“Do they?” Bal climbed down to a ledge, fading in and out of view.
“Showing off shadow warrior skill doesn’t impress me.” Jod sounded impressed.
Awa was thrilled to see what Yari’s diplomat craft could accomplish. Griots were often peacemakers. She would need to learn this. “If we killed the barbarians, who would we be?”
“Alive, who will they be?” Bal always asked good questions, but why take Jod’s side? “Barbarians will think the gorge is theirs to plunder, pollute, and kill.”
“You talk as if the gorge is alive.” Jod sneered.
“Why not?” Bal snapped at him. “When the world is dead, so are we.”
Jod choked off laughter. “You actually believe Elder jumba jabba?”
“Some of it.” Bal and Jod faced off as if to fight.
Awa stood between them. “You can’t believe everything Elders say, but—”
“Grow up!” Jod shoved Bal to the edge of a ravine. “Barbarians would kill us without thinking.”
“Maybe.” Bal blocked Jod’s second attack and put a knife to his neck. “Maybe not.”
Jod grimaced at her skill. “Why are we on the run if they’ve been defeated?”
“No one has won.” Yari stepped from the shadows and separated them. “Tell a different story.”
“You know every story,” Jod shouted. “Why know so much and live worse than savages?”
“That’s your question, not mine,” Yari replied. Awa wanted Yari to argue with Jod. Instead, vie led scouts the tricky way around the gorge to throw off trackers.
Awa argued with Jod in her head. Anawanama and Zamanzi lived better than poor Empire citizens, even as renegades on the run. They ate well and lived free. Father’s farm had been headed for ruin. He had to sell Awa, so his sons could have prospects. Green Elders lived simply, not poorly. What good was a dank stone house, slaves who hated you, and dumb animals who couldn’t take care of themselves?
As if to prove Awa true, Yari took them by abandoned farms and villages where groundnuts rotted, wells ran dry, and grain stalks crumbled. Poison dust raised stinging welts on exposed skin. They paused in a barn to get out of a foul wind. Two balls of rags trembled by a dead farmer in an empty corral: young boys too weak to moan or stand.
“They probably sold their girls,” Yari muttered.
Scouts drizzled water on parched lips, and, when the wind died, threw the boys on their backs and trotted on, singing comfort.
Six days the scouts wandered, gathering survivors and refugees. A silent trek. Exhausted and numb, they finally reunited with the enclave in a green-land valley. The leaves on a hundred hundred trees whispered welcome. A stream rushing over rocks gurgled joy. Standing in a waterfall, Awa and the others washed the poison dust away and smeared on Smokeland honey to ease the sting. The story Awa told at the feast fires was of shadow-warrior bravery, Yari’s wisdom, and barbarian resilience.
“Well done.” Isra had slicked spiky white hair down with red clay for celebration. “What of the fields and forests?” Vie wasn’t fooled by Awa’s omissions.
“The land near Kaharta is dead,” Bal said, “and poison desert spreads.”
“We shall see if we’re better at surviving than Kahartans are.” Isra gripped Yari’s waist. “You should be glad I didn’t go and sent Garden Sprites with you instead.”
“Why?” Yari drank a long draught of honey wine.
“I would have stopped you giving away our goats.” Isra took the wine and drank a swallow. “I’d have let shadow warriors shoot our enemies and not waste fire arrows on air. I wouldn’t have risked our children for news of an old lover.”
Awa would soon be fifteen, a child no more. None of the Sprites were.
“It was your idea to take them with the scouts,” Yari countered.
“Today the crossroads gods smile on you.” Isra emptied the wine jug. “But I know these people. I’m one of them.” Isra grew up around the Golden Gulf and raided villages and enclaves until Yari persuaded vie to run away to the Elders. “Change is unlikely.”
“You changed.” Yari grinned. “Or are you still a tight-hearted demon?”
“You can’t charm everyone.”
“I don’t need to. I have you to protect me.” Yari squeezed plump Isra and sang an untranslatable Lahesh love song.
Isra groaned. “When I’m not there and you dance into danger and charm fails?”
“Do you plan to leave me?”
“The gods of the crossroads laugh at our plans.”
“We can laugh too!”
Isra drew Yari into their tent to finish arguing on the bed.
Everyone retired except Awa and Bal, who sat watching the sliver of moon rise. It had grown a little fatter. The wild dog rested his big gray head in Awa’s lap, chewing the last of the feast scraps. Bal balanced on one arm, legs swaying. Awa knocked her over. They wrestled with the dog, then settled into a furry heap, toes in the warm ashes.
“What would you have done?” Bal asked. “Killed our enemies or not?”
“I don’t know,” Awa said. “I’m not brave like Yari, to risk dancing for the enemy…”
Bal stroked a tight curl at Awa’s neck. “You’d have come up with a good story, I’m sure.”
“You always say that.”
“Well”—Bal touched the snake mark on Awa’s forehead, eyes full of sloppy sentiment—“we always need a good map for our days.”
Awa took secret pleasure in Bal’s faith.
4
A Snake in the House
Amplify now
Every yesterday lives in today
We have many futures and each changes the past
Many possibilities get lost to the void
Imagine freedom and it is yours
“Fatazz!” Chanting verses from Amplify Now wasn’t mastering Xhalan Xhala. Djola sipped a potent cathedral seed and cloud-silk potion. Tremors coursed through his body. “Xhalan Xhala changes all that might be into a single what is. Other possibilities turn into void-smoke.”
He spoke Anawanama to the boy who offered him water, a mute child of nine or ten. Quint’s age. “You must feed the void-smoke to the crossroads gods, or else it slips through a wise-woman corridor and storms the everyday. Feeding crossroads gods is tricky. The spell is almost impossible.” The boy shrugged and thrust a cup at him. Djola pushed it away. “I need fire, not water. Calling fire is the pivotal spell. Xhalan Xhala is a spell of spells.”
The boy stomped off, pouting like Bal. With Djola an honored guest on a pirate ship, Nuar would try to turn Quint into an Anawanama chief. Yari would be a better teacher. Sweet Yari, bold Yari went off to train Sprites, to teach the future. They had no future unless—“I was meant to find Amplify Now!” He shouted as if Yari stood near. Vie wouldn’t teach him Xhalan Xhala, proclaiming, Better for ancient wisdom to be lost than perverted.
Why write down conjure unless you wanted somebody to learn it? Once he mastered Xhalan Xhala, he’d sweep away corruption and bring fools back to the peace fire. Yari and Kyrie would return to the stone-wood table. Djola would offer his family and everyone a good life.