“What words are you chewing?” a pinched voice demanded in Empire vernacular.
Djola almost threw a knife in Captain Pezarrat’s placid brown eye. The rascal appeared in the sick bay door without a sound. Lahesh flame-cloth pants were cinched at his ankles and glowed in the dark. “Why are you here?” Djola also spoke Empire vernacular and slid the blade back up his sleeve. “I thought you—”
“You don’t know me.” Pezarrat’s pockmarked face revealed little. He scratched tight beads of hair on a sun-bronzed scalp and watched Vandana and the old healer stumble around swaying bodies. “My ship, belowdecks or above.”
Djola nodded. “It’s your fleet, Captain.”
Pezarrat held out a bark-paper scroll. A resin seal smelled of cathedral forests. “It appeared on my bunk. How does Kyrie do it? I don’t even know where we’ll go.” Djola tucked the scroll in his Aido bag. “Why don’t letters appear on your bunk? Is Kyrie trying to scare us?” Pezarrat eyed the barrel of books. “You tell that old mountain bitch how good we treat you. Books, meat, tree oil, a boy or girl or veson if you want.”
Djola grunted at pirate largesse. Pezarrat got quieter. “You feed the whores your meat rations. Don’t you worry they’ll die a poison death meant for you?”
Djola fed them antidotes too. “Why waste worry? They’re your spies.”
“I have to pay Vandana and Orca two shares each.”
“A share and a half,” Djola muttered.
“Who wants to sleep near a man who conjures ghosts and bad weather?”
“Haints come of their own accord, and we are the weather.”
Pezarrat chortled. He enjoyed their sparring. “You should join us.” Half the pirate crew began as captives. “You’ve already paid a tenth of what you owe me.”
“Surely I’ve reached a third by now.”
“During every raid, you hide in your bunk, talking jibber jabber. Afterward you disappear in a scroll or codex.” He looked down. “Amplify Now.” He puzzled over the first image: a conjurer with one eye closed leapt in the air and touched a wheel that exploded into flames. “What does this jumba jabba mean?”
Djola chose his words carefully. “Amplify Now is a poor translation for the Lahesh: Xhalan Xhala.” It felt strange speaking the name of the spell of spells out loud. Vandana took a sharp breath and dropped a needle in the middle of stitching a wound. Djola stared. Nothing had rattled her like that in a year of plunder and mayhem.
“You know dead languages? Speak, woman,” Pezarrat commanded.
Vandana shrugged. She never looked in Djola’s books. Orca couldn’t read. Poor spies.
“Xhalan Xhala is conjure to call tomorrow from what we do yesterday and today,” Djola said.
“No man makes time.” Pezarrat frowned at another symbol. “Flames from a crossroads heart. I’ve seen this squiggly Vévé before.”
“Reckoning fire.” Djola leaned close to Pezarrat. “Calling reckoning fire, a man risks burning up too.”
“I don’t believe in spirit debt.” Pezarrat slammed the book shut. “You claim reckoning fire for yourself?”
“It’s just a carnival dance.” Djola forced a smile. “A trick on the eye.”
“Azizi and Council welcome tricks. A book of Lahesh wim-wom might cut our tax.”
Djola snorted. “Untested, savage conjure is worthless. Just tall tales.”
“So you always say, yet you collect so much.” Pezarrat and Vandana glared at scrolls and codices.
“Azizi would know how his enemies think,” Djola said. “Tall tales reveal a lot.”
“So this jumba jabba is a cheap thing, but not worthless.” Pezarrat tapped Amplify Now against Djola’s chest. “Tell Azizi, all men are the same. Don’t waste himself looking for savage secrets, just grab their randy balls and squeeze.”
“What about the women, the Iyalawos who rule the mountains?”
“Squeeze them too.” Pezarrat sniggered as if they shared memories of violating women. “I don’t fear Iyalawo Kyrie or any of them.” He tossed the book out a porthole into the placid sea.
Djola flinched and bent down to a spy who’d gone to Bog City to poison wells and spread lies. A broken bone poked from a sleeve.
“This one also builds ships.” Pezarrat stood over them. “He needs both arms.”
Vandana gripped his torso and sat on his legs as Djola tugged clenched muscles to make room for the bone. He snapped the broken pieces together and held tight while Vandana wrapped the arm to a splint. The fellow passed out. Djola headed for a captive bleeding from her side.
Pezarrat blocked him. “Sometimes I think you should be a librarian or a priest and sometimes I think you have an assassin’s cold heart.” He wasn’t stupid, just greedy and heartless. “I think you’ll try to skewer me when you find whatever you seek.”
Djola spoke Anawanama. “I’m worth more to you alive than dead. When a change comes, it’ll be too late for you.”
“I have no use for savage poetry.” Pezarrat feigned understanding. “I intend to get rich, kill you before you kill me, and retire from the sea to the floating cities.”
“Why keep a snake in the house if she wants to eat you?” Djola translated a line from The Songs for Living and Dying.
“All men are snakes.”
5
Mortal Danger
No matter that Pezarrat tossed the book.
Djola had spent sleepless nights memorizing every word, every image. What you know is always yours. Lahesh conjurers could call fire yet stay cold. They felt the motion in stillness, sensed the truth in a lie, and changed the unknown into the known. They brought the power of Smokeland to the everyday. If Djola could touch a thing, feel its fate, imagine flowing in its time, he could pull reckoning fire and bring tomorrow to today.
“We’ve run out of splints and bandages,” Djola cursed.
“I sent Orca to fetch the healing silk I stashed in my hammock.” Vandana was sewing up pirates and captives in flickering lamplight.
“Thank you.” Djola hated sewing flesh.
“How bad?” A delirious captive clutched Vandana. “Will Pezarrat take me?”
“Maybe.” Djola drizzled a honey-venom potion into his and everyone’s mouth, for strength and sleep. Tomorrow, captives had to be well enough to replace dead pirates or be sold to a farm, brothel, mine, or army. Weak ones would be tossed overboard along with pirates too broken to fight again. Captives were eager to join Pezarrat. They imagined a few years of easy raids and then retiring to a rich life in the floating cities. “Better to get off these ships as soon as you can.” Djola wanted to turn his patients into rebels. No potion for that.
“I’m patience.” Vandana finished sewing and touched Djola’s arm. “Like you.”
Djola snorted.
“I will take everything to home.” Vandana held up a small bag. “A library from the floating cities.”
“Lahesh conjure? Is that how you hide your long blades?”
Vandana smiled, dagger teeth glinting. “Old warrior women trek across Mama Zamba to Arkhys City. We can be spared and know how to come back to home.”