Firesoul Read online

  "No, you wouldn't. So just shut up and look pretty, your whining's getting on my nerves." The sorcerer turned back to Jiri, the chill around her fading away into the heat. "Let's go."

  They picked their way through the crowd to the booth, dodging merchants and customers, gangs of children and revelers that had spilled away from the Orchid Dance that filled the Adayenki, draped in beads and flowers and reeking of palm wine. They stopped once to watch a group of tall Bekyar stalk by, their piercings gleaming copper and gold among their scars, their expressions fierce and disdainful. When they reached the merchant that Linaria had found, Jiri stared at the bolts of cloth that hung from the racks surrounding him. Mud cloth, just like she had worn her whole life, cotton covered with intricate designs of brown and black, yellow and white. Designs that were close to—but not the same as—the simple, angular ones she had grown up with.

  Seeing them, knowing that they weren't made by her tribe—by the people who had once been her tribe—Jiri could feel her eyes grow hot, but she forced the tears away.

  I am not a child, whatever that baboon Morvius might think.

  Quickly, not thinking, she picked out the clothes she wanted. Loincloths and pants and long, light shirts to wear over them, done in black and brown patterns that would blend with the shadows that stretched below the jungle's canopy. Linaria argued with the merchant while Morvius loomed behind her, throwing fierce looks at anyone else who started to approach, scaring off customers until the merchant reluctantly dropped his price. Holding her new clothes, Jiri spilled out some of the coin Kalun had given her, then followed the foreigners as they moved on.

  "I want to look at what scrolls they have."

  "Scrolls are bloody expensive, Lin. Can't we— Oh, demon balls."

  "What?"

  Jiri already knew what, even as Linaria asked the question. She could see whom Morvius was glaring at over the crowd.

  The paladin's armor gleamed like a mirror despite the dust. The pale skin of Sera's face wasn't quite as clean, but it was again free from sweat. The holy warrior marched through the crowd, cutting through it like a sword, but chattering children flowed behind her instead of blood. She stopped in front of Jiri's group, dark eyes flicking over each of them before stopping on the shaman.

  "You've recovered."

  "Gods, Sera. We've just got her up and moving." Linaria edged over, putting herself partly between the paladin and Jiri. "She doesn't want to be interrogated."

  "Or converted," Morvius said cheerfully, stepping in from the other side.

  Now Jiri was staring at both their backs. She reached out and touched the arms of the foreigners, her shortness making her feel like a child. "What does she want?"

  Linaria stepped to the side, letting Jiri step around the unmoving Morvius. "She wants to ask you questions about the thing that came out of that ruin. She thinks—"

  "She thinks it's eeevil," Morvius said, drawing the word out mockingly. "So she wants to go poke it with her sword. That's a thing, with her and her church."

  Sera's sword hand twitched, but she otherwise ignored Morvius. "It is evil. It burned your village, Jiri. What was it?"

  "What was it?" Jiri had no love for this woman. She could feel the condescension in her, and it made her want to spit. But Sera had killed the demon that had killed Oza.

  The others helped.

  I helped.

  True, but Sera's sword had been the one that had carved the demon open at the end, had spilled its putrid essence out and sent its spirit back to the terrible place that was its home. Sera fought demons, and that made her a weapon, even though she was a dangerous one that might turn in Jiri's hand and cut her if she wasn't careful.

  I need weapons.

  "I don't know," Jiri said. "A spirit of fire, of destruction. Something trapped long ago, sealed away by my ancestors. Bound, until those raiders released it."

  "Evil cannot be contained." Sera shifted in her armor, the metal shell a strange affectation inside these walls, but in the fierceness of her fanaticism she didn't look foolish. "It must be cleansed."

  "Maybe," Jiri said, and the strange words of the common tongue caught in her mouth, held for a moment by uncertainty and pride until she forced them out. "Maybe you're right."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  "You know she doesn't trust you," Linaria said.

  Jiri carefully set aside a cluster of dried herbs, mindful of the merchant and the guards who stood so still and watchful around her and Linaria. Like crocodiles in the water, waiting for them to make the smallest wrong move. Considering the value of the magical trinkets, scrolls, and spell components spread on the tables beneath this bright awning, Jiri understood their caution, but was still unnerved by it.

