The Burning City (Spirit Binders) Read online

  “I don’t care if I start a riot,” Lana said. “They’ll speak to me.”

  Makaho paused and then inclined her head. The stables were secreted to the side of the temple, hidden by dense foliage and cracking garden walls. The fire temple had four carriages and several mounts—not half as many as a rich family in Okika, but more than enough for the densely populated Essel. The streets were so narrow that if the rich didn’t want to dirty their feet they made better use of rickshaws or palanquins than horses and carriages. A young girl was shoveling manure while another about Lana’s age was on her back in the packed dirt, adjusting an axle. Both of them scrambled to their knees when they saw Lana and Makaho.

  “Get up,” the nun snapped. “The black angel has some questions for you. For all the good it will do her.”

  They stood up, but the only one who darted a look at her face was the youngest.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt your work,” Lana said, “but I’m looking for someone you might have seen a few days before the great eruption. An older woman, with olive skin and graying hair. Her right arm is missing.”

  The older girl shook her head slowly. “I apologize, Ana. I never saw anyone like that.”

  The nun smirked, but Lana wondered if she detected the faintest hint of relief. “There. You see? I suggest you try another corner of this city for your search, Ana. There are many other places fire is worshiped besides this humble temple.”

  Lana was about to concede defeat as gracefully as possible, when a slight movement from the younger girl caught her eye. She hadn’t answered, had she? And yet Lana thought it likely that the presence of the head nun would stifle any information the girl might have to give.

  “Then I’d appreciate if you could spare a carriage to send me home.”

  Her smirk turned into a full grin. “Of course. Uele’a will see to it. Now, if you’ll excuse me. My duties are numerous in these trying times. I trust you won’t hesitate to ask if you require anything else.”

  After the nun left, Lana tried to think of a discreet way of taking the young girl aside, but it turned out she had no need. The girl approached her after the older one led the harnessed carriage outside.

  “You wanna know about that lady?” the girl said softly.

  “Have you seen her?”

  The girl clucked her tongue. “Great black angel like you’s gotta have a lot of kala.”

  Lana would have admired her cunning, if not for her frustration over this added delay. She fished into her pocket, pulled out the handful of half-kala coins she had left, and tossed them in the girl’s outstretched palm. “You want more,” she whispered, “come to the fourth district and find me later. But tell me now what you know.”

  The girl stared boldly at Lana’s wings, then straight into her face. Lana bore it. Even this awed scrutiny was better than fear. “The woman with one arm? Yeah, I seen her. She came late at night, a few days before the blow. The old bag met her, but I woke up because Sweetstraw was nervous. The day of the blow, Uele’a was supposed to drive her carriage, but I had to do it because she got sick. Your woman picked up someone else down at the market and I took them to the docks. They went on some merchant ship. That’s where I saw Nui’ahi. Right there, by the water. And I thought, you know, how could something like that be so pretty? That’s what you’re like, isn’t it? Just like that.”

  Something the girl said resonated. “She picked up someone in the market? Who? What did this person look like?”

  “A woman. I didn’t see her real well. But she was younger than the one-armed lady. And darker, like you. She was buying some pomegranates, I know, cause they fell out of her bag.”

  Lana realized she was trembling and bit her lip to stop. It was suspicious enough, interrogating the girl like this. She couldn’t let her know she’d learned something important. “Find me this evening,” she said again. “Fourth district, near the docks. Ask anyone. They’ll know where to find me.”

  The carriage was ready, and the older one looked at the two of them anxiously. Lana shook her head and made a show of seeming disappointed. “I suppose that couldn’t be the one I’m looking for, then,” she said loudly as she climbed into the carriage. “It’s too bad.”

  The older girl relaxed her shoulders. Lana closed the door before her face could reveal any of the triumph she felt.

