Firesoul Read online

  Amiro moved, sudden and smooth, rising from his chair. "You don't have to be," he said, then switched back to Taldane for the others' benefit. "All you have to do to get out of here is tell us how to stop that thing from killing, which is what you want. Tell us, and you'll be free, to make whatever choices you want about your future. This will all be done, just as soon as you speak."

  "You don't want to stop All-in-Ashes," Jiri said. "You want to control it. Nothing good can come of wanting to control that."

  Amiro sighed. "So be it, for now. I'll speak to you about this again later. After more have died, and after Mikki and Corrianne have had their chance to persuade you." He gave the women a hard look. "Go gentle, tonight. And don't forget the dreamless."

  "Oh, we won't forget anything, love." Corrianne walked forward, the heels of her boots clicking on the uneven stone. She had dressed in black again, a silk skirt and a long leather vest, and she pulled a pair of leather gloves from the wide belt that ran around her waist. She wiggled her fingers into them, then reached out to rap Jiri on the bridge of the nose, just hard enough to make spots dance in front of Jiri's eyes. "And we'll be as gentle as lambs."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  They spent a little while rearranging the cell.

  The guards came back after Amiro left and dragged Jiri in her chair to the back of the cell. Then they brought in a table and another chair to match Amiro's empty one, and filled that table with platters of food and bottles of wine. The northern women had sat down and started to eat, chatting as they did.

  "I saw Orvin in the market today." Corrianne took a bite of bread, smeared with butter and some kind of lurid red stuff that smelled of fruit and sugar. "He had both his eyes again."

  Jiri looked away, keenly aware of how long it had been since she had eaten.

  "He must have paid a healer quite a lot to grow back the one I took," Mikki said, putting her glass of wine down beside her beetle, which was feasting on a slice of melon. "I suppose I'll have to take his other one."

  Worse than Jiri's hunger, though, was her thirst.

  "Would that be his right or left?"

  And worse than that was the humiliating, painful pressure building in her bladder.

  "Y'know, I'm not sure." Mikki began to neatly slice apart a fish. "I guess I'll just have to take both."

  "Seems safest."

  "Here, what do you think of these?"

  Jiri couldn't stop herself from looking up. There was nothing else in here but these terrible women and their terrible talk. Nothing but them and the pain in Jiri's body and limbs, tied too long to this chair.

  "Where did you get those?" Corrianne was studying the earrings that Mikki was holding up, rounds of opal surrounded by silver.

  "Stole them from a Garundi trader that came through today. You don't like them?"

  "Garundi jewelry is gaudy. Besides, they're made for a darker complexion then yours."

  "More like hers?" Mikki looked at Jiri.

  "Maybe," Corrianne said. "Try them."

  Mikki rose and came over to Jiri, the earrings dangling from one hand. With her other she caught Jiri's chin, turning her head. "Your ears aren't pierced."

  "The Mosa don't do that," Jiri growled, her skin crawling beneath Mikki's fingers.

  "That's all right," Mikki said, smiling. "I do." The little woman set the earrings down on Jiri's thighs, then reached into a pouch that hung from her hip. She pulled two acacia thorns from it, long and sharp. The halfling stuck one in her mouth, picking at her teeth with its rough tip as she considered Jiri's right ear. "Well, I've done things like that. Put holes in people, I mean." Mikki caught Jiri's ear. "I think holding still would make this easier for us both."

  Jiri gritted her teeth and said nothing, kept gritting them when she felt the thorn biting into her skin, then pushing deeper, carving a slow, agonizing path through her lobe.

  When it was through, Mikki twisted the thorn a few times, grinding its rough sides into Jiri's torn flesh. "Half done," she said brightly, holding up the other thorn. "Oops. This one's lost its tip. Might take a bit longer."

  It did, but again Jiri didn't say anything, just clenched her teeth against the pain as the little assassin bored through her flesh with the blunt thorn.

  "There," Mikki said, finally, giving the thorn one last twist. "All done. Now let's try those earrings." With two jerks, Mikki pulled the thorns out, leaving pain and slivers behind. Then she picked up the earrings and pressed their hooks through Jiri's torn lobes.