  Their attention made her almost as nervous as Sera's.

  "I see how she watches me. She doesn't hide her suspicions well."

  "She doesn't try." Linaria picked up a scroll and waved two fingers at the merchant. His face twisted into a frown, and he held up four. For a moment they flashed fingers at each other silently until Linaria spread her hand and put the scroll back down. A strange form of bargaining, just as fierce as the shouting going on in the other parts of the market, but quieter.

  "Sera and Morvius have more in common than they would ever admit," Linaria said, flipping through another short stack of parchment sheets. "Neither one of them has any use for tact." She pulled her hand back and looked over her shoulder. Beyond the awning, Morvius sprawled in the shade cast by one of the Adayenki's tapestries, paging through a thin book he had found at one of the stalls they had passed. Sera stood a little away from him, her armor shining like water under the sun.

  "She wants to help," Jiri said.

  "Yes," Linaria said. "Herself." The half-elf looked back at Jiri. "Never forget that. She says she wants to hunt this thing because it destroyed your village, murdered your people. That's a kind of truth, but Sera doesn't care about your people. She thinks you're all savages who worship ghosts and demons, and she thinks your village was just a pile of sticks and mud. Their deaths, and the destruction of your home, were just signs for her. Like tracks for a hunter, announcing the presence of her quarry." Linaria lowered her voice a little more. "The church of Iomedae sent her here to hunt for evil, so that's what she's going to do. Hunt and hunt, until she's brought them enough trophies to buy her passage back to the north, where she thinks the real world is. She'll help you as long as it helps her, and not a moment more."

  "I guessed as much," Jiri said. "Which means I understand her. Which is a kind of trust."

  "A strange kind," Linaria said, looking back out again at Morvius. "But one I've used."

  "It's the ones you don't understand—" Jiri began.

  "—that are the hardest to trust," Linaria finished.

  The women stared at each other, Jiri expressionless, Linaria smiling faintly.

  "Do you need any of that?" the sorcerer finally asked, nodding toward the neat bundles of herbs.

  "These things? I could gather all this within a stone's throw of Kibwe's walls. Why would I pay for them? Can we go back now?"

  Linaria nodded and they walked away from the merchant, ignoring his pointed humph.

  "Done?" Morvius said, shutting his book.

  "Done," Linaria answered. "We can go back to the inn now, and you can read your dirty poetry in comfort."

  Morvius grinned and shrugged. "Well, if you're tired of the heat and crying girl needs her bed, we can go back. If you want to shop more though, I don't mind waiting so much now."

  "What?" Linaria asked, suspicious. She turned to look where Morvius had been staring. "Oh. Of course."

  Jiri had clenched her teeth at the man's crying girl comment, but she turned to see what Morvius had found. She just saw more market, more revelers, and more workers. "What?"

  "Them," Linaria said.

  "Oh." Jiri could see them, a group of young women clustered around a sweets vendor. Their hair was hennaed and worked into intricate braids with glas
s beads, shells, and brass, and they wore bracelets on their ankles and wrists that chimed as they moved and laughed. Their clothes were bright and loose, and for a moment Jiri felt a twinge of envy. They would be beautiful when they danced, their colorful skirts swirling around them, their jewelry and beads flashing.

  I never dressed so fine when I danced for Hadzi.

  More memories, tearing at her, and Jiri forced them away. "It's for the Orchid Dance," she said. "They've dressed to catch the eye of a lover."

  "Dressed?" Morvius said. "I wouldn't think that even you people would call that dressed."

  Jiri looked to the man, not understanding, then realized that he wasn't staring at the dancers. His eyes were on a group of men and women beyond them, hauling in baskets of fish to sell. They were dirty with their work, and wore nothing but loincloths smeared with mud and sweat.

  "Them? Why would you stare at them? They're not dressed for anything."

  "Because," Morvius said with exaggerated patience, "they're not dressed."

  "That's—" Jiri started, but Sera cut her off.

  "Indecent. Just because these people don't know how to be proper doesn't mean you should stare at them."

