 
### The Ascenders

A Red Wraith Prequel

Nick Wisseman

Copyright © 2018 by Nick Wisseman

www.nickwisseman.com

Cover design by Rebecacovers

With thanks to Brook McKelvey for her smart critique

An excerpt from The Ascenders won an Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future Contest in 2015. The current version was published on April 23, 2018.

All rights reserved. Except for the use of brief quotations in a book review, this book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author.

_This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental._

# Table of Contents

Preface

Tribe Names

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Afterword

About the Author

#  Preface

_The Red Wraith_ , my first novel-length historical fantasy, was always the story of Naysin, a Native American (or "original") boy who becomes the conduit for magic's reentry into an alternate version of Early America. But the early drafts included the points of view of several other characters. Eventually, I realized these secondary tales didn't quite fit. I still loved them, though, and vowed to make sure they didn't stay forgotten on the cutting room floor.

One of the excerpts stands well enough by itself that I was able to split it off into _The Battle Dancer_ , a novella that serves as a lead-in to _The Red Wraith_. The other stories are too intertwined to separate without gruesome surgery, so I've included them together here.

Fair warning: what follows doesn't fully conclude on its own—the ultimate resolution lies in _The Red Wraith_.

If you're okay with that, read on.

#  Tribe Names

Original Peoples*

Dine (Apachi)

Dzune (Puebo)

Hellani (Illineye)

Hodensee (Irqouis)

Kiksha (Chicksaw)

Lepane (Delware)

Lnu (MikMak)

Metica (Aztek)

Matowak (Montauk)

Pekout (Peqwat)

Roanack (Croatan/Sectan)

Tsalgi (Cherkee)

*Eropan names for these tribes are in parentheses.

Afrii Peoples

Alladan

Foim

Hausan

Oyon

Whydan

#  Prologue

Saint's Summit

On a summer day atop the Messippi pyramid of Saint's Summit, an original man known to some as Naysin and many more as the Red Wraith fulfilled a vision by summoning four lesser shamans from various races: Quecxl, a fellow original man riddled with pockmarks and accompanied by a dirty seagull; Amadi, a limping, muttering Foim from Afrii; Chase, an Anglo whose myriad burn scars included a crimson palmprint on his forehead; and Isaura, an Espan woman who braided her hair in elaborate patterns threaded with blue flowers.

Two of the shamans wanted to shame Naysin. The other two wanted to kill him. Everyone came armed.

At the appointed hour, the shamans ascended separate sides of the earthen pyramid to meet Naysin and Tay, his milky-eyed companion (and seer of the initial vision). They crested the broad summit in eerie unison, and after a brief standoff, Amadi charged Chase, Chase threw fire at Amadi, Quecxl sprinted towards Naysin, and Isaura shot Naysin through the stomach.

Whipping his arms around in a circle, the Red Wraith froze the other shamans in midstride and—ignoring the mortal wound in his gut—peered into their memories, investigating how they'd come to wield magic, how they'd come to hate and love each other, and how they'd come to him. Tay's vision hadn't specified _why_ he needed them there. But Naysin knew that, if he were to remake the world before he died, he had to find the answers hidden in the ascenders' pasts.

This is what he saw.

#  Chapter One

Chase: Eight Winters Before Saint's Summit – Worm Moon

The infernal pig shot out of Chase's hands, scrabbling further into the woods and away from the colony.

Damn it all, but that sow was slippery.

Chase, having fallen onto the muddiest portion of the trail when the swine eluded his grasp (again!), picked his stout frame off the ground and sprinted in pursuit.

"Mila!" he shouted. "You blasted ball of bacon, come back here!"

That was two hours of chasing this pig now; if he didn't catch it soon, he'd miss the council meeting. Matthew would love that.

"Mila!" Chase called again, his ropy blond hair swinging in front of his eyes as he ran. "So help me, I will pluck your whiskers one by one if you don't—"

He turned a corner on the trail and almost ran into a kneeling red man: Nootau.

"Yours?" the chiseled Croatan asked, his hands pinning the pig by the neck.

"Aye," Chase panted. "She dug beneath the fence this morning ... I've had a devil of a time catching her ... Thank you."

Nootau's lips twitched, perhaps threatening to form a smile. "That rope for her?"

Chase removed the cord he'd wound around his shoulder. "It is, although I've half a mind to eat her now and be done with it."

Nootau shrugged, accepted the rope, and expertly trussed the pig under its legs and round the neck, leaving just enough length for a leash.

"Flint?" a small voice asked to Chase's left.

With a start, he realized Nootau was flanked by his son, Mukki.

"Flint?" the boy asked again, miming a striking action.

Chase chuckled. "You think I should roast the pig too?"

Mukki shook his head and gestured at his father.

"Ah—a demonstration." Chase could feel grains of sand trickling down his mental hourglass. But Nootau had caught Mila, saving him Lord knew how much time. "All right." He withdrew his flint and steel and made a show of holding the flint high. "At an angle, you see?" In a sharp motion, he struck the steel and was rewarded with a sizable spark.

"Fire man," Mukki said, grinning hugely. "Every time, he makes fire."

Chase suppressed a grin of his own—the boy's Anglo grew better by the day. "One of my few talents; I'm told I've a knack for it."

Nootau raised his eyebrows. "Every time?"

"If you hit it right. Here." He offered the flint and steel in one hand and held out the other for Mila's leash. "It's the least I can do."

Nootau considered the fire-striking tools for a moment, but made no move to take them.

"Please," Chase said, stretching his fingers invitingly. "I've more in my cabin, and you've done me a tremendous favor."

Mukki nudged his father eagerly, which seemed to tip the balance—with a shrug, Nootau exchanged Mila's leash for the flint and steel. "Every time?"

"Every time." Chase gripped the rope and turned back toward New Kent. "Thank you again, but I really must be going. I'll see you on trading day."

The red man nodded, clicking the flint and steel together experimentally. "See you."

"See you," Mukki echoed excitedly.

Chase waved and began trotting back the way he'd come. "Quick now, pig—I've other swine to wrangle."

* * *

Matthew's plump lips curled upward in that familiar smirk. "Are we in agreement, then?" he asked, even though he already knew the answer.

Most of the other council members murmured their "Ayes" with mixtures of relief and excitement, but Chase grunted angrily and stood to leave.

"Is that an abstention, Brother Chase?" Matthew wasn't even trying to hide his pleasure now.

"It's whatever you damn well want it to be." Chase meant to slam the door on his way out, but he'd forgotten that its wood had swelled with the humidity brought by the year's first rains. So instead of a bang, he got a scrape as the dirt entranceway checked the door's momentum and robbed him of his parting shot.

Doubly furious now, Chase stalked toward his cabin, the modest house he'd built with his brother after their wives died crossing the ocean last spring, leaving James alone and Chase a single parent.

"But we built a new home together, Lord," he grumbled, flashing a baleful look up at the sky. "Because we believed in the spirit of Jesuan cooperation New Kent was supposed to embody—a harmony that should extend even to heathens in the wilderness."

Yes, the Croatons' moccasins chafed less than Anglo boots, and the Sectans' cotton was softer than Anglo wool, but petty comforts weren't why he wanted to continue dealing with Nootau and his brethren—despite what his fellow co-founders kept insinuating. The point of New Kent was to build a community, a New World that succored the unenlightened instead of consigning them to damnation.

But Matthew and his cronies had already lost sight of that.

"Bloody imbeciles," Chase said under his breath. "Bloody, dung-gobbling imbeciles."

It wasn't a far walk—the colony remained embarrassingly small—but it was long enough that Chase was able to step off some energy. For once, the fact that the unpaved roads were dangerously muddy didn't bother him. Slogging through them, around the humble church and past the half-full granary, was cathartic just now. He'd have to remember this the next time the council decided on a similarly stupid course of action.

"You get your pig?" Kyle Bieberman called out when Chase tromped past him.

"Aye," he said, civilly as he could manage. "She's back in her pen; filled the hole in with stones."

It was small comfort, though. Chase was still far from calm when he reached his front door, sweat streaming down his brow as he stopped with his hand on the knob. The question Matthew had carried the meeting with— _Did not the Lord Jesua intend us to build this shining city with our own hands?—_ kept reverberating in Chase's mind, challenging him to refight the argument he'd already lost.

Because where would they be without the reds' help?

"Dead, that's where," Chase whispered at the sky. "Or close to it."

The tribes knew the land, and they'd given aid gladly: advice about what to plant where; miracle cures for ailments that didn't exist in the Old World; fair bargains for food and goods. There had been tensions—aye, and a few unfortunate incidents—but the good outweighed the bad. And practicalities aside, if the settlers maintained the relationship, the reds could be saved, converted to the true religion and turned away from their pagan frivolity. They would help New Kent live in this world; New Kent would help them reach the next.

It was the only way the city could truly shine.

Suppressing the urge to spit in frustration, Chase wrenched the door open harder than he'd intended and—

Stared in shock at his brother, who was coupling with a red girl.

They were rutting on the dirt floor, the lone bed apparently too small for their impure union. The girl's eyes were squeezed shut with pleasure, but James looked at him in guilty surprise, his plump white hands frozen on her smooth red hips.

This was not the type of cooperation Chase had in mind.

"Chase ..." James began uncertainly before stopping.

" _In front of Kip_?" Chase asked, pointing to his son, who snored loudly in the makeshift crib he'd nearly outgrown.

The red girl opened her eyes, finally aware that something was amiss. On seeing Chase, she mumbled a few mildly embarrassed words, slithered off his brother, and reached for a blanket to hide her nudity.

But the lack of any real shame in her expression, and the way his brother tried to shrug off his sin—literally, with a shallow roll of his bare shoulders—just burned Chase. There was no other way to describe the sensation: it just _burned_ , sparking a firestorm of rage that made his earlier anger feel like a friendly smile. Feeling himself overheating with emotion, he tried to turn and leave, to walk away from his temper as his father had always counseled. His fury held him rooted to the spot, however, coursing through him, enflaming his blood, searing his mind with agonizing intensity.

And then everything was burning.

The roof, the walls—even the dirt floor had erupted with flame.

It took several moments for Chase to comprehend what had happened. His first coherent thought was that he'd been transported to Hell to suffer indignities even worse than watching his brother abase himself with a girl he hadn't wed. But then it registered that the two sinners were gone. Burned to cinders by the first flash of impossible fire.

As was Kip.

Three steps forward confirmed it: his son was soot. His son—Jessica's baby boy, the child she'd died to bear and the last legacy of her gentle grace—had been reduced to black dust and a bubbling stain.

Chase stumbled backward and fell into the street.

The stench of burning flesh slammed into him as he hit the ground. Breathless, he crawled to the nearest house and used the knob of its front door to pull himself to a stand. From this far away, the heat was tolerable.

But the recrimination wasn't: it rained down on him like the ash in the air.

That rush of anger. The fire in his blood.

He'd caused this conflagration.

Chase knew the crime was his as soon as the notion formed in his head. His brother had sinned, to be sure. But so had he, and far worse. He'd murdered his flesh and blood with magick—with the Devil's hellfire.

Chase's mind went blank.

Peeling his gaze away from the inferno, he started walking, past an overmatched bucket brigade and through the sparse crowd, both of which had gathered without him noticing. Several people offered words of sympathy, and Mila squealed from her pen, but no one stopped him as he staggered out of town.

#  Chapter Two

Quecxl: Eight Winters Before Saint's Summit – Pink Moon

"Close your eyes."

Quecxl did, even though he didn't know Citalli's cluttered house well enough to trust his memory of its layout. "You're not going to walk me into a wall, are you?"

"You'll be fine. Three steps forward."

"Big or little?"

"Normal."

"All right." Quecxl took three steps forward, stopped, and spun on his bare left foot for flare.

"Stop it. Two steps right."

"You're no fun." But he complied.

"One step forward."

Step. "Did your father lay a trap for me? Am I about to wander into a noose?"

"Only if you keep talking. Two steps right."

Step, step. "You know what I'd really like? Wandering into _you_ , waiting for me, wearing nothing but—"

"Stop there."

"Not just yet, then? So what is this?"

A shower of pellets bounced off his feet and shins. He opened his eyes to see maize kernels coming to rest around him in a spray of portent. Sobering quickly, he cleared his throat. "And ... what does this mean?"

From the other end of the room he'd been directed to enter, Citalli smiled and told him.

Quecxl dropped to a crouch. "That was a ... That was a joke—right?" He leaned in to stare at the kernels, trying to extract a different message from the pattern they'd formed after Citalli threw them.

Her smiled broadened, taking on the look of the contented jaguar statue that guarded the entrance to the fourth quadrant's central temple. "Do you know how to read maize?"

He wrapped his thick arms around his shins to steady himself. The motion caused the edge of his poncho to scatter several bits of maize—did that matter? "You're sure?"

"Yes, Quecxl, I'm sure." If she'd had a tail, it would have been swishing triumphantly. "The kernels are clear. To rid Tentocht of the pale ones, you must sacrifice me in three days."

Slowly, he rose and pressed his hands against the back of his head, still stunned by how quickly an innocent game had transformed into an ultimatum that he kill his new love to save the Metica's honor.

"Quecxl," Citalli admonished him as she stood to keep her face level with his—she was tall for a woman. "Maize doesn't lie. This is the gods' will. Huitzipochtli himself wants this. And it makes so much sense: you already have the knives! You weren't able to sell them because you're _meant_ to use them! Can't you see? This is _meant_ to be!"

He wasn't convinced, but she obviously was. "You want this?"

"More than anything." She traced his cheekbones with her index fingers. "Especially since it makes you the hero."

"But I'm not a priest," Quecxl objected, realizing this should have been his first reaction. "Only a tlenamac can ... can extract the heart, and I'm not even a tlamazqui. Far from it." He spread his arms. "At home, I help my mother care for the sick, not sacrifice them."

Citalli's fingers glided from his cheekbones to his lips. "Shhhh. It doesn't matter. Not now, with the Tlatoani held captive by pale ones. What has he done to stop them? What have the priests done to help him? No, we'd be fools to trust them any longer. We have to heed the maize."

He started to voice another protest, but she shushed him again.

"Think on it. I'll need at least three days to prepare. Shhhh. Just promise me you'll think on it."

Against his better judgment, he nodded.

* * *

After conferring with her best friend, a priest-in-training at the second-largest calmac, Citalli determined three days was too soon: she would abide by the ritual calendar and allow one of its twenty months to elapse. Which meant Quecxl had ten more days to agonize.

For hours on end, he mumbled through a series of internal arguments and counter-arguments as he went through the motions of trying to find a buyer for his flint and obsidian blades. He knew he looked crazy, but with the Tlatoani captured by pale ones, no one was buying anything but food anyway.

_The Tlatoani had been captured by pale ones_. Quecxl repeated this thought whenever it slithered to the forefront of his mind. Doing so made him angry enough to think Citalli was right, that with the Metica's ruler held hostage, and the priesthood seemingly powerless to help, maybe it was time someone else acted.

But these moments of conviction never lasted long. Mostly Quecxl just doubted.

And worried.

And agonized some more.

Why had such an immense responsibility been thrust upon a humble knapper from Otumba, a small craft center several days travel from Tentocht? He hadn't come to the island city with grand intentions; he'd just wanted to sell his wares and spend a few days exploring the empire's mythic capital. It was his first visit, and despite rumors that something was amiss, he'd been excited.

But when Quecxl's trading party—laden with blades, quetzal feathers, and jade ornaments—had crossed the southern causeway, they'd found the city in an eerie state of paralysis. Pale invaders had betrayed the Tlatoani's hospitality by taking him hostage in his dead father's palace. He still issued regular edicts, but everyone knew they reflected the pale ones' will.

And in consequence, all but Tentocht's most essential business had diminished or died. None of Quecxl's companions had sold more than a tenth of their goods in the five weeks since they'd arrived. The only silver lining was that venturing farther and farther from the sluggish central market had led him to Citalli.

She'd been watching a junior priest bury a rack of skulls—to make room for a new rack—next to the fourth quadrant's main temple. So she'd been well positioned to hear Quecxl try and fail to sell the priest a knife "sharp enough for sacrifice." After Quecxl had given up, she'd followed him into the main street and asked him if she could hold the blade.

Matters had progressed from there.

Over the next few weeks—during which his companions gave up on Tentocht and left—he'd learned that Citalli was a year younger than him, but born on a more auspicious day; that she was unmarried, still living at home and helping her mother weave quachtli, the cotton textiles the city's elite apparently used as currency; and that she was particularly impressed with his goal of selling sacrifice knives to the priests in the sacred inner city.

He'd also learned how tender her lips were, how soft her skin was, and how passionately her body could move. Those were his favorite lessons.

Things might have gone on that way indefinitely if it hadn't been for the massacre.

Some people thought it wouldn't have happened if the pale leader hadn't abruptly ridden out of the city with half his men, leaving a junior pale one in command. Citalli wasn't so sure. She thought it was the gods' way of expressing their anger with the Tlatoani's inaction. "It was fated," she'd said more than once after the junior pale one ordered his remaining followers to slaughter thousands in the palace courtyard. "The pale ones won't let us sacrifice, and the gods are becoming impatient. This was their warning. Who knows how much longer Tonatiuh will continue to rise in the sky if we don't act?"

For several days, though, all she'd done was talk, repeating variations of her interpretation to anyone who'd listen. Until the afternoon Quecxl had come to her family's home and she'd told him to close his eyes.

Was it really so simple? Was a sacrifice all that was needed to rebalance things? Heart-sacrifices were certainly holy acts, honorable offerings to gods who'd sacrificed members of their divine family to create humanity—payment-in-kind was the price for maintaining the universe. Sacrifices were about atonement too.

And surely the Metica had much to atone for if a handful of invaders could humble the great city of Tentocht.

But while the pale ones had tried to limit sacrifices, they hadn't been able to stop them completely—the high priests in the inner city still made regular offerings. So what difference would Citalli's unsanctioned death make?

An enormous one, according to her. She never betrayed any doubts, and her thirteen days as an ixtilpa—a divine proxy—only made her more insistent. "Can't you see?" she repeated to Quecxl as he attended another of the endless preparatory rituals performed by Coyotl, her priest friend. "This is right. This is what Tentocht needs. It _needs_ us."

"Why can't he do it?" Quecxl asked again, gesturing toward the kneeling, chanting priest.

Citalli answered the question as she always did. "No, Quecxl, it has to be you. The maize was very clear: your hand, your knife, my heart. It's the only way."

So it went until the morning of the fourteenth day, which found her as resolute as he was uncertain. Yet there was an inevitability about the proceedings now. Quecxl wasn't sure it felt right, but it did feel unstoppable. Which was why he allowed Coyotl to score his ears, dab his body in black paint, and adorn his arms with little bags of incense.

"You look like a tlenamac now," the priest observed with unseemly satisfaction.

Wasn't this blasphemy? It didn't seem to bother anyone but Quecxl. But despite his misgivings, the pressure to comply was no less powerful. And Citalli looked so sure when he finally saw her on the altar, so convinced that everything was as it should be, that her secondhand finery made her look like Omihuatl, the female form of Ometeotl, the original high god.

And indeed, there was a glow about her. Maybe it was just the moonlight—to avoid complications, they'd decided on a midnight ritual—or the strain of climbing the fourth temple's deceptively long staircase. But even panting and veiled in darkness, she looked ... holy.

Righteous.

Ready.

And so, Quecxl found, was he.

Coyotl mumbled a final appeal to the gods, moved behind Citalli, and pinned her shoulders to the altar.

She smiled, reached back to grip his forearms, and arched her chest toward Quecxl.

He nodded to both of them, raised his best obsidian knife, and ... hesitated. Only for an instant, but long enough to see something pass between Citalli and Coyotl as she looked into the priest's eyes. Something that had always been there—Quecxl had just been too foolish to see it before now. Too much of an Otumban rube, a simple country boy whose naivety must have been an endless source of amusement for these twisted urbanites.

