Forged by Fire (30 page)
Dusk, and clouds congregated into a hierarchy of propor tion and density. A light rain fell—it would have been tor rential, over the distant jungle mountains—and the bonfires in the warehouse spat and sizzled as if dashed with oil.
Piah came running into the arbiyesku, breathless: A regi ment of soldiers was marching our way.
We stared, stunned and appalled. What?
“To throw them out.” Piah pointed at the Kwembibi Shafwai, whose eyes shone in the dark like pearls, all of them, every man, woman, and child, focused on me and my clan.
The sound of wings overhead. Terror spurted through us, and we all tensed and flinched, but the sound was not that of a Skykeeper: escoas only, their leathery wings churning up sooty dust as they landed in the gloaming. A collective shudder of relief swept through us all.
I stiffly stood and met Malaban Bri as he dismounted. Knife-carver slid off from behind him. Two-braids, and again the bayen man from the previous night, dismounted from the second escoa. My two soldiers shadowed me.
“Is it true?” I asked Malaban. He smelled of smoke and charcoal and sweat and was covered in soot; he hadn’t changed since the previous night.
He turned to face me, khol-encircled eyes grave. “It’s been decided. There’s no proof that we owe these people recompense for the knowledge they allegedly gave you.”
“They didn’t
allegedly
give it to me. It’s the truth!”
His barrel chest swelled and he released his breath: “So you say.”
“You doubt me?”
“
I
don’t.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry, Zarq.” His words were final. He nodded to Knife-carver, and the two of them, followed by Two-braids and the lord, crossed the compound to where the tribe of Silent Slayers awaited payment.
I followed. Savga followed me, Agawan carried in a sling upon her back. Tansan materialized from the gloom and joined us. Alliak and Piah joined her. A slow flood of rishi followed, pressing closer, closer to me. My soldiers were hard-put to stay beside me in the crush.
Like the
scritch-scritch
of a thousand weary cockroachs moving over scree, we heard the footfalls of the approach ing regiment of soldiers, coming to deal with the Kwembibi Shafwai.
Longstride and the matriarch stood. We all assumed our positions from the previous night, as if we were resuming a well-rehearsed dance.
“Tell them,” Malaban Bri said shortly.
Knife-carver gave his skullish smile and began a choppy speech to the matriarch. He paused once to search for a word, head tilted like a bird of prey’s; unlike the night pre vious, he didn’t consult Two-braid, and Two-braid made no suggestions.
When he was finished, the silence was all-pervasive.
Then Longstride hissed at us. At
me
.
She drew back her lips into an impossible snarl—she wasn’t human, wasn’t anywhere near human—and hissed, and her hiss didn’t stop; it kept flooding from her as if each droplet of blood in her body were turning into air and shooting from her mouth in a vehement stream, and I backed up a step from her, every fine hair on my nape, on my arms, rigid with horror. Either side of me, my soldiers’ hands dropped to their hilts.
The matriarch spoke, baritone voice muted and confi dent. Knife-carver looked nonplussed as he digested her words. My skin crawled then. He was not one to allow himself to look nonplussed. With effort he wiped his ex pression blank and translated. “She says they will summon the creature from last night. They say that unless you ful fill the bargain, they will summon the creature every night until nothing remains here but blackened bones and burnt earth. She says she can do this, and will do this, even when claimed by death.”
The matriarch turned to face her tribe and raised her arms, her exquisite waterfall of gold necklaces flashing with reflected firelight. She barked out something. At once dreadful, coarse coughs started erupting from various tribe members. Longstride continued her eerie hiss, eyes unwav ering upon me.
I could barely find my voice. “Malaban, how far away are your soldiers?”
He looked at me. “Is this woman capable of doing what she says?”
“Look at the clouds.”
The clouds had turned to coals, churning and clotting, edges tinged livid with fire. One man was singing—no, crooning. The sound was smooth and sinister, like a garrote slicing slowly through the neck of a victim.
“Savga,” I said hoarsely. “Run.”
Thank the One Dragon, she obeyed, and her flight loosed fear in the rest of the arbiyesku, and they began to scatter, slowly and uncertainly at first, but as the clouds began to siz zle like oil-splattered coals, pulsating with red, panic spread and soared. Mothers grabbed children and ran for cover, and sons helped aged greatfathers stagger into domiciles. Tansan and Piah remained beside me. As did my soldiers.
My nose began to bleed.