  Don't know...The righteous disdain in the paladin's voice made Jiri slide her eyes to her. "You come from the north."

  Jiri's words came out even, but Sera must have heard something in them. The woman turned toward her, squaring off as if she were getting ready for battle. "My family is of Chelish descent. But I grew up in Andoran."

  The names barely meant anything to Jiri, and she ignored them. "My teacher. Oza. He traveled in the north. He said it was so cold that the rain sometimes fell like chunks of glass and that the wind could strip all the heat from you and leave you dead in minutes. He told me the people there had to dress themselves in layer after layer just to stay warm. He told me he could barely breathe with all the cloth wrapped around him, and when he did he regretted it because all the clothes that everyone wore were never washed enough."

  "What are you saying, girl?" Sera asked.

  "I'm saying that you northerners drown yourself in cloth because up there, in the cold, it is proper to do so. You'd die without all that stinking cloth. Here, in the Mwangi, you may have noticed that things are different. There's no cold here, and the rain falls warm and often." Jiri swept her eyes over the paladin's gleaming armor. "Wearing too much clothing here makes you overheat. It gives parasites a place to hide. It holds your sweat and your scent and attracts predators. It gets wet and weighs you down, saps your strength and drowns you. It rots against your skin and helps start disease. In the jungle, dressing like you do in the north can kill you."

  Jiri hugged the bolts of mud cloth she had bought close to the wrap-dress Kalun had given her. "Here, in Kibwe, I can dress like this, in something pretty, something bright. In the jungle, I wear my mud cloth. Sometimes, if necessary, I just wear a loincloth, and no one thinks anything of it." She tilted her head toward Morvius. "No one stares. Because I'm not indecent. I'm just dressed for the place I live in, wearing what works best in my home. I'm just dressing proper."

  "Ouch, Sera. She jerked you up by the short hairs there, didn't she?" Morvius laughed, looking up at Jiri. "Y'know, runt, you're not so bad when you're not crying."

  Sera ignored him, frowning at Jiri. "What I mean—" she started.

  "Is that the first thing you're going to teach these damned savages is how to dress themselves?" Linaria stared at Sera, and the wicked gleam in her eyes almost made her look like Morvius. "Isn't that what you told me right after you got here?"

  Sera gave up trying to look reasonable. Her sword hand fell to the hilt that rode her hip, and her face went hard. "It isn't moral. It isn't right."

  Linaria laughed, like bells tinkling. "Gods, woman, are you ever going to realize that people might decide to do something differently than you for good reason? That they're not just ignorant or evil?"

  "Give it up, Linaria," Morvius said. "You'd have a better chance getting her into a loincloth than you would getting her to admit that, and at least the former would be entertain— Uh-oh."

  Jiri had been staring at the paladin, wondering about the wisdom of trying to use her. When Morvius broke off, she looked away and saw what had caught the man's eye.

  Two women, breaking out of the crowd to stop near them.

  Patima and Corrianne, of the Aspis Consortium.

  Chapter Seven

  Fire in the Adayenki

  Linaria's hand rested cool and light on Jiri's shoulder, but her grip tightened fast when Jiri started to move.

  "Don't," Linaria whispered. "This isn't the place. This isn't the time."

  Where then? When? Jiri didn't bother to voice her questions, but she didn't pull against Linaria's grip. Something in her had shifted. She forgot the market and the crowd, her annoyance at Sera. The dark shadows of her grief that had been so close fell away, and the bright anger that they had been covering ran through her, hot and alive. Since Boro, she had fought so hard to keep that heat down, banked and buried deep. Now she didn't care.

  Patima. Corrianne. Two of the raiders who had killed Oza and destroyed Thirty Trees.

  Jiri let the fire grow in her.

  She wanted to burn.

  "Linaria! Morvius! Sera! How lovely to see you all!" Corrianne flashed them a smile bright with spite. The magician was dressed in something ridiculous and fine, a black silk dress threaded with silver. Its neckline dipped low, but it had sleeves long enough to cover her hands, and her face was sweaty beneath an elaborate black hat. Behind her, Patima was dressed much more simply in a loose gray silk tunic that came down to her knees. The women were flanked by two large men who carried wooden clubs studded with brass, and a small crowd of children trailed them, carrying baskets stuffed with their purchases.