So they wanted him to drive his knife home? Wanted the son of a healer to kill with a blade he'd rather see used to gather herbs? It didn't make any more sense now that he knew the truth, but it also didn't matter. He was happy to oblige.

Quecxl brought the blade down so hard it punched through Citalli and snapped on the altar. Rage hadn't clouded his aim—he'd opened her right below her heart. She screamed in ecstasy as her priest "friend" muttered fervent thanks.

Blood began to spill down the temple's steps, but Quecxl knew he wasn't done yet. He had to use what was left of the knife to make the hole big enough to remove her heart while it still beat.

And he was too angry to hesitate again.

But as he maneuvered the blade inside her, he felt ... resistance. More than skin and sinew would account for—he'd cleaned enough fish to know what slicing through innards should feel like. No, this was something more. Something strong. Something solid.

Something that was in him too.

Frantic, he let go of the bone handle he'd labored so hard to perfect. But it was too late. As the strange, stiff energy grew within him, the knife _rose_ from Citalli's chest.

No one spoke as the broken blade slipped off her stomach and clattered against the stone floor. All they could do was stare as the wound in her torso finished healing—finished _knitting_ back together—as if Quecxl had done nothing more than poke her with his finger.

Then, after a lengthy pause, Coyotl said what they were all thinking: "The gods have rejected the sacrifice. Tentocht is doomed."

Quecxl nodded slowly, backed away, and stumbled down the glistening red stairs.

#  Chapter Three

Isaura: Eight Winters Before Saint's Summit – Strawberry Moon

Isaura could smell flowers.

She couldn't place the type—she couldn't place much of anything about this New World she'd seen so little of—but she knew they were flowers. Newly blooming, fragrant, and just beyond reach.

Isaura undid the straw that bound each lock of her auburn hair. If Fate were kind to her today, she'd have all morning to fashion a new weave. A new pattern for a new day.

But the work couldn't keep her mind off the flowers.

Were they some form of red sage? The odor wafting into the shack wasn't pungent enough to come from a true strain, but the scent had some of the same sharpness. A bit watered down, perhaps, as if crossed with the subtle nothing of a bluebell.

What would such a hybrid look like?

Her imagination conjured an image of a petal unfurling, first into the shape of an upended vase, then a shallower dish, then a vessel of intermediate depth, the color morphing from dark blue to light purple to rich red. Beautiful ...

And likely nothing close to the real thing. But there was no determining the truth from where she sat: the only significant gap in the shack's wall was five feet away, and it might as well have been five miles. Moreover, all the gap revealed was an abandoned latrine.

Wrinkling her nose, Isaura settled on an interlocking pattern of braids. The stories her aunt used to tell her were fantasies—river brujas didn't exist, and even if they did, they wouldn't weave spells into their sin-black tresses. But what did it cost her to play at plaiting another hex in her hair? She had nothing but time, and the entwinement seemed an appropriate counter to the manacle encircling her ankle; a coil on her head to balance the twisted links around her foot.

Pausing to breathe deeply of the flowers she still couldn't identify, Isaura closed her eyes and tried to picture their petals again. They probably belonged to a blossoming weed.

But since she'd never see for herself, why not imagine something better?

* * *

Her imagination failed her later that morning, right about the time an especially ugly soldier began studying her battered face, as if trying to determine where she'd been hit the least—after all, no one liked an inconsistently bruised puta. Once he'd found his spot, the bastardo slapped it with the back of his enormous hand.

The blow sent her half-braided hair billowing like smoke from a musket's muzzle, but she bore the pain without comment, accustomed to it and well aware that protesting would only make matters worse. Best to let the bastardo finish and be on his way ... So that another bastardo could take his place in the godforsaken shack. And another after him, and another after him, and on and on and on, until this particular bastardo returned to hit her again.

In truth, she'd never become "accustomed to it."

Oh, she'd tried, as she was trying again now. Trying to focus on the mysterious flowers' scent—surely it was some form of red sage. Trying to concentrate on the "spell" she still meant to finish braiding into her hair. Trying to flood her thoughts with pleasant, untaintable memories from her childhood in Espania. Trying to be _elsewhere_ as the bastardo peeled off her meager clothing, pushed her onto the pest-ridden bed, touched her, caressed her, violated her ...

But at a certain point, it just became too much.

The exact moment varied, but sooner or later Isaura always had to stifle a scream. This afternoon, the moment came when her hairy assailant worked himself into a forceful rhythm—and suddenly she was suffused by paralyzing panic, numb and frantic all at once. She couldn't move, but it felt like she'd die if she didn't, but her muscles wouldn't respond, and the soldier just kept going, and she wanted to scream, but that would only make him chuckle, and ...

And there was something different: a new feeling of dizzying urgency that demanded she vocalize her anguish or perish. The impulse was too strong to ignore, so for the first time in weeks, she let the scream out, expelling a wave of anger and hurt from her battered mouth.

Then she was soaked.

What?

The bastardo had stopped his tired administrations. Was he going to hit her again? No, he was probably just laughing to himself. But ...

He wasn't moving. He wasn't even breathing.

Stunned, Isaura lay motionless for a few more seconds as random tears streamed from her eyes. Was this a trick? Was he waiting for a reaction before he snickered and resumed? But why was he holding his breath? And how could he make himself so still?

Unearthing her courage, she broke through the paralysis and struggled to get the bastardo's body off her. He felt ... lighter.

She knew why when he hit the floor and _shattered_ , bursting into a thousand dusty pieces that mixed with the enormous puddle beneath her bed to create a fleshy slurry. But it took her more than a minute to understand what had happened.

Her latest rapist had been drained of every ounce of water, completely desiccated by a half-woven, make-believe hair hex.

* * *

No one had sounded the alarm yet.

Isaura was sure of that much, at least, even if she wasn't certain about anything else right now. Except that she needed a better place to hide: crouching in a wagon partially filled with sacks of grain wasn't a very good imitation of being invisible.

Which was what she'd have to be if she was going to get out of St. Augstin alive. But the wagon had seemed the easiest means of concealment after she'd calmed down enough to feel the intensifying chill on her ankle—the manacle's clasp had somehow frozen to the point of porcelain-like brittleness; breaking it had been a simple matter. And then she'd slipped out of the shack and run to the wagon, because she hadn't known where else to go: she'd barely been outside since she'd set foot on this savage land. Most of her last year had been spent on her back. Or her front, if that was the way a "patron" liked it. There hadn't been much time for sightseeing.

Isaura almost laughed despite herself. Careful now. She had to be quiet until nightfall if she was going to have any chance of escaping.

Not that she knew where to go, or even how to get there. Maybe she could steal a caballo. She'd been a fair rider once, back in her old life—before sailors snatched her off the streets of Barcelono and forced her onto a ship and into a life of whoring. Explorers, they'd called themselves. Agents of the king.

She couldn't help spitting.

And then she winced. Not because spitting made her feel crude—she'd discarded her pretentions long ago—but because seeing fluid leave her body reminded her of ... of what had happened in the shack.

Of how that solider died.

He'd deserved it. It was a bad end, but he'd deserved it. So did the other soldiers. And the sailors. And the hunters. Every nameless man who'd opened the door to her shack deserved to die, including the strange Anglo with the ropy blond hair. She'd never seen the stout man before yesterday, when he'd looked inside, asked a question she couldn't understand, shaken his head at her lack of response, and walked away. Surely that act had earned him as much retribution as the other cowards. Because the pity in his eyes had given her a stupid, stray second of hope—and then he'd done nothing.

The form of punishment wasn't important. Yes, she'd dried the soldier out until he was as brittle as ancient parchment—horrible, but God must have meant it to happen. The bastardo had reaped what he'd sown. He'd hit her, and raped her, and he would have done it all again in a few days.

He'd _earned_ his death. She'd been right to end him, to empty him like an upturned cup, to ...

To kill like a river bruja, with hate and a hex.

Isaura couldn't stop the tears, but she wanted to. Badly. They were just like the spit: more fluid leaving her body. More water.

More streams of damnation.

* * *

It was a dark night, but there was just enough starlight to see by.

No one had come looking for Isaura—from what she could tell, there was barely anyone in the settlement right now. No doubt they were off raping and pillaging some defenseless heathen village. She probably could have left the wagon hours ago.

But she hadn't been able to move. Daylight made her terror too real, emphasizing every detail of the reprisals she imagined the men of St. Augstin would enact if they found her. The justice _she_ deserved.

Not for killing the solider. The bastardo had gotten what was coming to him: she hadn't lost sight of that as she'd waited for the sun to set. He'd been a brute, and the world was a better place with him in Hell.

But brujas belonged in Hell too.

She was too weak to face a pyre, though. That's what you were supposed to do to brujas: burn the diablo out of them. Boil their foul bodies down to the marrow.

If you could catch them.

But Isaura didn't want to be caught. She'd waited for nightfall so she could take heart from the shadows and—

Duck back into the wagon as she saw the Anglo from the day before approaching her shack. His hood was up, but she knew him by his walk; she'd grown skilled at recognizing men by the sound of their approaching strides. A hole in the wagon's side allowed her to watch him open the door to her former prison, peer inside ... and turn to scan the settlement. His gaze locked onto the wagon within moments.

But instead of shouting, or springing forward, or doing anything that suggested Isaura's reckoning was at hand, the Anglo simply nodded toward the building she'd already identified as the stable and walked in the other direction, disappearing behind what looked to be the soldiers' quarters.

When Isaura finally exhaled again, her breathed sounded loud as roaring wind, a gale of relief she choked off immediately. If she'd interpreted his motions correctly, the Anglo had signaled that she should make for the stables while he ... did what? Pondered the fleshy slurry he must have seen in the shack? (Or maybe the light had been too poor?) Pretended he hadn't found her? Had a laugh with the remaining soldiers about the trick he'd played on the bruja-puta they were about to hang?

And what business had an Anglo in an Espan settlement? He'd looked more vagabond than trader; certainly not a man to put any sort of faith in. Even if—

The soldiers' quarters were on fire.

And not in a small way: within seconds, the entire structure blazed merrily, plainly lost even though a few men sprang out of the darkness to organize a ragged bucket brigade.

Bless the Anglo—he'd created a distraction for her. In her mind, Isaura apologized for the ill she'd wished him: he'd given her the opening she needed, a chance to dart to the stables, take a mount, and ride to freedom.

If only she could move.

But the paralysis had hold of her again, the same immobilizing force that had rooted her to her bed so many times over the past year. Except that it wasn't enabling her survival now—it was preventing it. Anchoring her to the wagon as if she'd been nailed to its planks, preventing her from so much as raising her head to look for more inrushing soldiers. The distance in her mind felt as safe as ever, but she needed to be _here_ : active and in the present.

It might not have happened if Isaura hadn't caught the mysterious flowers' fragrance again.

The wind brought it to her as the fire's hunger stirred the night air. The smell was ... emboldening. After breathing it in, Isaura banished her woodenness, slipped off the wagon, and crept back to the awful shack. Circling it quickly, she groped the ground until her fingers brushed against soft petals. Her former prison shielded much of the flames' light, so she still couldn't discern the flowers' nature. But after plucking four of them, she redid her hair, pulling it into a simple, innocent bun through which she inserted the flowers.

It was glorious to have their scent so close.

Then Isaura walked openly to the stables, taking her time about picking the best of the three remaining geldings. The largest seemed the most pliable, so she saddled him with the sturdiest-looking tack, wove one of the flowers into his mane, and galloped out of St. Augstin. She looked for the Anglo, but there was no sign of him other than the sudden combustion of another building, this one on the side of the settlement opposite her flight.

Doubly grateful, Isaura recalled what one of her more talkative "patrons" had boasted of several months ago: that Laflorida's borders extended as far north as a fast caballo could ride in a week.

Time to find out if that was true.

#  Chapter Four

Quecxl: Eight Winters Before Saint's Summit – Thunder Moon

The thieves were getting away.

Under the cover of an overcast night sky, the pale men had snuck out of the palace and made for the southern causeway. In anticipation of just such an escape attempt, Metican guards had drawn up portions of the bridge at sunset, but the pale men had improvised a platform to lay over the gaps. Now the invaders were halfway across Lake Tecxo.

They were moving slowly, though, no doubt weighed down by the gold they lusted after like pigs.

Quecxl couldn't help grinning, despite the strain of running all the way from the city's center. (A mob had formed after the first alarms sounded, and they'd been sprinting for the causeway ever since.) But his smile was short-lived—there was too much rage and guilt in him to allow other emotions to survive.

The mob shared his anger. After months of holding the Tlatoani captive in his own palace, the invaders had finally killed the Metican ruler. Murdered him, and then blamed it on Metican protestors. To be sure, few of Tentocht's inhabitants understood why the Tlatoani had been cowed so easily and for so long by the pale men—the nobles were even circulating a rumor that the Tlatoani believed the pale leader to be Quetxicoatl reborn—but killing him was blasphemy. It was also an act of humiliation: Tentocht, the mythic island-city seat of the great Metica empire, had just been laid low by a handful of hairy pale ones.

But while Quecxl felt the same anger as the men and women pounding down the causeway beside him, he was alone in his guilt.

No one else had botched a holy ritual atop the sacred altar of the fourth temple.

No one else had turned a simple offering into an unprecedentedly bad omen.

Never mind that he'd been tricked by a lying bitch he hoped to never see again—it was his act the gods had rejected. And shortly after his failure, matters in Tentocht had gone from bad to worse: the pale leader had returned and reinforced the garrison he'd left behind, Metican protestors had tried unsuccessfully to storm the palace, and the Tlatoani had been butchered.

Was it entirely Quecxl's fault? He wasn't arrogant enough to believe that. But had he contributed to the fall of his once glorious people?

It was hard to think otherwise.

So he pushed himself to keep running. To swim when he came to the raised portions of the causeway; to pursue the pale men as quickly and relentlessly as possible. But despite his extra motivation, he couldn't outpace the mob, much less the canoes churning through the water to either side of the causeway—when he came within range of the pale men, he was far from alone.

It turned out to be a blessing in disguise: the first volley from the pale ones' fire sticks was devastating, a synchronized explosion that flashed across the surface of Lake Tecxo and lit the night. Quecxl was only spared because the front rows of the mob—the ones he hadn't been able to outrun—absorbed the damage.

But not a single Metican turned back. Not now, when they could return fire with bricks and stones and everything else they'd found during the mad dash through the city. The pale men didn't let up either, loosing their fire sticks as quickly as they could reload them. The rolling thunder remained deadly, but it also gave away the invaders' positions—each blast was a beacon, a gleaming target that attracted thrown objects like a flame invites moths.

It was too much to keep track of, too confusing to make sense of who was winning and who was dying. So Quecxl just pushed forward, stepping and then swimming over bodies until he finally reached the pale men. Half of them were standing tall, fire sticks braced against their shoulders for aiming or against their feet for reloading. The other half were hunched over their makeshift platform as they positioned it to bridge the next gap in the causeway.

As Quecxl hauled himself out of the water, a canoe's worth of Metican warriors leapt into the pale men's midst and began wreaking havoc. Unlike the undisciplined mob, the warriors had taken the time to arm themselves appropriately: each one wielded an obsidian sword-club and wooden shield, and all but one of the dripping heroes had donned a suit of quilted cotton body armor.

But while they were much better equipped than Quecxl—he'd only had time to grab one of his smaller flint knives—none of them could match his determination.

Shouting his fury, he dived under the nearest pale man's fire stick, slashed his groin, and shoved him into the lake, noting with grim satisfaction that the thief's shiny metal armor would sink him like a stone. The next closest invader had locked blades with one of the Metican warriors. Quecxl ended the stalemate by burying his knife in the pale one's back. Blood spurted into the air and onto Quecxl's face, and for a glorious instant he felt vindicated, absolved of his failure at the fourth quadrant's temple. If this was truly his moment of redemption, maybe he'd be able to mete out the same justice to one of the pale ones' interpreters. Or if he was really lucky, maybe he'd be able to exact the Tlatoani's vengeance on the pale leader himself.

Quecxl looked up at the sky to scream his prayer ... and saw the gore spouting from his victim begin to diminish, to _reverse_ its flow and rush back down. The thief's wound was closing rapidly, sucking in every ounce of lost fluid.

Again. It was happening again.

Foolish though he knew it was, Quecxl turned away from the pale man—he couldn't bear to see the wonder on the invader's face. It wasn't right.

It wasn't fair.

As Quecxl bemoaned the curse that had come over him, a fire stick went off to his left, illuminating the nearest patch of water long enough to afford a glimpse of his reflection.

He looked broken.

He looked beaten.

He looked ready to die.

Then something hard obliged him by smashing into the back of his head, and he fell face-first into his battered image.

* * *

It was several months before Quecxl felt like singing again.

He used to sing all the time. Alone or in a group—it didn't matter, as long as there was something worth singing about. After he woke on the far shore of Lake Tecxo, however, alive but surrounded by the bodies of hundreds who weren't, it was many, many mornings before he felt like bursting into song.

Once he'd confirmed that the pale men had succeeded in their escape, Quecxl began wandering the Valley of Metica in self-imposed exile. He couldn't go back to his family in Otumba, not after inadvertently helping to destroy their once-glorious capital. Yes, the great city still stood, but the pale ones had killed the Tlatoani, and their pig-lust would bring them back for more gold. Quecxl could feel it in his bones. The Toltoch kings' noble lineage would be diluted, the Metica would revert to the savagery of their Chichmec forbears, and the Empire of the Triple Alliance would bend, buckle, and collapse.

Quecxl didn't want to witness any more of the tragedy than he already had. So he'd scraped by on the outskirts of Metican territory, avoiding any landscape that looked too cultivated. It wasn't easy. Much of the valley's floor was irrigated for farming, most of its walls were terraced for the same reason, and hedgerows of maguey plants were everywhere. But once he'd wandered far enough, the signs of civilization tapered off, and he was able to keep to himself.

He hadn't wanted to at first. While he was still traversing Tentocht's densely populated suburbs, he'd initiated a number of interactions, but each one seemed to go worse than the one before—he'd never really believed his more-worldly friends when they'd said the Metica were hated by their less fortunate cousins, but now he was experiencing the truth firsthand.

The hostility had only increased as he ventured closer to Tlaxalla, one of the few city-states the Metica had never been able to conquer—two encounters in border villages had almost ended in blood. After the second, Quecxl had kept to the sparsely inhabited highlands.

Despite these hardships, he'd survived long enough to become accustomed to living alone and fending for himself. He rarely missed rabbits and ducks with his sling now, and he remembered enough of his mother's teachings to identify which insects—like the maguey worm and the junil bug—were safe to eat. He still craved maize, though. He'd been able to eat a little on the cob, etole-style, but it wasn't the same as a carefully made tortilla, or a steamed tamale. Even etole gruel would have made his mouth water at this point.

He'd forgotten all about food that morning, however, when he'd entered one of the valley's many swamps and found an abandoned canoe and its cargo of not one but _two_ maguey-fiber fishing nets. He'd been paddling, fishing, and singing ever since.

Finally, a day worth celebrating. It felt good.

Especially since the last few months had been so cursed dark.

* * *

The evening was less enjoyable.

As twilight approached, Quecxl's muscles started to ache. If it had only been his arms, he might have thought the pain was the result of over-eager paddling. But his entire body was tightening like stretched quachtli. Then his head began to pulse, and his vision blurred so badly his surroundings looked like they were being obscured by fog.

He kept singing as long as he could, fighting the abrupt end of his best day in months. But he knew it was a losing battle, and when he came to a set of chinampas—the island-like fields peasants raised to farm the swamps—he belted out one last stanza and gave in.

It was time to call it a day.

It was time to crawl atop the nearest chinampa, pull his canoe up as far as he could manage, and lie down.

It was also, unfortunately, time to vomit and lose consciousness.

* * *

Quecxl roused several days later in the care of an old and shriveled Tlaxallan man.

