Firesoul Read online

"Did he tell you to keep it secret too?" Jiri stared at the older man.

  "He did, and I agreed. I could see the danger of speaking of them easily enough. " Kalun wiped a bead of water off the carving he held, careful to keep his fingers away from the sharp blade of its spear. "That time has passed. Oza was afraid that if the old stories got out, that if people knew about these things, they would hunt them. Well, that jug's been broken, and we'll never get the water back in. I don't know if Patima knew about the kindi before she led Amiro and the rest to your Pyre, but she knows now."

  "Maybe," Jiri said. Did she? Did Patima go to the Pyre by chance, or was she seeking this thing, this All-in-Ashes? If so, why did she let it go? If it was trapped in the kindi she found and stole, why free it? She had run from it the moment she let it go. What is she doing? What does she want? I know more, and I still don't know anything!

  "We have to get it away from her," Jiri said. "We have to get it back. That kindi Patima stole, it's the key to all of this."

  "So you keep saying." Linaria tilted her head, her strange eyes like ice. "And I think you might be right. But we can't get to her, or what she stole."

  "We haven't even tried!" Jiri shouted. She looked at Sera, standing silent in the door. "You want me to find this thing for you, so you can claim its heart as a trophy? Then help me do this." Jiri looked to Morvius. "You want to earn that jewel? This is what I need." Kalun was next. "You want all your debt paid to Oza? Help me get his killer, and stop her." Finally she turned to Linaria. "And you. You want to earn my trust, be my friend, help me so that you can feel good about how someone else once helped you? Then do this. Help me get to Patima, and help me get that kindi back from her. If I had that, we could stop this All-in-Ashes, I'm sure of it. Help me stop it, because if we don't, I think more villages will burn. I think Kibwe itself might burn."

  Linaria looked back at her, her so-pale face smooth, expressionless. "I've fought for you, and with you. I almost died for you. I thought I had earned your trust."

  Jiri stared up at the tall woman. She burned inside, angry and ashamed and frustrated. "I made a promise."

  "To a dead man," Morvius said. "A man who tried to keep that secret and failed and died because of it." Morvius dropped the bucket and dug a hand into his shirt. "You talk a lot, runt. About what people should do, and why they should do it. You miss out on the how, though. And the how, that's the sticking point. The hard part. Figuring out the how is why greedy, hard-hearted bastards like me survive and get shit done, while people like you, the ones obsessed with telling people the what and the whys, need us to haul your asses out of the fire."

  Morvius pulled his hand out of his shirt and tossed something at her. It bounced off her chest and landed at her feet, glittering in the sun. The diamond she had given him.

  "I think I'm done doing that."

  "But—" Jiri started, but Morvius cut her off.

  "But that All-in-Asses thing is going to keep killing people? Yeah, probably. Maybe you should have thought of that when you were keeping secrets. When you were flailing around, getting yourself into trouble that we had to haul you out of. Just like your dead teacher."

  Jiri clenched her fists, her anger blazing, and she could feel the heat running through her, so eager to burn that look off of the broad-shouldered man's face.

  "Go ahead," Morvius said, smiling down at her. "Do another stupid thing. How many can you get away with, before you finally get burned?"

  "Enough, Morvius," Linaria said.

  "Almost." Morvius's eyes never left Jiri. "You want Patima, runt? You want what she stole? Stop trying to make us solve your problems, and figure it out yourself." He turned from her and pushed his way out of the room. At the door, waiting for Sera to step out of his way, he spoke one more time. "My bet is you'll just try something stupid on your own again. When you do, try not to feel too surprised if we don't come and haul your little butt out of the flames."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The room smelled like charred wood, water, and smoke.

  Jiri sat in the corner, in one of the few not-damp spots, and stared at the little kindi with the spear, standing rigid and silent on the stool where Kalun had left it.

  "What am I supposed to do?"

  When Oza had spoken, people had listened. He was a shaman, the most powerful shaman in all the jungle around Kibwe. They had done what he said, because he had proven he knew what to do.

  What have I proven? That I can run for help?

