The Burning City (Spirit Binders) (35 page)

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Authors: Alaya Dawn Johnson

BOOK: The Burning City (Spirit Binders)
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A sprite waited for him. It was fire, in the shape of a pure white horse, with torches for hooves and smudges of black ash for eyes. A silver tether tied awkwardly around its neck explained its clear irritability: it was geas-bound. A gust of wind, spraying Kai with snow and sea foam, reminded him that he had yet to clothe himself.
“You seek me?” Kai said, attempting to keep an eye on the fire sprite as he tied his pants and pulled his shirt over his head.
“She said the guardian swam here. She said you need to come.”
Kai remembered Lana, on the front lines of a war. “Who?” he said, carefully.
“The Ana. The witch. The one you’ve been seeking.”
If anything, this made Kai’s stomach go even more hollow. Akua? After all this time, why would Akua reveal herself? And why to Kai, not Lana? It made no sense, but he couldn’t refuse this fire sprite’s summons. How could he face Lana again if he ignored this chance to find her mother? He was drained, true. Akua had sent for him at a time when he was least able to protect himself from her. But still. . .
“Where is she?” he asked.
“I’m to take you to her.”
Kai decided this wasn’t any more dangerous than agreeing to see her in the first place, and so he mounted the fire horse. He was not very surprised to pull up in front of the old house that so obsessed Lana.
“You were right, keika,” he said softly. She would never let him hear the end of this when he told her. He dismounted the horse and watched as it walked up the stairs and inside, the fire of its hooves never marking the wood. He followed.
He had never seen Akua before, but he knew the face of the woman even now releasing the fire sprite from its bargain. Makaho smiled at him.
“The sprite meant you?” he said. “An Ana?”
“No,” Makaho said. “I’m no binder.” And Kai understood a few more things.
“Why did you bring me here?”
But the head nun did not answer him. Another voice did, disembodied, emanating from the shadows like the most powerful and terrifying of spirits.
“So I would bind you, water guardian.”
He knew her, even before he saw her. Knew her from her power and the dry, private humor and the inexorable neatness of this plan. She would have known, even if no one else did, what had caused this unprecedented storm in Essel. And, knowing that, she would know how drained he was, how incapable of a geas that could effectively defend himself against her. She seemed to step from the shadows, though he knew that she had not been in the room a moment before. Akua. The woman truly responsible for his aunt’s death.
“You should give her mother back,” he said, having considered and discarded a dozen other defenses.
“Yes, poor Lana. But not quite yet. As the tide may push and pull water with its invisible force, I bind you stay with me until I let you leave, Kaleakai.”
Akua was too nuanced a witch to leave a tangible sign of her binding, but he felt it nonetheless, like a noose around his neck. He had never been bound before. No one but this extraordinary, dangerous, terrifying woman would dare treat the water guardian like any other sprite.
Makaho remained seated on the floor, rigid and patently afraid. Kai was distantly amused to see the apparently imperturbable head nun so out of her depth.
“Your people had best learn to fight in the snow,” he said to her. “Because we’re getting a lot of it.”
12
 
