City of Fire (City Trilogy (Mass Market)) (22 page)

Auntie surveyed her work with a smile that made Scirye shiver despite the heat. Auntie seemed to be enjoying her handiwork.

Scirye shoved Kles’s wing away. “Please, Auntie. Stop it.”

Auntie screwed her wrinkled face in puzzlement. “Why? Dey try kill you, you know? Dey bad-bad boys. So Auntie fix dem. Den dey no bad-bad no more.”

“No one deserves to die like this,” Scirye begged. “Not even them.”

“You good girl,” Auntie said, and tapped a finger against her temple, “but you
lolo
, too.” Then, with a shrug, she snapped her fingers again. “But you say please. So ‘kay.”

The cockroaches swarmed back into the walls or down the grate. Even more rose in a brown cloud upward, toward the rooftops above.

The sharks lay in the alley, flopping and whimpering, with hundreds of little red marks on their tough hides.

Auntie walked over to the white shark and nudged him with her toe. “You bad boy gonna behave?”

The white shark nodded numbly.

“So you listen to your Auntie, eh? Or next time my pets, dey nibble you to… da… bone.” She clicked her teeth together for emphasis.

The white shark nodded his head and then, not sure if that was the proper answer, he shook it vigorously, as well.

“So you go,” the strange woman said, jerking her head toward the street. “You don’t bodder anybody no more.”

The gang did not even try to get to their feet but scrambled on all fours, casting frightened looks over their shoulders at the old woman.

The strange old woman pivoted slowly and swept her index finger along to indicate Scirye and her companions. “And now you,” she mused.

“Put down your axes,” Scirye said to the others, and squatted down to place her axe on the alley floor. The others quickly copied her and Kles settled back on her shoulder.

Then, bravely, the girl tried to stand up again. As the old woman drew near, Scirye felt the power emanating from the little wizened brown body now, like a thousand-watt bulb. Her comical dress only seemed to add to the menace.

Of all the deadly beings that Scirye had encountered so far, the girl felt that none had been more dangerous than this old lady in her whimsical costume.

Kles growled a warning but because it resonated in his beak, it had a slight echo—like a lion’s cub with its head stuck in a hollow tree.

As the old woman’s eyes narrowed, the girl pressed a hand anxiously against the griffin’s leg to signal him to keep quiet. Kles snapped his beak angrily but fell silent as Auntie leaned forward and took a good whiff of the griffin.

Scirye, in turn, caught the old woman’s scent of stale tobacco mixed with sweet coconut milk.

“Birdy pet okay,” Auntie declared.

“I
am not a pet, my good woman,” Kles informed her. “I am a servant in this lady’s retinue. The first among many, I might add.”

“Dat so? Chick-chick tell da fortunes, too?” Auntie asked, amused. When she smiled, the many folds around her eyes crinkled up like paper. “Or you just hoping, eh? Still, I like chick-chick.”

It was an impressive sight to see a griffin in full indignation because both his fur and feather bristled. Even more anxious, Scirye squeezed her friend’s leg. “Just be grateful, Kles. We saw what happens when she
doesn’t
like you.”

Auntie’s eyes twinkled. “You not just good-good, you smart girl, too.” Standing on tiptoe, the old woman sniffed the girl, moving from one cheek and over to the other.

Suddenly Scirye felt dizzy, as if she were standing on one foot on top of a narrow mountain peak and at any moment about to lose her balance. Yes, it was all about balance. This strange old woman was weighing her like someone using scales to tell a genuine coin from a counterfeit.

Trying to keep from shivering in fright, Scirye dropped her eyes and fastened instead on the pendant of Auntie’s shell necklace. It was a rectangle of old ivory with a crude but powerful carving of a bearlike man.

“Hmm,” the old woman murmured, and then took a particularly loud sniff as if she were a vacuum cleaner and Scirye was a dust bunny. Then Auntie rubbed her nose thoughtfully. “I smell
mana
, big
mana.”

Scirye wrinkled her forehead as she tried to puzzle out what the strange, frightening woman said. “Excuse me?”

The old woman sighed in exasperation. “How come you doan hear? I talk good.”

“I… uh…,” Scirye stammered, even more scared than before.

“Please excuse our ignorance, Madame,” Kles intervened, “but we’re unfamiliar with your vocabulary and the way you speak.”

“Okay, chick-chick,” Auntie said. “Den I talk like stupid tourist, too. But I find your brand of English flat and boring. Do you understand me now?”

Kles bowed deeply, ruffling his wings as he did so. “Yes, thank you. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.” He tapped a claw against Scirye’s shoulder to remind her to remember her manners.

“Yes, thank you, Auntie,” Scirye said hastily, “and please excuse me, but what is
mana?”

“Mana is a force that we all share,” Auntie explained, still in a musical voice that made the syllables rise and fall like a song. “You, me, the ocean, the sky, the rocks, we all have it. But some have more of it than others. When they have as much as you, they do great things.”

Scirye looked up again, blinking in surprise. “Me? But I don’t feel any different.”

“You can’t tell, but I can.” Auntie’s eyes bored into her. “Somebody marked you for sure.” And then she turned to the others, her musical voice now becoming as ominous as the distant rumble of thunder. “But the rest of you. Are you goody-goodies, too? Or”— her eyes narrowed dangerously—”are you baddy-baddies?”

Scirye

Koko was shaking openly. “We’re… goody-goody. We gave you our c-c-candy.”

Auntie jerked a thumb at Scirye. “She gave the candy to me. Not you.” She stuck her face almost nose-to-nose with the boy and inhaled sharply. “Hmph, a stinking
kupua
! What kind of trouble are you trying to cause here?” was her judgment.