"Lay back," the old man said in thickly accented Nahwatl, forcing Quecxl down with surprising strength. "You have the rash."

He was too feeble to resist. "What rash?" he asked as the old man felt his forehead.

"The plague rash." The old man said this matter-of-factly, as if he were telling Quecxl he had an upset stomach.

"I have the plague?"

"You have the plague," the old man confirmed. "Here," he continued, patting Quecxl's forehead, "and in your mouth. The pustules will come in a day or two."

Quecxl tried to sit up again, but he was no stronger than before. "Where?"

"All over." The old man wiggled his fingers above Quecxl. In another context, it would have looked like he was simulating rainfall.

Quecxl swallowed. "And then?"

"The pustules fill, probably burst. If that's all, then you'll have a good chance. But if your blood turns black ..." The old man shrugged.

"What can I do?"

The old man tapped the bed. "Rest."

* * *

The next week was easily the most painful of Quecxl's life.

Fever wracked his body in waves, rising and falling so fiercely he couldn't sleep. His stomach muscles were sore from incessant vomiting. His throat was raw from the accompanying acid. And the pustules ... The pustules were agony. They hurt as they emerged, ached as they swelled, and burned when they burst.

But his blood didn't turn black, and on the eighth day, Ixtli—the old man—proclaimed the worst had passed. "You'll have scars," he said, pointing to the oozing craters pocking Quecxl's skin, "but you'll live."

Ixtli was right on both counts. Quecxl made a full recovery, but he'd never be able to hide the fact that he'd been plague-touched. He didn't waste time pitying himself, though: little scars—even hundreds of them—seemed like the least he deserved for his role in the fall of Tentocht.

To keep his mind off the past, he spent his convalescence helping Ixtli as much as possible. The old man was spry for his age, but that wasn't saying much. Quecxl still didn't quite believe his wizened savior had hauled him off the chinampa, into a canoe, navigated the swamp, and _carried_ him to the house. Ixtli seemed too frail. Wise enough, but far too frail.

Eventually—around the time Quecxl started feeling like himself again—he realized much of Ixtli's seeming-fragility stemmed from grief. Plague had struck down most of his village in the last year, including every member of his immediate family. The few survivors kept to themselves. Quecxl had seen two women and a man going about various chores, but none of them wanted to interact with a stranger—much less a Metican—who'd overcome the disease so many of their loved ones had succumbed to.

It was no place for an outsider to linger.

So when he felt he'd repaid his debt—by replanting Ixtli's chinampas with maguey plants and taking care of other odd jobs—Quecxl gathered his few belongings and went to his savior to say goodbye.

But he didn't mean for their parting to be so final.

"I have the rash," Ixtli announced when Quecxl found him by the closest waterway. "Here," he said, tapping his forehead, "and here," he continued, pointing to his mouth.

Quecxl didn't know how to respond, so he just repeated what Ixtli had told him a few weeks ago: "Then rest."

Ixtli shrugged and allowed Quecxl to prepare his bed. The fever took the old man in the afternoon. The pustules came the next day.

Then his blood turned black.

"What can I do?" Quecxl asked, after three neighbors—who'd finally deigned to speak with him after he'd asked them to help care for Ixtli—wished the old man luck in the afterlife and left.

Ixtli had already considered his last request. "Go to Tlaxalla. Tell my family." He made Quecxl repeat the details three times—names, directions, specific messages—before finding the strength to tap him on the shoulder. "Take my canoe, not the one you were using. It belonged to a bad man. He took sick and died before you came."

Quecxl nodded, his eyes moist. "Why did you save me?" he finally asked, sensing there wasn't much time left. "I'm Metican," he elaborated when the old man's eyes wrinkled in confusion. "You're Tlaxallan."

Ixtli waved his shrunken hand dismissively. "You were sick. I could help."

It didn't seem like enough of a reason, but the old man was clearly failing, so Quecxl let it go. Soon after, Ixtli's eyes filmed over, the breath left his body, and Quecxl finally understood.

What he'd done on the fourth temple's altar had been a catastrophe, but Ixtli—Ixtli had saved him when he deserved to die. And the old man deserved a better fate than falling to the same evil that had killed most of his kin.

For Ixtli, he would risk re-summoning the curse he'd brought down on Tentocht.

Springing forward, Quecxl laid his hands on the old man's chest, willing it to rise and fall as it had moments earlier. But he didn't know what he was supposed to do. Had he said anything the first time? No—or at least, nothing curative.

Still, there had to be something he could take from that experience, or something his mother had taught him while he helped her tend her sick clients. Think ... Ixtli's body was beginning to cool ... Think! The old man's face looked peaceful ... THINK!

It didn't help—Quecxl couldn't come up with anything on his own. So for the first time in months, he prayed to Huitzipochtli. He wasn't asking for knowledge: he didn't care if he learned how to do this. It certainly wasn't something he wanted to make a habit of. He only needed to feel the stiff energy moving through him one more time. Before, it had just happened; why couldn't it just happen again?

Please. Let me heal him. I had the plague. I know how he suffers. Let me give him relief.

Ever so slightly, the air thickened. Quecxl redoubled his efforts, praying harder and faster. But nothing else changed until he returned to the theme of shared experience: I had the plague. I know how he suffers.

The air thickened further.

Completely focused on reliving the plague now, Quecxl forced himself to recall every detail: where the pustules had emerged, what it felt like to be covered in a thousand pussy pimples, how much they'd hurt when they burst. It was excruciating, but it was working. He could feel the stiffness inside him, flowing through his body and into Ixtli's.

Please, he begged Huitzipochtli again. Let it not be too late.

Eventually—after an exhausting but fruitless interval—the first pustule disappeared, swallowed by Ixtli's skin as if the blemish had never been. Then another disappeared, and another, until the surface of the old man's skin was once again marred only by wrinkles.

But his blood remained black. And he still wasn't breathing.

Quecxl threw everything he had left into the process, praying and visualizing and _hoping_ with all his heart.

It wasn't enough.

Ixtli's skin no longer looked like it was stretched over a night sky, but his breath never came back, and his body kept cooling. Quecxl hadn't accomplished anything more than beautifying the old man's corpse.

* * *

Tlaxalla wasn't as impressive as Tentocht—no city was—but it was still larger and grander than Quecxl was used to.

Even the family lots in the outer city were bigger than most nobles' properties in Otumba. And once he'd navigated to Tlaxalla's central plaza, he couldn't help staring at its focal points: a towering temple and a massive palace. The temple had been constructed in the intricate style of the ancient Toltochs, with two immense staircases instead of one. And in addition to housing the sumptuous living quarters of the Tlaxallan king, the palace was rumored to contain a ball court, a zoo, and gardens more beautiful than anything within many weeks' journey.

No wonder the Metica had never been able to force this city to pay tribute.

Trying not to look as awestruck as he felt, Quecxl wandered through the market—the plaza's other main feature—as surreptitiously as he could. His fear of being identified as a hated Metican had faded somewhat: no one was going to pay much attention to a commoner amidst such glorious surroundings. But he still didn't want to attract attention to himself if he could help it. The plan was to find Ixtli's relatives, tell them of his death, and leave.

Only the last part proved difficult.

Representatives of Ixtli's family were exactly where he'd said they'd be: hawking maguey-fiber clothing from the third stall of the market's seventh row of vendors. And it didn't take long for Quecxl to tell them (respectfully) of Ixtli's passing. No one questioned the news—the fresh pockmarks on Quecxl's face and arms were all the evidence anyone could want. One of Ixtli's nephews had healed-over versions of the same blemishes.

But a fast exit proved impossible: Ixtli's younger brother insisted Quecxl spend the night with the family and share in their remembrances of the old man as he began his journey in the afterlife. "You prepared him for his time in Mictlan. It's the least we can do."

Quecxl tried to decline gracefully, but Ixtli's family wouldn't have it. So after the market closed for the day, he followed them to a courtyard in the outer city, where several houses' worth of extended family accepted the news with tearful thanks. That night, they plied him with pulque—fermented from the sap of homegrown maguey—and asked him to recount his time with Ixtli again and again. At some point, Quecxl let slip that he was Metican, but no one seemed to care. Even though he'd heard whispers the pale men were regrouping outside Tlaxalla with the city's blessing and cooperation.

"It would be different if you'd heart-sacrificed the old man," a nephew—or was it a son?—observed during one of the night's surprisingly frequent lighter moments. "But he treated you like family, so we'll do no less."

By that point Quecxl was swimming with pulque. He couldn't think of a response, so he settled for expressing his thanks in song. Most of the family members who were still awake joined in once they recognized the tune, a ditty about a man whose attempts to help his wife make tortillas kept resulting in disaster. Quecxl noticed a few inconsistencies between his rendition and the family's, but the majority of the lyrics were identical. Maybe Tlaxalla wasn't so far from Tentocht after all.

The thought returned to him in the early morning as he drifted off to sleep in the center of the courtyard. Tlaxallans and Tentochts both spoke Nahwatl, ate the same maize, drank the same pulque—there were far more similarities than differences. Probably because, as one of the nephews had pointed out, they all shared a common heritage if you went back far enough: migrants from Aztlan had founded both cities.

Aztlan. The Place of the Herons. A city to the far north, whose barbarian inhabitants hadn't been afraid of anyone. Not the Toltochs they'd conquered when they came to the Valley of Metica, or any of the other peoples they'd swept aside in their journey south. Even the pale men wouldn't have intimidated his ancestors ... Wouldn't have let the pale ones sack their capital ... steal their gold ... kill their Tlatoani ... No ... never ... not Aztlan ...

When he woke—embarrassed at having drunk to excess like an old man who'd actually earned his right to indulge—Quecxl couldn't remember much of the previous night. His final musings on Aztlan stayed with him, however. No one knew if the city still existed. But if it did ... Maybe its people had the ability to pay the pale men back for their temerity.

So after he'd said his goodbyes to Ixtli's family—and they'd made him promise to visit if he ever returned—Quecxl left Tlaxalla with a new heading in mind: north.

To Aztlan, or whatever remained of it.

#  Chapter Five

Chase: Seven Winters Before Saint's Summit – Wolf Moon

New Kent was deserted.

Chase tried to blink away the evidence, but the desolation was still there when he reopened his eyes: every house abandoned, every intersection empty, every pen bereft.

And the graveyard was full.

It was fifty yards away, but he could see it all too well from where he stood, at the center of the colony he'd helped to resettle after convincing family and friends that leaving Angland and crossing the ocean was the right—no, the only—thing to do. He could see the mounds littering the communal plot that shouldn't have been filled for a hundred years; he could count the white sticks that were too close together to give peace to the unlucky souls lying beneath them ...

Some of the earth seemed freshly dug.

Lurching back into motion, Chase hurried closer, even though part of him didn't want to get near enough to read what was scribbled on most of the crosses. But it was impossible not to look, and he knew every one of the names. To list them together would be to write a lengthy butcher's bill.

"My bill," he murmured.

Yet one of the unmarked graves was definitely fresh—someone had been able to lift a shovel as recently as a few days ago and penetrate the frost-hardened earth. Someone he could talk to and ask about what had happened here after he left. He needed to know why the little colony had failed so utterly in his absence. Hadn't they been turning the corner? Nothing came easy in the New World—this had been Sir Raleigh's third attempt to make good on his charter from the Queen and establish a settlement on the island. But things had been on the upswing. Despite the council's pigheadedness.

Turning away from the cemetery, Chase considered it a blessing that he hadn't seen two crosses in particular: one large and one small. He'd looked for them—he couldn't help it—but they weren't where he'd expected. And that was probably for the best: he wasn't ready to face them yet.

But he was ready to find some answers.

* * *

It took all afternoon to find the last man in New Kent.

Initially, the skeletal figure sprawled on the Goodmans' bed looked like a corpse. But after a moment, the body stirred, exhaling with a terrible wheeze and shifting its legs.

It was Matthew.

A shell of what he'd been—he couldn't be more than half his original weight—and reeking of all manner of decay, but it was Matthew. Chase's chief rival in the New Kent of a year ago, and the only person who could tell him how the settlement had blighted so quickly.

Matthew greeted him by vomiting in the corner.

Chase waited until the retching ended and then asked the question burning through him like a fever: "What happened here?"

Matthew spat to clear his mouth and croaked out a laugh. "'What happened here?' he asks, as blind and slow as ever." Whipping his withered head up, he glared at Chase with enough venom to force him back a step. "Isn't it obvious? Our Lord deserted us. He let the red devils gorge at the teat while leaving nothing for us. Death is all he wants for the white man."

Suddenly overwhelmed by Matthew's physical transformation—gray hair instead of black; rotting teeth in place of an ivory smile; skin and bones but no muscle—Chase retreated another step. "Surely not."

The energy went out of Matthew as quickly as it had come, and he slumped back like a corpse again. "He argues when the evidence is so readily at hand. Look at me. Then go look at the cemetery. I just buried Danielle there. My wife, Chase. I just buried my wife next to the rest of the colony. Get a shovel if you don't believe me." He laughed darkly again and turned to face the wall.

"But we were learning the way of things when I left," Chase insisted softly.

"An illusion. Entirely based on the aid the Croatons and Sectans were providing." Matthew spat again, this time spraying out a wad of bloody phlegm. "Oh, you were right—so right. After you left, we stopped relying on the red devils' help. But only because they stopped offering it. And we weren't ready to have that cord cut yet. Not when the Lord saw fit to lash us with drought and pox just when we were most vulnerable. If the devils had still been our allies, we might have seen it through. But without them ... Well, the good Lord gathered a nice little collection of souls for his Heaven."

Chase managed—just—to keep his voice low and even. "You know this isn't what I wanted ... What about Raleigh? Or White? Didn't he come back with supplies?"

Matthew closed his eyes. "Still in Angland."

Chase chewed his lip. "So if you didn't ask them to stop, why did the tribes withhold?"

"Because they're fickle. Because they're fools. Because the Croatons blamed the loss of one of their daughters on us: Nootau's sister disappeared, and they said we took her. But it doesn't matter. It's over. Nothing matters now." Matthew dismissed Chase with a wave, his threadbare fingers flopping like reeds in the wind. "You'll excuse me if I don't ask you to stay for tea."

* * *

The quiet was even more unnerving now that Chase knew its cause: the reds.

The Croatons had abandoned his people because of what Nootau's sister had set in motion when she'd seduced James, let New Kent starve and waste away while they feasted on their pagan wealth and frolicked.

The devils were to blame. It was their fault.

Not his.

Chase bit his lip; it was raw from all the chewing today. To take his mind off the pain—in his lip and heart—he tried to remember New Kent as it had been. From his seat on the rim of the town's central well, he could see every structure that still stood (as well as the ruins of his old house, which he studiously ignored): the Bieberman's house, Carpman's general store, the Fowler's house, Talmander's tannery ... The entire village had once been filled with busy people working hard to fulfill a collective dream.

As Chase bent to rest his chin in his hands, his ropy hair swung forward and covered what remained of his paunch. He'd been proud of that extra flesh once: it had represented prosperity. Progress. The realization of a promise. Now it was just a bulbous reminder that he was still alive. That he didn't deserve to be—not after what he'd done. Not after bringing the Lord's wrath down on everyone he'd known and loved.

Through his bangs, his eyes lit on the word someone had carved with a shaky hand into the Fowler's first fencepost: "Croatons."

The true culprits.

Chase remonstrated himself for losing sight of that fact. He'd sinned—there was no denying that. He'd sinned terribly. But he hadn't forced the reds to act like savages. They'd done that on their own.

"That's the truth of it," he whispered. "By God, that's the truth."

Chase sprang off the well and punched his right hand into his left. The devils were the true villains here. They'd withheld their advice. They'd withheld their maize. They'd laughed and danced as his people screamed and starved. Yes, by God, yes. It was them. It was their fault. New Kent's blood was on their hands. They were the villains here.

He started pacing around the well. Maybe the reds had planted Nootau's whore of a sister to give themselves a pretext for letting the settlement whither on the vine—no self-respecting white man would have treated the bitch any differently. They would have used less sinful means, but the outcome would have been the same. The reds were canny enough to know that. Hell, even little Mukki was probably laughing.

And so: the devils had acted like devils. That was all he needed to remember.

But he wouldn't let them have his village.

That had likely been their plan all along: starve out the white man and then squat in the home he'd made. It made too much sense. Too much despicable, heathen sense—that must have been it. The red devils had perpetrated an act of conquest. Any minute now, they'd come whooping into New Kent to claim their prize. To sleep in the beds his friends and family had made, under the roofs they'd broken their backs to raise.

"No," he spat. "No, by God, I won't stand for it."

Chase could feel the sin rising in him, the evil that steamed his blood and fired his skin. He'd only felt it once the past year, when his wandering had taken him to Laflorida and that Espan woman's plight had enflamed him. But this was the first time he'd wanted to feel the heat; this time, he was doing God's will.

Chase was sure of it. It wouldn't make up for what he'd done, but that was in the past. And he'd come back to do what was right.

The Fowler's house was the first to ignite. Flames raced across the twisted timbers like waves crashing over a beach, turning the house into an inferno within seconds. The Talmander's tannery went next, exploding faster than a firework and pelting the surrounding buildings with sparks.

And then Chase was running through the streets, spraying every structure with the fire in his veins, overflowing with an urge to make the buildings move, to quicken them so much they had no choice but to burn. The Bieberman's, the Carpman's, the Geiger's ... Even the church.

He set all of it ablaze.

Feeling like a god—an avenging, Old Testament god—he sprinted to Matthew's house and threw open the door. His former rival cowered in the filthy bed, huddled against the wall as if death had already claimed him.

"I release you!" Chase shouted and, without hesitation, blanketed the room in fire.

A single, agonized scream vaporized his euphoria.

He couldn't see Matthew through the smoke, or hear him after his cry of pain ended with a horrible abruptness. But Chase could smell him. Even through the dense smoke and sweet haze of blazing cedar, he could make out the all-too-familiar stench of burning flesh.

Sick to his core, Chase lurched back toward the street. But his coordination deserted him: he missed the door and rammed into the wall, which was already super-heated and crawling with flame.

His left side ignited like a torch.

Stunned but still in motion, Chase tried to stagger out of Matthew's house again, this time with more success: he fell into the street and instinctively started rolling. He kept wriggling long after his side stopped burning, but no amount of thrashing could save New Kent. His colony was a pyre now.

And the hellfire was searing him from the inside.

He'd wielded too much of it. His innards felt as hot as his ruined skin, and his bones were about to boil over with marrow.

He had to get out of the village. He had to get away from the heat, from the specter of his burning dreams, from Matthew's house.

He had to get out.

He had to get out now.

He had to get—out—NOW.

Chase used the phrase to fuel a mad dash, reciting the words until he was clear of the village. But he didn't stop running when he passed the last house. He kept sprinting, even though his lungs were ragged with smoke and exertion and his side radiated pain where the fire had blackened his flesh.

Eventually he reached the nearby river and dove in headfirst. He didn't want to come up—didn't ever want to come up—but after a minute his body forced him to surface and breathe.

And as the steam rolled off him, he watched the last bits of New Kent burn to the ground.

#  Chapter Six

Amadi: Six Winters Before Saint's Summit – Hunter's Moon

"This is my territory!" the fat man declared with copious amounts of spittle. "My territory, giraffe suckler! Mine!"

Amadi grit his teeth, wiped his cheeks clean, and considered his options. Despite the fat man's obvious penchant for sloth, his ambush had been well executed: every one of Amadi's men lay dead or dying in the desert's sand. Most had been pierced by multiple arrows before they could draw a weapon. He'd been spared, but he hadn't escaped injury—an arrow had grazed his bald head, and the victors had nearly broken his left elbow when they disarmed him; the snake tattoo on his forearm was already marred by purple bruises.

His ejeme were unharmed, though. Terrified, but unharmed, and still just as valuable ... If you knew the right white man to talk to.

Maybe there was a deal to be struck.

