The Burning City (Spirit Binders) (20 page)
Read The Burning City (Spirit Binders) Online
Authors: Alaya Dawn Johnson
He would have said more, but Lana squeezed his hand and forced a cool smile to match Eliki’s. “I’m sure our dear rebel leaders would never dream of making me do something I don’t wish to do. I’m sure they want my participation in their civil war to be fully consensual. I’m sure they will offer me a great inducement for that consent.”
Pano choked back a laugh, and even Eliki’s smile grew a touch less frigid. “Inducement? Caring for you on our meager resources? Protecting you from the mad Mo’i?”
“And for that I’m sincerely grateful, though you understand if I don’t want to endanger myself further by participating in your propaganda against the Mo’i. I have to find my mother, after all.”
Kai was giving her a little sideways smile that made her stomach flip, despite everything. Perhaps after she had rested and the others had gone away, she and Kai could have a true reunion.
“Oh, how can you think of your mother at a time like this?” Eliki snapped, waving a pale hand as though she would slap her. “Twenty thousand dead! Half the city destroyed, and that despot still sits there in his fortress, dredging up horrors from before the great spirit bindings and destroying our freedoms daily with his edicts and abductions. And here you
dare
tell us that the tens of thousands of mothers who are dead or missing are nothing compared to yours?
You
, with the influence to make the whole city understand how their leader has betrayed them, you
dare
tell me you won’t help because your stupid mother is missing?”
dare
tell us that the tens of thousands of mothers who are dead or missing are nothing compared to yours?
You
, with the influence to make the whole city understand how their leader has betrayed them, you
dare
tell me you won’t help because your stupid mother is missing?”
Lana’s fingernails dug into her palms, though she hardly noticed. She was aware of a desperate fury and a cold, private fear that what Eliki had said was right. That she was truly the venal and selfish person who could place her own problems high above a sea of everyone else’s misery. Perhaps everyone does that—but not everyone had, as she did, the power to help others. Faced with the moral choice, Lana wondered if her singular focus on Leilani and Akua meant she was making the wrong one. She glanced at Kai, and then quickly away. She knew he was thinking of the conflict that had driven them apart months ago, and the horror it had taken him so long to forgive: even knowing all she did about Pua and the effects of the geas, she couldn’t regret the binding that had saved her mother.
“Your causes are not mine, Eliki,” she said. “Do you realize what your rebellion is leading to? A civil war. And you ought to know precisely what war does to the spirit bindings.”
“That’s the Mo’i’s burden. He’s caused this. He’s broken all the rules. So long as he keeps his power, no one will feel compelled to keep within the boundaries of the bindings.”
Unexpectedly, Kai spoke. “He’s destroyed the system, Lana. And without that, we might all destroy each other.
“We might all help free the spirits and commit mass suicide,” Lana said.
Kai’s eyes were ice pale and remote as a wind. “And so you let Essel bleed to death instead.”
Lana threw up her hands and winced. “Oh, are you a radical now? The
water guardian
?”
water guardian
?”
“Well,” he said, so softly she wondered if the others heard him, “at least your goals and desires can be relied upon, Lana.” And now he was certainly speaking of Pua. She wiped her eyes and turned from him. Perhaps their relationship truly was impossible. But she couldn’t bear to think of it just now.
“My mother is not more important than all the others in this city, but she is
mine
. You will help me, or I refuse to help you.”
mine
. You will help me, or I refuse to help you.”
Eliki stared at her for a moment, and then turned away in disgust. In the end, Pano was the only one who would meet her eyes. At least he seemed understanding.
“I’ve told my people to look out for any information about a one-armed witch and an outer islander,” Pano said. “I’ve heard nothing definite, but someone at the fire temple claims the head nun has started sending supplies to a house on the far edge of the city.”
“What does that have to do with my mother?”
“Probably nothing. But he said there were two mandagah jewels in the package. He noticed because they’re so rare these days. I thought your mother might have been a diver.”
Lana could have stood up and danced, damn their disapproving expressions.
Mama
, she thought,
I’ll find you. I’ll stop Akua, whatever she’s planning
. In her joy she turned to Kai, but he had gone cold and distant beside her. And so she found herself looking out the window again, to the death, opaque as a man against the ruined street. Its mask mouth stretched wide. She was dimly aware that even a few months ago, the sight would have disturbed her.
