“Savage?” Yari frowned, then smiled. Demon-flies glowed behind swirls of vie’s hair. “The Anawanama remember your mother. Does she remember them?”
Awa shrugged. “Anawanama have map-sense and storm-sense too.” She said what Kenu told her. “They read the wind, feel thunder in the dirt, but have no words for left and right.”
“I can teach you Anawanama. They see more colors than Lahesh do.”
Awa wondered: If a person learned Anawanama would she have a map of the world inside? Would she get a storm-sense and feel the wind and rain coming? “Can I learn both? And their stories?”
“Yes.”
Awa forgot throbbing feet and hugged this prospect to her heart.
“This is my mission.” Yari sat down next to her and drew a crossroads in the dirt. “To be a bridge, from the ancestors to tomorrow.”
“Is that why you had to buy so many Sprites?”
Yari stiffened. Anger or terror flitted across vie’s face. Perhaps both. Awa wanted to take her stupid question back. Yari leaned close and spoke with a scratchy voice. “You all will conjure a new world.” Vie patted her hand, as sad as Father staring at sick fruit trees and dead goat kids, as fierce as Mother planting Smokeland herbs that resisted poison sand. “Men like high priest Hezram want to steal the future. We can’t have that now, can we?”
Awa puzzled vie’s words and shook her head. “I guess not.” A Smokeland bee clung to a tight ringlet and buzzed.
“You’re a bridge also.” Yari sounded excited. “Perhaps you can teach me bee-talk.”
Bees liked Awa and she liked them. How could she teach that?
7
The Emperor’s Council
Djola pulled off the blindfold and shrugged free of the scrappy guard. The vast Council chamber with its high ceilings and sky windows was tucked in the middle of the citadel. Djola counted twenty doors, each wide enough for two elephants walking side by side, and leading to who knows where. Only Emperor Azizi, his guards, and Lilot, the chief cook, knew the safe ways in and out. Treachery here meant a difficult escape. Stone walls were thick to hold secrets and traitor screams. Enemy blood was easy to mop up—the floor was polished marble, quarried up the coast by northlanders, which people no one would say. Lahesh tinkerers? Lahesh animal masks hung on the walls: a menagerie of fire-breathers about to pounce. Djola chuckled.
The Lahesh say: Steel is sharper than any claw and only people spit fire. Nobody thought so-called savages had much to offer the Empire. But Djola knew better. If he mastered Xhalan Xhala, ancient Lahesh conjure, he’d wield the power of Smokeland in the everyday. He’d touch a withered tree and feel what caused void-winds to blow across the land. He’d clasp a man’s hand, taste his breath, and know his dreams. Djola would be able to see what might be, even call it forth.
Dizzy at the thought of such power, Djola leaned into a Lahesh mask, a creature with metal-mesh hair, ruby eyes, and stone teeth in a maul the size of his head. The dusty fire-breather made him sneeze. Xhalan Xhala was a formidable challenge, a Lahesh spell of spells, a closely guarded treasure, conjure that might break a mind. Samina would not approve and Nuar never trusted wily shadow warriors who married their enemies, but—
“Ignorance won’t save us,” he whispered to the mask. Wielding Xhalan Xhala to halt the poison desert, Djola could show Council, his wife and brother, and everybody that he was indeed a master of the impossible.
Dinner candles dribbled away. A waste of beeswax, it was still light. The high priest of Arkhys City and Council masters sat in roomy chairs around the stone heart of a long dead cathedral tree. They held their heads and sulked in their beards. No one touched a feast of roasted goat, spicy tubers, seaweed, and nut butters except flies and a cheeky rat. Emperor Azizi had a strange fondness for rats.
Djola slid into his chair. Anawanama spells carved in the arms tickled. A savage chair for a savage master. This used to irritate him, but his chair sat next to Azizi’s now. Djola tossed cheese at friend rat, a sable fellow who’d sat in his lap on occasion. Truth be told, Djola liked rats too. Masters groused, as if purple tides, crop failures, and thief-lord raids were the rat’s fault.
“Don’t indulge the nasty beasts.” The Master of Grain stood barefoot on the warm hearth stones. A tent of wood piled shoulder high threw flames up into the chimney. Grain’s blue eyes sparkled against black skin as he soaked in heat like a panther gathering energy for the hunt. He was young, shrewd, and on the rise. A beardless northlander who’d disavowed his tribe (no one knew which one) to join the Empire, Grain had good reason for hating rats. He reminded Djola of himself, twenty years ago.
“Another poison storm ripped through the capital. Two dead.” Grain shuddered.
“So much unrest.” High priest Ernold rubbed crimson tattoos on his brown bald head. Gravy stains on his priestly robe looked like blood. He strode among Azizi’s helmet-mask collection: a hundred warriors with thick necks and bulging eyes, all stolen from vanquished northlanders, tribes whose names had been lost. “Hezram in Holy City offers Dream Gate conjure to Azizi. Blood sacrifice would stop poison sand and bring order. Security.”
“Kurakao!” The Master of Water praised the gods. A handsome rascal, yet this evening his silver eyes were dull gray, his strong back and shoulders hunched, his smooth skin sallow. “We should accept Hezram’s offer.”
The Master of Money, Water’s twin brother, also had a sickly pallor and a hoarse wheeze as he agreed. “The price will only go up.” Hard to tell Money and Water apart. Both were Hezram’s toadies on Council, Ernold too, though he’d deny it.
Djola smacked the table and rattled empty plates. “You’d suck blood from our people, our children, to make spells for order?”
“Transgressors who offend the gods aren’t our children,” high priest Ernold said.
“Hezram does blood conjure with children in Holy City?” The Master of Arms tugged a red beard frosted silver. An incurable idealist, he burped sour breath and patted a belly poking up from broad hips, a dumpling burial ground. “Shame.”
“Yes, but…” The Master of Books and Bones worried crumbs on his plate. The knotty beard on his sagging jowls was egg white. His eyes were black beads. He hugged a coarse cotton robe. “Griot storytellers claim freak storms never touch Holy City. Inside Dream Gates, weapons or weapon-spells turn on the men wielding them.”
Grain snorted. “Half the city lives in huts, bleeding for these impregnable gates.”
“And the glory of god. Bleeding is an honor for the fallen,” Ernold declared. Grain laughed outright at priestly nonsense. Arms scowled. The other masters squirmed.
“Mixing blood and tree oil to conjure Dream Gates is illusion solution. Outside Holy City, poison dust still blows, devastating the land.” Djola was losing patience. “From the mines to the farms to the forests, we must work together to reclaim the land, change our ways.”
Money shook a mane of black hair. “We can’t afford change.”
Djola rolled his eyes. “You’re against change on principle.”
“Hope enchants you.” Water shook his own mane and guzzled wine. “You step in dung and see the next harvest, not shit on your boots. Transgressor blood is cheap.”