The Burning City (Spirit Binders)

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  “Nothing we didn’t already know. This one thinks he can play with a great spirit.”

  The ghost of his sister might make him want to scream, but he felt as though he could hardly think without her. What did these two know? Would they kill him for what he’d done?

  “Is this about the ramblings of that mad black angel? You can’t prove anything. Leave before I call the guards.” Each sentence came out fainter than the last.

  Senona Ahi shook his head. “We have no time to play these games with you, Mo’i. You sacrificed your hand to weaken the bindings. We know this. I assure you the black angel has nothing to do with our knowledge. Indeed, I’m rather impressed she figured it out.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” Kohaku didn’t mean to ask it. He certainly didn’t intend the hint of longing that infused his words.

  But the fire guardian laughed. “Of course not,” he said.

  “If that would solve the problem,” said Kaleakai, “I promise we wouldn’t be speaking to you right now.”

  Kohaku could think of no response to that.

  “The trouble,” said Senona Ahi, “is that you have unleashed something. You don’t think the fire spirit has made that offer to thousands of other penitents over the years? People desperate with your particular combination of despair and thirst for revenge? And yet only you succeeded. That makes you a powerful person—the only person who can stop the fire spirit before it breaks its bonds entirely.”

  “Break? What do you mean?”

  “He means,” said the water guardian, whose eyes had turned ice-chip blue, “that if you don’t agree to sacrifice yourself in the service of the fire spirit’s binding, it will break free entirely.”

  Kohaku stared at them. They stared back, said nothing.

  “You want me to kill myself.”

  “We want you to sacrifice yourself. The lip of Nui’ahi would be appropriate, considering. But any fire death would do, so long as you dedicate yourself appropriately—”

  “Leave.”

  “You probably didn’t know your sacrifice would murder—”

  “Leave. Guardians or no, I will kill you.”

  Senona Ahi stopped in mid-speech. His gaping mouth might have been comical if not for the hint of fire in his throat.

  “Do you doubt it?” Kohaku said.

  Kaleakai stood, and dragged Senona Ahi up with him. His hand left pale blue imprints on the other man’s elbow.

  “No,” said the water guardian. “I expected as much.”

  The woman kneeling on the floor of the tiny local fire shrine went quiet with shock when Lana walked inside. The sennit braid she had been carefully winding and unwinding with ritual fervor around her left wrist fell limply to the floor. By her lined face and slate-gray hair, Lana guessed her to be at least sixty. She’d been one of the women fighting off the Mo’i’s guards in that hellish scene before the fire temple, when one of her fellow napulo disciples had burned herself alive in the public square. Lana spared herself a quiet moment of relief. This was the fifth supposed napulo enclave she’d visited in the last week. She’d begun to wonder if they’d all vanished in the wake of Kohaku’s edict.

  “I heard Bloody One-hand captured you,” Lana said. “You escaped?”

  The woman gathered the coils of worn sennit braid from the floor with trembling hands. Now that Lana looked, she could see bruises up and down her arms, faded to mottled yellow and green.

  “He released me,” she said quietly.

  “I’ve never heard of him releasing someone.”

  The woman clutched reflexively at the rope in her hands. “I was lucky. I have influential friends.”

  Lana wondered about that. “And the other napulo?”

  Her mouth pursed in what might have been anger or grief. “My friends were not in time for her. What brings you here, black angel? Did you want to lecture us for our unseemly spectacle? For wanting the bindings to weaken? And to think that we still mention Polonuku’s name in our prayers.”

  “Who?”

  The woman gripped the edge of the altar and hauled herself carefully upright. “You don’t even know her name? Your predecessor. The black angel who sacrificed herself to remove the unholy binding.”

  “You honor her? And what of all those killed in the wars and disasters after? Even if you hate the bindings, how can you countenance. . .”