The matriarch bent, her magnificent pearl blanket held regally about her, and scooped up a fistful of dirt. The dirt was slaty, griseous: the color of clay. That had been the foundation of my mother’s world when she was alive: clay. The matriarch straightened. Spat into her palm.
“Tell them to desist,” the lord behind Malaban said, un ease fat in his voice. Malaban nodded at Knife-carver to obey, and Knife-carver spoke. His words fell on deaf ears.
With the spittle-dampened clay in her hand, the matri arch began forming a figure.
“Piah,” I said. “Tell the soldiers to hurry. Run.”
From the corner of my vision, I watched him disappear into the dark.
Drip, drip;
crimson beads of my life fell into the dust at my feet. With trembling hands, I pinched my nostrils together to stop the bleeding.
The matriarch reached under her waterfall of fine gold necklaces and withdrew a feather. A luminescent blue feather. I remembered how her tribe had swarmed up to the roof of the warehouse the night previous as the vast feathered brisket of the Skykeeper had swooped over us; I remembered how they’d raised their spears, how women and the young had clambered onto the shoulders of men. Stupidly unafraid, I’d thought them. Uselessly defiant.
Not so. They’d had a purpose. They’d been trying to reach the Skykeeper, and they’d succeeded: They’d procured a feather.
The matriarch rammed the feather into the clay effigy. Swift as an adder, Longstride grabbed my head, wrenched it forward, and the matriarch extended her palm beneath my chin. My blood dripped onto her clay figure even as Malaban Bri shouted something and Tansan leaped toward me and my soldiers withdrew their swords.
A fiery pain blasted across my face, and the next I knew I was on my back, on the ground, watching the clay fig ure in the matriarch’s hand grow and lengthen as a violent blue vortex enclosed it. Tansan, too, lay on the ground, still and silent beside me. My guards were likewise unconscious, their swords shattered about them as if they’d been made of glass.
The figure floated off the matriarch’s hand, grew to the size of a human, and coalesced into my mother, gowned in pleated blue.
She looked ill pleased.
“Zarq.” Her voice was horrible, the rattle of a finger bone prodding the loose teeth of a corpse. Her eyes found mine: her eyes, but not her eyes. Eyes that, in lieu of pupils, had roiling maggots. “How?”
She wanted to know how I’d summoned her. But I hadn’t.
The matriarch spoke.
Like a sheet of moving blue water, my mother turned slowly to look, unblinkingly, at the matriarch. Slowly her blue bitoo began to fade from the waist down. In its place appeared scaled red legs, stork-thin and dripping with rot. At the matriarch’s command, she was beginning the trans formation into a Skykeeper.
“Don’t listen to her,” I said, speaking over the matri arch’s chant. Somehow I was on my feet again, legs un steady. “Mother, don’t do it. This is
your
Clutch, Xxamer Zu. Remember?”
I turned to Malaban Bri. “Give them the damn bull and a yearling.”
The matriarch continued to speak while the harsh, un natural barks of the tribe of the Silent Slayers ricocheted around the night. The haunt’s arms turned into wing bones.
“Mother, listen.” I stepped forward. “You have kin here, the danku, the pottery clan. I’ve seen them. You have neph ews, nieces. Your sister, she’s alive. She has a daughter who looks just like Waivia.”
“Waivia.” My mother—the haunt, the half-formed Skykeeper—swung on me. “
You.
You threaten her safety.”
“No—”
“She tells me you gather forces, you forge weapons, you want to take what’s hers.”
“I would never do that! She’s my
sister
.” Outrage gave me strength, even as I realized that somehow Waivia had learned that I hadn’t taken that ship overseas. “Don’t you dare accuse me of hurting Waivia. Ever.”
Malaban Bri said something to Knife-carver. Knifecarver found his voice, with difficulty. He spoke in the lan guage of the Kwembibi Shafwai. The matriarch paused; the barking paused; Longstride’s hissing paused.
“Yes,” Malaban said to the matriarch, stepping forward, extending the soft underside of one of his wrists. He swiftly pulled a knife from a sheath at his belt and drew it across his skin. “Blood truth. I vow it.”
If the lord who’d accompanied him was still present and conscious, he did not refute Malaban’s vow: the Kwembibi Shafwai would receive the neonate bull, and a young year ling to mate it to.
The matriarch needed no translation. She nodded.
The tribe began
reversing
their barks, sucking in bellydeep inhalations, while Longstride began hissing
in
air. My mother began to fade.