  Kalun had said that he would try to find information. Sera and Linaria had said nothing. And outside Kibwe chattered and the sun rolled overhead, slowly moving toward night, when All-in-Ashes would rise again, and fall.

  Is Patima doing this? Jiri stared at Shani's face, carved into the dark wood, and wondered. Can she control that spirit with the kindi she has? Can they work like that?

  Questions. That's all she had, and no answers.

  How do I get answers?

  How. The word burned her. How would Oza have done it? He would have gone to the council. They would have listened to him, and forced those Aspis people to give Patima up.

  Or he would just get her himself.

  Jiri raised her fingers to touch the necklace around her neck. The bones were warm under her fingers, their carved lines smooth and polished. Oza could take the shape of a bird and fly into that place. Find that kindi, and become a monkey and steal it. Or become a tiger, and take Patima, too. Jiri's fingers tightened on the bones. She thought of wings, of feathers, of scaled feet and claws and beak.

  Hear me, spirits. I need you. Give me your wings.

  The carved bones rested against her skin, skin that stayed stubbornly her own, not sprouting feathers, not shrinking in and becoming small.

  Jiri snatched her hand away, jerked herself up, all her helpless frustration turning to fury. "I served you! All my life, I did what Oza told me. I gave you my respect, gave you my belief, honored you. And now, when I need you most, you give me nothing! Is that all I can expect from everyone?" No spirits, no northerners, no Kalun. No Oza. No Hadzi.

  No one.

  Just her, against Patima and a spirit made of fire and rage.

  Hands aching with heat, Jiri pulled on her last set of new clothes, picked up the kindi and her spear, and slipped out of the room.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Finding the Aspis Consortium was easy enough.

  Kibwe still seemed like chaos to Jiri, its streets rolling rivers of people, all crashing and moving and noisy, but she swam through them, hunting. When she found a likely target—a child playing, a group of women chattering, an old man carving on a bench—she would ask directions. They helped, somewhat, though they were still confusing, the landmarks of streets and statues and buildings nothing like the tangled trails and jungle that she was used to. But Kibwe was not so large after all, and by the time most people were settling in to rest through the afternoon's high heat she had found the compound.

  It stood near the western gate, in a neighborhood of stables, warehouses, and markets, a place where caravans were put together and taken apart. The streets here were full of animals: horses, mules, and camels, most packed high with goods. Crowds flowed along them, children playing or running messages, laborers hauling bundles of goods or looking for work, guards watching everyone with suspicious or drunken eyes. Through them all, the traders moved, arguing, laughing, bargaining, ordering and threatening, louder than the bawling of the camels.

  Jiri slipped through it all, grateful for the noise and the confusion. She could work her way around the compound, looking it over, and no one would notice her. Which was good, because she needed the time to stare.

  The Aspis Consortium holdings had been built for strength. Unlike the thatched roofs and wattle and daub walls of most of the buildings surrounding it, the compound had been built of stone. There were six structures that stood in a rough rectangle, three large warehouses and two smaller ones, each windowless and squat with one wide door leading into it. Each door was ei
ther gated tight or open and well guarded. The last building stood taller, with many windows, the lower ones all barred with iron. More guards stood by the single door. They didn't stop the steady flow of people in and out, but they kept a careful eye on all of them.

  Between each building, granite walls ran, separating the inside of the compound from the rest of the city. Jiri could see the peaks of a few orange tile roofs over those walls. Which meant that the compound contained several more shorter buildings, full of guards and workers, all surrounded by stone walls and closely watched doors.

  "My ancestors curse me," Jiri said to herself, staring at the little fortress. Morvius had been right. To get into that place and search it would require powerful magic or an army.

  Neither of which she had.

  Jiri leaned against a wall, clutching her spear tight. She was in a narrow space between a warehouse and a tavern, a dark twisting passage empty of everything but garbage, mud, and the stench of piss. From here she could see the door to the not-warehouse, the building where traders and other well-dressed people kept going. Amiro's house, probably, the place where he did his business. If Patima were to come and go from this place, this is where she would do it.

