Firesoul Read online

  "Must?" the thing hissed in a wet, sucking voice.

  Oza never turned to look at it. He just kept his eyes on Jiri, patient and calm.

  "There are very few musts, old man." The stinking mass of water fell. It roared down onto Oza, swallowing him, and then it surged forward, a great tide of filthy water that caught Jiri and smashed her down.

  Jiri flung her arms over her head and wrapped them tight over her face, trying to block that dark water out, but she felt it wrenching her arms apart, pushing through her lips and teeth, shoving open her eyes, pouring into her ears.

  "There are only two musts for you, girl," that voice came, gurgling and terrible. "Fear and failure."

  Jiri lashed out, flailing against the killing tide, trying to pull herself free. Deep inside her, something sparked, that anger that had always been there to serve her. She felt it spring to life and she welcomed it, needed it. She let it flare through her, let it go and go and felt the joy of its destruction as it flashed the water to steam.

  Fire boiled all that terrible murk away, and Jiri opened her eyes and saw the darkness of it twisting in on itself. Pulling back and changing...

  Changing. The dark water became a shifting, roiling cloud of smoke, shot through with light. Light red and gold, light so hot, and now Jiri felt the heat building in her again, swelling until it tore out of her, breaking her body into flames, and when she screamed she heard a new voice crackling through her, filling her.

  "There is only one thing that all must do."

  Jiri could see her hands in front of her go white as the moon and then break apart, each piece of her hot and dead and drifting, and before she could scream her mouth was gone too, and all she could hear was that terrible voice.

  "Burn, and join the ashes of everything."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Jiri tried to groan but couldn't. Something rough and bumpy filled her mouth, and her jaw ached fiercely, wanting to close. That wasn't the only pain, though.

  Like a flood, all her other agonies rushed through her. Her hands were numb from lack of blood. Something was wrapped tight around her wrists, forcing them together behind her. Those same bonds pulled her shoulders back, and her joints felt like they were packed with broken glass. The rest of her body ached too, though much less. That was from having been dropped naked onto a rough floor made of cold, uneven stone. With a jerk, Jiri was able to move her head, turning it so that her right cheek pressed against the ground instead of her left.

  That one tiny pain eased, but none of the rest. The movement also made her aware of two other things.

  The first was that someone had tied a cloth over her eyes. She could feel her eyelids scrape against it when she blinked, could see the faintest trace of light coming up from below her left eye.

  The second was a sound. A soft tap, then another. The noise stopped beside her head.

  "I think she's coming around."

  Mikki's voice.

  Something nudged Jiri's shoulder, and the touch made agony flare through her. She twitched.

  "Yeah. Go get the others."

  There were more sounds of feet on stone, the groan of a door, and then Jiri was too distracted to listen anymore.

  Something had touched her throat, something small and thin and sharp. It moved lightly over her skin, tracing the path of her pulse.

  "Is this what you wanted?" The halfling's lips tickled against Jiri's ear, like a little girl telling her a secret. "To be in our house? I brought you here. It's fine, I know you can't thank me now." The blade against Jiri's throat stopped moving, its point pricking her skin right beneath her jaw. "We'll save that for later."

  Jiri felt a little hand pat her cheek, while the pressure of the knife point increased one subtle fraction and then vanished.

  Biting into her gag, Jiri barely kept herself from shaking.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  "Spellcasters," Amiro said, "are problematic."

  Amiro sat before her, his shaved head smooth and immaculate in the lamplight. He held himself very still, posed almost, his spine perfectly in line with the back of his northern-style chair. His hands were folded, long fingers pressed together, and his eyes were cold and calculating as a crocodile.

  Jiri didn't feel problematic.

  The guards that had come with Amiro had jerked her up by the arms, making her scream into her gag. Then they had dumped her into one of these hard-backed chairs and cut the rope that bound her wrists. That relief had almost instantly been overwhelmed by the pain of the blood rushing back into her hands. While she groaned about that, the men had buckled her ankles, wrists, and waist to the chair with heavy leather straps that scraped across Jiri's skin. Then they had jerked off her blindfold. Jiri barely noticed them stepping out of the room, too caught up in her pain and the sight of Amiro sitting before her.

