he joined. But the second rebel steps between her and me: an older man, tattooed but shirtless, unashamed of all of his sins. He kneels at Akra’s side, speaking softly. “If you’re a deserter, how did you get hold of the flying machine?
Akra’s expression doesn’t change. “I’ll trade information for medical care and the safety of my mother and sister,” he says, but the rebel girl laughs.
“You’re in no position to bargain,” she says. “Get up. Both of you.”
Using her foot, she nudges Maman. “She’s unconscious!” I shout, but the woman raises the butt of her gun again and I cringe back, wrapping my arms around my stomach. Slowly, she lowers her weapon, a warning in her eyes.
“Be grateful I’ll let you carry her,” she says softly, speaking to me, but watching my brother. “It’s more than I got when his men burned my village to the ground.”
Is the pain in my chest from a lack of air, or shame? I look to Akra, but he will not meet my eyes. The rebel woman laughs like glass breaking.
“You’re surprised? How do you think cha made capitaine?”
I don’t answer her. What can I say? I only kneel beside Maman, pulling her arm up over my shoulder as I struggle to my feet. Her body is limp and heavy by my side. Akra takes her other arm, sharing the burden. I want to push him away, but I can’t carry her alone. So she hangs between us, feet dragging, head lolling, as we follow the rebel woman through the jungle.
The path is winding, long and tangled. Vines grip our ankles and rocks find our toes; slick patches of red mud have us scrambling. Soon I am panting with the effort; worse for Akra, who can’t seem to catch his breath. His arm is bleeding freely again. We travel slower and slower. Every so often, the man behind us prods us with his rifle. Finally, when we pass a thicket of bamboo, he calls a halt to build a sling.
He says it’s because we’re traveling so slowly, but I wonder if it’s pity. Either way, I’m grateful. And when the bamboo poles are cut and lashed together with vines, I quietly draw a little vana into the cot to lighten the load. Maman would hate it, but Maman can’t complain.
Though carrying her on the sling is easier, it’s still grueling work to keep her balanced. I focus on my feet, trying to make sure I don’t slip and spill her onto the jungle floor. One foot after the last, one foot after the last. My shoulders burn, and blisters rise and burst on my hands. My world narrows, and soon enough I forget everything but the path in front of me, the space between Maman’s feet and my own.
I am bone weary and famished, and I crave water with a deep ache; it’s all I can do to hold on and keep walking. What if I just stopped? What if I simply laid down on the path?
The thought of it is so tempting, I nearly do. But then a sound stops me—a whisper. Maman’s voice. “Jetta?”
The glint of her eyes is barely visible under her lashes. I smile to see it, though my lips are so parched it hurts. I haven’t lost her yet, and for all the times she carried me to safety, now I have the chance to carry her. One foot after the last, one foot after the last.
The day is fading by the time Akra staggers to a stop. I look up, tossing lank hair out of my eyes, and see it before me all at once: the rebel camp.
It’s carved into a clearing in the jungle, set in the curve of a wide stream—but instead of the stronghold I imagined, it looks more like a place for refugees. Tents are interspersed with slapdash lean-tos and one-room shacks, all scattered over the muddy earth. Skinny chickens and barefoot children roam throughout, and various cookfires send smoke toward the sky. Then the smell of food drifts toward me on a breeze, and my stomach cramps so hard I double over, dropping the poles of the sling.
Akra staggers, but he manages to lower his side carefully to the ground. Then he kneels heavily beside it. In the dim light, his face is wan.
“Get up,” the woman says, but Akra only shakes his head, his breath fast and shallow.
I can’t imagine standing either, now that I’ve stopped moving, not even when she nudges me with the gun. “You didn’t make us walk this far,” I say, breathing hard. “Just to shoot us at the end of the road.” Her eyes narrow, and suddenly I am not so sure. But then, in me, the deep, dark dare. “Do it, then,” I growl, the words slipping out, and the woman’s expression falters.
But that spark of bravado has taken all my strength. My head drops; my shoulders sag. Other rebels are drifting toward us now . . . children too. Would she kill us before their eyes? The scene plays out in my head—the gunshots, the blood—as another voice floats in: wicked, wry, familiar. “Did you bring me a gift, pussycat?”
Sauntering toward us, as lovely in a long sarong as she was in a scrap of silk—Cheeky. She grin
s at our captor, and I stare. The world seems to spin, like we are back up in the air. Am I only dreaming her here? But I never would have imagined her a rebel—nor wearing a machete at her waist, and Eve’s snake around her neck.
I want to say her name, but my throat is too dry. The rebel woman winks at her. “I found a bird too, but it was too big to drag home.”
