Fannie snorted as the incline got steeper. Her hot breath fogged in cold drizzle.
“But—” Awa’s tongue was heavy. “So many die who were not to blame.”
“A person always has a choice.”
“Living in a transgressor hut, we—”
“Can you swear you did nothing to cause poison desert?”
“No, I, I…” She chopped roots and tried to forget herself for two years.
“Did you resist? Any of you in the huts?”
Awa shrugged. “We just survived.”
“I thought as much,” he muttered. “Throughout the Empire, people are just surviving and so water, air, and earth become poison.”
“What do you know?”
“Denial is worse than poison sand.”
Awa shuddered. “Everyone has spirit debt…” She never imagined resisting, only escape—an impossible dream each night that sometimes included Holy City crumbling into poison sand. Prayers danced to the crossroads gods were always for sweet revenge that wouldn’t trouble her heart spirit with more debt. The poison master’s bring-down-the-mountain spell had answered these prayers.
“What happened on the bridge?” She changed the subject. “Tell me.”
“You saved me,” he said. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
He chuckled. “Rogue impulse.”
“How did we escape the tower collision? How could we—” She almost threw up. He patted her shoulder. She tried not to cringe at the silver-mesh glove.
“Look to that ridge.” He pointed. “Our destination will keep your stomach down until we can take a proper rest.”
The horizon was a steady seam of gray. A grove of young cathedral trees rose above a rocky outcrop. Bushy new growth was burnished bronze. Awa’s dizziness faded. Acres of trees at the base of the hills had been felled. The scarred landscape was infested with toxic brush and strangle vines. Soldier beetles thrived, eating exposed heartwood.
“Thief-lords.” The poison master spit out hatred.
“Crows feast on fat soldier beetles. They’re happy.”
“Too many beetles decimate everything. Barbarians steal today and tomorrow too.”
Cathedral trees supposedly belonged to the emperor. Precious oil, wood, seedpods, leaves, and roots were his living treasury. Sickly trees were chopped with an imperial license. Hezram held the license for Holy City and environs. He guarded his groves with warrior acolytes and Dream Gate conjure. The lands beyond the Narrows Bridge were disputed, so no licenses had been issued. Empire patrols were too scattered to keep thief-lords from raiding groves and hacking down trees.
“Barbarians will return with elephant brigades and fire bows to claim this young grove,” Awa said. “I hate them also.”
“Forgive my anger. It is old and unwise, leaking through a crack. My wife warned me…” The poison master shook his head. “Southern thief-lords are no better or worse than anyone. We must forgive—”
“I don’t forgive them.” Awa clutched her burnt arm. “I can’t.”
“Do you forgive yourself?”
“Do you?” Awa shouted. “Is reckoning fire and poison sand forgiveness?”
The poison master stiffened.
Awa leaned on Fannie’s neck, away from his anguish. “Your forgiveness is hollow.”
“At the crossroads we can always change direction.”
Awa’s stomach howled at Green Elder jumba jabba.
“Every choice you make could be wrong,” he continued. “Forgiveness replenishes your heart spirit.” He reminded her of Yari, playing conflicting truths against each other.
“I’m too faint to think.” Her belly was touching her backbone. There were no scraps from Tembe’s cook pots until the end of a festival day. Perhaps she could scrounge something to eat in the grove above.
No one owns the trees
The poison master sang Yari’s favorite song as the mare high-stepped through strangle vines creeping across the Empire Road.
They belong to themselves
Or maybe to the bees
No one owns the dew
Another’s heartbeat
The rays of a setting sun
Drifting through the leaves
“People belong to themselves too.” Awa shivered in the cold drizzle. “Does that stop thief-lords from selling anyone? Nonsense we sing for stupid children.”
“My children are dust, scattered on the wind.” He drew Awa into his warmth and pulled his cloak around her shoulders too. “So I sing for my haint children, growing old in the shadows.”
No one owns our hearts
We can give love away
Or share it in our arts
No one owns my soul
Your tears of joy
The rays of a rising sun
As the new day starts
No one owns the trees
We belong to ourselves
Or maybe to the bees
Another miracle. Awa felt sorry for a monster, for treading on his wounds. She ached with the pain of ghost children loved and lost. “You must tell me how you called a miracle to save us,” she said. “And how we have traveled so far. It’s a thirty-day ride from Holy City to the foothills of the Eidhou mountain range, even on a warhorse.”
“Forty-day ride, and if I must tell you,” he said, “I’ll tell, when you’re stronger.”
Awa sat up on her own. “I’m strong enough for any story.”
“You need much heart spirit for the Iyalawo language of miracles.”
Awa felt dizzy again, remembering the opposite shore shimmering like a mirage. The poison master must have folded the distance from the Narrows Bridge to the Foothills Bridge. “You conjured a wise-woman passageway.” Awa had never believed the tales of conjure women folding space and bending time and light to hide their comings and goings. But there was no other explanation. “I would love to see such a wonder. Why would Tembe share Iyalawo secrets with you?”
“Not Tembe. Another.”
“Who?”
Someone battered at the seals around his heart. Awa felt this and flinched. He exhaled a cold breath and mumbled in a dead language as Fannie trotted uphill past tree stumps and rotting roots.
16
Taking Measure
The oily expiration of young cathedral trees filled Djola’s mouth. The grove must be around the next bend, beyond a rocky outcropping. New red leaves fluttered in the wind, catching the last of the sun. Trunks and ferns undulated in the shadows, a trickster’s dance. Gray forms with granite teeth, smoky hair, and spark hearts floated between the trees. Haints.
Djola’s breath grew shallow; his eyes burned with unspent tears. Samina was the chill at his neck, the cold in his bones. Kill nobody in my name. Using Samina’s spell to open a wise-woman corridor had been foolhardy, and then singing from The Songs for Living and Dying … Bold haints broke from the forest of shades and taunted him for reckless conjure, whispering with the leaves.
“How else could we escape the deluge?” He yelled in Anawanama, what his mother’s people used, before the Empire and after, to talk to the stars and trees, to ancestors and spirits. “I couldn’t choose death on the Narrows Bridge. Not time yet.”