  Corrianne stood behind him, looking at Jiri like a cruel child regarding a spider, wondering which leg to pull off first. Mikki stood on the other side of Amiro's chair, eating candied dates and playing with a scarab beetle tied to a string.

  There was nothing else in the windowless stone vault. Its only features were a battered bucket that sat in one corner and the heavy wooden door that stood open behind Amiro.

  There was no sign of Patima.

  "Magic is unpredictable," Amiro continued. He was dressed in northern garb, a white linen tunic and hose with a gold half-cloak and a necklace of heavy gold links, from which dangled a golden key. Strangely formal garb for these surroundings. "Those who wield it—"

  "No matter how pitiful and useless," Corrianne said.

  "—must be respected," Amiro continued, as if unaware of the interruption. "I just want you to understand why we've taken these precautions, and to let you know that we respect your abilities." Amiro ignored Corrianne's snort. "If I had the proper resources here in Kibwe, we could have done this more comfortably, with a cell properly charmed. Since I don't, I'm forced to use the methods we have at hand. I apologize for that, and whatever inconvenience they've caused you."

  Jiri, bound naked, gagged, and aching to the chair, just stared at him.

  "That being said, we're going to have to remove your gag. You may be tempted to try casting when we do. I would recommend against it. Let me tell you why."

  Amiro opened his hands, his first motion since Jiri's blindfold had been removed.

  "I am a cleric of Abadar, the Master of the First Vault." Amiro's hand tilted toward Corrianne. "Corrianne is a wizard, trained by one of the finest—"

  "The finest," Corrianne interrupted again, huffy.

  "The finest academy of magic in all of Taldor," Amiro said. "We are both familiar with magic—divine, arcane, and spirit. We both have more knowledge and more power than you. So. Should you decide to do something, we'll know it, and we'll give Mikki a signal. Mikki?"

  The little woman caught her beetle and pushed it into a pouch on her belt. She drew something else out of the pouch: a short, wickedly sharp little spike. On small, bare feet she walked over to Jiri and stood on her right side. Jiri tried to keep her eyes on Amiro, but her head twitched when she felt the prick of that spike against her ear.

  "If Mikki sees our signal, she will drive that spike straight into your ear," Amiro said, his voice still detached. "It's just long enough to rupture your eardrum, which Mikki assures me causes a vast and unique kind of pain."

  "I can only go by how people scream, but I'm confident of that statement," Mikki said cheerfully.

  "Pain like that should disrupt any spell you might attempt. The resulting deafness would only affect one ear, and after a short rest we would be ready to begin speaking again." Amiro folded his hands again. "Of course, if you tried it again we would have to puncture one of your eyes. But I doubt things will go that far. You are young, but you are a shaman, are you not? I'm sure your judgment is sound." He smiled at her, a banal twist of the lips that didn't touch his crocodile eyes. "Mikki," he snapped.

  Despite herself, Jiri twitched, and she felt the poi
nt of that spike dig into her ear, a quick sting of pain, and the dread gathering in her wound tighter.

  Amiro's dead-eyed smile was still aimed at Jiri, but he kept speaking to the halfling. "Let's try to avoid any accidents this time. You're a professional."

  Mikki shrugged. "I just get so bored sometimes, when these things go on and on."

  "Well, I'm sure this one won't." Amiro snapped his fingers, a sudden sharp pop that made Jiri almost twitch again, and Mikki jerked Jiri's gag off. "Will it, Jiri Maju?" Amiro paused just a moment before her name, as if emphasizing the space where her tribal name had been.

  Bound to that chair, Jiri's stomach clenched, and her skin streamed with cold sweat. Somehow she managed to keep her voice calm. "It depends on what you ask."

  "I'll start easy," Amiro said. "Why were you and the others trying to seal us in that ruin?'

  How much do I fight them? Jiri wondered.

  Not at all. Not until it matters.

  "That place was under my teacher's protection." Jiri said. "He felt it when you broke in, and we went there to seal it up again. To trap you inside, so that nothing evil would be released. But when he was trying to do that, he was attacked by a demon."