Mama
, she thought,
I’ll find you. I’ll stop Akua, whatever she’s planning
. In her joy she turned to Kai, but he had gone cold and distant beside her. And so she found herself looking out the window again, to the death, opaque as a man against the ruined street. Its mask mouth stretched wide. She was dimly aware that even a few months ago, the sight would have disturbed her.
“Closer, Lana,” it said.
She laughed. Beside her, Kai turned. The death vanished immediately. He looked back at her ecstatic face and shuddered.
6
L
ANA HARDLY SAW KAI OVER THE NEXT TWO DAYS. He said that he was taking stock of the city and finding any clues he could about the state of the spirit bindings, but she knew that he was avoiding her. He hadn’t said so, but he probably believed every one of the cruel accusations Eliki had hurled at her. And perhaps he was right. Perhaps that time on Okika had damaged her—made her too aware of parental sacrifice, too beholden to her mother’s love. Kai, who had grown up almost entirely apart from any other humans, and often had difficulty interacting with them, seemed to drown in his capacity for empathy. It had led him to protect her, when she’d been about to die in front of an inn on the rice islands. He hadn’t known a thing about her, but he cared anyway. Who was she to deserve someone like that? If she slept alone, at least she’d grown used to it.
ANA HARDLY SAW KAI OVER THE NEXT TWO DAYS. He said that he was taking stock of the city and finding any clues he could about the state of the spirit bindings, but she knew that he was avoiding her. He hadn’t said so, but he probably believed every one of the cruel accusations Eliki had hurled at her. And perhaps he was right. Perhaps that time on Okika had damaged her—made her too aware of parental sacrifice, too beholden to her mother’s love. Kai, who had grown up almost entirely apart from any other humans, and often had difficulty interacting with them, seemed to drown in his capacity for empathy. It had led him to protect her, when she’d been about to die in front of an inn on the rice islands. He hadn’t known a thing about her, but he cared anyway. Who was she to deserve someone like that? If she slept alone, at least she’d grown used to it.
Her wing was too sore to allow much movement, and so she distracted herself from her pain and loneliness by delving into the black book with a single-minded intensity. Though she was increasingly fascinated by the story of Aoi, Tulo, and Parech, she still didn’t understand why Ino would have dared so much to give it to her. Aoi had lived and died more than a thousand years ago. The only possible connection was the spirit bindings. They had begun in Aoi’s time, and now, in Lana’s time, it seemed that they were unraveling. But surely any information about the great bindings would be better given to a guardian like Kai than to an ignorant witch’s apprentice like Lana. Was it possible Akua had managed to interfere with one of the three original bindings? Lana groaned and put her hands over her head. She found it difficult to focus on anything else the longer her mother stayed missing.
“What is Akua doing?” she said aloud, just because she had been alone with these thoughts for so long.
The death laughed outside the window. But as she had thought many times before now, the emotion behind it seemed almost affectionate. She had bound it, once, with the knowledge that it suffered from petty human emotion. But affection?
“You are strange,” she said to it.
“As are you, black angel.”
And, even more oddly, the backhanded compliment relieved some of her misery. She puzzled a bit more over the black book. Aoi’s method of making the boat invisible to their pursuers had made her gasp just a little. Binding the death was an incredibly risky geas, but Aoi seemed to have no knowledge of her recklessness. Humans imitate spirits at their peril—that was one of the lessons she had learned from the book of postulates Kai had given her in the water shrine. And yet Lana kept coming back to that geas.
She had never heard of any binding that conferred invisibility, let alone in such a dangerous way. Could she cast it now? She found her hand drifting to the bone flute. She hadn’t used it since she came to Essel and played that one time with her father. Something about that performance had kept the death bound for the last few months. She could feel that binding pulling taut and knew she would need another geas soon to keep it from killing her, but she worried. A sufficient personal sacrifice would be painful and exhausting. And there was no other way to bind it without using Akua’s flute. Sometimes she caught herself staring at the flute’s yellowing, smooth surface, and thought:
perhaps it wouldn’t hurt.
But she couldn’t fool herself any longer. Akua had kidnapped her mother, had led Lana to kill another person, and had destroyed her life in some complex game where the bindings were so deep and strong she thought she must have sacrificed a village to forge them.
perhaps it wouldn’t hurt.
But she couldn’t fool herself any longer. Akua had kidnapped her mother, had led Lana to kill another person, and had destroyed her life in some complex game where the bindings were so deep and strong she thought she must have sacrificed a village to forge them.