  "So glad you made it out of that beastly jungle. Did that horrible thing trouble you much?" Corrianne's words were poisonously delighted. "I hope not. Linaria, dear! You look so much better. I can hardly tell your nose was broken. How's your belly? Mikki's knife didn't leave a scar, did it? She's so rude! Halflings, though. They're just awful."

  "You stole something," Jiri said.

  Corrianne glanced at her, then dismissed her. "And Morvius. I heard you're playing with a new spear. Is it long? Is it strong?" She tilted her head and looked at him with a flirty smile and hateful eyes. "Has Linaria given you a chance to try it out yet, or is she still—"

  Jiri spoke again, interrupting. "You stole it from the Pyre, and my people burned."

  The magician turned her eyes from Morvius and looked at Linaria. "I see you found a pet in the jungle. Is it some kind of dog, with all that yapping?"

  "What was it?" Jiri had stopped paying attention to Corrianne. The magician was acting the monkey, throwing crap and howling, and just as small. Jiri looked past her and spoke to Patima. "What did you steal? What did you unleash?"

  "I took what I wanted." Patima's voice cut easily through the low roar of the marketplace and the drums that still beat in the Adayenki Pavilion. She used Jiri's native language, her western accent clear. "What I needed. As for what I released. What do you think it was?"

  "Something that the ancestors sealed away and warned us never to approach, for good reason. You let it go, and it destroyed my village, killed my people. And your demon—" The words caught in Jiri's throat like hot ashes. Linaria had said that this woman with the pretty voice had something that could bring her demons.

  "Oh, Patima, please." Corrianne rolled her eyes. "Don't talk to it, you'll just encourage it, and I don't want it following us home."

  "Corrianne," Patima said, switching smoothly back to the so-called common tongue, the trade language shared by locals and northerners alike. "I know you won't shut up, but understand that picking a fight with those three is going to end far better for you than picking one with me."

  The magician rolled her eyes again and turned her back on the Bonuwat woman. "Sera! You're still doing that thing with
your hair. I've always said that the servants of Iomedae were so brave."

  Patima dismissed Corrianne and stepped away from her, getting a little closer to Jiri. Her guard moved with her, staying to the side but right there, ready to step between his employer and Jiri.

  "I left the demon to guard our retreat. A good idea that worked out rather differently than expected." Patima's words came smooth, hypnotic, like a story. "I felt it, when you killed it. That's when I knew our time was up. I told the others to run and grabbed what we came for. That's when the other thing came, when it poured itself out of the air. If we hadn't been running already, those wings of fire would have closed around us and we would have been the ones to burn." Patima smiled, a slow, beautiful smile that didn't touch her hard, dark eyes. "You saved us, and I don't even have your name to give you thanks."

  Saved them. Oza had given his life, and Jiri had almost lost hers, and it had all been for nothing—for worse than nothing. Dimly, Jiri knew that Linaria was cursing, that the white-haired woman had snatched her hand away from Jiri's shoulder like it was a hot coal, but all that mattered was the woman standing in front of her. "I don't want your thanks." Jiri ground out the words. "You should have burned."

  "And maybe someday I will," Patima said softly. "But not today." She stepped back. "There are bigger things in the Expanse, girl, than one village. I didn't mean for your people to die, but I don't mourn them. I do what I have to."

  "What you have to do is give back what you've stolen. Before anyone else dies."

  Patima looked at Jiri, her eyes dark, expressionless, dead.

  "No," she said. "I don't." Then she turned and started walking away.

  "Well, that seems to have gone badly. I wonder what your ugly little pet said to Patima?"

  Jiri barely heard Corrianne. The anger she had let warm her had flashed over to rage, and fire crackled through her. "Raider!" she shouted and raised her hand, flames springing to life around it. "You killed my father!"

  "Jiri, no!" Linaria grabbed Jiri's arm, and this time her hand wasn't cool. It was cold, so cold it burned, and the flames that Jiri had been just about to throw hissed and died, swallowed by frost.