  "Well, I'm glad Patima's little playmate did something useful," Corrianne sniffed. "She summoned that stinking thing too close to me, and it slimed my outfit. I had to burn it, and that bitch refuses to pay me back."

  "The demon killed your teacher?" Amiro asked.

  "Yes." I can't let them know how much his death hurt me. Amiro will use the pain against me, and Corrianne will use it just to amuse herself.

  "He told me to get help," Jiri said, to drag the questions away from Oza. "To run to Kibwe, and find Kalun."

  "They knew each other?"

  "Apparently," Jiri said. "My teacher never spoke of Kalun before. He told me to go to the Red Spear, so I did. I told Kalun what happened, and he sent the others back with me to deal with the demon and seal the Pyre."

  "That must have taken some time." Amiro's eyes slid sideways to the tiny woman who stood beside Jiri.

  "Do you want fast, Amiro, or do you want alive?" Mikki asked. "Those are your choices when you're dealing with traps."

  Amiro waved his hand at the assassin. "So you brought them back to the place you call ‘the Pyre.'" Amiro made a face. "Did they know it was us in there?"

  "They guessed it might be. But they were doing what I asked, what my teacher asked me to do. They came to kill the demon and seal the Pyre, not attack you."

  "I'm surprised Kalun thought he could seal us in there with just stone," Amiro said. "He underestimated us. Or he wanted us to get out."

  He thought about that for a minute, and Jiri thought too. Did Kalun know how easy it would be for them to get past that stone wall?

  "It doesn't matter," Amiro said. "I know what happened when we came out. What happened after we left?"

  "That thing you released came out, and it went to my village and burned everything and everyone in it to ash."

  "How unfortunate," Amiro said.

  "Everything? Everyone?" Corrianne asked. "Ah, what a dark day for lice and goats."

  Anger flickered through Jiri, warming her chilled skin, but she forced her breathing to stay steady, in the calming pattern Oza had taught her. She couldn't let the fire in her go today. That spike would drive into her ear long before she could burn through her bonds.

  "Corrianne," Amiro chided. "I'm asking questions. Now, Jiri—did you see what this thing looked like?"

  "Like living fire and smoke. Like fury and destruction," Jiri said. "And it's out there. It burned Thirty Trees, and that caravan, and Zawao village. Will it burn another village tonight, or will it come here to Kibwe? You set that thing free, Amiro. You let Patima steal that k—" Jiri broke off, trying to turn the sound into a cough. "—that thing, and you released that terrible spirit into the world. How many have died because of your greed? How many have to die before you start to try to make things right?" Jiri looked him in the eyes, desperate to see doubt, guilt, uncertainty. Desperately hoping that he didn't notice her slip.

  Of course he did.

  "What was that? I let Patima steal a what? A k—?" Amiro pronounced the consonant like a cough.

  Jiri gripped the rough wood of the chair arms tight in her hands and shifted her eyes away from him, studying the stains of water and mildew on the granite blocks of the walls.

  "So here it is, so soon. The sticking point." Amiro unfolded his hands and reached out, catching Jiri's chin. He tipped her head toward him, and Jiri was painfully aware of Mikki's spike shifting with her head, but just a shade more slowly, its tip digging a little deeper into her ear. "This, girl, is why you're here, talking to me, instead of in a sack at the bottom of some swamp, a gift to the crocodiles. You know something about that thing Patima found. Something that might be useful. Now here's my question: Are you going to be smart and tell us what you know, and survive this? Perhaps even profit from it? Or are you going to be foolish and drag this out, making it unpleasant for everyone involved?"

  "Except me," Mikki whispered beside her, then giggled.

  Jiri kept herself from cringing away from Mikki, just barely. Kept herself from jerking her chin out of Amiro's long-fingered hand and impaling herself on that thin spike. "You have an accent when you speak Taldane." Jiri spoke in her native tongue, shaping the words like they were most often used around Kibwe. "You sound like a northerner."