“Mother, listen to me.” Again I stepped toward her, arms outstretched. Great Dragon, even
now
she was still my mother, still exerted a pull on my emotions, and I didn’t want her to leave me. “Don’t kill the children of your birth Clutch. We won’t harm Waivia, I promise.”
“You’ll submit to her.”
“I can’t make that promise for Xxamer Zu. For myself . . . if you promise not to touch this Clutch or anyone on it”—I was thinking of Savga, and Oblan, and Agawan—“I will . . . I’ll submit to her. Me alone. To her will alone. Yes.”
“Not good enough.” She was flecks of bone and necrosis in ebon air, her voice the soft rasp of powdered clay blow ing over slate.
“I’m your daughter!” And I admit it, I was crying. She would always make me cry; every time she abandoned me, every fresh renouncement and abdication of her love would shatter me anew.
The haunt paused. Those chips of disintegrating bone floating in midair visibly
paused
.
“Yesss,” came the hissing sigh. “My Zzzarq.”
If I could have, I would have swept those chips of bone to my breast and embraced them, for I loved them, couldn’t help it. I did.
“Ssso. Thisss: I will not return unlesss Waivia enters thisss Clutch. If she doesss, I will protect her, regardlesss of cost to kin. I will protect her, as I should have done long ago.”
The matriarch clapped her hands together, smashing the clay effigy into dust. My mother’s haunt abruptly disap peared. The matriarch blew the dust in her palm away. The Djimbi chants stopped.
I swooned and landed beside Tansan, who was just be ginning to rouse.
I remember the damp, silty feel of clay beneath my hands as I formed incendiary shells in an assembly line. Savga’s prattle as she worked beside me, stuffing twists of straw into one of three chambers of each shell. How my eyes wa tered and nose ran and tongue shriveled from the stinging powder that others funneled into the clay fruits I fashioned by the hundreds.
At night: needles flashing orange in firelight as every spare hand, at every spare moment, sewed the heraldic crests of the Great Uprising: a burning yellow crown stitched upon bolts of plum-colored cloth that would be strapped upon the briskets and bellies of our destriers.
I remember the clanging ring of weapons being forged, the whoosh of pumped bellows, the metallic smell of hot iron plunged into barrels of water. I remember the smell of wood shavings, the thud of hammer and mallet, and rows and rows of great crossbows lying in the sun like the pale ribs of a herd of some slain, strange beast.
When I smell jute, hemp, and leather, I remember old men and women clustered together, knotting rope into nets, deftly attaching the nets to leather surcingles that would later be attached to saddles. A new weapon, those nets were, inspired by the Xxelteker incendiaries that we were fashioning from the firepowder and kerosene shipped in from the north and arriving by wagonfuls in Xxamer Zu. The nets held upward of eight incendiaries, and were to be slung beneath the belly of destriers, flown over the enemy, and cut loose. Takeoff ramps were designed and hammered into existence to accommodate such net-laden destriers.
I have other memories, too, formed around hard pits of emotion. Frustration: trying to convince Djimbi elders of the necessity for joining the council of the Great Uprising. But they were mistrustful and scornful and afraid, those wise old people, and why should they trust me, an aosogi via? I wasn’t one of them.
Where I failed, Tansan succeeded. With diplomacy and patience—and that supernatural presence that the dragonmaster had been so suspicious of—Tansan escorted a group of Djimbi elders into the Uprising’s stockade, to consult over the weeks with the council.
I remember jealousy: Why was I working on an assembly line, instead of in the destrier stables, caring for our neonate bulls? (Because I couldn’t go near venom, not for any rea son. Couldn’t trust myself. Knew I would plunge into addic tion like an anchor dropped down into the sea.)
I remember my growing fear as the days clambered quickly over one another: Malacar was going to war. Xxamer Zu was going to war.
I
was going to war. It seemed surreal, even as I formed shell after shell for incendiaries— surreal but terrifyingly true. Like the way a nightmare can leave one unsettled for days, the residue of the unreal vis cerally impressive and impossible to shake, affecting how one views every moment of the next day.
Laughter seemed sharp-edged. The sight of children at play was arresting and brought tears to the eye. Any baby that cried was quickly tended to—we all scurried to alleviate anyone’s discomfort; we all treasured the touch and sound of those we loved—even while we snapped at the baby for crying. We were all shorter on patience than usual. We were preparing for war; we had no time to waste on scraped knees, on children’s squabbles, on little tummies that demanded food and drink so relentlessly! Couldn’t the children understand this? We were going to
war
.