Firesoul Read online

  "We should avoid the city?"

  "The city, and the villages around it." Jiri scooped a little ointment onto her fingers and took a step toward Boro. When he didn't back away, she moved to him and rubbed the ointment over the burns her hands had left on him. When she was done, she checked his hand.

  "Thank you," she said, after she had proven to herself that the Rough Ford shaman had done a good job with Boro's burn. "For coming out here."

  "Thank you for the warning." Boro looked at his hand, still held in hers, then stepped into her, wrapping his other arm around her. "Hadzi was a fool, you know. He never knew what he had."

  Leaning into him, careful of his burns, Jiri held him tight. "Thank you," she said again, a whisper, then she let him go and stepped back. "Gods, spirits, and ancestors, may they watch, protect, and guide."

  He stared at her, stared beyond her at the foreigners, at the trail that twisted back toward the ruin of the village they had grown up in, toward Kibwe. "And may they go with you too, Jiri Maju. With you too."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Jiri went up the trail slowly, walking to where the northerners waited.

  Where else did she have to go?

  Linaria stood up from the fallen tree limb she had been resting on, brushing away a thumb-sized millipede that had crawled onto her leg. Morvius, sitting beside her with his boots off, hunting ticks around his ankles, looked up.

  "So are you good from here?" he asked. "Or do you need us to walk you to their doorstep?"

  "Morvius." Linaria didn't raise her voice, but her warning was as clear as a naked blade. The man grumbled, but quietly. Linaria, satisfied, walked to Jiri. "We're going back to Kibwe," the pale woman said. "Come with us, and Kalun will have a place for you."

  "If you heard us," Jiri said, "then you know there's no place for me. Not anymore."

  "I didn't hear him. You two talked too quiet, too close, and I don't know your language nearly well enough. But I've seen the look that's in your eyes now." Linaria pushed back her hair, white as clouds even when soaked with sweat. "I'm going to tell you something, Jiri, and you're going to think it's a load of shit now, but you might find it important, later. I know what it's like to lose everything. I know that you're numb, because the hurt is too much. That's why you have to keep moving. Because when that numbness goes, when the hurt comes in, that's all you're going to have, and you're going to be useless. Fall apart in Kibwe, with Kalun. You may not know him, but he's a good man. He'll help you, and you'll need it. You've lost your world, Jiri, and you're going to have to rebuild it, one piece at a time."

  Jiri stared into the woman's not-quite-human eyes. Do you know what it's like? The words echoed in her, in the emptiness left after everything else had gone to ash. To have your whole world burn? Do you? I don't know that you do, and you're right, all your words sound like shit to me.

  Again, though, there was the simple question.

  Where else did she have to go?

  She didn't speak. Jiri just nodded, once.

  "All right." Linaria turned from her, back toward Morvius, who was pulling on his boots, and Sera, who had stood silently watching, dark eyes on Jiri, like they always seemed to be. "Let's go."

  "Oh, can we go now?" Morvius stood and stomped his boots into place. "Are you sure? Because if your little friend there wants to collect some more soul-crushing traumas, I suppose we can wade through another day's worth of mud and leeches."

  "Morvius," Linaria said, her voice perfectly level. "I solemnly swear to Calistria that if you say one more word in the next half hour, I will freeze your balls to ice and then crush them under my heel. Understand?"

  Morvius opened his mouth, then shut it. His lips tilted instead into a crooked smile, and he swept a graceful bow to the half-elf.

  Sera tilted her head, waiting for them all to pass to take her place in the back. "Do you try to inspire violence from all the women you meet, Morvius, or is it just a natural talent of yours?"

  Morvius flipped the same gesture at the paladin that he had made this morning, but stayed silent. Jiri stayed silent too, and dropped her eyes. She had no interest in watching these people quarrel, or in the jungle that surrounded her, or in the muddy trail at her feet. She only wanted to move, to drag herself forward, away from Boro, away from the people who weren't her people anymore, away from everything and into the nothing that was now her life.

  Chapter Six

  Drums

  There were drums in the Adayenki.

