The Burning City (Spirit Binders) (38 page)

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Authors: Alaya Dawn Johnson

BOOK: The Burning City (Spirit Binders)
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“You have a message from Pano?” the wife said, so eagerly that her fat baby actually removed its mouth from her nipple to protest.
Sabolu thought she was speaking mighty loud, and Malie—always sensible—apparently thought so too, because she glared.
“I thought you two might like to see some horses,” she said.
Sabolu took an involuntary step back when the wife stood. She didn’t want to get any closer to that kid. For all she knew, whatever spirit geas the pale one had given her would still work if she touched it again. And Pano wouldn’t like that at all. The guard trailed them while they walked at a maddeningly slow pace through the halls, though Sabolu knew that was safer. Outside, they hurried. The path between the temple and the stables had been kept clear, and Malie glared at the guard when he tried to follow them inside. Uele’a had gone, for some reason, but that was easier for her purposes anyway. No need to pretend to admire the horses. She gave Malie directions on how to find the secret entrance and handed them some bandages and liniment they used when the horses had chilblains. The wife looked like she might faint. She was a bundle of nervous energy, that wife. Sabolu didn’t understand how she had come to be at the center of so many political webs. She’d be better off in a fishing village in the outer islands.
“Oh,” she said, remembering Black Angel Papa and his strange message. “Do you know a Leipaluka? She’s a dead rebel soldier. And there’s another, one of the Mo’i’s, called Edere. I think it’s a code for the black angel.”
Malie frowned. “I’m not sure. A rebel and a Mo’i soldier?” And then the wife tugged on her sleeve and the two of them left. Sabolu leaned against one of the horses for warmth. She thought of how much money she’d earned in promises this day and smiled. It was good. This war was treating her very well, for all she didn’t like the smell of blood. She and Papa would get their house in less than a year at this rate. And then she’d be out of the stables forever.
“Though I might miss you, Sweetstraw,” she said, burying her face in the gentle mare’s mane. She didn’t mind horses, really. Manure smelled miles better than blood.
The stable doors always creaked and groaned when they opened. “Uele’a?” she called. “That you?”
But no, the owner of the footsteps came into view a moment later, though he was still silhouetted against the open door.
She recognized the graying ginger hair, even if she had never seen his face very close before.
“The old—I mean, the head nun ain’t here, if that’s what you want.”
“That’s not what I want,” he said, and his voice was very still, like a film of ice over a spring—
 
—frozen, but with something powerful bubbling up beneath.
That’s not what I want
. The girl was so young. It made him angrier, it made him want to lock her up with the others, hang her from the ceiling like Nahe for daring to do what she did to his child, to his baby, how could anyone be so depraved it made him want to spit and so he leaned back for a moment, back into the snow and the cold morning air and spat with remarkable violence into the white drifts. He turned back. The girl was babbling at him, something about a rebel soldier called Leipaluka and one of his own called Edere, he didn’t understand a word, only that she didn’t know enough to be afraid just yet. He stepped forward—
 
