The Burning City (Spirit Binders) (28 page)
Read The Burning City (Spirit Binders) Online
Authors: Alaya Dawn Johnson
As the cold set in, and the frantic work on the house finally eased, I began to spend hours walking through the city, silently observing what I could. That Essel was preparing for war was obvious when I looked for the signs, but those were less overt than in Okika. I wondered if we should perhaps alert the chiefs to the upcoming Maaram raid, but I didn’t feel particularly compelled. I couldn’t imagine Essel had become so great a power by being careless about such matters. But there was something else brewing in the city—another sort of war, though this one had no leaders or armies. The napulo philosophy’s influence in Essel shocked me. It seemed every third conversation I heard discussed the obscure creed my radical priest had taught me. And with its widespread acceptance came a curious new idea. If there were no gods but spirits, and if we humans could be sure of nothing save our current existence (so this line of reasoning went), then surely we could do no better for ourselves than to bind these spirits for our own benefit. As a woman selling cups of warm kava in the street told me one evening: “If we’re all gonna die, then you bet I’d like to live in the meantime!”
This idea seemed to culminate in a notion so stark in its hubris that it left me breathless the first time I heard it: a final geas to bind the ultimate expressions of each spirit to humanity’s will. How the nameless progenitors of this idea proposed to forge such an awesome geas I had no idea—my throat went dry at just the thought of summoning the death spirit again, let alone forging chains strong enough to keep it bound forever. And yet that very fear made me want to explore the idea more deeply, to seek out those women (and the few men) who understood something of spirit bindings. None of them had any more of an idea than I did about how such an ultimate binding might be accomplished, but in the smaller details they could teach me much. I became a student of geas, that ultimate practical expression of the napulo creed. When Parech called me Ana now, he never quite meant it as a jest.
I came home late one night in the deep cold—the longest night of the year, we all later learned—a little drunk on kava and amant. I had learned a dozen postulates from an old witch who lived by the great bay, and had scribbled them all down in a crabbed hand in my precious notebook (the paper inside being significantly more valuable than even the fish-leather cover). I had the giddy, freewheeling sense of coming ever closer to an achievement I didn’t even dare put into words. Almost as though I thought the spirits might be watching me.
Which, of course, they were.
Tulo and Parech were sleeping when I staggered inside the room that still smelled like freshly cut wood and drying clay. They had grown tangled in sleep—her hand on his chest, his leg straddling her dark thighs. I regarded them for a long moment and then wiped my eyes. I fell asleep quickly and was awakened not much later by a sound like a mountain groaning. Only a moment later did I realize that the ground was shaking. Our new house, our beautiful house, was creaking ominously on its new, unsettled foundations. Tulo was already awake, but glancing around the room in bleary-eyed panic. I wondered what she saw, but had no time to ask her. Parech slept like the dead, as usual.
“Wake up, you stupid fool!” I yelled, shaking his shoulders. The earth screamed again, so I could hear nothing else, and above us one of our precious new logs creaked. Parech shot to his feet and grabbed Tulo by the elbow.
“Get out!” I shouted. He hesitated for a moment and then turned. Tulo stumbled along behind him, her eyes dashing left and right at flitting ghosts. I scooped up our blankets and what mats I could hold. The ground shook again, tossing me to the floor while the logs snapped above me. I had no time. I gripped the bundle tighter in my arms and hurled myself out of the door. Our makeshift steps had collapsed, and so I smacked into the earth just as our house listed sideways. The second support cracked, and I might have been crushed under the inexorable force of our collapsing house if not for Parech, who gripped my forearms with bruising fingers and pulled me out just in time. He held me to him and I stayed there while the earth groaned and rocked around us. I could hear the fury of the waves now, even over the diminishing rumbles of the earth. I looked north, to Nui’ahi, and saw to my relief that this earthquake hadn’t fully awakened the sentinel, though it belched more smoke than usual.
Parech gradually released me and we looked at each other in wordless, thoughtless shock. I nearly jumped when Tulo put her hand on my shoulder.
“Are you all right?” she said.