  The woman’s cheeks were flushed with anger; her knuckles pale where they gripped her worn prayer braid too tightly. “A necessary penance for the evil we committed. Make no mistake, black angel, all the bindings will come due. Whether we napulo exist or not, nothing as unnatural as the great bindings can last forever.”

  Lana sliced the air with her hand, furious, but wishing she could instead be cool and supercilious. The trouble was that she knew the nature of binding too well to dismiss this napulo woman’s position. She might disagree with her conclusions, she might want to vomit at her blithe acceptance of mass death, but she understood. She saw what bindings did to Ino. She had stood on the top of the ruins of the wind shrine and heard the spirit itself tell how it hated the bindings. But it had also said something else. Something she doubted the woman would believe.

  “The wind spirit gave me these wings,” she said. “Do you want to know why? Because something about keeping me alive helped reinforce the death spirit’s binding. It said that it remembered the world before the death was bound, and afterward, and it preferred the world after. So does your philosophy have a place for that? A spirit that prefers the bound world?”

  She had, Lana noticed with grim satisfaction, managed to shock the napulo disciple. The woman held herself so still that Lana had to count to see if she still breathed.

  “You are not lying,” she said finally.

  “No,” Lana said.

  “What are you doing here? What do you want with us?”

  “I’m looking for a one-armed witch.”

  “And you think we’d have anything to do with someone who binds the spirits for her livelihood?”

  “If you had the same short-term interests, why not? Besides, she’s not an ordinary witch. For all I know, she’s as much a napulo as you.”

  The woman tossed her braid on the altar and walked closer to Lana. “What do you want this woman for?” she said. Her voice was very low. Lana wondered who she thought might overhear.

  “She has taken my mother. I’m afraid of what might happen if I don’t get her back.”

  “I never met her, but I heard of her. They said she came through two months ago, looking for ancient books and letters—accounts we kept of the age of bindings.”

  “But why would napulo have accounts of the bindings?”

  For some reason, this made the other woman laugh. “Do you know what napulo means, black angel? It’s the word for binding in the old Maaram tongue. Maaram is what Okika used to be. A thousand years ago, the napulo were a community dedicated to studying the spirits and the process of binding. Some thought to use the bindings for power. A few of the wiser ones knew that such bindings could only be a perversion. They were marginalized, and of course, you know who won that argument. Over the centuries, the only napulo who would claim the title were those wise ones who had opposed it from the beginning, and we inherited the wealth of knowledge amassed over that time. So you understand? Part of what we do is to atone for our own sins. It was a napulo disciple who bound each of the great spirits.”

  Lana took this in. “And you’re saying the one-armed witch knew this?”

  “She must have, to ask us. And I don’t know why, but those she asked trusted her enough to give her some of our most cherished records.”

  Lana felt her wings shaking in her excitement and stilled them. Careful, now. This was more than she’d dared hope for, based on Sabolu’s information. “Do you know what records she took?”

  “Anything we had about life geas.”

  “You mean the death spirit?”

  “Well, yes, but more specific than that. They
were all methods of binding the death to extend life.”

  Lana felt the blood drain from her face. She had to remind herself to breathe. Binding the death to extend life. Like the binding she had used to save her mother. Could that be why Akua had kidnapped Leilani? To somehow disrupt Lana’s life geas?

  “Do you know anything else? Where she is now?”

  The woman, clearly sensing her agitation, put a hand on Lana’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, keika,” she said. “But the woman vanished as she came. No one knows.”

  Lana had a dream. She couldn’t remember the details, only the vaguest of impressions: scudding clouds, the calls of moa and other beach birds, the dry switching of tall grass on the dunes. And the waves, always the waves, crashing like a spirit’s hammer on the shore. There were no people in this dream, not even Lana herself, but the impression of the place—like and utterly unlike the beaches she had known as a child—had been of a world deeply loved. She woke and gingerly moved herself from Kai’s arms so she could reach the black book. It didn’t take her long to place the vague dream connection. The beach she had dreamed of was the place where Aoi, Tulo, and Parech had decided to build their house.