  Jiri didn't really hear them. Curled in the soft strangeness of the bed Kalun had given her, she didn't want to hear the drums, or see the whitewashed stone walls around her, or smell the rich tang of spice and perfume, animals and sweat, food and flowers that drifted through the carved latticework covering the room's windows.

  She felt them, though.

  Their rhythm pounded through her bones and made her tremble. She knew this music. The heart of Kibwe, the tapestry-bounded Adayenki Pavilion, was hosting an Orchid Dance. A year ago she had taken a drum and handed it to Hadzi and danced to this rhythm, her braids swinging, her heart pounding, smiling whenever she had swung near the handsome young man. So scared and proud and happy, dancing beneath the branches of Thirty Trees' mango grove in the flickering light of the fire...

  Jiri curled tighter into herself, trying not to feel the drums.

  Trying not to feel anything, and almost succeeding, until someone began to beat on her door as if it were a drum, too.

  Jiri opened her eyes. Across the room, a flood of girls spilled through her door, four of them, children and adolescents. Jiri recognized Fara, Kalun's daughter, and from their looks the other three were her sisters. They wrinkled their noses and stared at her, then scattered when Kalun stomped in behind them.

  "Move those screens. Get some light in here, and air this place out. Fazi, gather those food trays. Fori, you get the chamber pot."

  "Eww, Papa—"

  "Do it," snapped Kalun. "Or would you rather have your mother up here?"

  The girls whirled into action, snapping back the lattice, picking up the dishes of food that had been brought to Jiri and ignored, hauling off the stinking pot. Jiri watched them silently, then rolled to face the wall.

  "No, Jiri. Enough."

  Strong hands gathered her up, lifted her out of bed and set her on her feet. She staggered and Kalun caught her, wrapping a sheet around her like a cloak.

  "There's a time for mourning, girl, and it's probably longer than this, but my wife will kill us both if this room isn't cleaned. Do you want your first song in the spirit world to be about being strangled by an old Tirakici innkeeper?"

  Jiri clutched the sheet and didn't answer. She just stared at the man, empty.

  He sighed. "All right. Faya, take the sheets for washing. No, not the one she's wearing. Collect that from the baths. Fara, you take her there and get her clean."

  "I don't want a bath," Jiri said, or tried to say. After so much crying, her voice barely worked.

  "You don't want anything except for everything to be the way it was, and you can't have that," Kalun said. "I still owe your Oza a debt, and I've only paid part of it. Getting you on your feet will pay a bit more." He pushed her, gently but firmly, toward the door. "Go, or I'll carry you."

  For a moment, a flicker of heat ran through Jiri, but she crushed it out before it could flare into flame. I don't want fire. Not anymore. She let Kalun push her, let his daughter take her hand and pull her along.

  "It's all right," Fara told her in the sort of voice one used for babies. "I don't like baths either." The girl wrinkled her nose a little. "I don't usually smell as bad as you do, though."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  There was hot water and stiff-bristled brushes. Then cool water, and all four of the girls were back, carefully untangling Jiri's remaining braids, pulling them apart and putting them back together. Jiri sat through it all, trying to hold on to her silence, her pain, but the feel of the water on her, the brushes across her skin,
the strange smell of the soap they used in the city, the painful tugs on her hair, the sound of the drums and the chatter of the girls, pulled her unwillingly from the oblivion she had been trying to cling to.

  When Jiri's bath was done and her braids were back and mostly straight, Faya tied a bright green wrap dress under her arms. Jiri moved carefully, not used to the way the long dress flapped around her ankles, and didn't realize that Faya wasn't leading her back to her room until the girl opened the door to Kalun's talking room.

  "What now, innkeeper?" Jiri asked, stepping in. Linaria was there, dressed in tight-fitting breeches and a loose shirt, the pale blue cloth of both finely made. The white-haired woman's face had been healed, her black eyes gone and her broken nose back to its delicate shape. Morvius slouched beside her, staring down at a book with brightly painted illustrations of bizarre beasts, slightly more shaven than last time Jiri had seen him. His clothes were ornate but shabby, just like the ones she had first met him in.