Her dark brown eyes darted less—indeed, they focused on me until I thought I might drown in them. I was shaking. So was she.
“What. . .what did you see, Tulo?”
“They were everywhere. They knew what was coming. They danced, Aoi. They danced like we did on the ship. I couldn’t hear them, but I thought they sang, too.”
My teeth started to chatter loudly. I couldn’t tell if I was frightened or cold. The waves crashed against the shore, spraying high over the dunes. I wondered if the water might reach us, or if we’d be spared at least that disaster.
Parech took a long look at the two of us and shook his head. “Everything is in the house. We’ll freeze to death out here. You two use the blanket. I’ll go into the village and see what I can find.”
He hugged us both fiercely before he went. I wondered if he would borrow or sell something, or if he would simply steal what he needed. I knew that for us, he would do whatever was necessary and hardly note the difference.
I guided Tulo over to the dunes, where we might shelter from the wind, and covered us both as best I could with one of the blankets I’d managed to save. We shivered together beneath it. She put her head on my shoulder.
“Is it gone?” she asked.
I looked at the house the three of us had built. “Flattened, I’d say, not precisely gone.”
“Oh, Aoi.”
Tulo reached up. She stroked my tightly braided hair and then began to unweave the thick plaited strands.
“You have beautiful hair,” she said. “Mine goes everywhere. Yours. . .well, if I could see, I’d braid flowers into it with five strands and make it into a crown.”
“If I could—”
Tulo put a finger over my lips. I stopped talking. I stopped breathing. We stared at each other. And then, as though falling in a pond, I inclined my head and kissed her.
We were warm, that longest night. Warm, and comforted, and filled like cups with painful pleasure. We lay tangled inside each other, beneath the blanket, and I thought unexpectedly,
I miss him
.
I miss him
.
“He’ll be here soon,” Tulo said, nuzzling her face against my collarbone. She fell asleep and I listened to the waves.
I looked up when he approached, though he moved silently as always and the water boomed. I saw his face clear, clear in the moonlight: the knowing, the shock, the sad smile.
I missed you
, I wanted to say, but he turned and left us alone.
, I wanted to say, but he turned and left us alone.
PART IV
Desperate Men
9
W
HEN LANA COULD SEE AND HEAR and touch and taste again, the only sensations she could quite make out were of closeness and warmth. She smelled something familiar and clean, like water from the ocean.
HEN LANA COULD SEE AND HEAR and touch and taste again, the only sensations she could quite make out were of closeness and warmth. She smelled something familiar and clean, like water from the ocean.
“Are you all right?” Kai asked.
She shivered and nodded against his chest. She didn’t want to open her eyes. If she did, she would have to acknowledge what she’d promised. She’d have to deal with the damage she’d done. Nothing felt any different, which scared her even more.
“Lana?” Kai said, as though frightened by her silence.
“I was stupid. I forgot the binding would break.”
“I thought it might. I should have warned you. I’m sorry.”
Lana had to smile at this. “Perhaps next time you should worry less for my pride.” She paused. “It almost had me.”
Kai’s shuddering breath tickled her scalp. “I thought it did have you. How did you bind it?”
She grew aware of a slow coil of terror, migrating from her stomach to her throat and curling there like an eel. “My wings,” she said. “I gave it my wings.”
Kai jerked back suddenly, his eyes turning clear violet in his shock. They were still seated on the steps just outside the main rebel headquarters. The cold air was filled with a fine haze of ashfall. Lana gripped her shoulders and ground her teeth, waiting for his indignation. This was, perhaps, her steepest sacrifice yet.
“But you still have them,” he said.
Lana sat straight up. Slowly, hardly daring to believe it, she moved her hands behind her. They encountered, like they had every day since that morning in the ruins of the wind shrine, the smooth texture of her outer feathers and the downy nap beneath. She flexed her muscles—aside from the slight twinge from her almost-healed wound, her wings unfurled against the steps just as they ought.
“I still have them,” she repeated, numbly.