“Too bad! I could use a new boa,” Cheeky says, petting the scales of the snake. “This one doesn’t have any feathers. So what are these, then?”
She peers down at Maman with a frown on her face—is that start of recognition? And when she meets my eyes, her own widen in shock. She whirls, barreling right into our guard, shoving the woman back. “Go! Get the docteur, quick!”
* * *
Sent at 1630h
General Legarde at Nokhor Khat
To: Capitaine Legarde at Luda
REGARDING THE RECHERCHE FOR JETTA OF
THE ROS NAI STOP ELABORATE ON HER CRIMES
STOP WHAT HAS SHE DONE CONFIRM RECEIPT
Sent at 1811h
Capitaine Legarde at Luda
To: General Legarde at Nokhor Khat
MESSAGE RECEIVED STOP TELEGRAPH
OFFICE OPERATIONAL STOP SUSPECT WANTED
FOR QUESTIONING REGARDING PRACTICE
OF NECROMANCY
* * *
* * *
Father—
I’ve just returned from my first successful flight. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that one of my other machines was stolen.
The part I can’t understand is, it shouldn’t have been able to fly.
I want to replicate the conditions under which it took to the air. There is something strange here, but I’m on the verge of discovery, I know it. I told you I could figure it out. Aren’t you glad now that I’m not getting married out in the middle of the sea?
Theodora
* * *
Chapter Twenty-Six
At Cheeky’s insistence, we are carried into a long pavilion—a sick house, I realize. Or what the Aquitans called an hôpital. But in Chakran style, it’s built on a platform to keep the floor dry. The grass roof is held up by thick trunks, with the sides left open for circulation. Gauzy mosquito nets hang above soft pallets lined up in a neat row. Some of the beds are already occupied—we pass a man with no feet, a woman bandaged and moaning, a youth who seems uninjured except for the empty look in their eyes.
Are they all the victims of rebel torture? But if so, why would the rebels care for them? More and more, the stories of the Tiger’s hordes seem exaggerated—or at least, I had seen worse from the armée. It’s still hard to let go of the fear, but it is distant. Or maybe I’m too tired to carry it any longer. The sick house smells clean enough . . . moreover, it is a place to rest, and once I’m lowered into a bed, the night fades into a blur, seen narrowly between my heavy eyelids.
I rouse a little when a man comes into the hôpital—the docteur. Another old monk, though he hides his tattoos with a thin shirt. How many have the rebels collected? He leans over Maman first, his face serious but not severe. He treats Akra next, daubing his wounds with something that smells bright and clean. Then he removes the tattered shirt to check my brother’s ribs. Akra swears as the docteur probes the bruised flesh, but I am staring blearily at my brother’s scars. He seems sewn together—a patchwork of black and blue stitched with white, and something that looks like an old bullet wound in his shoulder. What had he suffered?
What suffering had he caused?
I close my eyes then, trying to shut out the world. How long had I been awake? Everything has become too much. For once, my mind obeys my wishes; I drift away into a soft and secret darkness. Then someone touches my hands and I jolt up, struggling, but the docteur whispers to me—hush, hush—and I stop fighting. Blackness pools behind my eyes and in my head, swirling like a dark galaxy as I slide into a dreamless sleep.
After a while, I am aware of light . . . sips of water . . . the docteur’s touch. But I don’t have the will or the strength to open my eyes for a long time. When I do, there is afternoon sun—gentle, golden—filtered through the gauze of the mosquito net. I am lying flat on a pallet, on the floor. Every muscle hurts with the deep ache of exhaustion and hunger. I feel reedy, thin, like even the light of my soul has dimmed.
But the camp outside is full of life, and with my eyes closed, it reminds me for a moment of Lak Na. Giggles and singing as children playing a clapping game—the slap and splash of laundry in the water. . . . Water. My breath hisses through cracked lips and I struggle to sit up. Someone sweeps open the netting, and I’m looking up into Cheeky’s face. “You’re awake,” she says, delighted.
“Water,” I reply.
“Right. May I?” At my nod, she slips a soft hand behind my neck, lifting my head off the pallet and bringing a cup to my lips. Greedily I drink—it’s juice from a young coconut, so sweet, tears start in my eyes. Too soon, it’s gone.
“More?” I croak, but she is already refilling the cup. My eyes focus on her hands—the nails chipped now, the pink stain fading.
“We brought food too,” she says to me. “Can you sit all the way up?”
“I think so,” I say, and I do—slowly, gingerly, with her help. Then I down the next cup all in one go. “Who’s we?”