  Lana dozed on the roof of the boarding house, only waking when the sun gave way to the nearly full moon. She stretched and looked blearily at the streets below. Even this far from the volcano, the marks of its eruption were unmistakable. Aside from the omnipresent ash, there were simply more people visible everywhere. Those made homeless by the disaster huddled in makeshift shantytowns near the docks. They begged and worked for what money they could, and their haggard, dirty faces had become as much a backdrop of the ravaged city as its blackened buildings and piles of cooled lava. Lana shivered—she knew how lucky she and her father had been. They had money and a place to live far from the center of destruction. If not for her black wings, if not for the constant ache of her missing mother, Lana thought they might well have been able to pretend that nothing much was wrong at all.

  The air was chill on her skin, but it was so lovely out here with the stars for company. She was blissfully alone. Even the death had faded away entirely, as it had done occasionally ever since the eruption. Her current protective geas was steady enough for now, but she knew that wouldn’t last much longer. She would have to think of some other way to bind it. She could do so easily enough with Akua’s bone flute, but felt terrified at even the thought. She shook her head. Her father wasn’t going to like the new scars that a death binding would likely require.

  She had finally gathered the energy to climb down when a rattling sound, too close, startled her. She nearly stumbled over her wings before she could peer over the edge of the roof. A tiny figure was hurling something. Pebbles.

  “Black angel,” the figure called. “I came like you asked.” A girl’s voice, and not very hard to place, at that. Lana smiled.

  “Then I’ll come down for you,” she said. Why not give the girl a show? She looked to be about eleven, young enough to be awed by her power but not cowed by it.

  Lana unfurled her wings and launched herself into a lazy updraft blowing in off the ocean. It felt so good to fly after so long, to stretch out the muscles that had gone stiff from disuse. She found herself climbing higher and laughing. Her back ached and burned, but even that felt perversely marvelous. She always forgot the simple joy of flying. Like diving in some ways, though it replaced the silence and teeming life of the ocean with the wind’s shrieking voice and endless distance. She spiraled as though she could reach the moon and then turned and plummeted. She caught a current just in time, spreading her end feathers as wide as they could splay, and letting her sore muscles take the brunt of her sudden descent. She landed with barely a noise in front of the girl, who was grinning in unmitigated delight.

  “How’d you get those wings, black angel?” she asked. “Can anyone have them?”

  “No,” she said, and something in her face made the girl take a step back.

  The girl swallowed. “So, you promised me a reward.”

  Lana gave a rueful smile. If only she’d been half as bold as this girl when she was that age. She took her back inside the apartment. Kapa seemed surprised to see Lana’s young guest, but smiled gamely.

  “What’s your name?” Lana asked the girl.

  “Sabolu,” she said. “You gonna give me the money?”

  Lana looked up at her father and shrugged. “Could you give Sabolu some kala, Papa? I promised her for helping me.”

  He took a few stone coins from his pockets and handed them to her. “Where are you from, Sabolu?” he asked.

  Sabolu shrugged. “Dunno. Here, I guess. My parents never said and they died ages ago. You eating catfish?”

  Lana looked and saw, indeed, that her father had brought back a meal of fish and taro mash. Kapa spread his arms. “Woul
d you like to join us?”

  Sabolu grinned and dashed over to the table. Lana looked at her father fondly. “Soft heart,” she whispered. He just shrugged.

  “I see lots, black angel,” Sabolu said, when she’d stuffed herself. “You want, I can come back here and tell you if I hear more about that one-arm witch and the old bag.”

  Well, she could certainly use an unobtrusive ear in that den of secrets. “If you hear anything else interesting, we’ll pay you for it. But I don’t want you to get yourself in trouble. Don’t do anything too dangerous.”

  She shook her head. “No one notices the stablegirl.” She left soon after, and Kapa sat silently before the remains of their meal, frowning.

  “What is it, Papa?”

  “That girl. . .she’s so young. Are you sure you should use her like this?”

  “She practically begged me, you saw.”

  “Still. . .”

  “Papa.” She made her voice hard. “Do you want me to find Mama or not? Sabolu is the only one who’s seen her.”