  Having the earrings put in barely hurt, compared to the piercings, but their weight was a burning agony. Jiri clamped her teeth against it, trying to breathe in the steady rhythm Oza had taught her. It helped, not easing the pain exactly, but making her accept it.

  It did almost nothing to push back against the mixture of shame and fear that filled Jiri now, body and spirit.

  "See?" Corrianne was saying. "They look terrible on her. On you, they'd look ridiculous."

  Mikki grabbed Jiri's braids and twisted her head back and forth, staring at the jewelry that dangled from Jiri's bloody ears.

  "You're probably right. I'll have someone take them to the market tomorrow. I need a new chameleon anyway. I lost my last one." She pulled at the earrings, and for a moment Jiri was sure she was going to rip them out, but Mikki plucked them carefully free. Then she shoved the thorns back in. "You don't want those holes to close up." Her finger slid across Jiri's face, tracing her cheek, eyebrow, nose and lips. "Those Bekyar pierce themselves all over. Face and body." Mikki's hand glided down Jiri's neck. "Including some places that seem like they would be very uncomfortable. I've always wondered how much that hurt, but I've never asked one." Mikki pulled back her fingers and looked at the blood that tipped them. "Maybe you could tell me. I have a lot more thorns."

  Jiri looked at her, unblinking, all of her concentration focused on not lashing out and wreathing this woman in flames.

  I couldn't kill her before Corrianne stopped me. I have to control my anger, save my strength. Jiri kept repeating that thought to herself, over and over.

  It was the only kind of hope she had.

  "It's hot over here," Mikki said. "I think that means she's angry."

  "Angry? About what? We've barely started to do anything." Corrianne dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. "That reminds me, though: she hasn't used her bucket yet, and probably needs to. How are we supposed to trust her out of her chair if she's so upset?"

  "We can just leave her there until she calms herself," Mikki said. "Or pisses herself."

  "Like I want to smell that."

  "I won't do anything." The moment the words were out of Jiri's mouth, she hated having said them. They felt too much like the first small steps toward surrender.

  "You promise?" Corrianne's voice was both acid and sickly sweet.

  Jiri didn't want to say anything else, desperate not to slip any closer to obedience. But her bladder throbbed like a knife in her, and she couldn't stand the idea of voiding herself in this chair, certain that these women would leave her tied down in her own waste. She let her head tip into a tiny nod.

  "Good girl. Unbuckle her, Mikki."

  The halfling rolled her eyes and reached out for the buckle on Jiri's wrist, popping it free. She worked her way through all the others until she crouched before the chair, undoing the ankle ones.

  "Better hope she doesn't piss now," Corrianne said.

  "I'll put those thorns through her eyelids if she does," Mikki said. She finished with the buckles and stepped away.

  "Well?" Corrianne lifted a jug of wine and splashed her glass full. "Do you have to go or not?"

  Jiri ignored her, ignored her screaming bladder and concentrated on her legs. They were knotted and trembling, and she wasn't sure they would hold her. I'm not crawling in front of them. Using her arms, Jiri pushed herself up, every joint groaning. Wavering, unsteady, she took a shuffling step toward the bucket. Just hearing Corrianne speak again almost toppled her.

  "Loo
k at that, Mikki. Look how tough she is. Moving so well after being stuck in that chair for so long. You know, maybe we should have some sort of guard on her. Just to be safe." Corrianne spoke again, a quick spill of words in some harsh tongue, and her fingers flickered over the candle that sat on the table beside her, casting a long shadow on the stone ceiling.

  That shadow twisted, pulled in on itself, and fell. It landed on Jiri like a thick rope, heavy and hot. Its weight slammed Jiri down, and her knees and palms hit the floor. Skin scraped away and blood flowed, but Jiri didn't feel these new hurts. All her attention was on the thing wrapping around her, loop after loop, a coiling, grasping thing that caught her tight. On the floor, on her belly, Jiri fought. Without thinking, fire flickered out of her, burning along the length of the thing, but it didn't let her go. It flexed instead, pulling tighter, and Jiri lost all of her breath.