"I can get you the best price for those," Amadi said, flicking his eyes toward his cowering cargo. "In Ghelwa. I know who to talk to. I know who will pay the most."

The fat man guffawed, setting his sweaty jowls rippling. "What makes you think I don't?" He reached up and slapped Amadi, harder than such a little hippo chip should have been able to. "You're not bargaining your way out of this, suckler," the fat man said as his men laughed again at the suggestion that Amadi was so tall he could lick a giraffe's balls. "You've been lording over this route for too long, trying to keep its wealth to yourself. But you never did it right; they say you're tough as rhino hide, but you're too dumb to get the best compensation. _This_ is what you should have asked for," he said as he reached into his pouch and withdrew one of the white men's tiny weapons—a pistol. " _This_ is more valuable than any of the trinkets you wasted your time acquiring." For emphasis, he hit Amadi again, this time with the pistol's butt. The impact dropped him to his knees.

And the mental lock he'd fastened over his anger came undone.

As soon as he'd regained his bearings, Amadi surged back to a stand, angling his ascent so that his bloody head connected with the fat man's chins. Stunned, the hippo chip dropped like the dung he was. Amadi dived on top of him, elbow first. The fat man's fingers were limp when Amadi wrested the pistol away from them, and they didn't so much as twitch when he smashed the foreign weapon into the offal's forehead.

Then the fat man's lackeys intervened, and it was Amadi's turn to crumple to the earth.

* * *

He was bound when he woke.

Not just tied up: bound. Bonded to the ejeme—his ejeme. Constrained by the same scratchy rope he'd used to form so many of their ilk into manageable lines over the last several years.

It would have been far, far better if the fat man had just killed him.

Amadi knew this to be true even before the ejeme to his immediate front and back—men he'd been the master of just that morning—started hitting and kicking him at every opportunity. And there were many: the rope connected his attackers to him at the neck, with no more than a foot of separation between them. So there was no running from them, no hiding, no recourse but flexing his muscles when he sensed a coming blow. At least the ejeme's hands were tethered; they couldn't strangle him. Not easily, anyway.

But the guards certainly didn't seem to care if the ejeme brutalized him in every other way possible. A serious injury seemed inevitable. And it proved so: on the second day, as they approached the edge of the Ko swamp, the ejeme in front of Amadi elbowed his stomach unexpectedly. Staggered, he fell into his assailant and slid down his back. The fall left Amadi's feet dangling behind him at a precarious angle, an opening the ejeme to his rear took swift advantage of: with a brutal stomp, the man shattered Amadi's right ankle against the sun-hardened mud.

No one spared any pity for him. The guards only halted the line long enough to check that he could still hop on his other leg, and that the rope was taut enough that he wasn't in the way when the ejeme had to drag him. The pain, from his ankle and myriad other injuries, was excruciating.

But it wasn't the worst of it.

Amadi also had to endure four days—the length of time it took to limp through the swamp to Ghelwa—of imagining his ancestors suffering a similar fate in Kutome. His fall in status had surely affected theirs. And he was the last of his lineage. If he wasn't able to reverse his fortunes before he died and entered Kutome himself, his family would fade into obscurity.

The humiliation was almost as bad: when the fat man recovered from the beating Amadi had administered, the taunts came fast and furious.

"You look good in rope, giraffe suckler!"

"Why so slow, elephant licker? Did you stub your toe?"

"Aww, is the wildebeest lover tired? I thought you were supposed to be _tough_."

The only time Amadi dignified the fat man with a response was to ask who he was.

"Ode," the fat man cackled. "Ode killed your men, giraffe suckler. Ode stole your ejeme and your territory. Ode will sell you at Ghelwa. Ode is the end of you. Ode, giraffe suckler. Ode."

As intended, it was a name Amadi would remember.

Still, he was alive when the caravan passed through Ghelwa's rotting gates. And that was no small thing. People knew him here. People with power. Black men and white men. Surely one of them could be appealed to. Surely one of them would help him.

But no one acknowledged him as Ode's guards led the ejeme through dusty streets and down to the endless warehouses. No one responded to his calls; no one lifted a finger.

His one-time partner didn't even blink. The Franc ass just laid silently in his carrying hammock, content to sway to the beat of his bearers' footsteps as the two servants ferried him past Ode's caravan.

And then, before Amadi could form another plan, he was herded into _his_ spiked holding pen, the same wooden cage he'd locked from the other side so many times before.

This was it—there was nothing left. Fat Ode, that little hippo chip, had taken everything. His men, his ejeme, his route ... The bastard had even waited until Amadi passed through the kingdom of Allada and paid the tolls. And now Ode had all but guaranteed Amadi would die at the hands of the last set of captives he'd been able to buy from the Foim dynasty's ahosi warriors.

Oh yes, he had no illusions about his fate now. The guards had turned their backs, and the ejeme were growing restless, projecting hate from their eyes and breathing heavily. It wouldn't be long before one of them struck. Then they'd all be on him, the whole line coiling in upon itself like a viper savaging its stomach with fang and tail. He wouldn't fight them. What was the point? He was already broken. Better to get it over with and die quickly: he needed to cross into Kutome and beg his ancestors' forgiveness as soon as possible.

But they—or someone else—didn't allow it.

The attacks still came, and they hurt as much as he'd expected, but when the closest ejeme tired of pummeling him and pulled the rope around his neck, drawing it tighter and tighter until Amadi's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets, he didn't die.

Instead, a viscous force began pooling _inside_ his neck. At first, he thought the rope had ruptured his jugular. But the force was thicker than blood, warmer, stronger, and more ... supportive. Within moments of its appearance, the stiff energy spread widely enough to act as a shield around his neck; try as they might, the ejeme couldn't tighten the rope any farther. He still couldn't breathe well, and his throat continued to burn like fire, but something—an ancestor?—had decided he wasn't going to die of strangulation today.

Or, it turned out, to die at all.

Once the ejeme realized he wasn't suffocating, they resumed beating him. Some hammered him with their hands. Others kicked him as low as his ankles and high as his mouth. A few settled for simply slamming into him like angry rams.

But every blow was buffered by the same force that protected his throat. And that wasn't all. Even when his spirit armor—as he came to think of it during the third phase of the ejeme's assault, during which they frantically tried to dismember him—couldn't prevent an injury in its entirety, the thick energy _repaired_ the damage.

If his skin split open, it closed.

If his muscles tore, they knit back together.

If his bones broke, they reformed.

The pain wasn't lessened, but no strike caused him harm for long.

It was impossible.

And yet, when the guards finally waded into the holding pen to prevent further damage to Ode's property, Amadi was no more hurt than he'd been before the attack began. His ankle remained shattered, but otherwise he was whole.

With no idea why.

Ode was just as mystified. When he visited the holding pen the next morning, he found the ejeme standing as far away from Amadi as the rope allowed. "You must smell terrible," the fat man mused. "Even so, I expect you'll fetch a reasonable price if we can hide that limp of yours." The prospect seemed to cheer him up, and after inspecting a few other ejeme through the pen's bars, he left in good spirits, presumably to arrange an auction.

Amadi watched the fat man waddle away, still trying to determine if survival was a blessing or a curse.

He was leaning toward the latter.

#  Chapter Seven

Quecxl: Five Winters Before Saint's Summit – Cold Moon

Fishing nets floated in the chill shallows like wind-caught webs, but no one tended them.

Canoes lay ready on the frosted beach, but no one ran them down to the waterline.

Houses rose out of the leafless forest, but no one occupied them.

Another spirit town.

Quecxl shook his head as he steered his own canoe toward the beach. He'd seen variations of this scene too many times during his journey north. Too many empty villages; too many full graveyards.

Too many victims of the plague.

Letting go of his oar, he let the tide carry him the last few rod lengths. As he rested, his left hand absently brushed over the pock marks on his right forearm.

He'd been lucky, fortunate to have a caretaker who knew what he was doing. A saint who'd nursed him through the fever, the vomiting, and the pustules and then somehow kept his blood from turning black.

That was what Quecxl wanted to do. That was who he wanted to be.

But he wasn't fast enough. The plague was always one step ahead of him, ripping through the next community just before he arrived. Sometimes he thought about bypassing the next five villages he saw, maybe the next ten. However many it took to head off the disease.

He never managed it, though. It was too hard to turn a blind eye. He'd been paddling along the coast, off and on, for more than two years now, and he still stopped every time he saw a deserted town. Because if even one person was left alive, then at least he could do something. And in the many villages where no one awaited him, there were always a few corpses to bury or burn. The last holdouts deserved final rites just as much as those who'd been taken before them: the friends and family the survivors had venerated even as sickness began to weaken their own bodies.

Quecxl rocked forward as his canoe finally ran aground. But he didn't get up. He didn't want to go into this shell of a village yet. It looked fine from here. Empty, yes, and singed on the edges; a few of the outer buildings were little more than blackened husks—perhaps the result of careless fire-scaping? He'd seen signs of the practice throughout his journey, a technique the Metica employed to encourage the presence of game animals. Apparently they weren't the only ones who shaped their environment with flame.

The remaining houses seemed well-crafted, if in a strange style. Well-crafted and well-cared for. Loved, even.

But once Quecxl stood up, once he stepped out of his canoe and started calling out to see if anyone was there, he'd discover the real state of things. The awful reality he suspected and expected.

He might have stayed in his canoe all morning if a gull hadn't landed on the prow.

It wasn't a very impressive bird—average-sized, if a bit squat, with dirty white feathers that wouldn't fetch much even in the commonest market—but it was certainly a bold little thing. The gull had settled within arm's reach of Quecxl, and instead of looking worried that he might snatch it, the creature stared at him defiantly, as if daring him to attempt something.

Quecxl didn't move; he was too surprised. Lunch had never just flopped down in front of him before, and it seemed wrong to turn such a singular moment into an everyday meal.

No, this was something more.

Something special.

His wandering forebears had founded Tentocht when—as prophecy foretold—they saw an eagle perched atop a cactus. Did the gull on his prow signify something similar?

Probably not anything as majestic. That was plain after the gull relieved itself on the front of Quecxl's boat.

"How generous," he said, his feeling of awe fading rapidly.

The gull bobbed its head and then took off like a shot for the center of the deserted village. The bird's flight looked ... purposeful.

Maybe the gull's appearance meant something after all.

Quecxl dragged himself out of his canoe. "Is anyone there?" he called as he passed the first houses, many of which were bordered by blue wildflowers. No one answered, in Nahwatl or any of the other tongues he'd picked up during his travels. He wasn't surprised.

Until he saw what the gull had led him to: three _pale_ men lying on the village square, in pools of their own blood.

At first Quecxl thought they'd been decapitated, but when he drew closer he realized they'd only had their scalps cut away. One of the men was definitely dead, his eyes rolled too far back in his head to return to normal without the aid of someone's fingertips. And short of taking a pulse, it was hard to tell how it went with the second man. The third man, though ... The third man was indisputably alive. Unconscious, with raspy breathing that sent sputtering, hazy plumes into the air, but alive. Quecxl watched the pale one's chest rise and fall a few times, turned abruptly, and walked back the way he'd come.

"I'm thirsty," he snarled at the gull when it flew in front of him, "and my beans are in the canoe." This seemed to mollify the bird: it left him alone as he stalked the rest of the way to his boat and rummaged around for his sack of cacao beans. Back in Tentocht, they would have been worth a night's stay at a good inn (assuming they weren't counterfeit). Not as valuable as a swatch of quachtli—he'd only had that much money a few times in his life—but not insignificant either. Yet in foreign lands, the beans were just beans.

Normally, only Metican nobles could afford to turn them into a beverage, so he'd been saving his small supply for a special occasion. And while his current situation wasn't quite what he'd had in mind, something about it seemed to warrant making his first cup of hot cacao.

The gull followed him like a dog as he searched the houses for firewood and a suitable pot. At first he tried to shoo the bird away, but it was too persistent. And too quick—it dodged his swats so easily he almost laughed.

But he wasn't smiling when he made his way back to the central square to build a fire near the pale men. Rummaging through the village had revealed the truths he'd been too self-absorbed to see at first: the canoes on the beach were more strangely constructed than he'd realized, the pot he'd found was made from a foreign metal, the clothes he'd come across were cut from alien cloth, and there were fire sticks in almost every house.

This was a pale settlement. Or at least, it had been.

Scowling, Quecxl took stock of the last inhabitants' conditions: no change. The first was still very dead, the third barely alive, and the second could have been either.

He kept his back to them as he ground the beans. They had to boil, and once the water started bubbling, he didn't have anything to do but huddle beneath his poncho and wait. He spent a while yelling for the pale men's assailants to reveal themselves, but he didn't expect anyone to step forward, and no one did; they'd probably left as soon as they had the pale ones' scalps.

Mostly, Quecxl just stared at the gull. It had settled on a post a few rod lengths from his fire, wings folded tight against its dirty little body. Was it sleeping? Its eyes were open, but they looked vacant. How nice that must be not to have a care in the world, not to have an ugly decision weighing on your mind with only a pot of (no doubt) poorly made hot cacao for counsel.

What was the gull's purpose? Why had it prompted him out of the canoe when all there was to find in this pale town were dead and nearly dead invaders? Surely he wasn't meant to care. Not after watching that first group of greedy pale ones—race-kin to those who lay bleeding behind him—bring the Metica to their knees. Not when plague was burning like wildfire through towns of people who could have been his cousins. Not when he couldn't do enough to change either outcome, couldn't even find rumors of Aztlan.

"Are you going to lead me there?" The words tumbled out of Quecxl's mouth before the thought finished forming in his head. For an instant, his hope flared bright enough to outshine his depression. But the gull didn't move, didn't give a sign, didn't even blink.

"Well, then," Quecxl said bitterly, annoyed with himself for jumping to fanciful conclusions again. Judging that the beans had boiled long enough, he poured the pot's topmost liquid into a small cup he'd found in one of the houses. Despite his best efforts, a few fragments slipped over the pot's rim, making his first taste of hot cacao a little gritty.

It was still amazing.

And scalding—Quecxl could feel the roof of his mouth blistering from the heat. The pain was welcome. "Now this," he told the still-motionless gull, "was worth the wait."

The bird didn't respond, but a voice from the Tlaxallan swamps of two years ago did: _"You were sick. I could help._ "

Ixtli.

Quecxl set the steaming cacao down as the scene in the old man's hut came back in all its horrible detail.

The smell of decay.

The silence of an all-but-abandoned village.

" _Why did you save me?" he asked impulsively._

" _You were sick," Ixtli answered, matter-of-fact as always. "I could help."_

And that was that. A Tlaxallan had helped a Metican for the simple reason that he could.

"You're a pox yourself," Quecxl informed the gull as he finally turned back to the pale men. The second man was dead—he'd bled out while Quecxl made the hot cacao. But the third man still fought, still labored to breathe.

"A winged pox," Quecxl muttered as he knelt next to the man's oozing head. "And Huitzipochtli help me, I'm about to save a pale one." After gathering himself, he tried to imagine how much it would hurt to have his scalp cut off, what the blade would feel like against his skull as it severed skin from bone, the way the last flap of flesh would tear as the knife-wielder's other hand gave a sharp tug ... Once he felt like he understood the pain—really, truly understood this particular hurt and the manner in which it had transpired—he used his fingers to make a slicing motion across the pale man's raw forehead.

The pale one jerked in renewed agony, but Quecxl didn't stop. He could feel the pain himself now, but he had to concentrate. Over the last two years, he'd learned that empathy was the best way to activate his power, to enable his ability to weave a person's flesh back together. Understanding how a plague victim suffered was easy—he knew all too well what the pox felt like. But it was much harder to recreate the hurt from injuries he'd never had himself. And he'd never been scalped, or even had a serious head wound.

So this was difficult.

Not impossible, though. It took longer than usual, but the stiff energy eventually flowed through Quecxl and into the pale man. And then, inch by inch, the missing patch of the pale man's head shrank. Reformed. Grew new skin. Sprouted new hair.

Healed.

Totally and completely, until every last trace of violence was undone.

"You owe Ixtli for that," Quecxl said as he set the still-unconscious pale man's head on the ground. "And I'm not burying your companions. You can feed them to the earth's maw yourself."

Hoping he'd done enough to appease Ixtli's spirit and the gull—or were they the same thing?—Quecxl stood, searched the closest houses for food again, and took his meager findings back to his canoe.

#  Chapter Eight

Isaura: Five Winters Before Saint's Summit – Strawberry Moon

Manuel was still the only male Isaura could trust.

Nethern men, Anglo men, Franc men—the rogues among them were all alike. No different than her lecherous Espan countrymen. She'd had to fend off advances from almost every nationality now; grubby, grabby men were the main reason she'd kept moving after leaving St. Augstin.

Language was never the issue. Within a few weeks, she could usually manage a broken version of a town's dominant tongue. And she'd been able to find work at almost every stop: washing dishes, laundering clothes, working the fields. Nothing glamorous, but it didn't take much to trump the first job she'd had in the New World.

No, it was always the men who made her move on.

Isaura stroked Manuel's mane and scratched beneath his chin, his favorite spot. "You're all I need anyway," she whispered as he stretched his head in pleasure. "My good caballo." He'd carried her out of Laflorida, never tiring when she'd asked him to run longer and faster than she had any right to demand. He'd never fought her either, even when she'd been starving and barely strong enough to keep her hands on the reins. "My good caballo," she repeated. "You carried me to that first village."

New Carthage.

Where Melody, the Anglo innkeeper, had taken pity on her and nursed her back to health. By and large, the women Isaura had met in the New World had been kind enough. And welcoming.

Until their husbands started leering. Like Melody's Abram had.

"I could only understand half his nonsense," Isaura told Manuel as she let him lower his head to graze. "Something about how my 'red hair looked like a flower bursting from fertile earth' when I rode you. Maybe he didn't say that; I had to fill in a few gaps. And who would compare you to dirt?" Laughing, she ran her hand along Manuel's coffee-brown side. He was a tall caballo—seventeen hands at the withers; maybe more—and long too. She loved every inch of him.

"Well," Isaura said after another few minutes. "Are you ready to try this again?" She nodded toward what amounted to the main road in these parts, a deer path the trader she'd talked to that morning had promised would lead to a pleasant little Franc village called New Parix.

Manuel snorted and tried to go back to his grass.

"I'll rephrase," Isaura said with a smile. "Let's try this again." Bracing herself against his side, she swung onto his back and slipped her feet into his stirrups.

* * *

The trader hadn't said anything about a drought.

Isaura watched a wizened old woman lower her bucket into the well again, obviously hoping against hope it wouldn't come up empty once more. Maybe the man hadn't known, but the signs were obvious: dry wells, parched throats, empty fields ... Isaura would have gone elsewhere had the trader disclosed any of these unfortunate details.

She was here now, though, and her appearance was already occasioning too much comment for her to just ride through. She'd tried that in Little Amstern, but a single woman on a large caballo drew eyes, and leaving without a word had apparently seemed like an invitation to a group of Nethern buffoons. Manuel had seen the lechers off by rearing and brandishing his enormous hooves, but it wasn't a scene Isaura wanted to recreate.

So she forced herself to make an honest effort of it. She still needed a place to belong, and aside from the drought, this little village seemed as good as any she'd come across in the last two years. "You ... I help?" she asked in her fractured Franc.

The old woman looked at Isaura dubiously before stepping back from the well and gesturing toward the crank. "By all means, if you feel like working those pretty young arms. But it doesn't matter who's doing the turning. This well's been bone-dry for a month. I just keep hoping that ... I'm not a fool, I suppose, for still checking every day. My husband certainly thinks I am."

Isaura hadn't caught every word—the old woman talked so _quickly_ —but she'd understood enough to know how futile her own effort was going to be.

If she left it to chance.