  Her father didn’t argue, but he didn’t meet her eyes the rest of the night.

  Nahoa sent for Kohaku the afternoon after she spoke with the black angel. Her daughter’s reactions mirrored her own feelings for the infamous woman quite accurately, as it turned out. Ambivalence, but perhaps a glimpse of someone she might like. She certainly liked how the black angel had left Makaho in a lather after their encounter. Why, the head nun had been so distracted and frenzied that Nahoa nearly had a delivery boy send the black angel some mandagah jewels in gratitude.

  “The stablegirls, indeed!” she heard Makaho mutter as she stalked to the privy.

  And so fortified, she sent word to the Mo’i that she would be willing to meet him on the grounds of the fire temple in a private room an hour before sundown. She came armed with the list Pano had given her the previous morning. He had claimed they were all innocent, but she wasn’t as naive as all that. Pano and his people were fighting an armed resistance, and she knew civilians numbered among its casualties. Though she had firsthand knowledge of her husband’s cruelty, she wasn’t sure how she felt about the costs of resisting it.

  Makaho seemed quite ambivalent herself that afternoon, when one of her servants finally deigned to mention what Nahoa had conveniently forgotten to tell her: that after two months of begging, the Mo’i would be allowed to see his estranged wife and daughter.

  “It was very irresponsible of you not to tell me, dear,” Makaho said, with that syrupy tone and fake smile that turned her face into a death’s head of wrinkles.

  Nahoa grimaced and contrived to sound both stupid and contrite. “I’m sorry, Makaho. I didn’t know you’d care.”

  Makaho’s smile grew even wider. “I care about your welfare, dear.” Nahoa heard the subtext: I care about your powerful husband. “I hope you’re not considering going back to him.” I hope you’re not thinking of removing yourself from our power.

  Nahoa shook her head and did not have to feign her frightened earnestness. “No, of course not. I only thought. . .it’s been two months, and he hasn’t even seen his daughter. At least I could do that for him?”

  Makaho sighed, apparently satisfied that Nahoa was firmly hers. “I suppose. And it will be good for him to see that you are well.” It will solidify our hold over him. “Yes,” Makaho said, visibly warming to the idea. “I think it will do quite well. Only you must keep someone in the room with you the whole time. For your own safety. Malie perhaps?”

  Nahoa clenched her teeth but managed to blush. She had grown used to the servants constantly monitoring her behavior in the temple, but for this she had to be alone. Perhaps Malie herself was involved with the rebels, but she couldn’t be sure. “I’m sure I will be safe enough, Makaho. I don’t intend to go back to him, of course not, but he is my husband and it has been quite a long time. . .”

  The head nun stared at her for so long Nahoa thought she could feel sweat beading on her forehead. Playing stupid was flaming exhausting. Only Ahi’s sleeping weight reminded her why she was doing this.

  Then Makaho grinned and Nahoa knew she’d won. “Well, that’s understandable, my dear. Perfectly understandable. We’ll just leave a guard stationed outside the room for your. . .privacy. Just call out if you need anything.”

  Nahoa knew that these guards would be listening quite carefully through the bamboo-reed walls, but so long as no one was physically in the room with her she ought to be able to contrive to send Kohaku the message.

  She was so giddy with her victory, and Ahi so perfectly content against her breasts, that she forgot to be nervous until the temple guards led her to the meeting room. Then, her heart began to pound so loudly that Ahi wiggled uncomfortably against her chest. What would Kohaku say? When he tried to convince her to return, would she be tempted? Because—despite everything—Nahoa missed her husband. She remembered how he had been on the ship when they returned to Essel, and the gentleness with which he had always treated her. Her ma would say this mess was all her fault for falling in love too quickly, and Nahoa was inclined to agree with her. What had she known of Kohaku before she had married him? Only that he was educated, and some tragedy had befallen him that led him to offer himself as a sacrifice to the fire spirit.