  Aoi hadn’t called it the Rushes—maybe that name came later—but she had written that they had built on the western shore, deep in the farming country. Lana couldn’t believe that it had taken her this long to associate their home with the strange house that Makaho had been sending supplies to. The house in the black book had been destroyed in an earthquake, and the house on the beach had been standing for centuries, but it was the first hint that the events in this strange book might relate to her problems now. For whatever reason, Akua hadn’t wanted her to know this story.

  Akua also didn’t want her to know that she’d been associating with the napulo. Lana recalled with sick dread the possibility that Akua would attempt to break Lana’s life geas. Lana knew that she had done something to disrupt Akua’s plans when she recited that geas—Akua had as much as told her so. But she still didn’t understand what good it would do to break it now, more than a year later. Akua meant to use Lana for something, but why Leilani?

  “Something wrong?” Kai asked, yawning. She hadn’t realized he was awake.

  She laughed.“What isn’t? When did you get back? How did the meeting go?” His hands trailed up her back, buried themselves deep in her black down, and gently worked out the knots in her muscles. “As well as we expected.”

  Lana stiffened. “He threatened to kill you.”

  “I’m the water guardian, Lana. He can certainly try.”

  She told him of her enlightening visit to the napulo woman, and her realization about the significance of the house in the rushes. “I thought I’d visit it again today,” she said, and smiled when he offered to accompany her.

  She went down ahead of him, only to find Pano and Eliki arguing in low, intense voices before their untouched morning meal. Eliki had pages and pages of scribbles in front of her, and her clothes were so rumpled and her face so haggard that Lana thought she must not have slept all night. Pano hardly looked any better.

  They took no notice of her approach, and so Lana just tried to be discreet while she ate what they’d left out. Their voices were low enough that she couldn’t catch every word, but she saw the map of Essel on the table and could easily guess the subject. Eliki wanted the northern docks. This was already the coldest winter Lana had ever experienced, and the worst months were still ahead. She remembered hearing of “volcano colds” in the days before the spirit bindings, but she hadn’t really grasped what it meant. Volcanoes were hot, at least until their constant spray of ash and smoke choked the sky and brought a pall to everything beneath it. In this sort of weather, the food stores that their sympathizers in the seventh district could bring them would be severely limited. Without a port, the rebels would soon starve, and no war would be necessary. So, Eliki proposed to get the port—a compelling argument. But Lana sympathized with Pano, who understood the implications of such violent, uncoordinated conflict far better than Eliki, it seemed. And no one could overlook the threat posed by Kohaku’s bows.

  Lana could tell that they had been engaged in this argument for most of the night. And judging by Pano’s bleak expression, he was losing. Lana put her finger over her lips when Kai came down. He took one look at the two rebel leaders and sighed. Neither of them had anything of use to offer this discussion.

  To get to the Rushes more quickly, she and Kai hired a rickshaw, and she contemplated briefly what an odd, disturbing pair they must seem to the outside world. But they were both used to the stares and the reflexive spirit invocations by now. She bought two pastries from the vendor, using some coils of sennit braid she’d found in Kai’s luggage. She’d had that idea after reading the black book. The ubiquitous cordage had been a type of currency in that long-ago time, and given the disaster they found themselves in, she thought they could all learn a few lessons from the previous age.

  They had finished the pastries when they finally reached the ancient house at the end of the road, dark and unchanged. And just as before, she felt the power of the geas binding this house, of the spirits tied to its preservation. But she saw no signs of habitation. She and Kai looked at each other and mounted the steps.

  The door was open a crack, as though someone had come inside and forgotten to latch it. But Lana was sure that she’d closed the door when she’d last left. She pushed it open. The air inside was warmer, despite the lack of any fire. The room was empty. Even the package that had been waiting by the door had vanished.