She'd learned a few things about herself since she left Laflorida. She still preferred not to think about why she'd left, and to be safe, she kept her hair simple: no patterns, no braids—nothing more elaborate than a bun threaded with the odd flower. But in her heart, she knew the shape of her tresses was incidental: her relationship with water was part of her now. And it had saved her more than once. During their travels, she'd called water from plants, trees, and even a stone—whatever it took to keep herself and Manuel from dying of thirst. Maybe it was time to put her curse to use for someone else.

Isaura didn't have enough control to fill the bucket at the bottom of the well: it felt like the shaft was at least forty feet deep. But she _could_ draw water from sources closer to the surface. So after she'd raised the bucket most of the way, she stopped to make a show of wiping her brow and shaking her hands, delaying long enough to fill the pail with moisture from the neighboring earth. Then she went back to work on the crank, and after a few more turns, produced a bucket full enough to make the old woman unsteady with shock.

"Praise Jesua," she finally managed. "It's the miracle we've been praying for. And you did it, girl. You did it. _You_ are the miracle."

Isaura couldn't help smiling as she blinked away tears; her eyes always leaked when she manipulated water. It was nice to see someone so grateful for a good deed.

However it had been accomplished.

* * *

"Can you dowse?"

Isaura looked back at Damien—the old woman's hairy husband—in confusion. "Sorry?"

"Dowse," he repeated, thrusting a copper rod into her hand and wiggling his nose at her limited vocabulary. "Sniff out water. Can you find wells? We need a new one. Getting water out of the old well was something, but it's still mostly dry."

Isaura fiddled with the bangles on her wrists while she deciphered the old man's words. His wife—whose name had turned out to be Alana—had all but dragged her to this small house after confirming that the water in the bucket tasted as clear as it looked. Once he'd sampled the water himself, Damien had sworn an impious-sounding oath and shifted boxes and furniture until he found the rod.

"My horse," she said eventually. "He need ... stable. Stall."

"Of course, of course. I'll have our grandson take care of him." Damien stepped outside and called for an 'Elliot.' "He'll see to your horse," Damien assured her when he reentered the house. "The big one tied up next to the well, yes? Must be—nothing like him around here. I bet he's a fast ride."

Isaura nodded uncertainly.

"So you can dowse?" Damien rephrased, his voice oozing hope.

She fiddled with her bangles again, as scared of saying no as she was of saying yes. But eventually she gave in and said, "I try."

"Praise Jesua," Alana murmured from the corner.

"We've been waiting for someone like you," Damien said, nearly shouting with glee. "An angel is what we needed, and that's what you are. That rod you've got there belonged to a dowser who lived in these parts years ago—he used it to mark the original well. I expect the stick's still good, even if his well isn't."

"The river dried up in the spring," Alana explained. "And when it went, it took our wells with it. Closest water we have now is Bear Lake, and that's nearly three hours away."

Damien shook his head ruefully. "Felix—our son; Elliot's father—spends his days driving a wagon of buckets back and forth. There's been talk of moving the town. But if you can find us a new well, maybe we can stay."

"First time," Isaura said, pointing to herself. "I not ... dowse ... before."

"Well, that doesn't worry me. If you can draw water from a dry well, you can figure out where to dig a wet one."

Alana added another "Praise Jesua" for good measure.

Isaura suppressed a sigh. Best just to get this over with. "Where?"

Damien smiled. "Bless you. I think I know the perfect spot."

* * *

"That's it: the old streambed. Drier than dust now, but the water used to be up to my knee." Elliot lowered his hand to the top of his boot, in case Isaura hadn't been able to interpret his words.

But she'd taken his point already: the streambed looked barren, little more than a scar upon the earth. Dead plants lined the banks, however, evidence that nourishing water had flowed here recently.

Using the divining rod for balance, Isaura stepped into the streambed and made for what seemed like the largest crack in its sun-hardened surface. She did so alone—Damien had insisted. "Dowsing is a private business," he'd said at least three times. "Elliot will show you where the old stream used to run and leave you to it. If I'm right about you, you'll know what to do."

She didn't.

It wasn't much of a surprise: she'd never done this before, or even seen someone attempt it. The rod just seemed like a sturdy walking stick. Was she supposed to tap it on the ground? Ram it into each likely location and intuit something from the vibrations? Toss it high in the air and see where it landed?

Pollas in vinagre, this was idiotic.

But she'd let that old couple get their hopes up, and their town was in real trouble. She wouldn't lose anything by trying—that was all she'd promised. And if she failed, she could stick around and fill buckets for them until the drought ran its course. Not that anyone would prefer that outcome, least of all her. It was an option, though.

Isaura took a deep breath and tied her hair in a ponytail. The "divining" rod still felt like little more than a prop to her, but ... What if she closed her eyes and held it, one end clasped tight in her hands, the other touching the surface of the streambed? Maybe that would help her sense _deep_ water. Not the bits of moisture she could feel in the air around her and the soil beneath her feet, but the rivers and lakes lying miles within the earth. She needed to go _down_ , far enough below the stream's corpse to find it a source of rejuvenation.

She needed powers she didn't have.

"Pollas in vinagre," she said to herself again, this time out loud. "It's not possible."

Two hands slid over her hips and toward her thighs. "Maybe you're just holding the wrong rod."

Elliot. Whirling to face the boy—he wasn't old enough to be a man in Isaura's book—she knocked his arms away and shoved his chest with the shaft of the divining rod. "No touch me," she hissed in Franc.

Her push only caused him to take a half step back—boy or man, he was big. Greasy, too: his black hair was so matted it looked like someone had drenched him in cooking fat. And the smile on his face was ... predatory. "Or maybe we're just looking for the wrong well?" he said, continuing with his suggestive idiocies. "I know where _your_ well is, and I bet it's sopping wet. Why waste time looking for another?" His smile tightened into a sneer. "My rod could find your well just fine."

"No touch me," she repeated, but this time her tone was weaker: the old paralysis was creeping over her again.

Elliot's smile deepened, as if he knew better, knew what she _really_ wanted. "But that's not how it works," he said. Then he lunged for her, absorbing her second blow without so much as a grunt.

His momentum took them both to the ground, and his weight knocked the wind out of her. Suddenly she _was_ paralyzed again, stuck beneath another panting, sweating, probing beast of a man. She struggled as much as she could, but he was too big.

Isaura kept fighting, though, even when he tore an earring from her left lobe. This wasn't happening again. Not without her battling every step of the way, freeing her hand to twist her hair into the beginnings of a braid, and digging deep within herself, as deep as she'd been searching for water in the earth. She had to summon the strength to force him off before he violated her. To immobilize him. To kill him, if she could.

But she couldn't replicate what she'd done in St. Augstin. She hadn't understood it then, and she didn't have the control now.

There was something else, though. Something larger she was able to latch onto. A wellspring of power that began in her core and wound down through the crack in the streambed to a—

Torrent of water.

A huge fountain of it, racing to the streambed's surface. The sheer energy made her lightheaded; she felt like her body itself was turning to liquid. Loosening and flowing and surging ...

She gasped, and Elliot mistook the noise for a change of heart. Redoubling his efforts, he started to ask her how she liked it now—

Only to rocket off her when a geyser of icy cold water erupted beneath them.

He landed heavily on the bank; she splashed in the water already filling the streambed.

"Bitch!" Elliot roared when he had his breath back. But as he lumbered to his feet, the reality of the situation dawned on him: Isaura had been dowsing for water, and now—in place of his climax—there was a veritable flood. "You're a witch," he said, in a much more subdued voice.

She stood too, soaked to the skin and leaking tears.

"You're a witch," he repeated, his expression unreadable now.

This was dangerous, in a wholly different way than a few minutes ago. Even through her exhausted haze, Isaura could sense the new hazard. Before, Elliot had been attacking her womanhood; now he was assaulting her humanity, accusing her of being something foul. And maybe she was, but that didn't give him the right to say or do anything to her ever again.

The only thing he deserved was fear.

Closing her eyes, Isaura searched for the wellspring of power and located it almost instantly: it still pulsed with the force of the water spewing from the crack in the streambed. Without fully comprehending the mechanics involved, she doubled the wellspring.

When she reopened her wet eyes, she saw Elliot again, his jaw dropped so low Manuel's head would have fit inside his mouth—the Franc idiot couldn't stop staring at what she'd done. The geyser was split down the middle, shearing to either side as it revitalized the river from two angles.

She'd parted the water.

Elliot's knees shook as he crossed himself.

"Maybe I witch," Isaura whispered, just loud enough for him to hear, "or maybe you dream. If you dream, I can no hurt you. If I witch ..." She nodded at the bifurcated geyser.

It took him almost a minute to respond. "I must be dreaming," he eventually decided.

"Must be," she agreed, her face a mask of stone. "And you keep dreams to self, yes?"

"Yes."

"Good. Now we go back. I get my horse and leave, you tell about water. Everyone happy."

He looked at her with pathetically hopeful eyes. "Everyone happy?"

Isaura motioned for him to start walking back the way they'd come.

It was all she could do not to collapse when he turned around and hurriedly readjusted his clothing. Her limbs still seemed ... watery. Structureless, as if her muscles were going to drip off her bones and merge with the geysers. But she didn't need to maintain the split any longer: it had served its purpose. And once she let it go, she felt better. She had to lean heavily on the divining rod—she was no longer dismissive of its ability to be a walking stick—but making it back to town felt possible now. Then she just needed to climb on Manuel and let him carry her to safety. As he'd done so many times before.

He truly was the only male she could trust.

#  Chapter Nine

Amadi: Five Winters Before Saint's Summit – Beaver Moon

In the dark hold of the white men's stinking ship, fist after fist slammed into Amadi.

The punishment hurt—it always hurt. But he knew his assailants couldn't administer their justice for long, especially in the festering air. They were too malnourished and sick. He deserved the abuse, though, so he didn't resist.

And it wasn't like they could cause him lasting harm.

True to form, the session ended shortly after it began. The ejeme who'd attacked him withdrew as far as their chains would allow, nursing their bloody knuckles and muttering yet again about how unfair it was that some misguided vodun saw fit to protect a man as undeserving as Amadi. Why should he be graced with spirit armor that prevented him from suffering so much as a bruise, when good people around him—people he'd grievously wronged—were naked, neglected, and dying of deprivation? It wasn't fair, and it didn't make sense.

Amadi agreed.

The full enormity of what he'd done hadn't hit him until his ninth night in the Ghelwan holding pen, where he and the other ejeme had waited almost a year before they were sold to the asthmatic Anglo now shipping them across the ocean. But when Amadi finally faced up to his sins, there was nowhere to hide.

And no way to set things right.

Apologizing was worse than useless. He'd still tried, laboring to make his remorse clear to the ejeme who spoke Gbe or something similar. But what could you say to someone awash in the excrement of a hundred other captives confined in a pen that wouldn't be big enough for half a dozen cattle? Words were meaningless—he'd realized that within a day. And the only other thing he had to offer was his body. It wasn't nearly enough, but some of the ejeme seemed to find release in beating him like a drum. So he let them, as often as they wanted, for as long as they could manage.

It was the least he could do.

A booming crash interrupted Amadi's reverie and tilted the ship, sending the hold's ever-present layer of fetid water sloshing back and forth. Along with scores of dimly lit faces, he looked up, trying to stare through the floorboards to see what had caused such a terrible noise, a sound so loud he could feel its reverberations in his teeth.

Then white men all over the ship began whooping and hollering as if they'd won a great battle. But the jubilation didn't last; within moments, the yells turned to curses and murmurs. And a short while later, another crash rocked the rear of the ship in the same location. More crashes followed at regular intervals, but there was no more cheering—just swathes of swearing and occasional footsteps.

In the hold, silence quickly gave way to whispered speculation. (No one talked to Amadi, but they couldn't prevent him from listening.) Most of the Gbe speakers agreed that the white men were using one of their weapons, a great gun some of the more-worldly ejeme had alternately heard described as a "cannon" and a "bow chaser."

_Who_ the white men were firing upon was subject to more debate: this was an Anglo ship, so it could be almost anyone.

"Probably Espans," one of Amadi's most-frequent attackers insisted.

"Francs are more likely," another man replied.

"Or Netherns," a woman added.

Amadi shook his head. A few seasons ago, most of the hold's inhabitants had never even seen a white man. Now they could speak with authority about which white tribes were most likely to buy and fight over ejeme. The months in the Ghelwan holding pen had been bitterly instructive.

The "months"—Legba's balls, he even tracked _time_ like a white man now.

But that's what happened when you were bought and sold more times than you could remember, passed back and forth between white traders trying to accumulate enough cargo to fill a ship. Most of the ejeme couldn't tell one type of white man from the next at first, but a few of the Foim and several of the Hausans had enough prior experience with foreigners to distinguish between them. And the rest of the ejeme were quick studies. In short order, even the least attentive had been able to tell an Anglo from a Franc by the way he dressed, or a Nethern from an Espan by the way he formed his strange words.

Amadi and the rest of the ejeme had also become experts on their relative worth. The white men's consultants—officious looking "doctors"—always seemed to favor males with good teeth, eyes, genitals, and overall physical appearance. Ejeme who looked older than middle age or in bad health generally fetched a poor price, and injuries like Amadi's shattered ankle often meant outright rejection. (His undeserved regenerative powers didn't seem to extend to injuries he'd sustained before the vodun clad him in spirit armor; his ankle had only healed naturally and incompletely.)

But Ode had negotiated a bulk price for everyone—strong and weak alike—and the trend had continued in subsequent transactions, until their final buyer had branded the ejeme with the mark of his ship and herded them into the vessel's hold like wildebeests.

Amadi smiled darkly at the memory. _His_ brand had disappeared almost as soon as the hot iron had been withdrawn, but none of the pale onlookers had noticed: there had been too much "chattel" to process. The other ejeme had seen, though, and muttered, and shook their heads again at the unfairness of it all.

Except for the small Whydan girl who'd gasped in astonishment.

Amadi craned his neck around until he found her delicate form. She'd always looked appalled at the way the older ejeme used him as a punching bag, and she'd borne her branding better than most. But what had drawn Amadi to her was the way she'd offered to help him up after he tripped during the march from Ghelwa to the ocean. Everyone else had laughed or ignored him.

He'd repaid her kindness by watching over her. His first task had been ensuring she wasn't among those capsized when two canoes overturned in the shark-infested waters between the beach and the white men's ship. He'd been ready to dive in after her, but it proved unnecessary. Since then, he'd stayed ready to intervene in a similar manner.

If only he knew her name.

He _thought_ it was Oseye—the other Whydans seemed to call her that. But they called her a lot of things, and Amadi didn't speak enough Yoruban to know which was her proper name. Yet he liked the sound of Oseye. It was a name worth protecting.

Another explosion brought Amadi back to himself, and he noticed several of the ejeme advancing on him again. He wasn't surprised: beating him was the one thing that united the hold's various tongues and cultures. And in strange, uncertain moments like this one, brutalizing the worthless Foim in the corner was all the more satisfying.

Maybe this time they'd find a chink in the spirit armor and end his suffering. Amadi prayed to Gu, the vodun of iron, that it might be so, that just this once the invisible plates—or scales, or whatever it was that buffered him—would fall away when the attack came. He'd never asked for such shielding, and he didn't deserve it.

Yet Oseye did.

"Give it to her," he murmured as the first punch connected with his stomach. "Transfer my armor to Oseye. I'm not worthy of it, but she is. Give it to her."

Taking solace in the idea, Amadi willed the spirit armor to unfold itself from his feckless hide and wrap around Oseye's beautiful young body. The blows were coming fast now, but he embraced the pain: the more they hurt, the less protection he had, and the less protection he had, the more he'd ceded to Oseye.

"Give it to her," he repeated as someone kicked him in the mouth. "Give it to her," he insisted as someone clawed at his throat. "Give it to her, give it to her, give it to her ..."

He knew it was working when true darkness flickered on the edge of his vision. Whispering his thanks, he reached for the shadows and stuffed them in his eyes and down his throat until he could see and breathe no more.

* * *

Amadi woke in midair.

Misty, salty air; he was falling toward the sea. Tossed overboard by white men who swore as he opened his eyes just after leaving their grasp. He heard the captain wheeze out a rebuke, and then—

Amadi was in the water.

In it. On it. Surrounded by it. Under it. There was water everywhere, and he barely knew how to swim.

Instinct hijacked his still-addled mind, forcing his arms and legs to thrust downward again and again until they'd reversed his momentum and he started to rise back to the surface. When his head emerged into the salty air, he drew it in greedily, frantic to fill his lungs with something other than the blueness trying to engulf him.

He was closer to the ship than he'd expected; perhaps a quirk of the boat's wake had pulled him along for a stretch? And while the white men who'd thrown him overboard were grimly watching him tread water, they weren't changing course—not for a half-crippled ejeme. They must have thought he was dead. _He'd_ thought he was dead. But apparently he couldn't just will his spirit armor to abandon him.

So: once again, he was alive when he didn't want to be, in a hopeless, miserable situation.

Was he meant to float in the ocean forever? Provide an endless food source for sea creatures that would delight in the way his flesh replenished after each bite? What was the point? Why—

Why was there a boy clinging to the ship's hull like a barnacle?

Amadi drew a hand over his eyes to shade them from the sun, nearly submerging himself in the process. Yes, that looked like a boy—an actual boy; not a carved decoration—holding tight to the badly warped rudder, the upper portion of which was _curled around_ _him_ like a harness. And yes, his strange, reddish-brown skin was _flickering_ with dark and light lines. This was no trick of the sun.

But what was it?

The boy, gray-haired despite the fact that he looked no more than sixteen years old, seemed about to ask something similar. But Amadi just shrugged, exhaled forcefully, and sank.

It didn't matter. Strange rudders, flickering barnacle boys: none of it mattered. He didn't deserve answers; he deserved a watery tomb. He'd fought his descent the first time, but he wouldn't now, not when—

A net scooped him up and rushed him toward the surface.

Except there was no net—no lines, no knots. Just an invisible force and the barnacle boy.

Amadi tried to resist, but he might as well have been unconscious for all the good it did. Was he hallucinating?

"What are you?" he asked as he emerged a few feet from the boy.

"What are you?" the boy retorted before answering his own question. "You're a tar skin—from Afrii."

Amadi regarded his savior for another surreal moment. Maybe he wasn't hallucinating—maybe he was already dead. "My name is Amadi. I'm a Foim, of the kingdom of Dahemy. What you called me are white men's words."

Chastened, the boy nodded. "We should speak quietly," he whispered, glancing meaningfully at the deck above.

Amadi tried to shrug again, but his forearms and wrists were pinned to his side by ... nothing. "You've chained me."

The boy blanched, and the invisible bonds disappeared. At the same time, a set of handholds opened in the rudder, its wood parting like the lips of twenty hungry mouths. "I didn't want you to sink."

"By the vodun," Amadi breathed as he used two of the holds to steady himself and watched the black lines spread anew across the boy's flesh. " _Are you_ a vodun?"

"What's a vodun?" the boy countered warily.

Amadi shook his head. "It's of no matter." And it was true. Finding a stray shaman didn't change anything, didn't alter what should happen. Lifting one hand from its hold in the rudder, Amadi began itching at his other wrist. The resulting pain was proof that he wasn't dead ... yet. "The cannons—they were firing at you?"

"Yes."

"You must be a powerful swimmer." Amadi scratched harder.

"I'm strong," the boy admitted. "Most of the time, I was running, though."

"Running," Amadi said with a dark chuckle. "By the vodun ... And he speaks Gbe flawlessly." He stopped scratching, lifting bloody fingernails away from his wrist. Then he switched holds and plunged his raw flesh into the water.

"What are you doing?"

Amadi smiled. "My wrist itched—the white men only take our manacles off when they think we're dead. The metal chafes."

The boy shifted on the bench. "And that's why they threw you overboard? They thought you were dead?"

Amadi looked away. "As did I."

"You were a slave?"

"Yes." Just as he deserved to be. "In the belly of the ship, those of us who still live wondered what the white men were fighting. Most believed it was Espans. Or maybe Francs." He looked back at the boy. "No one suspected anything like you."