  And what would I do if I saw her? Follow, and then what?

  For a moment, Jiri allowed herself the luxury of imaging the Bonuwat woman coming out alone, walking away oblivious as Jiri stalked behind her, and...

  Even in her fantasy, Jiri couldn't imagine how she could capture the woman. Or force her to give her the kindi she had stolen.

  I don't think she's going to bring it out with her.

  With a groan, Jiri set her spear against the rough wall beside her. Her fingers reached up and touched Oza's necklace.

  Feathers and talon. Wings and beak.

  Please.

  Her only answer was the buzzing of flies around her, trying to drink her sweat.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The day was starting to fade.

  The street was crowded, packed with bearers hauling bundles of goods now that the cruelest heat of the day was behind them. Jiri stared over them, still watching the door that led into the Aspis compound. A door that had opened just a little, enough so that a small figure in a feathered, hooded cloak could slip out. Jiri tensed, but the figure was joined by a dozen more, and even from across the street Jiri could see that none of them was Mikki.

  Not unless the halfling had grown scales and a sharp-toothed muzzle.

  Kobolds. Those things were probably the strangest creatures Jiri had seen passing through that door, but only by a little. Merchants and traders of all nationalities and a few different species had gone in and out of that building all day.

  Patima had never been among them.

  "This is useless," Jiri muttered. She had spent hours watching, thinking, and still had no idea of how she could get into that place unnoticed, much less how she could find the stolen kindi.

  "Oh, don't say that."

  The voice, high-pitched and full of sly humor, came from behind her. Jiri whipped around, her fist tightening, growing hot. Behind her, the narrow alley lay empty of everything but shadows. Her eyes hunted through those dark places, while her ears strained to hear anything more. She saw nothing but mud and darkness, and heard too much— the sound of music and voices through the tavern wall, and from the street behind her the bawling of camels and shouting of their drivers, the low roar of people talking and moving things and laughing and arguing.

  "So glad you came to find us."

  The voice came from...Jiri raised one hand, shimmering with heat, while she reached out for her spear with the other. She couldn't find the source of that mocking voice, but she recognized it now. Like a child's, but not.

  Mikki. Linaria called her an assassin.

  That thought made Jiri turn her head, and she saw them: a group of men standing where the narrow alley opened into the street. The two in front held the corners of a thick cloth blanket between them. Like a net.

  "Gods and—" Jiri gasped, whirling around. She raised her hand, ready to throw fire, and then something crashed down on her.

  It smashed her into the stinking mud, knocking the breath out of her. Jiri felt it clinging to her, digging at the back of her head and neck. She thought of a leopard, leaping down from a tree and biting at the back of its prey's skull, and panicked. She brought her hands in and shoved herself up, and whatever the thing was grabbed the back of her head.

  Little fingers knotted in her braids, and that piping voice rang out merrily just behind her ear.

  "You coming here made this so much easier."

  A hand slapped over Jiri's mouth, cutting off her shout, and she went to bite it, but there was something in it. A cloth, wet and reeking, smelling of...of...

  And then the darkness came, sudden and absolute, and Jiri knew no more.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Behind the Walls

  The drums of the Orchid Dance pounded, their rhythm infectious, insistent, and Jiri danced beneath the stars. A fire blazed in the center of Thirty Trees, its light shining off skin and eyes, brass and glass beads, the dancers whirling and spinning. Jiri spun with them, spun and spun as the drums got faster, their music building. Jiri tried to keep up, but her feet faltered, stumbling on the hard-packed earth, and she couldn't breathe.

  The air had gone hot and smoky, and Jiri choked. Around her, the light grew and the drums bellowed, and the fire wasn't in the center of the village anymore, it was the village, every house blazing, and the drums were the sound of dried thatch and wood being eaten by hungry flame. Jiri staggered, eyes hurting, lungs desperate, but all the other dancers were stuck in place, dark shadows against the fire's terrible light. They had to run, to get away, and Jiri stumbled toward one of them, a girl posed delicately on her toes, arms raised. Jiri reached out to grab one of those arms and her hand touched something soft and hot.