Leech stared puzzled at Koko.
“Kupua?”

“A
kupua”
Bayang explained, “is a shape-shifting creature.”

“Hey.” Koko grinned nervously at Auntie. “No hard feelings.”

Scirye regarded Koko with new interest. If Koko was in disguise like Bayang, what was his true form? Since Leech didn’t show any surprise at the revelation, he must have known his friend’s secret already.

“I knew there was something funny about his smell,” Kles said.

“I resent that,” Koko said, slapping his paunch, which boomed like a drum. “I take baths.”

“Oh?” Auntie said skeptically.

“Once a month,” Koko mumbled.

Auntie smelled Leech next. Her eyes widened and she bent over, snuffling at his iron bands. Then she held her palms over his armbands as if she were warming her hands. “You’ve got lots of
mana
here, too. Why did you make Auntie work so hard? Why didn’t you fight yourself, eh?”

“I was ready to hit them with an axe,” Leech insisted.

Auntie wrinkled her forehead and tapped his hand. “Not with your fists, stupid-stupid.” She rapped a knuckle on one of Leech’s armbands. “With this.”

“What’s so special about it?” Leech asked.

“So you don’t know.” Auntie pursed her mouth and then took another sniff before she held a hand parallel to the ground, twisting her wrist back and forth. “So that makes you a maybe-maybe.”

The old woman crooked a finger at Bayang and the dragon bent obediently so that the smaller old woman could stare into her eyes while she sampled Bayang’s scent. Then she staggered backward, rubbing her nose vigorously, as if trying to wipe away the smell.

“Hoo, mo-o!” Her words came muffled through her hand.

“What’s a
mo-o?”
Koko asked.

“The Hawaiian version of a female dragon,” Bayang explained.

Auntie nodded at Bayang. “You’re bloody-bloody-bloody.” She glanced back and forth between Bayang and Koko, eyes narrowing.
“Mo-o. Kupua
. That spells trouble. So maybe I should just get rid of you right now.”

Scirye felt her stomach tighten just like it had when the gang leader had forced them into the alley. She was afraid of the old woman and yet she could not stand by and do nothing.

“Please don’t harm them,” Scirye begged. “They’re my… friends.”

The old woman grinned, revealing her few remaining teeth, all of them stained orange. She flapped a hand to indicate Bayang and the boys. “Why is a smart girl like you with the likes of these, eh?” Despite her smile, the old woman’s eyes glittered dangerously, as if Scirye was being weighed on her personal scales once more.

“We… we’re hunting for the some thieves,” the girl said. She felt as if she were babbling from fear. “They’re… um… very bad-bad.”

The old woman tilted back her head. “Ah, so am I.” She stabbed her thumb against her stomach. “And I would’ve caught him, you bet. But then you got into that mess. So I came after you. But that meant I missed my thief.”

“I’m sorry,” Scirye said earnestly. “After we catch Roland, perhaps we can repay you by helping you.”

“Roland?” The old woman’s head snapped up alertly. “What do you want with him, eh?”

Scirye glanced at the others and Bayang nodded encouragingly. “He killed my sister and hurt a lot of people,” the girl said. “And he stole something very valuable from me, too.”

“He’s a big thief, all right.” The old woman’s head bobbed up and down in agreement. “He stole something very valuable from me.”

“What could he take from someone as powerful as you?” Bayang wondered.

“He knew I wouldn’t give permission to build his island,” the old woman said. “So he took some of my friends. There are so many of their people scattered around the islands that I couldn’t protect them all.”

Bayang understood. “They’re his hostages so you can’t stop him from making his island.”

“Even worse,” Auntie said angrily, and for a moment Scirye thought that the tips of the old woman’s gray hair glowed red, “he’s making them build the island itself.”

“You mean he’s made them his slaves?” Leech asked, horrified.

The old woman grunted in assent. “So I’ve been trying to catch him. I figure then I can make him let my friends go. But now I’ve heard a rumor that he intends to take some of them elsewhere and use them on other projects.”

Bayang made sure to bow her head politely. “Am I permitted to ask who you are?”

The old woman held up her hand and snapped her fingers mischievously. The next instant there was a tiny flame dancing on her fingertip. “Do you know me now, bloody
mo-o?”

As Bayang watched the flame waver back and forth, she whispered, “You’re the Hawaiian goddess, Lady Pele.” The dragon made sure to bend her head even deeper. “You rule the volcanoes.”

Scirye bowed her head immediately. Kles, as a veteran of the Kushan court, did it with an elegant flourish of wings and paws. Leech made an awkward copy of Scirye’s, but Koko remained defiant. “We don’t bow to anyone.”

“Show some respect,
kupua,”
Pele warned. “Or else.” The flame widened upon her fingertip until it hung like a fiery dagger. Then with a casual flip, she sent it an inch deep into the brick wall.

“Right. Gotcha,” Koko said, jerking his head up and down like a puppet.

That seemed to satisfy the goddess’s pride. “You leave Roland to me, eh?”

“The children should stay behind,” Bayang urged, “but let me go with you. There is a dragon called Badik with Roland that I have to catch.”

“I’ve heard of Badik.” Pele stroked her chin. “Many centuries ago when there was a great battle beneath the ocean between his clan and another. The fighting churned the water so much that the surface seemed to boil and turned it red with blood for miles and miles.”

“Many of my people died that day,” Bayang nodded, “but we destroyed his armies.”

Pele let out her breath in a little puff that pushed out her lips. “Hoo, another victory like that would have destroyed the rest of your people.”

“True,” Bayang said, “which is why I have to stop him before he can try again. My people have always valued their relationship to you and will be very grateful if you help me.”