The boy grew visibly uncomfortable. "My name is Naysin, of the Lepane tribe—just Naysin."

"Naysin of the Lepane," Amadi echoed. "Naysin of the Lepane ... A boy with the powers of a vodun." Reaching his other hand from the water, he gripped the empty hold and pulled himself up until his eyes were level with Naysin's. "I would ask something of you."

The boy winced.

"Save the ejeme."

"The ejeme?"

"The slaves. It's plain you have the strength to rescue them. Get them off this ship and return them to their homes." Almost as an afterthought, Amadi added, "Please."

"I don't know if I can."

Amadi was about to disagree, but a gigantic mouth swallowed him up to his stomach.

Finally.

He'd wondered how long it would take a shark to scent his blood; the vicious fish always seemed to congregate near ships like this one, stalking them in anticipation of easy meals. Well, he was happy to serve as one. As the shark's teeth tore into Amadi's gut, he let go of the rudder and gripped the edges of the fish's maw. But instead of trying to hold it open or pry himself out, he pulled himself farther in.

"Stop!" hissed Naysin. And without touching the shark—or doing anything Amadi could see—he cracked the brute's jaw and fried its tiny brain. Another invisible force pulled Amadi free, formed a swathe of the ship's hull into a pallet, and set him atop it.

But the intervention wasn't effortless; for a moment, Amadi thought Naysin had blacked out.

"Why did you do that?" the boy whispered once his eyes had uncrossed and his skin had stopped flickering quite so rapidly.

Amadi watched his blood stream over the pallet's edge as a school of sharks swarmed their dead brother. He wished they could trade places.

"Those pike will be back for you. I'm too tired to hold them off. And I can't heal you—"

The boy didn't need to.

Blinking, Naysin took in Amadi's suddenly smooth torso, whole legs, and unmarred wrists. "What are you?" the boy asked a second time, but more sincerely.

Amadi sat up on the pallet that hadn't existed a minute earlier. "I'm Amadi, of the Foim." He brushed in annoyance at his restored stomach. "Save the ejeme; let me die." Then he jumped toward the water.

Anchored by the portion of the rudder still molded around his torso, Naysin managed to grab Amadi's left arm before he went under. "Why?" he shouted, finally heedless of who might overhear.

Amadi regarded him coolly. "Because I put them there."

The words shocked Naysin enough to loosen his grip, and with a nod of thanks, Amadi disappeared into the blue.

* * *

Beneath the boat, the water quickly became still, and the sun's light illuminated the first part of his descent. Aside from the sharks' feeding frenzy, there wasn't much to see: just a few schools of fish darting here and there. Certainly not a view worth keeping his eyes open for, not when the sea's salt burned them so. But Amadi looked as long as he could—even the dullest underwater vista was a welcome change from the surface's endless horizon and the questions that lingered there.

What _was_ that boy? Why was he on the boat, and how had he done ... what he'd done? Could he save the ejeme? Would he? Was he worthier of his power than Amadi was of his?

Then, all too quickly, he sank beneath the light's reach, and the pressure in his ears and lungs became impossible to ignore.

He'd had a taste of the water's weight when he dropped the first time, after the white men threw him overboard. But he hadn't sunk anywhere near this deep, and the force he'd felt then had been a pittance compared to the one crushing him now. This felt like the hand of a massive vodun had taken hold of his temples and chest, an _angry_ vodun intent on squeezing the life from him. Or maybe the hand wanted to squash him back into the clay from whence he'd been shaped, so that he could be remade into a more deserving form.

Whatever it was, it hurt. And the chill ... Legba's balls, it was cold.

He finally closed his eyes, but it didn't help. His head and lungs were rupturing—there was no shutting out pain like that. But there also wasn't any reason to endure it longer than he had to: he needed to end this faster. Opening his mouth, he filled himself with water. Nothing could save him now. Even the spirit armor wouldn't be enough.

He was wrong.

At the last possible instant—as if the vodun were toying with him, delaying their aid until right before the point of no return—the spirit armor's strength multiplied exponentially, forcing back the water's weight. Moments later, the thick energy that had sustained Amadi through so many beatings warmed his arteries and stabilized his body.

Legba's hairy, heaping balls.

Even deep beneath the sea's surface, with nothing but water in his lungs, he wasn't going to die. He _couldn't_ die. The vodun wouldn't allow his death, much as he sought and deserved it.

He could, however, become immobilized.

Amadi recognized the real danger when he tried to relieve some of his frustration by punching the water in front of him—he could barely move his arm. And he was still sinking. If he fell much farther, he wouldn't be able to move at all.

And then he'd be trapped in the ocean's freezing depths forever, paralyzed and in pain, but undying.

It took a furious bout of scrabbling to halt his descent, but that was just the beginning. He spent the rest of the day fighting back to the surface. Maybe longer: it was impossible to keep track of time amidst the endless blue (and black) he'd sought to bury himself in.

For once, though, his spirit armor proved to be a boon. His muscles shouldn't have been able to power him the whole way—normal fibers would have torn and snapped long since—but the thick energy repaired every rip and lent him unlimited endurance. And while his lungs ached from the lack of air, somehow the spirit armor kept him from suffocating.

None of this protection made the climb any less excruciating, but when his head finally burst free of the sea, Amadi used his first breath to give thanks to whatever vodun had seen him to safety.

* * *

Weeks later, Amadi limped naked from the waves.

Any shore would have looked beautiful to him just then, but the island beach that accepted his escape from the ocean was truly stunning. Lush, green, and vibrant, the unfamiliar land teemed with life: a swarm of jewel-toned bugs dotted the air like beads in a maiden's hair; a flock of crimson birds soared overhead; a family of dark turtles labored to reach the water he'd fought so hard to emerge from.

By rights, he should have died from exhaustion and exposure long since, or starvation and dehydration, or storms and sharks, or any of a hundred other causes—swimming across the sea had been almost as hard as his journey back to the surface. After the first week, he'd stopped counting the days; the growing tally only made him feel more likely to be doomed to an eternity of dogpaddling.

But he'd held his course, swimming in the direction he _thought_ the ship had been traveling. He was no sailor—he couldn't navigate by the stars or gauge a heading by the angle of the wind—but he'd always had good instincts, and they'd been honed by years of traversing the swamps and jungles of Dahemy.

Not that Amadi hadn't doubted himself. Repeatedly. If he'd had any inkling another course might have been correct, he would have changed direction in an instant. Particularly once the hunger and thirst set in. He didn't _need_ food or water—just like he hadn't _needed_ air when he sank unfathomably far beneath the ocean's surface—but he still craved their sustenance. He'd tried catching fish as he swam, but his attempts had been far too clumsy; his only meal had come when he'd happened on the floating remains of a creature so repugnant Amadi had vomited with every bite. He'd also tried drinking the sea, but while his body could handle the salt, the water wasn't fresh enough to slake his thirst.

Yet he'd survived. And now he was finally free to indulge himself.

The turtles were the best game in sight, even if their beaks looked formidably sharp. But that wasn't the sort of thing he needed to fear now. He even allowed his target to bite him, letting it latch onto the meat of his forearm as he hauled the struggling creature away from its brethren. "Brave attempt, little shelled one, but this isn't a fair fight," he apologized as his arm healed and he broke his quarry open on a nearby rock.

Even raw, the turtle's flesh tasted amazing, its blood washing down his throat like sweet nectar. He'd take the time to cook his next kill, but right now he didn't have the patience for anything but consumption. He'd come too many miles for niceties.

And he didn't want to postpone his atonement any longer than necessary.

* * *

It took him ten days to find an active plantation. (The first he'd found was an abandoned, fire-lashed ruin littered with bodies—perhaps the barnacle boy's work? That would explain his flight.) Amadi had never seen such an estate before, but he recognized its nature immediately: what else could it be when Afrii like himself tended to row after row of hairy-leaved plants while angry white men with whips oversaw the work?

It was an easy thing to creep up unseen: the ejeme were focused on the plants, and the white men on the ejeme, watchful for any signs of escape.

But not the reverse.

No one noticed when Amadi joined the line—he wasn't the only naked dark man in the field. And he'd studied the ejeme's actions long enough to imitate them immediately: pick the hairy plants' lower, sticky leaves; pile them waist-high; carry the stack to a centrally positioned wagon, where two ejeme women waited with string to bind each bundle.

It wasn't long before Amadi started sweating profusely—piled together, the dirt-coated leaves were surprisingly heavy, and the sun was furiously hot. But he'd doomed Oseye to this life; Oseye and too many others.

So he didn't flinch when a whip lashed his back. He merely pretended to fall, allowed his skin to heal beneath the shelter of the nearest hairy leaves, and stood to resume his work. The vodun were with him; the white man who'd whipped him had only done so idly, moving on to the next ejeme without bothering to gauge the lash's effects.

#  Chapter Ten

Chase: Four Years Before Saint's Summit – Pink Moon

It was raining again. Whenever Chase was angry, it rained.

Maybe the Lord was trying to tell him something.

"I'm not going to _do_ anything," Chase mumbled as he held his thumb, still throbbing from an errant hammer blow. "You know that."

It was true. Or at least it had been the last two years: he hadn't summoned hellfire since torching New Kent (and Matthew; there was no forgetting Matthew). Not in anger, anyway. He'd conjured a spark or two to stay alive—mostly during the winters, when a fire at night was the difference between life and death—but that was it. No conflagrations, no infernos.

Just little sins. He was done with big ones.

Of course, when something tried his patience, he wasn't above being _tempted_. Like this chair leg: how hard was it to accept a nail? The seat needed to be fixed—and he wanted to fix it—but the thrice-damned leg seemed determined to crook his nails and cast his hammer blows awry. It didn't help that Pik had hopped atop the chair and started chattering; the brown squirrel took particular pleasure in Chase's failures. Torching the little beast would have been immensely satisfying.

But now it was raining.

"You're lucky he's looking out for you," Chase told Pik as he nodded toward the spitting sky, setting his ropy blonde hair jiggling like a three-brace of eels. "Were it up to me, you'd be barbecue." After reclaiming the hammer—which he'd thrown aside after it betrayed his trust—he walked into his house to wait out the deluge. Pik scampered after him, no doubt hoping for a handout. Insatiable beastie.

At least the roof was finally watertight. It felt like he'd been plugging holes since he arrived. And that wasn't the only thing wrong with the cabin—his humble, ramshackle little cabin. Clearly, the settlers who'd constructed it hadn't been master craftsmen in the Old World.

He'd been happy to find it, though. In those first months after leaving New Kent for good, he'd come across larger empty structures. Sometimes entire native villages—victims of the pox, no doubt. But he couldn't live in a ghost town. That was too much emptiness; a small house was enough. And being alone suited him. There was no settlement to lead here, no colonists to inspire. No New World to found. It was just him, his cabin, and the wilderness. That was all a man really required. Give or take a greedy squirrel.

The rain became heavier. "And you, my Lord," Chase amended as he surveyed the roof again. "It goes without saying that I need you." Still no leaks. Maybe his plugs were actually going to hold.

What should he do until the storm blew itself out? Pik chattered a suggestion, but Chase ignored it; the little beast was too fat as it was. If only the squirrel could earn his keep by sewing—Chase's clothes needed mending. But he still had a few weeks before the state of his garments became truly desperate. Besides, what did it matter what he looked like?

Absently, Chase fingered the scar on the left side of his neck, the hideous burn extending from his Adam's apple to his elbow. When he realized what he was doing, he jerked his hand away as if the marred flesh were still hot. He certainly didn't need to be doing _that_ —not when he could fix the chair inside just as easily as out.

Moving quickly so as to avoid a total soaking, Chase ran into the rain, grabbed the chair, dashed back into the cabin, and resumed his repairs. The storm subsided a few minutes later, but he didn't notice for more than an hour, until Pik overturned a half-full mug in his haste to escape with a bit of jerky.

* * *

Smoke was eating the sun.

At first Chase thought it was only a few clouds rolling past. Or maybe fog: he'd seen some strange mist during his time in the woods, especially when the earth was wet. But then the smell of flaming trees, roasting flesh, and steaming river water hit him like an avalanche.

There was smoke because there was fire.

And the smoke was eating the sun because the fire was enormous.

He dropped the kindling he'd been gathering—oh, how the dear Lord loved irony—and sprinted back toward the cabin. How long had the fire been burning? He hadn't noticed anything until now, but he'd also been surrounded by deep brush until he reached this clearing a few minutes ago. It couldn't have been his campfire: he was careful to leave nothing flammable near it. Barring a truly malicious gust of wind, nothing around his little home could catch fire without his intent. And the rain had made things too wet for a stray spark to grow into anything.

Increasing his pace, Chase covered his mouth with his handkerchief to filter out the increasingly thick smoke. The threadbare cloth didn't make much difference, however, and he was breathing too heavily to have his air restricted. So he tossed the handkerchief aside, let his lungs burn, and forced himself to keep moving.

Had he been warlocking without knowing it? That infernal chair had continued vexing him throughout the morning—had something else flared along with his temper? But every time before, he'd felt the sin as it quickened in him, making him hot and loose, a terrible, lovely sensation. There hadn't been any of that with the chair. So it couldn't have been him. He hadn't done this. For once, he wasn't to blame. It must have been lightning, or—

The truth dawned on Chase as he reached his cabin: it was the red devils.

Of course it was. The tribes near New Kent used fire as a toy, burning prairies and forests willy-nilly. Luther, the colony's amateur naturalist, had thought they were consciously shaping the landscape. But anyone who'd seen reds light a sap-soaked fir tree and laugh as it exploded knew better. The devils were just playing.

And this time they'd gone too far.

His cabin wasn't lit yet, but the blaze was dangerously close. So was the heat: he was twenty feet from his cabin's door, and if he moved any nearer, he'd fry like a side of bacon.

Pik was already doing so.

"Squirrel!" Chase yelled, but the little beast refused to jump off the cabin's roof, despite the steam rising from his mangy coat. As Chase had forced himself toward the fire, he'd hoped Pik had been among the menagerie of forest animals fleeing in the other direction. But the stupid beast was clinging to the roof corner furthest from the flames, apparently paralyzed with fear—he wasn't even chattering.

Chase spat and watched his spittle sizzle as it touched the earth while his body hair rose like a thousand eager candlewicks. "I suppose that's your way of telling me I should leave," he growled at the sky. "Because the devils made it so hot my spit's burning? But they're not taking two homes from me. You hear me? They took New Kent, but I'll be DEAD before they take this cabin!"

Ignoring the fact that this last statement could easily come to pass, Chase spat again and swore. He didn't want to bring forth _more_ fire, but he'd become almost as good at shaping flames as he was at creating them. Never this much at once, but what choice did he have? Perhaps he could manipulate their heat and smoke as well.

As his body began to quicken, Chase studied the fire in front of his cabin. The air bucked like a horse with a burr under its saddle, but he could still make out individual flames as they crept forward like limbs of a hellish millipede. He had to direct those legs elsewhere, make them walk around his cabin instead of over it.

Straining terribly, Chase threw everything he had into coaxing each flame a little to the right or left. He still let them advance—he wasn't strong enough to stop their progress—but he was able to divert them, to send them and their byproducts off at an angle, like a river rock breaking water to either side. Latching on to this new metaphor, he envisioned his cabin as the rock. And when the flames inched past all four walls, he pictured _himself_ as the rock. Part of the same rock; he and the cabin were one stone, calmly ushering the water to either side. He could do it. He was doing it.

There.

He was exhausted, but he still stood. Now he just had to hold on. The fire would burn through eventually. It might take a while, but eventually he'd be able to see something other than red and orange; eventually Hell would recede and the world would—

"Praise God!"

Chase almost lost control when he heard the words, barely audible over the inferno's din. They'd come from behind him: someone was praising the Lord in full view of the all-consuming fire.

"Praise God!" another voice called, sounding truly overjoyed. Then another voice took up the cry, and another. Within seconds, a veritable chorus of thanksgiving had arisen.

Chase couldn't see anyone when he looked behind him: he was too deep in the fire. Backing out of it was agonizing, but he managed to continue shielding the cabin, even when he reached the fire's edge and spied what approached: a ragged group of white men, women, and _children_ —so many children. Their clothes were tattered ruins, their skin was nearly as bad, and they looked like they hadn't eaten in days. Most of them were reaching for the fire as if they wanted to embrace it.

The woman in the lead didn't seem at all surprised when she noticed Chase emerging from the flames. Any normal person would have assumed he was the Devil incarnate. She just yelled, "Take us! Oh, please, God, take us! We're ready!"

"Are you mad?" Chase was still funneling most of his energy to the cabin, but incredulity gave him a second wind as he left the fire and ran toward the woman.

"Burn us!" the woman shrieked. "End us with your fire! Make it STOP!"

"Make it stop!" the rest of the group repeated, chanting the phrase as arrhythmically as their steps were shambolic. Steps they were still taking. At the same steady pace.

Directly toward the fire.

"Stop yourselves!" Chase shouted as he drew even with the first woman and tried to block her path. But with incongruous grace, she spun around him and kept walking.

"Stop!" he yelled again, grabbing her from behind. Her legs continued pumping, as if they were powered by some external force. Within a few steps her feet were so far in front of her that Chase's grip was the only thing keeping her upright.

"Stop walking!" he pleaded a third time.

She gave him a crazed smile—her face was perpendicular to his chest now, and he could see every broken tooth in her demented expression. "Oh, I'm glad you suggested that, good sir. Otherwise I might have kept stepping unto my death." Laughing hysterically, she tried to wriggle free.

Chase forced her to the ground, kneeling on her shoulders to keep her pinned. Even so, her feet still twitched and jerked. "What in God's name is WRONG with you people?" The rest of the group had passed them now—the furthest were maybe twenty paces from the flames.

Then the woman bit his thumb.

Swearing profusely, Chase moved his hands out of range.

"If you have an ounce of mercy, you'll let me die," the woman hissed as she redoubled her efforts to break away.

"Why?" Fifteen paces now. The heat of the fire would start to cook the leaders soon.

"Because we're cursed!" She began crying—at last, a normal emotion. "We can't help marching like this, understand? We have to go on until we drop, and sooner is better than later."

Ten paces. Chase peeled off what he could from the cabin's shield and shifted it to the walkers nearest the flames. "Cursed how?"

"By a red," she whispered, looking afraid for the first time. "He magicked us. All of Rokoan. Made us walk forever ... We're the last ones standing."

Five paces. Chase's extended shield was too thin: the furthest walkers' hair and clothing were smoldering, and their bloody footprints sputtered and bubbled. "Why?"

"Mary said he was angry about something. I didn't hear him—I was inside my house. But he pulled me out. He pulled everyone out so we could see him, shining black and white like smoke off the Devil. A wraith, he was—a red wraith. Then he made us walk. One step after another, no matter what was in front of us." The woman raised her head until her frantic eyes were only inches from Chase's own. "Some folks got impaled on branches in the woods. Others fell down starved, or dry with thirst. A few families even choked each other to death to make it stop. Now there's just us, the _lucky_ ones who survived on rainwater and what berries and leaves we snatched as we passed."

The furthest walkers were entering the fire now. There was no help for it: he had to increase their shield. Gritting his teeth, Chase let the cabin go.

The woman capitalized on his distraction by biting his other thumb.

"Death will be a blessing," she sobbed as she slithered loose. Her legs—which had never stopped moving—pulled her forward again, dragging her along until she was able to push off the ground with her arms and catapult herself upright. "Make it stop," she chanted again as she resumed her erratic walk toward the fire.

Lying back on the hot earth, Chase closed his eyes to focus. The furthest walkers were at least as far as the cabin's husk now. Continuing to shield them at such a distance—along with everyone else—was quickly becoming more than he could bear. And when he began protecting the woman as well ... It was too much.

The walkers wanted this, and there was nothing he could do to change their fates, nothing but prolong their agony for a few more hellish seconds.