N
AHOA HELD AHI AGAINST HER chest long after she had stopped drinking. She couldn’t bear to relinquish her. Not now, when it was distinctly possible that she might never see her daughter again. The war that had been looming like a thunderhead for the last three months had crashed around them. And Nahoa could no longer avoid the truth: she might be the only one with the power to stop it. No one had as much of a hold over Kohaku; no one else could convince him to stand down. Pano had asked her to speak with him, but that was before the war had begun.
“I don’t think just speaking will do the trick, Ahi,” she whispered. “You be good, promise? I’ll be back soon enough. Your papa won’t hurt me, no matter how crazy he’s gone. Just be good for Auntie Malie, and I’ll be back before you know.”
Ahi burped, which Nahoa supposed was reassurance enough. She went to the pallet in the corner of the room and shook Malie gently awake. Her maid shot up immediately, as though someone had screamed.
“What is it? Is Ahi—”
“She’s fine. I need you to take her for me.”
Malie lifted Ahi and frowned. “Are you going somewhere, my lady?”
“Only to see Kohaku. He came a little while ago.”
“Is this for Pano? What he’s asking isn’t safe.”
“What is safe these days? And anyway, it’s not for Pano. Or not just for him.”
Ahi began to hiccup, and Malie absently held her over her shoulder, rocking to ease her discomfort.
“Nahoa. You’re not going to. . .you can’t go back to him.”
“If it will stop this war? What right do I have to let all these people die for my own comfort?”
“Kohaku is unpredictable. What if you go back and the war doesn’t stop? What if he hurts you?”
Nahoa shook her head. “He won’t hurt me.” But perhaps she said it with a little too much conviction?
“And what about Ahi?”
“You’ll take care of her.”
“And what if you die?”
Nahoa had to wipe her eyes, but she didn’t waver. “You’ll take care of her.”
Malie sighed. “I could kill Pano. Truly, I could, for dragging you into this while my back was turned. He knew I’d never approve. That’s why he found you alone.”
This was news to Nahoa. “I never thought of you as the protective type,” she said.
“Someone needs to be.”
Ahi had fallen asleep, so Nahoa just kissed the crown of her head and left before Malie could make her change her mind. She knew she had to do this, but that didn’t mean she had to be happy about it.
Kohaku had yet to finish his meeting with Makaho. Nahoa waited impatiently outside the secondary fire room, where he and the head nun conversed about their horrifying schemes in absolute privacy. She was too nervous to even want to spy on them. Pano hadn’t contacted her since the battle started, and she was sick with worry for him. She had even gone to the stables to find Sabolu, but the girl had been gone on some errand that the other one, Uele’a, had been at a loss to explain.
Finally, frustrated past endurance, Nahoa nodded at the guard standing outside the door and pushed her way inside before he could stop her.
“And the other?” Kohaku was asking.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I do. There’s nothing definitive just yet.”
And then they both noticed her. Kohaku’s face lit up in a way that made her stomach clench, but Makaho just frowned. “We were just finishing, my lady. What’s your business?”
It was unusual for Makaho to be so short with her, but Nahoa was too agitated to mark it. “I’d like to speak with my husband,” she said.
Makaho narrowed her eyes at the both of them and then shrugged. “You may use this room, in that case. I will contact you soon, Mo’i.”
The head nun left the fire room and then the two of them were alone. Kohaku looked at her and took a few tentative steps closer. “How is Ahi?” he asked.
“Good. Happy as ever. She can suck on a screwpine wedge for hours.”
This seemed to make him miserable, though he still smiled. “I’m glad. Makaho tells me she was sick.”
“She’s fine now,” Nahoa said, made terse by her confusion. Of course Kohaku couldn’t be responsible. She felt horrible for even suspecting him.
“Nahoa. . .” He cleared his throat. “Do you think you might come back. Eventually? I miss you. Both of you.”
Great Kai.
Nahoa couldn’t even speak. She knelt with shin-jarring force on the marble floor and turned her head away from him. She could not cry. Not on top of everything else.
“I’ll do it,” she said. Her throat was dry—her voice was barely a whisper—but Kohaku still heard her.
“Nahoa? You and Ahi. . .”
She coughed and forced some strength into her words. “I’ve got conditions.”
He had been about to embrace her, but he stopped now, confused. And perhaps a bit angry.
“Not Ahi. She stays here. Just me. And you have to call off this war. And the disappearances. All of it.”
He stared at her for so long she had to fight just to breathe. Her heart pounded so hard it would have woken Ahi. Great Kai, please let this work.
Her husband stood with frightening speed and knocked plates and remnants of food from the table. A flush was livid on his cheeks. “
They’re
the ones fighting a war against me! What am I supposed to do? Let them take over the Mo‘i’s house and start passing laws?”
“Yes! If that’s what it takes to end the violence. Haven’t you made us suffer enough?”
“Nahoa, you can’t, not even you. . .”
“Everyone knows,” she said mercilessly. “It’s no secret now. Not with the black angel and the guardians.”
That last made Kohaku dash forward and grip her face between his hands with enough force to make her tremble. She wasn’t really afraid—not even now—but she had never seen him so furious before. Not with her. “What do you know about the blasted guardians?”
“
Everything!
I know what they said you should do. I think you’re a coward for refusing them.”
Always afterward, she would wonder what made her say it, when she had never once thought such a thing. Why had she lashed out at him with such cruelty? They stared at each other in shock. He sat back on his heels. His eyes were wet.
“Oh, sister,” he said. And again, “Oh.”
She had started this, and she would finish it. “My conditions, Kohaku.”
“It’s too late. I wish you could see that, Nahoa. The war is started. I must finish it. If I could give all this up, I would. But I’m the Mo’i and I have obligations. You wouldn’t understand. You’re just a sailor.”
That hurt, like she supposed he intended it to. “You don’t want me back?”
The tears flowed freely down his face. “More than anything.”
“But not more than war.”
He raised his chin, his face the mask of blind stubbornness she knew so well. “I will win this, Nahoa. And there will be peace in Essel, and you and Ahi will come back to me. I promise.”
There was such self-delusion in his gaze, so much fear. She wondered how long he had been out of her reach—if perhaps she should have made this offer sooner.
“Goodbye, Kohaku,” she said, and fled the room.
 
The corridors of the fire temple were eerily silent, given the hell Nahoa knew must be exploding outside. Makaho had agreed to care for some of the wounded in the dilapidated southern half of the complex, but the casualties so far had not been half as large as they’d all feared. Nahoa understood why when she looked outside: the snow that she had marked as a curiosity a few hours prior had turned into an awesome white blanket, falling over the charred city and softening its hard edges. She had only ever seen snow on her trips as a sailor to the inner islands, and even then, nothing like this. A true inner-island winter made it far too dangerous to sail, though she had heard from those who lived there of these piles of frozen water. It looked like a spirit-borne ashfall to Nahoa, something entirely otherworldly. She huddled, chilled, before the clear glass windows overlooking some of the better-kept gardens and pagodas. The snow obscured all but the tallest plants and weighed down the trees, but it melted before it reached the steaming hot springs. She knew the pools were much too hot for bathing, but they still looked inviting against the backdrop of so much cold.
This snow had to have stopped the fighting for now. Perhaps it could stop it forever? Or perhaps Kohaku, better equipped and far more ruthless, would merely wait for the rebels to starve and freeze to death before going in and killing the rest of them. Perhaps Pano would get a special, public execution to honor the occasion.
She shuddered. “He wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t.” But it was like Malie had said—she wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Only Ahi made sense to her, and even she would grow inscrutable as she got older.
She heard the familiar smack of Makaho’s calloused, scarred feet on the floor, but she didn’t turn around. Nahoa wished she would just go away. But she wouldn’t, any more than Kohaku or his war would.
“What do you want?” Nahoa said, and almost winced at her own rudeness.
“I was worried for you,” she said mildly. “The Mo’i was quite upset when he left.”
Nahoa could imagine. “Well, I’m safe,” she said, still looking out at the snow. She could see Makaho’s distorted reflection in the glass, though she tried not to focus on it. Makaho’s expression was diffident and obsequious as always. As though that fooled anyone. She seemed disinclined to leave and so finally Nahoa sighed and turned around. She attempted to walk straight past her, but Makaho took a discreet step to one side so as to block her passage.

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