  Ash. The girl was ash, and her arm fell apart when Jiri touched her, crumpled down as all the rest of her went, her face and breasts and belly and legs, all crumbling into white and gray, riding the hot wind upward, while the fire roared like drums—

  No!

  Jiri tried to shout, but she had no voice. Not here, where the darkness spun.

  "Spin her again!"

  A voice, a woman's voice, horrible and accented, and it drilled through Jiri's head. Big hands were on her shoulders, and she recognized Morvius looming over her, grinning. Behind him, Corrianne screamed with laughter and shouted again, "Spin her!"

  No, you have to listen! The words echoed through Jiri's head, but they couldn't get out. Not while Morvius was grabbing her shoulders and spinning her in place. Around her, the Council Hall of Kibwe spun, and she could see all the people. Linaria and Sera and Kalun and Fara and all her sisters, Patima and Amir and Mikki, all in a ring around her, and behind them everyone else, everyone, staring and pointing and laughing as Morvius shoved her and sent her lurching away, barely able to keep her feet. Over her head the jewel-colored lanterns spun, and behind them her ancestors laughed, and the spirits too, Monkey and Crocodile and Iomedae and...

  Oza.

  Oza! Jiri tried to call, but she couldn't speak, couldn't say anything as Patima caught her.

  "Spin her. Spin her!" This time it was Linaria, or Mikki, or Sera—Jiri didn't know. She just knew they had to stop, had to listen, but she couldn't talk. Jiri tore her eyes away from the crowd, turned her head, hunting for any place without eyes, and found Hadzi behind her.

  Help me! Jiri silently pleaded, but Hadzi wasn't looking at her. He was looking up, through the rafters and the spirits, up at something beyond the darkness of the roof. His hair was going gray, his hands on his spear growing scars as his handsome face shifted, grew lines and became Shani's face.

  "He's coming," Shani said, and his eyes boiled.

  "No," said Jiri, but the word barely forced its way past her teeth, and in front of her Patima gave her a smile, small and full of pity. Then she took Jiri's shoulder
s and started to spin her.

  Jiri's belly cramped, and there was a taste in her mouth of something horrible. Jiri spun, and this was like the time when she was twelve and someone—Hadzi—had dared her to kiss the bright-colored back of a dreamdealer frog.

  Frogs.

  Giant, brightly colored amphibians surrounded her, leaping all around her, trying to catch Mikki. The halfling was swinging through the trees over them, dressed in red, her mouth stretching impossibly wide as she laughed and spit fire at the frogs.

  No. Dreams. Fever dreams. This spinning world felt like that. Like when she had bonecrusher fever, and had dreamed such terrible things until Oza—

  Oza.

  The world swung again, and Oza stood before her, hip-deep in dark water. Behind him the Pyre rose toward the sky, crowned in flames. "You worry too much about the how of it, Jiri," he said. "You already have that. I taught you how. You can become whatever you need to become, when you need to become it."

  Standing in the mud before him, Jiri tried to open her mouth but couldn't. Her lips were gone, melted into something like a crude beak. Feathers sprouted around it and in scraggly bunches down her arms. The skin of her chest and belly was rough with crocodile scales. On her legs, fur grew, orange and black.

  But I can't! You never taught me this!

  That was what she wanted to say, but all that spilled out of her was some terrible noise, painful and sad and angry. She beat her hands against her legs in frustration, and the feathers that grew out of her skin flowed together and became sheets of skin that hung like bat wings from her arms.

  I don't know anything! Memories flashed through her mind, of fire and smoke, kindi, and faces so strange. I barely know what's happening, and I don't know why!

  "The what is hard, Jiri." As Oza spoke, the water behind him began to bulge, stretching its dark surface toward the smoke-covered sky, shaping itself into something terrible. "And the why is hardest of all. You'll find those answers, though. I know you will. You must."

  The water rising behind Oza had become a great, crouching beast. In its rough head, currents spun, forming two whirlpools. They stared down at Jiri—mad, malevolent eyes. Below their hungry spin, the water pulled open into a gaping mouth.