So he made it stop.

* * *

Hours later, with the fire's edge well past, Chase staggered to the irregularly shaped pile of ash that had been his cabin, sifted through the cinders, and unearthed Pik's body. The flesh of his nose and paws was pinker than normal, but not burned; Chase had extended the shield early enough and held it long enough—even after he'd abandoned the cabin—to ward off the worst of the inferno's effects.

But not to save the little beast's life.

Pik had either suffocated in the cabin's wreckage after the roof collapsed or died from fright. Maybe he'd passed after the walkers found their peace, when the fire had surged forward and attempted to grant Chase the same tranquility; maybe Pik had let go during the subsequent, interminable limbo, when, too exhausted to move, Chase had closed his eyes and focused on maintaining the shield for just the two of them.

Or maybe Pik had already been dead when Chase first buffered him.

Regardless, there was nothing more to be done. Warding off the scorched earth's latent heat was draining Chase's reserves—he was probably too weak to dig even the tiny hole a grave would require, and ...

It was just a squirrel.

Not Kip; Pik wasn't his boy.

Chase considered the little beast's limp form for another moment before placing Pik back in the ash; despite being smudged, his brown fur represented the only bit of color in the blackened hellscape. Turning away, Chase consolidated the shield around himself and tried not to hear the sudden crackling behind him.

He would not die in this forest. He WOULD NOT die in this forest. Not if he held the shield and kept forcing one foot in front of the other, putting stride after stride of distance between him and the fire. Not if he did that.

Hold the shield.

Force both feet.

Stride after stride.

It wasn't until Chase stumbled into a green meadow that he realized he'd been marching in the same direction as the walkers.

#  Chapter Eleven

Amadi: Four Winters Before Saint's Summit – Milk Moon

"You think that was brave, tar skin? You think you can touch a white man? You think a bald bastard like yourself can _defy_ me and live?" The portly overseer hit Amadi hard enough to loosen his teeth.

Temporarily.

He didn't resist further—he'd already put up more fight than he'd meant to. But no one had the right to force kisses from Makena. If Rory tried to take what wasn't his again, Amadi wouldn't stop at a punch.

With a curse, the short overseer used the handle of his whip like a club, swinging it high to beat Amadi about his neck, chest, and arms—seemingly targeting every one of his tattoos—as the other white men in the blazing-hot tobacco field shouted their approval. The blows kept coming for a long time. Was Rory trying to kill him? Was that the punishment for striking a white man? It made sense—the Foim royalty would have treated such disrespect no differently back in Dahemy.

But what would Rory do when he realized his exertions were pointless?

Amadi didn't have to wait long to find out. The overseer's assault slowed shortly after it began, and he looked absolutely furious. No doubt he felt weak, humiliated by his inability to make Amadi so much as grunt, much less betray signs of pain.

He couldn't help smiling.

A mistake: Rory, streaming sweat now, cursed Amadi a third time and called for the other white men to throw him in the cellar. None of his fellow ejeme—a mix of black and red men and women—spoke as he was pushed and prodded through the long rows of tobacco plants, but his companions' expressions all said, "Farewell." Clearly, they didn't think he'd live the night. Maybe not even the afternoon. Amadi tried to catch Makena's eye as he passed her, but she avoided his gaze.

"I'll be fine," he wanted to say to his fellow Foim. "They can't hurt me." But he held his tongue, realizing the truth would only sound like bravado—she didn't know about his spirit armor. And why should she? Until today he'd been the perfect worker, careful to avoid provoking punishment that would reveal his nature in a way he couldn't conceal.

The white men were anxious to punish him now, though. The brute behind him couldn't even forbear until they'd navigated the fields and returned to the sprawling buildings of the main estate. At every step, the overseer whipped Amadi more viciously—only to swear mightily when the initial lash marks healed over.

"It's going to be a long day, Oseye," Amadi whispered in Gbe as the increasingly agitated white men threw him in the root cellar, bound his arms behind his back with a set of manacles, and attached its rusty chain to a hook protruding from the low ceiling. "A very long day."

* * *

To his surprise, Amadi was left alone for what he judged to be the rest of the afternoon.

At first the wait seemed like a reprieve. He couldn't see anything with the door shut, but he was out of the sun, and he wasn't surrounded by a sea of tobacco leaves. The hairy plant had filled his vision almost every day since he'd set foot on that first plantation, the one he'd joined on the island of Bimshire. His only respite from the crop had been the journey back to the mainland—in the dark hold of another stinking ship—after his new "master" abruptly decided to move his business to the Carolines. Amadi suspected it had something to do with the uprising he'd seen remnants of on Bimshire, but it didn't matter. Nor did the fact that he'd swum across the ocean in the exact wrong direction when he'd tried to pursue his original ship. To get lost was to learn the way, and he was where he was supposed to be. At least the root cellar smelled pleasant: it was filled with all manner of vegetables, most of which Amadi and the other ejeme never got a taste of.

But it wasn't long before he was ready for the white men to return. Better they got it over with quickly—the first few beatings were always the savagest. Once his assailants confirmed their ineffectiveness, they'd grow frustrated and their attacks would become less passionate.

Amadi tested the manacles as he waited. The links seemed strong; he couldn't feel any give when he pulled. And the bands' edges were rough enough to scratch. A few days with these on, and a normal man's wrists would be raw.

Not his, though. The manacles would be as harmless as the white men's whips. But the overseers were incensed. They had a hierarchy to maintain, a way of life to preserve—who was he fooling? They weren't going to stop at a _few_ savage beatings. He was headed for months of torture. Maybe years.

It was no more than he deserved.

But what would the other ejeme think when word spread of his endurance? And it would spread: gossip was the plantation's other crop. Would it give Makena and the others hope? Would he become an inspiration? Would they rise up in his name and use their shackles to strangle the white tyrants?

Now he really was fooling himself.

Alone in a cellar, delusional in the dark: heroic tales didn't start this way ...

The cellar door opened, blinding Amadi with light. Something struck his foot, and the door shut.

What?

A short while later, the door opened again. When Amadi's eyes finally adjusted, he saw four figures fanning out around him: Rory, two other overseers, and a ropy-haired stranger with a burn scar running down his neck.

"Watch," Rory said as he unfurled his whip and cracked it across Amadi's face.

The lash split his cheeks open—for a heartbeat. Then the thick energy that had repaired his body so many times suffused the wounds and welded them shut.

Amadi laughed darkly as the overseers crossed themselves, but the stranger only raised his eyebrows. "Have you tried anything other than a whip?"

"Not yet," Rory replied. "But I didn't bring this to keep it holstered." In one motion, he drew his pistol and unloaded its shot into Amadi's chest.

The force of the impact knocked him back the full extent of the chain's length, and the pain was intense. But he could feel his spirit armor pushing against the bullet as soon as it entered his body, reversing the ball's flight and squeezing the projectile out of his lung, his pectoral muscle, and finally his skin as the thick energy repaired the bones and fibers torn along the way. When the bullet fell to the soft earth of the cellar floor, he laughed again.

"Remarkable," the stranger observed as the other men re-crossed themselves. "And yet you say he walks with a limp?"

"He does," Rory agreed grimly. "The charlatan. I thought you'd want to see him—because of Rokoan."

"And New Kent."

"Aye. I'd heard you were hunting the Red Wraith and all his ilk."

"He's hanging on our every word. Does he understand us?"

Rory nodded. "Some slaves speak Anglo better than others."

"Where do you hail from?" the stranger asked Amadi.

His head brushed against the hook in the ceiling as he drew himself to his full height, from which he towered over his captors—the tallest among them only came to his chin. The time for subservience was past. "I of Foim, rulers of Dahemy," he said in broken Anglo. "I learn your ugly tongue in Ghelwa. You no call me 'slave.' I Amadi, and you a little man to me."

Rory swore and began reloading his pistol.

The stranger cocked his head and looked Amadi up and down, his eyes lingering on each tattoo. "The Foim are known for their savagery," the stranger finally said to Rory. "Their pagan rituals involve so much human sacrifice that their king closes each ceremony by sailing a bone ship down a river of innocent blood. Their women are Amazores, warrior bitches who cut off their left breasts to allow clean draws of their bowstrings. And every one of the brutes, down to the youngest child, engages in cannibalism when presented with the flesh of a vanquished enemy. It's a mercy to make slaves of them—we save them from a heathen hell of their own devising."

Amadi snorted in disgust.

One of Rory's men crossed himself a third time and edged toward the cellar door.

"You must burn him," the stranger concluded. "There's no other way to purify his bestial flesh and release the evil spirit that's taken root inside. I'll speak to Mr. Jacobs."

"Do it quickly," Rory said as he motioned for the other overseers to leave the cellar. "If it's burning he needs, I'd rather light him sooner than later."

The stranger nodded as he followed them into the light. "I agree wholeheartedly. You'll have your employer's permission within the hour."

Amadi watched them go with a sinking heart. Spirit armor or not, fire would hurt.

But before the door shut, he was able to make out what had struck his foot a few moments before: a scrap of kindling. Small enough to fit inside his mouth, but thick enough to be bitten without breaking. Someone wanted him to endure with pride.

Too bad the kindling had bounced out of reach; now it was just a reminder of the pain to come.

* * *

The pyre was sloppily built.

Logs were scattered about Amadi in a haphazard circle, and his manacles were tied to a warped wooden post. Clearly, the white men weren't doing this for show: their hasty construction reeked of fear, and even now, on the verge of what they thought would be his execution, every one of them still eyed him uneasily.

Except for the ropy-haired stranger with the burn scar.

"The hand of God is upon you," he told Amadi. "Let it carry you to deliverance." Then the stranger opened his own hand and _conjured_ a spark on his palm—out of nothing. As Rory and his lackeys murmured appreciatively, the stranger knelt by the pyre and transferred the spark to a bundle of oil-soaked kindling, which caught immediately.

Amadi dug his nails into the post at his back—why would the vodun grant a white man such power? "Give me the strength not to cry out, Oseye," Amadi murmured in Gbe as a flame licked at his left foot. "I may deserve this, but these pale fools don't."

Yet as the fire grew around him, he knew couldn't stay silent. Even before his flesh started to cook, the heat became too intense to resist—it felt like the sun was rising beneath him. _Directly_ beneath him. The rags that passed for his clothing ignited, his skin started to slough off his bones, and he had to let some kind of sound pass his lips.

So he started chanting, yelling the words of the only ballad he knew in full: the story of how Legba, the vodun of trickery, had stolen three spears from Gu, the vodun of iron. It wasn't much—being burned alive still felt like being burned alive—but the tale's rhythm provided a purchase for Amadi's sanity, a lifeline he clung to as his skin melted and reformed, melted and reformed ...

He only had to endure long enough for the rope to burn away. The white men had left his manacles on, and their metal kept branding rings into his skin, but it was the rope that needed to go. It was the rope he needed to outlast. Only a few coils of rope, a few strands that couldn't withstand the inferno, especially if he strained against them with everything he had. The rope hadn't been weakened enough yet, but if he kept pulling, kept pushing against the post and leaning forward, the flames would do the rest.

Without warning, it happened.

Face first, Amadi tumbled through fire and onto logs, coals, and ash as the white men cheered away their fear. They thought it was over. Were he anyone else, it would have been.

But clad in nothing but white-hot manacles and the invisible protection of his spirit armor, he _rose_.

Most of the white men—including Rory—fled as Amadi limped from the flames, much of him still ablaze. Three of the overseers retained enough courage to fire their muskets, but only two shots hit home, and neither wound stayed open for long. After the stragglers dropped their weapons and ran in pursuit of their peers, only the stranger remained.

As Amadi approached, the white man opened his hand again, pointed it at him ... and frowned when nothing happened. Then the stranger groped in his pocket and produced a metal cross. Chanting something in an ancient-sounding tongue—was he drawing strength from a sacred tale of his own?—he thrust the emblem at Amadi.

Still nothing: the stranger's fire had abandoned him, and Amadi was no longer burning by the time he closed the distance between them. But his beard still smoldered, and his skin continued to blister and writhe. The white man grit his teeth as Amadi stared down into his defiant eyes, and for a moment, neither of them moved.

Until Amadi placed his right hand on the stranger's forehead, using the heat in his dark palm to brand the man's pale brow. "The hand of Amadi is upon you," he said as the stranger fell to his knees, clutching his scorched flesh and stifling a scream. "Let it remind you not to lie about Foim."

* * *

The other ejeme in the meeting hut looked at Amadi warily. He was still naked and manacled—there hadn't been time to look for keys or clothes during his mad dash to the ejeme's shantytown—but that wasn't the cause of his fellow prisoners' skepticism. They just didn't believe him.

Of course, he hadn't told them _everything_ ; it had seemed prudent not to mention his spirit armor, or the way the thick energy had helped him survive three gunshots and immolation. But the mere fact of his escape should have been enough to galvanize the other ejeme. And he'd marked the ropy-haired stranger. There'd be no forgiving that.

"You no know me before 'Master' Jacobs buy us," Amadi tried again in Anglo, the only tongue shared by everyone in the hut. "But trust when I say time be now. The white men angry. I sorry I made them, but I no want to die. And unless you do, run with me. Now, before they come for me and kill you instead."

At first, it seemed his pleas would continue to go unanswered. But Makena, beautiful Makena, broke the silence by clapping her hands together. "Maybe they'd kill us all," she said softly to Amadi in Gbe, her black eyes sparkling with intensity, "or maybe they'd stop with you. Either way, I've had enough of jackals like Rory." Moving to his side, she turned to the rest of the ejeme and put her hands on her slender hips. "In Dahemy," she said in Anglo, "women fight. Many of you know this, some maybe firsthand. I not fight there, but I tired of being coward here. It is time to go."

After another stretch of quiet, a few more ejeme followed Makena's lead and joined Amadi on the north side of the hut. Then another few came over, and then the majority. Not all, but most.

Including a thick woman who looked at Amadi and spat.

A woman who'd arrived only a few days ago. A woman Amadi belatedly recognized from Ghelwa's holding pens. A woman who, thankfully, didn't seem to speak a common tongue.

But she'd crossed to his side, and hesitating longer would only look like weakness. So Amadi nodded his thanks to Makena before speaking to everyone who'd joined him. "Find lightest, most useful things you can. Tools, food, water: only important things. Meet me by washing hole. We run through night."

* * *

And for two weeks, that was all they did.

Run by night, sleep in hiding by day, steal and forage whenever the opportunity presented itself—it was a hard existence. Four of the former ejeme died in the first week; five more in the second. Amadi lifted a different child on his back every hour, but he still wasn't sure how the littlest runaways survived.

No one gave up, though. No one complained, no one turned back, no one quit. Everyone ran until they dropped. Amadi was proud of them, and said so on the third day. Many of them returned the praise: his endurance—despite his ever-present limp—had become an inspiration. For once, he considered the spirit armor a blessing.

Still, pride and hope (and luck) wouldn't have been enough to see them to safety on their own. The real key was that all five of the red prisoners on Master Jacob's plantation had joined the escape, and they knew the land. Chogan, their leader despite his youth and middling height, even found a trail to follow through the forest. "Warrior's Path," he grunted in Anglo when Amadi asked. "Hodensee use to raid Tsalgi. No now," he clarified when Amadi frowned. "Wrong season. We safe."

The natives—for that's what they were: the people who'd roamed this land before the white men came and started importing "Afrii" like Amadi—also seemed to have experience evading ejeme-catchers. "Second time I run," Chogan explained at one point. "Hope it go better than first." He didn't say anything more about his prior attempt, or why he hadn't tried again earlier. Amadi didn't push him; there was too much else to worry about.

Like where would they find water?

What would they eat?

When could they stop running?

Where would they go once they felt safe?

The questions plagued Amadi with every stride. Men, women, and children were _following_ him—it was his responsibility to steer them right, to guide them to freedom. They wouldn't have been so quick to trust if they'd known him a few years ago.

As Nourbese had, the woman from Ghelwa.

He couldn't recall if they'd shared the same holding pen. Either way, she understood who he'd been: the snarl in her eyes confirmed it. And once she learned enough Anglo to share more than her name, it would only take a few words to unmask him.

But he was a different man here. A man who'd escaped a pyre and scared the white men long enough for the ejeme to escape; a man who never tired as he set the pace of their flight; a man who'd leapt out of his manacles.

The last memory made Amadi smile. The manacles had been a nuisance during the first two nights of running, threatening to trip him at every step unless he kept the chain wound tightly around his arms. But on the third morning, he'd had an idea. The fugitives had taken shelter in a cave near a hill, and at the bottom of the slope stood a misfit tree with enormous, wayward branches, one of which pointed back at the cave like an old woman extending a nagging finger. Chogan had just stumbled on a dead boar—their best find so far—and the initial skinning had exposed several gobs of fat. Amadi had asked for one of the smaller bits, warned everyone not to follow him, and sprinted up the hill as if its sharp incline were nothing more than a bump in the trail. At the summit, he'd smeared the fat over his wrists, greasing them until they gleamed with the rising sun's red light.

Then he'd jumped.

His aim had been perfect. As he'd plummeted past the tree, he'd swung his arms toward it and hooked the chain in a crook. When the metal links caught and arrested his descent, the impact wrenched his arms terribly, dislocating his shoulders and nearly ripping his hands off. But the pig's fat had done its job, lubricating his wrists enough to allow him to slip free of the manacles' jealous hold. He'd hit the ground in a roll, and by the time he'd jogged back to the awestruck fugitives, his body was completely healed and his hands were free, as naked as the rest of him.

His role had formalized that day. From that point on, everyone looked to him for decisions, and no one questioned them.

But that didn't mean he knew what to do.

No one else seemed to either—their escape had been such an impromptu thing. If they'd had time to plan, to map out their route or, at the least, identify a destination, their course of action would have been clearer. Because they'd _have_ a course of action, even if it were a bad one. Instead, they were aimless, despite the red men's guidance. Adrift in a strange land, with no idea where safety lay.

Or if it existed at all.

Makena was the first to realize they'd have to define the concept themselves. "The vodun aren't going to tell us where to stop," she'd told Amadi one morning as she kept him company during the first watch. (He'd taken the lion's share of daytime guard duties—no one else could afford to lose sleep.) "We need to choose for ourselves. There's been no sign of pursuit, and you're the only one who can keep this up."

Amadi looked at her, saddened again by how skinny she looked in the moonlight. She was still beautiful. But so thin. They all were. "How do we know it's safe?"

Makena shrugged, her eyes dull with exhaustion. "We don't. But running is another kind of slavery." She fell asleep before Amadi found the words to reply.

The next morning, he told the other former ejeme—by way of Anglo and pantomime—that it was time to make a new home.

Most of them looked ready, but Nourbese's expression was unreadable.

#  Chapter Twelve

Quecxl: Four Winters Before Saint's Summit – Hunter's Moon

Xihuitl flew up in a huff as Quecxl smashed his quartzite hammerstone on a hunk of raw flint. A flake splintered off and clattered against the bottom of the canoe, but the size wasn't right—the shard was too small. He was rusty.

Even so, it felt good to be knapping again.

Looking annoyed, Xihuitl returned to his perch atop the boat's prow and gave Quecxl a reproving glare.

"I'm just going to hit it again," he told the gull. "That's how this works. You might want to sit somewhere else if it's going to fluster you."

Xihuitl glowered at the hammerstone and squawked. But the bird didn't move.

"Suit yourself." Quecxl refocused on the flint and tried to get a better sense of its internal structure. In Otumba, he'd developed a real feel for obsidian: how its grains ran, where its strengths lay, which fault lines were safe to strike. That was years ago, though—he hadn't held a hammerstone in what felt like a lifetime. And even then, he'd only worked flint a few times, mostly for fun. He'd made a couple knives, but nothing serious. Certainly nothing he would have been proud to sell in a market as grand as Tentocht's.