  She hadn’t known about his sister, who died trying to rid herself of a baby. Her married lover, a famous Kulanui professor named Nahe, hadn’t much cared about the safety of the potion he procured to get rid of it. She hadn’t known of Kohaku’s expulsion from the Kulanui after he attempted to confront Nahe. Would she have fallen for him if she had? He had a kind smile, but his earnestness had masked an implacable, even paranoid need for revenge. But maybe she still would have wanted him. He was so unlike anyone else she had courted, so learned and sure of himself, despite the tragedies in his life.

  And if she had not loved him, she wouldn’t have Ahi.

  Kohaku entered the room before Nahoa was ready, when she had relaxed just a bit and offered Ahi her breast for the third time that hour. She could have sworn her heart stopped when he stepped through the door. He froze a few feet away from her, as though similarly stricken. He looked much thinner than the last time she had seen him, older and more careworn. And yet he had a new air of maturity that she didn’t remember. It made her want to study his eyes and run her fingers through his russet hair to comfort him.

  “Nahoa,” he said, his voice rough, and Ahi tore herself from her mother’s breast as though startled.

  Nahoa flushed and turned her daughter around so she could see her father. She seemed immediately delighted with him, which made something twist deep in Nahoa’s belly.

  “You can go,” she said to the guard, who merely nodded and backed out of the room, sliding the screen door shut behind him. They had the appearance of privacy at least.

  Kohaku repeated Nahoa’s name and then, moving as jerkily as a gasping fish, knelt on the cushions across the table from her.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said.

  She bit her tongue and looked away, dangerously close to tears. She had been afraid that this would happen.

  “Lei’ahi,” she said softly, lifting her daughter onto the low table. “Here’s your father. Would you like to greet him?”

  Ahi was too young to crawl, so she sprawled with evident happiness on her belly, oblivious to the tension taut as a rope between her parents. Kohaku looked at his daughter for the first time in either of their lives and smiled at her with a tenderness that made Nahoa rub her eyes furiously. Why had she fallen in love with a doomed man who had sold his soul for survival? Why couldn’t they have met earlier, before his sister died, before he became destitute and homeless, before he became Mo’i? Maybe then they could have been a normal couple, with normal problems and normal loves. Instead, she’d become a willing pawn in desperate intrigues in order to hide from him. Instead, her daughter was growing without a father.

  Kohaku caressed Ahi’s hair, only a shade darker than his own, and let her grab one of hi
s fingers with her chubby hands.

  “She’s beautiful,” he said, and Nahoa only nodded because she could not trust herself to speak. He played with Ahi for a few moments more, and then looked at Nahoa until she was forced to meet his eyes.

  “Will you come back? Please, tell me you’ll come back.”

  “I can’t. You know I can’t, Kohaku. You shouldn’t even ask.”

  He looked devastated, although she didn’t know what other answer he could have expected. “Why? Is it because of Nahe? You know what he did to me. He used my sister and left her to die, and yet you think I should have let him go free and get old—”

  “I don’t think you should’ve. . .” Tortured him. “…done what you did to him. It was cruel. Pointless. If you want justice, give them a trial. Don’t toss them in a secret dungeon and string them up. That makes you just as bad.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Something tells me we’re not just talking about Nahe.”

  “How do I know what you’ve done to the others? Sometimes I don’t think I know you at all. How you could do. . .” Blood everywhere, and that stench. She choked. “…that.”

  He was furious, but just as aware of the guards on the other side of the door as she, and so kept his voice low. “I love you, Nahoa. I want us to be a family. And you won’t come back because of politics?”

  “It’s not politics. It’s torture. It’s treating humans the way you wouldn’t treat a dog, that’s what.”

  Kohaku laughed, and Ahi made a hiccupping sound like she was about to cry. Nahoa picked her up again. “Politics,” he said again. “You won’t come back because you disapprove of my policy decisions.” He shook his head.

  “Chopping people up while they’re still alive is not a policy decision, damn it!”

  “And I thought the fire temple was just manipulating you. But here you are, plotting right with them.”