  "I wouldn't do that," Corrianne said. "That thing isn't impressed by fire."

  Jiri felt the thing shifting, and then its head was in front of her face. A wide, blunt head, mailed in scales black and crimson, with two great slitted eyes that stared at her with predatory disdain. A forked tongue flickered out of the mouth and touched her face, tasting her, and the slime covering that tongue stung her skin. A snake, or the bad-luck spirit of a snake, given temporary flesh by Corrianne's magic.

  "Are you just going to lie there?" The northern woman's voice was full of cruel amusement. "We let you go for a reason. Attend to it."

  Jiri watched the snake's tongue flicker, saw its jaws part to show lines of hooked white teeth. But it relaxed its coils around her, drew its head back. Jiri moved on her belly, getting one arm under her and pulling on her other, trying to work it free from the hot scales that pinned it to her chest. When she got it free she pushed herself up to her hands and knees, the heaviness of the snake dragging at her, and when she tried to rise she fell, dragged down by pain and exhaustion and the weight of scales. She pitched forward, turning her head barely in time to keep from smashing her nose into the stone. Instead her ear hit, and the thorn still stuck in her earlobe drove its point deep into the soft skin at the base of her skull.

  Jiri would have cried out, but the snake had shifted when she fell, tightening around her again with crushing force. It drove the air out of her, made her ribs creak, made the world start to go dark.

  "Careful, my legless one. I don't want you to squeeze her eyes out."

  The snake relaxed its coils, and Jiri breathed, panting air in and out while her ribs groaned with pain.

  "She still has her eyes," Mikki said, "but I think your pet squeezed something else out."

  "Oh, that is disgusting, isn't it?"

  Jiri could hear them moving over her long, gasping breaths, could see them as they came and stood above her. Corrianne looked down at her, her nose wrinkled. "Where's your sense of decency, girl? You've pissed yourself, and all you can do is lie there and wheeze. What did they teach you out in that jungle?"

  "Nothing about how to use a bucket, apparently," Mikki said. "Are we done here? She stinks, the food's gone, and I think my beetle's drowned in the wine jug."

  "I suppose we are." Corrianne waved her hand, and the black-scaled snake faded, dissolving away into shadow. "We need to put the dreamless on, though."

  Mikki pulled something from the pouch at her belt, a black band three fingers wide and edged on both sides with silver. "Here. I'm not getting close to her now."

  "Fine," Corrianne said. She spoke softly to herself and pointed at the thing. It rose from the halfling's hand and drifted over to Jiri. When it neared her, Corrianne pulled her hands apart, and the band stretched open. It went around Jiri's head, over her ears and down to her throat. There it settled, snugging tight to her skin. It felt like soft leather, but that silver fringe had an edge to it, as if it were made of tiny claws.

  "There. A little something for your dreams." Corrianne moved her hand, opening it as if letting go, then made a pinching motion. The thorn in the ear that Jiri hadn't fallen on twisted. "We're done for tonight, girl, but I want you to know something. Tonight was just a little teasing." The thorn twisted a little more, making Jiri raise her head. "Just a way to illustrate our roles in the little drama we've got going. Tomorrow, we'll start this for real. Think about that tonight, and think about whatever deal Amiro offers you in the morning. Because I can guarantee you, if you make me come back down here again and sit in this cell and breathe in your reek, I will make you remember tonight with great longing for how sweet and gentle I was with you. Understand?"

  Jiri said nothing, but when the thorn in her ear twisted again she hissed out in pain, and Corrianne was satisfied with that. The black-clad magician opened her hand, and the pain in Jiri's ear returned to a dull ache, lost among all the other complaints of her body.

  "I don't mind coming down here," Mikki said. "It's cooler, and I've got a whole basketful of thorns I can bring to keep us busy. So if you want to fight Amiro, go ahead. It might smell down here, but the smell of blood is stronger. It'll cover that right up."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The guards came, after Corrianne and Mikki left.

  They dumped a bucket of water over Jiri, rinsing her off before they dragged her to the other side of the cell. With brutal, practiced efficiency they gagged her, blindfolded her, then shoved her hands together into some kind of bag that they laced shut around her wrists.