—and closed the door. Malie had wanted to ask Sabolu for a knife or a pair of shears, because Pano’s pants had stuck to the wound, but she didn’t dare interrupt the Mo’i, whatever secret business he might have inside the barn. She heard Sabolu mention that soldier’s name, Leipaluka, and thought perhaps it had something to do with her spying for the war. So she turned back to the gardens. Inside, Nahoa was doing her best, but Malie winced at how her hands trembled when they attempted to pull the cloth away from the wound. Someone—possibly Pano himself—had already wrested out the arrow itself.
“Flaming night, my lady, you’d think you were dressing a chest wound.”
She knelt and pushed Nahoa gently aside. Pano was holding Ahi, which Malie didn’t think was quite the best idea, all things considered, but she was aware of the futility of questioning the gardener’s trustworthiness with my lady.
She looked up at Pano, but he was gazing at Nahoa with the sort of expression that made Malie’s stomach sink. Had this war made everyone insane? The gardener loves the crazy Mo’i’s wife. And the wife? Well, she hid her emotions about as well as a macaque in mating season.
“My lady?” Malie said, her tone, as usual, betraying none of her inner frustration. “Could you go to the kitchens and fetch some water and a cloth? And a knife, if one won’t be missed?”
Nahoa, apparently grateful to be given this simple task, stood on shaky legs and practically fled down the passageway. Malie waited until her footsteps had receded before rounding on Pano.
“Her husband will kill you,” she hissed, and though Pano looked mildly surprised, he did not seem confused. So she was right. Until this moment there had been some sliver of hope, some remote possibility that he had shown so much partiality to Nahoa for a different reason. Now she saw the doom they were both walking so blithely toward, and she could strangle them.
“I’ve done nothing,” he said, and she had to admire how even his tone was, given how much she expected the wound must be hurting him.
“Thank the spirits. And for how long will you do nothing?”
He shrugged. “I’m a gardener. She’s the wife of the most powerful man in the world. What could I do?”
Malie crossed her arms. “A little more than a year ago she was a sailor. And now she’s at the center of a dozen political conflicts, not to mention a war, estranged from her husband, who has gone insane, and caring for his baby alone. In you dance, as calm and caring as you please. You think it hasn’t gone to her head?”
“Gone to her head?” Pano repeated, sounding the syllables out as though they were in some ancient language whose meaning he might eventually parse.
“Yes, you bloody fool, and if you don’t do something to stop it, you both are going to—”
But Nahoa’s footsteps in the hall cut her off and she had to settle on glaring meaningfully at Pano while he stared back at her, dazed and abstracted and a little in awe.
“Sorry,” Nahoa said. “I had to chat before I could get away.”
Malie got to work, efficiently cutting through the pants leg and then soaking the wound in water until the cloth could pull away cleanly. The puncture wound looked nasty and deep to her, but Pano told Nahoa it wasn’t as bad as it could be.
“Perhaps not,” was all Malie said, before she rubbed in the horse liniment and bound his thigh in yards of hemp.
“This might be over by tomorrow,” he told Nahoa, while Ahi slept peacefully against his neck. Malie had to admit that the child did seem particularly fond of him. But she was a baby who loved the world and this could in no way be construed as evidence.
“There really are people fighting for you from the north? Who are they?”
Pano shrugged, his face full of the same wonder that Malie had seen when he looked at Nahoa. “No one knows. There are rumors that they’re a diplomatic delegation from Okika. Of course, there’re also rumors they’re barbarian warriors from the wind island, so anything’s possible.”
“Okika?” Malie said. “You know what that means, don’t you? The Maaram wars, a thousand years later.”
“Maaram?” Nahoa repeated, and Malie refrained from rolling her eyes. Honestly, she’d grown to love Nahoa, but sometimes it was galling to be reminded how low Malie had fallen and how high this former sailor had flown.
“The Maaram empire. It used to be centered on Okika. There was a war here, right around the time of the first spirit bindings. Essel defeated them and colonized all the islands.”
“But the islands aren’t colonies of Essel. Not anymore.”
Pano smiled at her, his indulgence far more gentle than Malie’s. “No, that changed after the spirit bindings. Slowly. No one could fight wars, so all the islands got their autonomy in the end. Trade agreements, different systems of government. Essel always at the center, of course.”
“And now you think they want to change that? By fighting against the Mo’i?”
Pano’s face went as blank as a wall, and even Malie felt too sobered to do more than twist her lips in disgust. So Nahoa understood the implications. Eliki and Pano had unleashed a monster, just as Malie had known they would. If a war could be fought in the heart of Essel, then a war could be fought anywhere. Okika might help the rebels now, but perhaps it wouldn’t be very long before they decided they could be much better managers of the city than the Esselans.
Pano said he had to leave. She hoped it was to rush straight back to that unnaturally pale rebel leader and plead for an immediate truce, but she had even less faith in Eliki’s judgment than Pano’s. Malie made a few quick stitches to close the gap in his pants leg and he wrapped his deep-hooded cloak around himself once more. Ahi started to scream as soon as he handed her back to Malie, which made her look nervously down the passageway. Luckily, Ahi’s screams gave way to more gentle whines.
Nahoa and Pano took their leave of each other without once touching. It seemed to Malie that they might as well have kissed for all the longing looks they gave each other. Great Kai, but she hoped Pano was smart enough not to confess his feelings to Nahoa. Pano left without a backward glance and Malie dragged Nahoa away before she could stare feelingly at the shut door. They approached the stables but turned back when they saw their guard had vanished. Had he noticed their escape? Or perhaps the Mo’i had sent him elsewhere. The temple itself was a scene of orchestrated chaos. Wounded soldiers poured in—some on their own feet, some on litters—and even the hallways were being used to accommodate them. Ahi seemed confused and upset by the chatter and the moans and the strange smells. She started to cry again and Malie bounced her up and down, whispering nonsense.
The main entrance and the offshooting fire room were still clear of the war traffic. In fact, the hall was eerily silent, empty except for the three of them.
“My lady.”
The four of them. They both turned. Makaho was sitting on the floor in the doorway to the main fire room. Her body was streaked with ash for some reason, and she had never looked older. Her face sagged as though drawn down by invisible weights. All the years Malie had worked in Makaho’s orbit, she had never learned what truly drove the head nun. It couldn’t just be power. Her disdain for her own wealth had never been for show. But what other reasons could she have? Obscure revenge? Immortality? Piety? That last would have made Malie laugh in other circumstances.
“May I speak with you alone, my lady?” Makaho said, all obsequiousness. Nahoa looked uncomfortable, like she always did in the head nun’s presence. It said a lot that she had chosen to come here rather than stay with her husband those many months ago. But then, Malie knew some of what she had discovered in that room in Kohaku’s cellar.
“Those wounded soldiers,” Malie said, remembering Sabolu’s odd message. “Is one of them called Edere?”
Makaho shrugged, a gesture of such weariness Malie was surprised. “How should I know their names? We have two hundred at least, and more dead. Why?”
“Oh,” Malie said, wondering if she should say and then deciding it couldn’t hurt. “Sabolu was asking after someone named Leipaluka. A dead soldier with some connection to Edere. But I’ll go,” Malie said. She could do nothing more to delay Nahoa’s conversation with the head nun. Makaho gave her a tired smile, full of the peculiar sort of fondness—
 