  "Well, you're talking. That's good." Kalun was dressed in silk again, a pale red embroidered with white. He caught her frown and leaned back on his carved stool. "Maybe." He pointed toward a tray by an empty bench. "There's food and drink. I don't think you've had much of either since you came back."

  Jiri could smell the food, rice and goat and spices, and her stomach twisted, wanting it. She ignored her body, though, and focused on Kalun. "I'm on my feet. So what now? Do we know what those Aspis people unleashed? Has it destroyed anything since Thirty Trees?"

  "Not that we know of," Linaria said. "I've asked around. No one has seen anything. Maybe it went back to its hole. Maybe it was something summoned, that didn't last."

  "You asked around." Jiri stared at the foreigner. Her stomach growled loudly, and she gave up and went to the tray.

  "She did, and I did," Kalun said. "And nothing. Rough Ford is untouched. Your people are moving on, spreading out to the other Mosa villages. The talk in the market is that Thirty Trees was destroyed by demons. Or bad-luck magic."

  Jiri tore a piece of flatbread in half and dug it into a bowl of stew. Bad-luck magic. Yes, but not hers. "It's not gone. I don't know where it is, what it is, but I know that. That thing..." Dreams had come to her, in the dark valleys of sleep that she had fallen into after returning to Kibwe. Dreams of flames and screams, of ashes drifting, a great cloud of them, and behind them something bright and hungry. "It's out there, somewhere. It's going to burn again." She scooped up another portion of stew, chewed and swallowed. "What about those people?"

  "You mean the Consortium?" Kalun said. "What about them?"

  "Do you know where they are? Are they here? That woman, Patima. She had something, something she had stolen from the Pyre. If we get it from her, we might find out what this thing is, what we need to do to seal it back where it belongs."

  "Ha!" barked Morvius, finally bothering to look up from his book. "Check the balls on this one. Steal it back. From the Aspis Consortium. That would be a good trick. Tell me, girl, who the hell do you mean when you say we?"

  Jiri ignored the broad-shouldered man, still focused on Kalun. "They stole something dangerous, something that doesn't belong to them, and my people paid the price. Why can't we take it back, before that thing comes again, before anyone else burns?"

  "Why can't we steal Leopard's teeth, so that he can't eat our children?" Kalun sighed. "Jiri, I've no love for the Consortium. Believe me. They're trying to slither their way into Kibwe the same way they've snaked themselves into the western Expanse, greasing their passage with blood and gold." The old man leaned back, frowning, and despite its lines his face showed the fierceness of the warrior he had once been. "If I could, Jiri, I'd do just what you say and more. I'd smash open that vipers' nest and stomp everything that tried to crawl away. But I can't. Nobody trusts the Aspis Consortium here, but Amiro is free with his coin and greed is as good as love among the powerful."

  "Never mind the fact that his crew might be the toughest group of adventurers this side of the Shattered Range." A delicate glass half full of white wine dangled from Linaria's fingers, the almost colorless fluid moving as she swirled the cup. "Amiro is a cleric of Abadar, and he seems just as able to bargain magic away from the merchant god as he does favors from Kibwe's council. Corrianne is a spoiled brat, but a strong caster. Mikki is as vicious as she is short. Patima..." Linaria frowned and stilled her wine. "She's been Amiro's hound for years, digging out every hidden ruin and secret treasure barrow near this town. But I've never been able to figure her out, to understand what she wants."

  "Money and power," Morvius said. "What else?"

  "Yes." Linaria went back to swirling her wine. "But I feel like the why of it for her is tangled. The others, I unfortunately understand. Patima, I don't. There's something mad under that smooth facade of hers. Something dangerous."

  "You know them. You know where they are. But you're not doing anything about them." For the first time since Thirty Trees, Jiri could feel something besides despair. Her fists were clenched with frustration, and Oza's necklace hung heavy on her. What would he do? Not stand around and talk.

  No, but he had power. The spirits came to his voice, made their magic his, gave him their shapes to wear. Jiri...

  I don't have that strength. Not yet. I'm not Oza. I'm not even as strong as these fools.

  "We have to do something," Jiri said, her words almost lost beneath the distant roll of the drums.