  When they let her go after that, Jiri lay on the rough stone, so grateful they hadn't tied her hands behind her back again, or belted her to that chair, that she almost cried.

  The door closed, and the thin bit of light trying to press in under the blindfold vanished.

  Alone in the dark, Jiri forced the tears away. What use would they be?

  Instead, Jiri made herself breathe, in and out, slow through her nose and around her gag, trying not to choke. She had to be calm. She had to think.

  How do I get out of here?

  The question circled in her head, over and over, and no answer came. Nothing came but fear and anger and a monstrous sense of failure.

  They're going to torture me. For as long as it takes, until I either break or All-in-Ashes burns this city down around us. And there's nothing I can do.

  Jiri bit into her gag. She tried to feel for the magic that lay in her, the gifts she had brought back in her dreams from the spirit world, but she couldn't focus on them, couldn't touch them. Wrapped in anger and fear, the only gift she could feel was fire, and that gift was useless now.

  Unless she wanted to burn.

  No. Jiri twisted in the darkness, rolling herself up onto her knees, then stood. I am more than fire. I can do this. I can be like Oza. He told me I was strong. I can make the spirits come to me. I can become—

  Something. A monkey, a rat, a bird—anything that could slip these bonds.

  They took Oza's necklace. Those smooth bones were gone, and the only thing around her throat now was the thing Amiro had called a dreamless, smooth and scratchy.

  It doesn't matter. I have to do it.

  Jiri reached for the magic, reached for the change, teeth clamped tight on the rag in her mouth, hands knotted into fists, her whole body tight, shaking—

  Then she smelled the charring leather and felt the heat growing around her hands. Swelling from warmth to pain as the bag around her hands began to smolder. With a grunt she fell to her knees, slapping her hands against the floor, trying to keep the bonds that held her hands from flashing into flames. Pain rolled up her arms, from heat and from her hands slamming against the stone, but the heat began to fade. Jiri stopped, half-choking on her gag, wishing desperately for sight, for the ability to see if the flames she had started were out. All she had was time, though, slowly passing, and the gradual realization that her hands were burned but not burning.

  Jiri slumped over. Her hands throbbed, her greatest pain now. When she was a child, when the fire had first started coming to her, she had burned herself a lot. This pain had been so familiar, yet so s
hocking each time.

  Oza had always healed her, then.

  He can't now. It's just me. Jiri thought about trying to reach for her healing, and her stomach clenched. I can't. The only spirit I can feel right now is fire, and I don't want to burn.

  Jiri lay on the stone, hands throbbing but still bound. She had started her bonds on fire, but she had slapped out the flames before they freed her. That last realization unhinged something in Jiri, and through her gag she started to laugh. At some point the laughter turned to tears, and finally they stopped, too.

  Sleep came for her like death, and Jiri welcomed it.

  Until she started choking.

  Something had her by the throat, tight around it, cutting off her air. At the same time, something bit into the skin of her neck, like a thousand tiny claws. Jiri thrashed, flailed uselessly at her neck with her burned, bound hands, then felt it ease.

  The strange necklace that Amiro had told Corrianne to put on her relaxed. The band stopped choking her, and the fringe of tiny silver hooks stopped digging into her skin.

  So this is why Amiro called it a "dreamless."

  Jiri was sure she would have no dreams tonight. This dreamless would come alive every time she started to fall asleep and wake her with pain and suffocation.

  She would not walk the spirit world tonight, could not bargain with the spirits for their magic. She would lie awake, aching, thirsty, hungry, exhausted. Knowing that she had failed, that she was useless. Knowing that they were coming for her, tomorrow.

  Knowing that tomorrow was so far away.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Horror Stories

  Oh, gods, Jiri. What did they do to you?"

  Jiri lifted her head, but behind her blindfold there was nothing but darkness. Were her eyes open? She blinked, and wasn't sure.

  It was hard to be sure of anything.

  Hands touched her, and she flinched, but they were firm and strong. They found her gag and pulled it out, and for the first time in an eternity Jiri could shut her mouth. The pleasure in that was so much that she ignored the hands, barely felt them as they pulled the bag from her own hands.