—that perhaps Makaho had always felt for her. Malie had been born a pampered merchant’s daughter in Ialo, Okika. She had traveled the world on a private ship, had taken lessons from private tutors, and might have even attended the Kulanui if not for the unfortunately spectacular downfall of her father’s business. With his wife and two daughters in penury, he had thrown himself over the edge of the great waterfall. Makaho, sensing an opportunity, had offered the oldest daughter a job that paid well enough to support her family. She had accepted.
Nahoa watched Malie leave with a particularly bleak expression.
“Come inside,” Makaho said, levering her stiff limbs from the heated floor. “I promise not to eat you.”
Nahoa had the grace to look embarrassed. Makaho allowed herself a moment of regret for how she was about to further burden this girl. It was too much that all of these responsibilities had been placed on her shoulders, just as it was too much for the black angel, herself even younger than Nahoa. Makaho had become the head nun of the fire temple when she was just a few years older than them. She’d risen above those older and better qualified. She’d schemed and stolen and even poisoned to become the first elected supreme head of the fire temple who harbored napulo sympathies. She hid herself well, but the few napulo scattered throughout the city had known, and she had felt the pressure of their approval like a lead chain all her fifty years in office. She was so close now. Kohaku, that fool of a Mo’i who had only undertaken the holy action to get revenge, had done so much of the hard work for them all. Now, with this great Ana, a napulo disciple for the death spirit, Makaho had a chance to see two great unbindings in her own lifetime. It was a prospect that kept her up late at night, bowing and feverish before the great fire.

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