  Amiro's fingers tightened on her chin. "Is that your plan?" he said. "Appeal to our common culture and try to shame me for abandoning the ways of my people and joining up with these foreigners?" Amiro had switched to the same language, his Kibwe accent thick enough that Jiri had trouble making out all the words. "An interesting tactic, much better than bravado or seduction. Your true emotions are too obvious for those. But it has one great flaw."

  "Which is?" Jiri said.

  "I hate our common culture." Amiro tapped a finger against her jaw. "Let me tell you something about my life, girl. I was born in Kibwe to a woman without a tribe. I grew up without a tribe, and I was picked on, despised, mistreated, because the other children knew they could get away with it. I had no one to help me, no one to defend me. Neither did my mother. She was murdered when I was seven, knifed by someone who thought the couple of coppers she carried were worth more to them than her life was to her. Her body was left in the streets, until the street cleaners threw it into the city midden, meat for the rats and the vultures.

  "Since she had no tribe, no one cared about her death. Since she had no tribe, no one cared about her child." Amiro dropped his hand from Jiri's chin and folded his long fingers back together again. "I was left to die on the streets, and I would have. But a man—a northern man—decided to hire me to run messages for him. He was the head of the Aspis Consortium. I worked for him, and he fed me, gave me a place to sleep. When I impressed him with my service, he began to educate me. He saw potential in me, and he used it. You see, the Consortium doesn't care where you come from. Who your parents were. How rich you are. What tribe you belong to. It cares about only one thing: Can you feed it? Can you grow it? Can you bring the money and power that the Consortium needs to survive and thrive, here in the Mwangi Expanse and in all the rest of the world?"

  Amiro gave Jiri a tight smile. "The Consortium is a hard master, Jiri, but it's a fair one. When I understood that, I did my best to bring it everything I could, and it gave back. The Consortium shared the wealth I brought it, and I have prospered.

  "Do you understand then, girl, why I've learned to speak the common tongue of the north so well? Why I've dedicated myself to one of their gods? Kibwe never offered a place for me. I had to find one for myself." Amiro tilted his bald head, shifting just a fraction, as if he were contemplating an ambush. "And what about you, Jiri Maju? Girl with no tribe, no place? Where do you fit, now?"

  "I..." Jiri stopped. I don't know. But I know I don't fit with you. "I belong to this place. Not this city, but this land, a
nd all things that live here. Especially the people. The people that are dying, right now, because of what you did."

  "Because of what we did," Amiro said, switching back to Taldane. "What do you think would have happened if your new friends Linaria and Morvius would have found out about your secret Pyre before we did?"

  "I think Kalun would have told them to leave it alone," Jiri said. "And if they didn't, I think Oza would have sealed them into that stone, and All-in-Ashes wouldn't be killing its way toward this city."

  "It wouldn't be destroying those villages if we controlled it. If we knew how to leash it. Which you could help us with. All-in-Ashes," Amiro echoed back to her. "You know its name and more, don't you?"

  Every spirit sees my stupidity. Jiri kept her mouth shut, not saying anything more.

  "Jiri. Listen to me." Amiro switched back to their shared tongue, and he spoke to her like a teacher, like a parent to a child. "I can't bring back your dead. We've harmed you. I've harmed you. But I have no interest in harming you again. Tell us what we need to know, and we'll call All-in-Ashes in, control it. No one more will die, and I will reward you. You've lost your tribe, but you can have something else, something better. You can join us. In the name of my god, I make you that offer."

  Jiri studied the bald man in his strange clothes and her stomach twisted. "I understand that you offer that as a gift," Jiri said. Her eyes shifted from Amiro to Corrianne, staring bored at her nails, and then to Mikki, bouncing lightly on her toes beside Jiri, still holding that sharp spike to Jiri's ear. "But I would rather share a hammock with a mamba."

  Amiro stared at her, unblinking, unsurprised. "I understand. But remember that offer. I will hold it out to you for as long as I can. I see potential in you, Jiri Maju, and while my people might have their issues, I would not let them call you ‘runt.'" He tilted his head a fraction when Jiri blinked. "I have my ears in the Red Spear. Kalun has too many daughters to buy them all beads. I know what Morvius said, and I know that you came here on your own. You're all alone, girl. Think on that."