Or at least an arm.
No, Lana would just have to sacrifice. She wondered for a moment if perhaps, now that Kai was here, he could help her. But then she recalled the frozen, remote expression on his face when she first balked at helping the rebels. And after that, he treated her with courtesy that always seemed to avoid both intimacy and proximity. She wouldn’t prey on his natural empathy by asking for his help now. She had that much pride.
She dozed on the splayed pages of the geas book, and when she awoke the streets had plunged into a misty twilight and her mouth was sticky with thirst. It seemed like too much trouble to call out. After a moment, she carefully levered herself upright on the pallet and then placed her feet on the floor. The drag on her damaged wing muscles was painful, but not unduly so. She stood and then gripped the wall when the room wobbled. She waited until she was absolutely sure she wouldn’t fall down and then went downstairs to find something to eat.
Eliki was in the main meeting hall, eating by the fire with one hand and reading some loose, handwritten pages with the other.
“Lipa said you should stay abed for a week at least,” said Eliki mildly.
“I think Lipa doesn’t have much experience with wings.”
Eliki shrugged, indicating her polite doubt even as she acceded the point. Lana pursed her lips. If only she could manage even a fraction of that poised assurance, that withering disdain. Even now, she so often felt like an untutored child in a room of adults.
“Would you like the rest of my meal? I find I don’t have much of an appetite these days.” Lana looked at Eliki’s plate: some local fish and boiled leeks. She was a little surprised by the latter—rumors had it that the rebels could get very little produce, since their control of the first district didn’t include access to any docks. Farmers in the decimated seventh district smuggled in what they could on foot. She thought to question Eliki’s largesse, but hunger overcame her objections. Eliki was silent beside her, occasionally reading and then scribbling on the paper. The food was bland and lukewarm, but even this small meal was welcome. As the cold set in, more and more would go hungry in the city.
“Here,” Eliki said abruptly, when Lana was finished eating, “how’s this? ‘The black angel herself, sent to us as a harbinger of the turbulent times to come, an avatar of the spirits who knows more of their ways than any other—”
“You can’t say that.”
Eliki paused. Her pale eyes flickered with the reflected firelight. “I believe we had an agreement?”
Lana sighed. “But that’s not true. Plenty of others know more about spirits than I do. Kai, for one. Akua, for another.”
“Akua the one-armed witch?” Lana nodded and Eliki shrugged. “Complete honesty, I have found, is not a particularly useful scruple in a campaign to rouse the populace, but fine. It works well enough without it.” She continued: “‘The black angel has confirmed what we have all suspected: the tyrannous bloody Mo’i lost his hand in a bargain made with the fire spirit. He sacrificed to loosen its bonds so he could come to power. And in so doing, he has destroyed this once great city and murdered several thousand of its citizens. Are we to swallow this betrayal when even now he imprisons and tortures us on no grounds, with no charges? The black angel has loaned her aid to the rebel movement, and who would know better than she the destruction of which Bloody One-hand is capable?’”
Eliki put the pages back down on the table and looked at Lana expectantly. “Well?”
If Eliki printed this, Lana’s fate would be forever bound with the rebels. But if she refused and left, Kohaku might assassinate her and Eliki might print it anyway. She sighed. “If you must. When does it go out?”
“It takes two days to run the presses. We’ll start tonight.” She grinned, and for once the expression seemed to hold no calculation or malice. “Reluctant you may be, Lana, but you will help our cause immeasurably. And you must know we’re in the right.”
Lana looked away, into the fire. “Yes,” she said quietly. But sometimes she felt that she would sacrifice “right” for “safe,” if she could. She never seemed to have that choice. And wasn’t she a coward for even wanting it?
“There were waves,” she found herself saying. “Great waves caused by the eruption. They flooded other islands. Thousands more died, and with the crop failures the toll might go much higher. Kohaku caused that too.”
“Waves?” Eliki breathed, sounding dazed at the thought of the destruction. “Did he truly?”
She began to scribble furiously again. The night was growing frigid, so Lana sat on the floor, closer to the fire. She’d started to drowse when the flames guttered. She turned to see Pano, entering with the young rebel soldier who’d been scarred by fire.
“There’s been fighting,” he said, his face haggard and grim. “Refugees from the seventh district farms bringing us supplies. One-hand got wind of it somehow and ambushed them.”
Eliki went unnaturally still. “Casualties?” she asked, her voice crisp and uninflected.
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