“Me and Leo,” she says, and at his name, a jolt shoots through me, much like pain.
Cheeky pulls back the mosquito net, and there he is—leaning against one of the posts in the pavilion. He gives me a wan smile and steps closer, almost cautiously, holding out a bowl like an apology. “I’m glad you made it,” he says softly. I throw my empty cup at his head.
My aim is terrible, but Leo jumps back, and Cheeky scrambles to her feet. “What is this about?”
“My father’s still back there, thanks to you!”
“Me?” Leo raises an eyebrow. “What did I do?”
“You should have helped me!” I say, though the accusation feels hollow the moment I make it. Still, he shrugs.
“I did the best I could,” he replies quietly, tucking his hand into his jacket and pulling out a stack of paper. He tosses it beside me on the cot; it rustles there, and not with the breeze. My book of souls. Quickly I cover it with one hand. The pages settle. Then I look back up at Leo, searching his face.
“And my fantouches?”
“I threw your pack in the river,” he says. “I couldn’t carry everything.”
A pang in my chest—even though I’d never expected to see them again, the thought is still painful: the last of my old fantouches, gone. But this was why Legarde hadn’t known what I was. After all I’d done, Leo had kept my secrets for me.
Why? Was it kindness . . . generosity? Or did he want something? But I cannot ask him. Not in front of Cheeky. “Thank you,” I say instead, the words tasting odd on my tongue. I take a deep breath. “How did you escape?”
Leo shifts on his feet. “It’s a long story,” he says vaguely, and my eyes narrow. But he holds out the bowl. “You should eat something.”
Cheeky nods, handing me a spoon. “You’re a shadow of yourself. Pun intended.”
Pursing my lips, I look down at the congee, warm and rich with bits of egg. My mouth starts to water. I lift the spoon—gently, so as not to disturb my healing blisters. Then I take a bite and blink away tears. The food is so comforting. “You’ve changed too,” I murmur between bites. “I preferred your other uniform.”
“Me too, to be quite honest,” she says, grinning. “But the mosquitoes are murder in the jungle.”
In spite of myself, her smile sparks a small one in return. “What is this place?”
“Remember all the people on the road from Dar Som?” Leo glances out over the camp. “Not all of them get past the soldiers at the gates.”
I frown. “And now . . . they’re all rebels?”
Cheeky hesitates. “It’s hard to say. First they were just refugees. But then the Tiger came.”
A chill goes
through me at the name; my eyes dart left to right, as though he might be lurking in the corner of the hôpital. “What did he do?”
“He helped,” Cheeky says quietly. “Has his soldiers dig latrines. Build shacks. Bring rice. They send out patrols to keep us safe.”
I stare at her, trying to make sense of it: praise for the Tiger. “So you’re a rebel now too?”
She arches an eyebrow. “I’m a performer, Jetta,” she says, as though it’s obvious, but there is a bitter edge to her smile. “Just temporarily without a stage.”
I falter, glancing from her to Leo. He looks away. I swallow. “La Perl?”
Cheeky presses her lips together. “Gone.”
I set down the bowl. “Tia and Eve?”
“Tia’s out on patrol with the boys. They like her, and she likes the attention. But Eve . . .” Cheeky’s hand goes to the snake on her shoulders. She strokes the smooth scales. “She ran back for this ridiculous thing while the armée was trying to quell the unrest at the dock. She made it out, but by then the bullets were flying, and . . .”
The words fade into silence; she lets them go like birds from a cage. I look to Leo again, but his eyes are distant and angled upward. My spoon slips in the bowl, but it doesn’t matter—my appetite is gone.
Cheeky sighs; in her ears, the little diamonds sparkle. “You didn’t eat much.”
“Small stomach,” I say miserably.
“Try to keep going,” she says. “Why don’t you rest a little? I’ll come back again at dinner. Maybe by then the others will be up. Your maman, and a brother, right?”
Absently, I nod. But on the pallet beside me, Akra stirs. “I’m awake,” he says, his voice rusty. He pulls back the mosquito net; he is propped up on one elbow and blinking blearily. His hair is mussed in black spikes, and he looks at Cheeky through narrowed eyes. “You mentioned dinner?”
She opens her mouth, closes it—like a carp. Her face turns bright red, and she flees.
Akra watches her go, his brow furrowed. “What was that?”
I shake my head, confused, but to my surprise, Leo is grinning again. “I’ll go check,” he says, jogging off after her. Then I remember what he told me—was it only weeks ago? If Cheeky’s ever tongue-tied, you know she’s found true love. I do my best to muffle my smile as I hand over my bowl.