She looked up, staring at the darkened landscape, searching for the death spirit. But it was gone—all she could see were the waning signs of the battle: people running from the apothecary house carrying bandages and water, speaking animatedly as they rushed to and from Sea Street, while soldiers hefted weapons that seemed ominously dull in the moonlight.
“With what could you bind me?” the death had asked her. Its key was not at its waist, but in its hand. She could smell something like blood on that key, but also cold. She had never known you could smell cold before that moment, but with the death inches from her face she knew instinctively that no human would be able to survive its touch. The infinite chill of death.
More than anything, she hated to be cold.
But what could she offer it? Too late to use Akua’s flute, too late for a normal sort of sacrifice. The last time, in Kai’s temple, she had bound it with a whim, a guess that it felt emotions as mundane as the fear even now constricting her heart and lungs. And it had let her go. This time she wouldn’t get away so easily. It meant to take her—she could tell by its uncanny stillness and its voice, cold as the key. It had cut itself off from the passion she knew it could feel.
But then, it still waited for her answer. And so she had offered the first thing she could think of: the wind’s gift, and the wind’s curse.
“Take my wings,” she said.
It stilled. The chill seemed, infinitesimally, to thaw. “Clever,” it said, a smile in its voice, if not on its mask. “The sacrifice interferes with another spirit’s power.”
“That’s not my concern.”
“True,” it said, and then Lana was back, shivering in Kai’s arms.
They went inside and he built up the fire while she told him all she remembered. Kai was silent for a long time after, busying himself with taking the clay jug of palm wine from the fire.
“It seems you offered an impossible sacrifice. The wind is the equal of the death, so the death couldn’t interfere with its gift.”
“So then I got something without sacrifice? Isn’t that impossible?”
Kai frowned and poured them both cups. “It should be. But no one really understands the rules of conflicting powers.
Someone
had to sacrifice. But not you, this time.”
Someone
had to sacrifice. But not you, this time.”
But then
who
? She couldn’t quite shake the sensation that this time she’d been too lucky. That, perhaps not now, but eventually, this desperate sacrifice would come due. She took the mulled wine gratefully—though she knew that her body had never left the steps, she still felt the chill of the death’s key deep in her joints, in the back of her throat. She thought there was a reason why the sensation reminded her of old age.
who
? She couldn’t quite shake the sensation that this time she’d been too lucky. That, perhaps not now, but eventually, this desperate sacrifice would come due. She took the mulled wine gratefully—though she knew that her body had never left the steps, she still felt the chill of the death’s key deep in her joints, in the back of her throat. She thought there was a reason why the sensation reminded her of old age.
“I never knew that, about the lead key,” he said into their silence.
Lana took another sip; a warm, slow burn rose in her stomach. “Neither did I. And I’ve read the death postulates three times through, so I know it’s not there.”
He rubbed the back of her hand and smiled. “Perhaps we should hire a printer to issue a corrected edition,” he said.
“We can tell Eliki to put off next week’s edition of the rebel pamphlet. She won’t mind, will she?”
“And we can tell the death spirit to leave you alone for a time—”
“And Kohaku to resign—”
“And Akua to give your mother back!”
Lana’s laugh stuck like a bone in her throat. A wave of nausea worse than what she had felt when the death spirit broke her geas washed over her. She put her head between her knees.
“Lana? I’m sorry, it was stupid of me to say it.”
“I almost killed her, Kai! I just realized. . .I almost killed her. Again.”
Kai froze. His hand on her back was rigid. “
You
almost died,” he said.
You
almost died,” he said.
Lana forgot her nausea. “That’s what I mean. What else have I been doing this for, Kai? It’s all for my mother. These wings, the death, Akua’s damned arm bone flute. . .do you think any of this would have happened if not for my mother?”
“You’d kill yourself for her.”
“Of course!” she said, noticing the curious atonality of his voice. Was he thinking of Pua again? She considered the conversation she’d had with Akua just before the death took her. She’d discovered her line, after all this time. What she had done to Pua before she didn’t think she could do again, with full knowledge. Perhaps she should tell Kai that. Maybe then he wouldn’t be staring at her now with stormy eyes.
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