  “No dust,” said Kai behind her.

  She shivered. “No. There wasn’t any last time either. But someone’s taken the package.”

  “Do you think maybe this is just a delivery location? Maybe the recipients live elsewhere.”

  Lana nodded slowly. “That would make more sense, wouldn’t it? This place. . .I don’t see how anyone could live here for long.”

  “It might be a geas that makes you feel that way.”

  Lana had to smile at that. “And when did Akua ever need artifice to frighten people?”

  “You think this is her place?”

  Lana walked a few steps deeper into the room and looked around. She hadn’t realized it until she said so, but the geas she felt here reminded her of the ancient house by the lake in Okika. She wished for some of that mysterious “Maaram herb” mentioned in the black book. If she could view the spirit world, even partially, perhaps she could converse with the spirits bound here and learn more about Akua’s intentions. But she had never heard of any such thing outside of the black book. The Esselans had destroyed a great deal of knowledge when they finally conquered Maaram in the great war.

  “Some of it must be hers,” Lana said. “The three in the black book built it, I think, but there must be something important about this house. Some reason she came here.”

  “You think the black book is that important?”

  She shrugged, frustrated. “Ino nearly killed himself to give it to me. He wouldn’t have done so without a reason.”

  “But you still have no idea what it is. And it’s distracting you. What makes you think this house is anything other than what it seems? The book. And who gave it to you? One of Akua’s creatures.”

  “You think Akua meant for Ino to give it to me?” She remembered the look of anguish on Ino’s face as he collapsed into the mud at the lake’s edge. “Impossible. You weren’t there. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “You don’t think she’s devious enough?”

  “I don’t think Ino is! That whole time, he was the only one who cared about me.”

  Kai put up his hands. “All right. I can understand friendship at least. But you have to acknowledge that Akua could have bound him in such a way he had no choice.”

  “But why this elaborate game? Why give me a book that means nothing to her?”

  “We’re here, aren’t we? Chasing down mysteries a thousand years old.”

&nb
sp; “Makaho sent something here—”

  “Makaho is a spider. She’s involved in everything and strives to turn everything to her advantage. This house could be related to a dozen of her schemes. You want Akua, Lana? Then design a geas that can break through her defenses. Or better yet, Makaho’s.”

  Lana looked at him, astonished. “I should have thought of that.”

  They left the house together, but on the threshold she paused and looked over her shoulder. Utterly empty, just as it had been before. But she was overcome with the sensation of watchful eyes, and she shivered as an oddly warm and gentle breeze briefly caressed her wings.

  10

  NAHOA FOUND SABOLU. The girl was lazing in the hay, fiddling with a cloth of intricately dyed red-and-blue barkcloth. She scrambled up when Nahoa approached, straw sticking out wildly from her hair like a fool’s crown.

  “Should I fetch a carriage, my lady?” she asked.

  Nahoa shook her head and regarded the girl carefully. She seemed a bit guilty, but that was just as likely from being caught dawdling as anything more sinister.

  “I just thought you might be able to help me,” she said.

  Sabolu nodded—maybe a bit too eagerly—and quickly tied the barkcloth in an inexpert knot around her tousled hair. How had she afforded such fine cloth, anyway? In these scarce times, it was hard enough to pay for a meal, let alone a frivolous luxury item. Surely the fire temple didn’t pay her so well. She had to be running errands on the side.

  “I can do plenty,” said the girl, lowering her voice, “but I’ll need something for it. And I don’t like kala much no more.”

  Nahoa thought. “I have a barkcloth skirt. You could take it in with pins.”

  Sabolu grinned so wide Nahoa could see a gap in the back of her teeth. She was opportunistic, sure, but enough that she would deliberately murder a child? Nahoa felt sick just thinking about it. But someone had to be guilty.

  “What d’you want, then?” Sabolu said.

  “I want to make a geas. Something that will hurt a person without them knowing it.”