“I fear bees more than crows.” Awa spoke truth. The banana smell of bee alarm, a buzz of wings by her ears, or a drop of honey on her tongue might land her on the other side of smoke for hours, for days, for who knows how long. Hezram and his witchdoctors hunted smoke-walkers and turned them into empty-eyed spirit slaves. That would be worse than the transgressor huts.
“Crows are welcome to my dead flesh.” She clutched the throbbing leg wound.
“A crow with white feathers.” He pointed at the bird watching from an altar. “Everything is wrong today, upside down and inside out. Even the bees.” He scanned the rafters and grabbed a hot poker. “I hate omens.”
“Stung to death might be better than a slow bleed.” Awa bit her tongue too late.
“Your blood is precious. A shame to waste it.” Hezram pressed hot metal against her leg wound. She lost sense for a moment. He threw cold rags in her face. “If you must take your leave”—he pointed to a belt of snakeheads hidden in his robes—“venom is faster.”
“Poison snakes are rare in Holy City.” A viper’s head with full poison sacs hung from a slim cord inside Awa’s shift and bumped her ribs as she bound the leg wound. “Dying slowly for god is redemption. Kurakao! I lose faith, sometimes.”
“You hang on,” Hezram said. “This is grace.”
“Yes.” Awa scrambled up. “Grace.”
“You think I’m cruel, evil?” Hezram pulled Awa close. His breath was honey sweet, his sweat oily and red. “I won’t be a drum that someone else beats, a road they walk to riches and fame. I won’t be bled and boiled.” He grinned at her, eyes wide, fervent. “The world is evil. A wise man does what he has to. I’m strong enough to prevail.”
“Yes, but—” Awa ground her teeth. The cauldron chambers were on the other side of the Nightmare Gates, so priests and acolytes could do what they wanted. And so could transgressors. Stabbing Hezram with the viper’s fangs would be easy. Afterward, she could follow the Dream Gates to the outside. Who would know she’d killed him? Not Jod, he never noticed her. Awa groaned. She wasn’t a killer. Imagining murder was easier than actually doing it.
“What?” Hezram demanded.
“Everything we believe could be false.”
Hezram laughed. “One thing is sure. The gods are indifferent to our suffering.”
“Perhaps we must be better than the gods.”
“Perhaps you’re a coward afraid to give up ghosts and face death.”
Awa met his gaze unafraid. “I seek redemption however it comes.”
His expression hardened. “Then you shall find it. Get out of here.”
19
Basawili
More breath to come. Not for Djola’s family. They were all dead. Or just Nuar? Nobody has seen the bodies. Not knowing was torture. They’d died a thousand thousand times in his mind, because of him. Djola had mourned them over and over. He was finished with torture, with hope and struggle.
An icy wind grabbed his arm. Frigid air made him cough. The fleet must have hit an ice storm. Djola was too thin. He wasn’t eating enough. The cold got to him under anybody’s thick, hairy hide, and wrecked even drugged sleep. Actually, he’d taken enough medicine to stop his heart. Had the cold followed him to the death lands? He opened crusty eyes. White light blinded him. He blinked and squinted. The scent of almonds and raintree blossoms pierced woozy visions, organizing the view a little.
“Come with me.” The scar moon spoke, a red slash on a gray horizon above hills and valleys of water, not land. He was still at sea. “Come to Smokeland. We have so little time.”
Not the moon talking, but Samina—her words tugged him away from the everyday. He was thrilled and frightened. “No worry. Vandana and Orca stand guard.” How could Samina know their names? “Hurry!” She used the voice not to be argued with, so Djola left his breath body on Pezarrat’s ship and flew over a sea of behemoth eyes. Their icy geysers lifted him high.
“This way,” Samina shouted.
Djola groped the cold, trying to touch her, pull her close. In one achy heartbeat, he passed through the border-void to Smokeland, going too fast for despair.
“I would spend these last moments with you,” she said.
His last moments or hers? She drew him along a bridge of blurry starlight past icy comets to a winter region. “My realm now.”
A stream, frozen midair as it rushed over a precipice, shimmered. Light from a hundred hundred surfaces bounced everywhere. The shadows of snow-dusted trees danced against the side of a white mountain. One hazy form blended into another. Leaves rustled and tinkled, and Samina whispered and whistled. Djola wished he hadn’t swallowed a bottle of seed and silk potion. Suicide suddenly seemed foolhardy, cowardly.
“Where are you?” he whispered.
“Walking beside you.” Her face was a snow squall, her heart lightning bolts. “And also in a transgressor hut, where my breath body burns.”
He tasted ashes, but was calm. Knowing her fate would be relief. “Are you dead?”
“I’m not sister Kyrie. Still, I cheat death.” She whirled about him. “I set fire to the transgressor hut before drinking a lethal potion and traveling to Smokeland. I smell that Lahesh potion on your breath and see the haze in your eyes.” Her voice was gentle, sweet. “What are you doing, my love?”
He choked. “Kyrie sent me letters, but only from Grain, not from you.”
“I wrote you many angry words, and love too, but I burned the scrolls. I’m not Kyrie. She found you with Grain’s map-sense.”
“You find me now.”
“We find each other. Smoke-walking.”
“Grain said you were in mortal danger—” Djola slipped on ice. “I’ve mourned you.”
“What good was that?” Her voice echoed around the mountain. Snow rumbled in reply. Avalanches awaited her command. “I won’t be sacrifice, spirit slave, or victim. I’m a guardian.”
“You’ve found your way,” Djola whimpered. “I’m lost.”
“End torture in the huts, on the sea, in the woods and fields.” Her icy words tickled his ears. “Do this to honor me. You’re the Master of Weeds and Wild Things.”
He almost sneered. “No one masters Weeds and Wild Things.”
She sighed a gust of wind that blasted him over a cliff. He tumbled through snow and ice then gripped a branch and dangled over a ledge. “At first, failure is the map.” She used his words to their children. “Come visit me here, where the dead linger and watch over the living.”
He dropped to snow-packed ground. “What happened to Tessa, Bal, and Quint?”
“You abandoned us, that’s what happened.”
“Quint would be so grown up. Are they dead?”
“I burn to ash in a hut. Why ask me?”
“A mother’s duty—”
“What of a father’s duty?”
“Council stole my future and yours. I mourned the children too.”
“What if our children live and you waste heart spirit?”
Djola didn’t want to fight with her or hope she was right. “Still…”