  "You will," Kalun said. He reached beneath his shirt and pulled out a small bag that clinked when he tossed it to Jiri. "You lost everything, so now you'll go shopping. Linaria and Morvius will take you to the market and help you get what you need."

  "What?" The bag of coin dangled from Jiri's hand like a dead snake. "You want me to go to the market? With them?"

  "He does." Morvius stood. "Here's your first lesson in the adventuring life, runt. You want to find treasure, you need treasure, and the sooner you learn to bargain like a Drumish fishmonger the better you'll do."

  "I'm not a raider," Jiri said. "Not a treasure-hunting thief, like this Consortium." Or you, she bit back.

  "'Course not. You just want to nip over to the Aspis compound and cut some throats and take their stuff." He grinned at her, his green eyes narrow with amusement and challenge. "So bring your coin, and we'll get you some pants so you can do it proper."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  "Is that what you're looking for?"

  Jiri stopped, trying to see the merchant that Linaria was pointing to. Kibwe's great market surged with activity, the crowd a chattering sea washing around them. Most of the people stood taller than Jiri. "There? No," she said, spotting a merchant who stood beneath a tall rack of dress cloths, their bright colors blending and clashing with the woven tapestries that spread behind him, marking the border of the Adayenki.

  "No, there. Look, that ugly bird-woman statue is pointing at it with her spear."

  The foreign woman pointed over the crowd, and Jiri looked up. A granite pillar stood before them, one of the dozens that dotted Kibwe. On its top stood a soapstone statue of a woman with the spreading wings of a bat and the fierce head of a hawk. The ancient warrior's spear did point down at the market, and when Jiri followed it she caught sight of bolts of black and brown cloth.

  "That's mud cloth, right?"

  "That's—" Jiri started to answer, but something about the statue pulled at her attention. Had it been holding its spear like that earlier? Wasn't it pointing toward the sky? When Jiri had come to Kibwe as a child, she had begged Oza for stories about these fierce statues. Even in Thirty Trees she had heard stories about them, how they moved when no one was looking, switching places with one another when the storms came at night. They were made by the same hands that carved these walls, he had told her, pointing to the great granite walls that ringed the city. Our ancestor's hands were very clever, and held so many dangerous secrets.

  Dangerous secrets. Did Oza know what lay beneath the Pyre? What that thing was that had been release
d? Jiri touched his necklace, felt the grief and anger that seemed as firmly threaded on it as the bone animal carvings.

  It's not fair. You taught me so much, but so little, and now I need you and you're gone and I don't know what I should do, and I just miss you, I miss Thirty Trees and Hadzi and everything...

  "Jiri, is that it?"

  Linaria's question barely made it through the shadows of grief that had sprung up around Jiri, but the woman's pale blue eyes cut through them, focused on her.

  "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine," Jiri said. And why do you care, anyway? She rubbed her hands across her eyes, hating the grief that kept coming for her but helpless before it.

  "Gods, is she crying again?" Morvius stood behind them, but his deep voice carried over the noise of the crowd and the sound of the drums. "What is she, four?"

  "No," Linaria said, her voice cold. "She just had her entire world destroyed."

  "And that's just terrible, but what's that have to do with us?" The market seethed around them, people jostling each other as they moved from vendor to vendor, but everyone dodged the broad-shouldered foreigner, giving him space. "We did the job. We killed the demon, we got paid. So what in nine hells are we doing now? I don't remember Kalun paying us to be her new best friends."

  "He didn't." Linaria folded her arms and stared at the fighter, and the air around her grew cooler despite the thick heat. "I'm being sympathetic because I'm a decent person. And you're going to fake being polite about it because that's one of my conditions for you following me around, understand? It's been three years, Morvius. You should know by now that I do a lot of things that you wouldn't, things that aren't solely motivated by lust or greed."

  "Yeah, stupid crap."

  "Yes," Linaria said. "Stupid crap you don't have to deal with. You can stop following me anytime you want."

  "I could," Morvius said, but his eyes gleamed and the corner of his mouth turned up. "But then I wouldn't be able to stare at your ass."