But when he'd found the hammerstone and flint in that morning's spirit town, the tools had called to him. It wasn't stealing. Their original owner had either fled or, more likely, been struck down by plague months before Quecxl arrived.

Another wasted community. It bothered him less than it used to. Not because he didn't care—he could still work himself into a rage by dwelling on the injustice. But he _expected_ to find dead villages now. Survivors were a pleasant surprise, and fully healthy towns a cause for celebration. They were the exception, however, and an increasingly rare one.

Xihuitl squawked again, as if daring him to get on with it.

"Oh, you _want_ me to hit it now? You think I'm making this for you?"

The gull continued staring at the hammerstone.

Quecxl shrugged, lined up his next hit, and struck. To good effect: this flake was bigger, the right size for a long spear tip or a short knife blade. The blow was also a loud one. Xihuitl flew around the canoe a full three times before resettling indignantly on the canoe's prow.

Quecxl couldn't help laughing this time. The bird looked so _grumpy_ —yet another reason Quecxl found it hard to believe the little miser with wings was his nahualli.

The realization had been humiliating at first. He'd had always assumed his animal twin was a warrior animal, like a jaguar—to match his stocky build—or an eagle. But a seagull? It was less than inspiring. Eventually, however, Quecxl had come to appreciate the bird's companionship. On occasion, Xihuitl even dropped a dead fish in the bottom of the canoe, usually when Quecxl had gone a day or more without food. It was ... motherly. But welcome. And maybe, just maybe—if his fortunes had finally changed and the gods had forgiven his failures—his nahualli would lead him to Aztlan, as the great eagle had led his Metican ancestors to Tentocht.

Of course, right at that moment it was hard to believe anything so grand of a pouting, dirty bird.

"No one's making you sit there. I'm stuck in this canoe—you can fly anywhere you want." Quecxl gestured at the horizon. "Or are you angry because I took you away from the ocean's easy fishing? Well, don't be. It was time to turn inland." Past time. But Quecxl hadn't wanted to plunge into foreign territory until it felt right. Except for sheltering in small bays and streams when a storm threatened, he'd kept to the ocean since leaving the Valley of Metica. Yesterday, though, something about this opening in the coast had invited him in, convinced him to abandon his heading and see where the new path took him—

There was a face on the nearer bank.

A _dark_ face.

Quecxl had never seen skin so black before, darker than his hair or the center of his eyes. It looked like obsidian flesh, as if the night was sleeping through the day in a woman's body. She was beautiful.

She also had the plague.

Even at a distance—and even on skin that strange—Quecxl knew what the tell-tale rash on the woman's forehead meant. He'd reminded himself a few breaths ago, when he'd leaned over the water to pluck a piece of flint out of his pock-marked reflection before the shard sank.

But the dark face disappeared before he could open his mouth. He must have frightened her. "Wait!" Quecxl called, knowing she wouldn't understand Nahwatl but hoping she'd be able to discern his meaning. "I can help you! I can take away the plague!"

No response.

With an impatient stroke on the other side of the canoe, Quecxl adjusted his heading and began paddling as fast as he could, willing his canoe to cut through the water like a blade—the razor-edged kind he used to make. But it still took an eternity before he reached the bank and hauled his canoe onto its sandy shore.

And the woman was nowhere to be seen.

"Wait!" he called again, "I can save your family too! And your friends—but you don't have much time! You have to let me help _now_!"

Still no response, except for Xihuitl's annoyed squawk—the gull hadn't liked Quecxl's frantic paddling any more than his flint knapping.

"Watch the canoe," he told the bird, fully aware of how ridiculous the request was, but trusting in Xihuitl's guarding abilities nonetheless (the bird certainly knew how to be a pest). Then Quecxl plunged into the undergrowth, scanning the ground for signs of the woman's passage. If she did have friends and family in the area, they probably weren't far off. Especially if they were suffering through the plague's latter stages.

"I can help them," he whispered to Huitzipochtli. "If you let me find them, I can help. I don't ask you for much anymore. Just let me find them."

* * *

The woman did indeed have friends nearby: maybe twenty more night skins and a handful of original men.

He'd found their makeshift camp by accident, after he'd lost his bearings and his composure (having shouted himself hoarse while cursing Huitzipochtli for his indifference). Quecxl didn't have time to feel shame for his doubts, though. The woman he'd seen on the bank was gesturing at him in alarm, and most of the men in the camp had started advancing on him with grim expressions.

Maybe he should have tried harder to hide his approach.

But he'd come with good intentions. He just had to find a way to communicate them.

"You," he said, pointing to the woman he'd (more or less) followed. Then he tapped his pocked forehead. "And you," he said, pointing to a man with a similar rash.

He repeated this process until he'd pointed at almost everyone in the camp; all but three of the ragged, starved-looking night skins had the rash, and every original man did. This group of—settlers? Refugees? War victims?—was maybe two days from disaster. At least they seemed to recognize their plight. No one was advancing on him anymore, and several gasped when he pantomimed coughing blood and collapsing to the earth.

"That's what will happen to you if you don't let me help you," Quecxl explained as he bounded back up. He pointed at the first woman again, tapped his forehead, and made a wiping motion across his temples, as if he were brushing away his plague scars.

This last action provoked a flood of excited chatter. Most of it sounded skeptical, even heated, but some of the night skins looked hopeful. None of the original men had anything to say, however. They just scowled at Quecxl with a surprising amount of heat.

Before he had time to ponder their hostility, a night skin, one of the three who didn't have the rash, broke ranks and walked forward slowly, until he was within arm's reach of Quecxl. The man moved with a limp, but he was tall—Quecxl only came to his shoulders—bald, and adorned with an impressive assortment of tattoos.

The tall night skin looked at one of the original men, who shook his head. Then the night skin considered Quecxl for a tense moment before speaking in a tongue he didn't understand. He shrugged to indicate his incomprehension. The night skin tried another tongue, and another, but Quecxl's responses were no different. Finally, the night skin gestured with his hands toward the camp's opposite end, turned, and walked in that direction.

Quecxl followed cautiously, still hoping for a happy outcome but intensely aware of how much distrust lingered in the air. He took pains to stay close—but not too close—to the tall night skin as he parted the crowd and strode to the one hut that looked solidly finished. Along the way, Quecxl noticed other buildings approaching a similar state of completion. The night skins and the original men must be trying to turn this hastily erected camp into something more permanent.

But none of it would last if the plague were allowed to flourish.

As if thinking the same thing, the tall night skin opened the hut's door to reveal a dark woman crouched over a boy of no more than ten years. He was covered from head to toe in oozing pustules.

Without waiting for an invitation, Quecxl rushed into the room and knelt beside the woman, likely the boy's mother. She shot a confused look at the tall night skin, but he forestalled her objection by shaking his head. Quecxl missed the rest of their exchange. He was too busy examining the youngest patient he'd ever attempted to heal. The survivors he'd found before had all been adults—apparently children were the first to succumb—and this boy didn't seem like he'd be an exception. His dark skin was harder to read than an original man's, but it looked like the blood underneath had turned black.

Which meant there wasn't any time to waste.

Gently, Quecxl put both hands on the child's blazing-hot chest. He knew how the heat burned, how each pustule ached and itched, how the fever came in waves and the nausea never left. He'd survived ... But his blood hadn't lost its color.

This boy was too far gone.

There was too much damage to repair, too many ill effects to reverse. Even as the stiff energy flowed through Quecxl, he knew it wouldn't be enough. He was too late. If he hadn't lost his way in the woods before he found this camp, maybe things would be different. But the boy's spirit was already departing his body. Quecxl didn't have time to do anything more than beautify the poor thing's corpse.

Still, Quecxl tried.

The boy's mother gasped as the first pustule shrank and vanished. As ten more pustules faded away, the tall night skin muttered what could have been a prayer or an oath. Quecxl didn't respond—he knew he was losing the battle, even if it didn't look that way. But he soldiered on, cursing Huitzipochtli with every breath.

Reinforcements arrived from two equally unexpected sources.

The first was the tall night skin. Quecxl felt the man lend energy of his own to the process, a rigid stream stronger than anything Quecxl had experienced. He opened his eyes in surprise and found that the tall night skin looked just as shocked, maybe more so. Determined, though. His aid was involuntary, but if it was helping, he wouldn't withdraw it.

Quecxl nodded his thanks as the second ally appeared: Xihuitl. The bird glided over the tall night skin's shoulder, ignored the mother's cry of alarm, and landed on the handle of a shovel.

"So much for watching the canoe," Quecxl remonstrated with a grin. For whatever reason, it was easier to heal when the gull was nearby. He probably should have brought the bird to begin with.

Refocusing, he willed the tall night skin's energy to meld with his own. Quecxl was never really sure how he did any of this—this weaving of flesh and blood—and he was even less certain now that he was drawing power from another person. But while it proved to be a close thing, eventually the boy was breathing again. Unconscious, but breathing.

Breathing and healthy.

Healthy and whole. He wouldn't even have scars.

Quecxl slumped to the floor. By rights, the tall night skin should have been equally exhausted—after all, he'd done half the work—but he showed no signs of fatigue as he scooped up the boy and carried him from the hut. The mother kissed Quecxl's forehead and whispered a fervent blessing before she too went into the sunlight and joined the other refugees' chorus of amazement.

Quecxl smiled tiredly, letting himself go limp against the dirt floor as he soaked in the sounds of celebration. There was still much to be done: at least twenty men and women had the rash. But with the tall night skin's help, he should have enough strength to finish the job, to save every last person in the fledgling village.

At last—at long, long, last—he'd arrived in time.

* * *

"Amadi," the tall night skin said as he pointed to himself.

"Makena," the woman—the one Quecxl had tailed to the refugees' camp—said as she did the same.

"Quecxl," he said, following suit with a smile. Then he laughed. He'd spent all afternoon working shoulder to shoulder with the tall night skin, and only now learned what to call him. Granted, the time had been filled with the furious fight to eradicate the plague, a labor so intense Quecxl had barely had energy to draw breath, much less speak. But still.

Amadi and Makena didn't laugh—why would they, when he lacked the words to let them in on the joke?—but they returned his smile. Makena's was even a bit shy. Was that an invitation? Did she want him to investigate? Did he?

Maybe. Hopefully. Yes.

He laughed again, reveling in how good it felt to sit next to a fire after saving an entire _community_ and not just one or two holdouts. His past failures still stung, but today ... Today there were no bodies to bury. And it made him want to sing.

Xihuitl squawked discouragingly from his perch atop a nearby stump. The bird hated when Quecxl sang.

All the more reason.

Making his voice as deep as possible, he launched into his favorite song, a ballad about how Quetzalcoatl had enabled the current age of the world by gathering the bodies of humanity's ancestors from the underworld and bringing them to the rest of the gods so they could imbue the bones with their blood. The theme of sacrifice to produce life seemed fitting.

He interrupted the second stanza to laugh again. So this was what being "drunk with power" felt like. Comparing himself to the gods. Ludicrous. And yet ... Anything felt possible. Aware that Amadi and Makena were watching him expectantly, Quecxl resumed singing.

Another voice joined in, a voice that knew every word.

At first Quecxl was delighted when he looked behind him and found the youngest original man approaching the fire. But the youth wasn't singing with joy.

His rendition was scornful.

Undaunted, Quecxl finished the last verse, keeping his tone playful. He faltered on the final word, though. The youth still had the rash—he must have been overlooked. Was that the source of his hostility?

Amadi stood to say something, but the youth preempted him. "Shaman," the youth said in nearly perfect Nahwatl as he nodded toward Xihuitl—most of the camp seemed to revere the bird, or at least acknowledge his unusual attachment to Quecxl. "I have the plague. Please heal me as you've healed the others." The words were respectful enough, but the tone ... The tone was hateful.

"Of course," Quecxl replied diplomatically, sensing that Amadi and Makena were just as surprised by the youth's aggressiveness (or was it his linguistic ability?). "Sit."

The youth turned the simple motion into another insult, lowering himself slowly and smirking all the while. His defiance was especially galling because, in appearance, he could have been Quecxl's brother: same brownish skin color, same stocky build, same dark hair.

The camp's night skins had welcomed him with open arms. Why weren't his near kin doing the same?

Amadi did say something now, barking what had to be a rebuke at the youth. Makena stayed silent, but she was clearly fuming as well.

"It's no matter," Quecxl said, raising his hand to indicate he didn't want the two night skins to intervene. He repeated the gesture when Amadi started to approach, no doubt intending to bear some of the burden of healing the ungrateful youth. "It's no matter," Quecxl said again. "I can heal him myself."

The youth laughed. "Can you, now?"

"Yes," Quecxl replied simply. "But I'll let the pustules burst your skin like popped corn if you don't change your manner."

The youth rolled his eyes, but kept his mouth shut.

Quecxl put his hands on the youth's chest, took a deep breath, and dropped his arms back to his sides. "One more condition: you have to tell me why you hate me so much—why all the original men here hate me—when I've never even met you."

"We've met someone _like_ you," the youth replied with renewed anger. "He used his power to betray us."

Quecxl crossed his arms. He'd barely begun to process that Amadi was at least a little like him, and now there was someone else? "Explain."

The youth didn't hold back. "We were slaves on an island—Bimshire, the pale men called it. They made us harvest their sugarcane. Most of us had no choice, but there was a Lepane boy who could do ... anything. Shoot fire, change shapes, rearrange the stars: whatever he wished. I knew he was manitouk, but his Hodensee keeper named him 'Karakwa.' It means 'sun.'" The original man paused to spit. "That spirit spawn was supposed to be our savior. But after he helped us escape, he disappeared. Left us to fend for ourselves. On an _island_ , with pale men looking everywhere for us." Emotion overcame the youth, and he had to take several deep breaths to compose himself. "Not many survived. We were lucky," he said, gesturing with his head toward the other original men in the camp. "We found a raft before the pale men found us. I don't think anyone else made it off that rock."

The youth seemed sincere, but a boy who could rearrange the stars? "This 'Karakwa'—what was his real name?"

The youth shook his head. "He was just Karakwa by the time I was brought to Bimshire. I don't know what he went by before. But now the pale men call him 'The Red Wraith.'"

Quecxl chewed his lip. It didn't seem possible—no one could be that powerful—but then again, he'd just cured a whole village ... A village he still didn't know anything about. "And after you escaped? How did you come to be in the company of so many night skins?"

The youth laughed again. "The Afrii? Slavers found us almost as soon as we reached the mainland. Different slavers, but just as treacherous. They sold us to another pale man within a few days. The only difference was we were growing tobacco, and our new 'master' favored dark slaves, like them." He pointed to Amadi and Makena, both of whom were watching the exchange closely. Then the youth focused on Amadi. "They were also from Bimshire, but that man acted like a _true_ savior. He led us to freedom and _stayed_. He's helping his people make a new life here."

"And you're staying too? You're not going back to your own people?"

Initially, it looked like the youth was going to force another laugh. But he couldn't fake it this time—there was too much hurt in his eyes. All he managed was wiping angrily at the rash on his forehead. "Most of us don't have people to go back to."

"Too true," Quecxl whispered after an awkward silence. Closing his eyes, he returned his hands to the youth's chest. Amadi's energy beckoned from the other side of the fire, but Quecxl ignored it, willing to bear the strain as penance. It didn't take long. The memories of his own affliction were still close to the surface, dredged up by the day's earlier work.

"Thank you," the youth whispered when Quecxl finished.

"I tried to be a Karakwa once," he said in an equally low voice.

The youth put his fingers to his forehead, as if to reassure himself the rash was gone.

"I tried to be a big man," Quecxl continued as he fought off a vision from that terrible night atop the temple of Tentocht's fourth quadrant, when he'd botched Citalli's sacrifice. "The gods were not pleased."

"Thank you," the youth repeated.

Quecxl shook his head. "It's nothing. What are you called?"

"Chogan."

"I'm Quecxl."

There was nothing more to say until Amadi limped over—for some reason, the hitch in his step was more noticeable by firelight—and placed his hand on Chogan's shoulder. They traded words in a pale man's tongue, and the youth turned back to Quecxl. "Amadi wants you to stay. He says we could use a healer."

Taken aback, he tried to deflect the question. "Where did you learn to speak Nahwatl? You're not Metican."

"No," Chogan said with a smile—the first Quecxl had seen on the youth's face. "But there was a Metican girl on Bimshire." His smile turned wistful. "She taught me her tongue so we could speak privately, even surrounded by others in the field."

"I'm sorry you lost her."

Chogan nodded, his smile gone. "Will you stay?"

Quecxl was tempted. But he still hadn't achieved his ultimate goal. "I'm looking for a place called Aztlan. Have you heard of it? It was the home of my ancestors—the first Meticans. If any still reside there, they'll have the strength to turn back the pale tide."

Chogan conferred with Amadi and shrugged. "We've heard nothing," he said apologetically.

"Then I can't stay," Quecxl replied, just as sorrowfully.

Yet he changed his mind after Xihuitl gave him an idea. Squawking noisily, the gull flew several rod lengths from the fire, landed, squawked again, and flew several more rod lengths ... in the direction of the canoe. Where the hammerstone and flint lay.

"But I don't have to leave yet," Quecxl said as he realized what his nahualli was trying to communicate. "You need knives—I've seen people here struggling to rip a piece of cloth or tear a vine when a blade would do the job in a heartbeat. I also saw a node of flint in the woods on my way here. If Makena can guide me back to my canoe, I'll fetch my hammerstone and make you all the knives you need."

After relaying Quecxl's proposal to Amadi, Chogan accepted the offer on the night skin's behalf. "Amadi says it's a rare thing to be able to mend flesh with one hand and forge a blade with the other. He welcomes your gifts for as long as you're willing to share them."

The praise set Quecxl's skin tingling, and he hoped to Huitzipochtli he wasn't blushing. But his eyes strayed to Makena, and now he knew his cheeks were red. "I'll stay as long as I can."

#  Chapter Thirteen

Chase: Three Winters Before Saint's Summit – Worm Moon

Scrabbling like a panicked crab, Chase tried his desperate best to get away from the red devil and his gleaming tomahawk.

This was going badly.

He'd meant to burn the heathens to ash before they realized what was happening. And he'd been mostly successful: the majority of the trading party was writhing in flames, corpses burning brilliantly as their fat crackled and popped.

But this devil—this damnably big devil—had been behind a wagon, out of Chase's line of rage-narrowed sight. And now he was having trouble concentrating, as his anger turned to terror and his concentration lapsed.

Again.

It was an almost perfect reenactment of that humiliating, scarring night on Jacob's plantation. He'd tried to incinerate this red, but suddenly couldn't find the hellfire, and the devil had noticed. He was advancing with deliberate speed, obviously relishing the prelude to vengeance.

Then Chase—on all fours after fear had made him clumsy—smashed against the eastern wall of the trading outpost, and the force of his flight caused him to rebound toward his pursuer. This was it: his troubles were about to end with a heathen's axe in his skull. So much for his quest.

As Chase braced for the coming blow, the fingers of his left hand brushed against the blunderbuss he'd taken off that dead idiot three towns back. With a cry of triumph, he ripped the pistol from his belt, pointed it at the red devil, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

A second later, Chase's thoughts caught up to his actions, and he remembered with a flash of dark laughter that the pistol had come unloaded, and he'd yet to find ammunition.

The red resumed his advance. He was close now, near enough to wind back his arm and angle the head of his tomahawk.

In a last act of defiance, Chase cocked his own arm back. Hurling the pistol might buy him some time. Another few seconds maybe, long enough to scrabble a little farther before the tomahawk found his skull anyway.

But as he began the throw, the pistol took on a pleasing weight in his hand. A calming weight. One that felt right, and balanced, and ... directing. The longer he held the weapon in his hand, the more he could focus, and as his fear fell away, the hellfire welled up inside him. Except this time it didn't emerge from the general area around him: this time it billowed forth from the pistol's muzzle, as if he'd loaded the gun with his inferno. And as his arm descended, the pistol's fire cut through the red devil like a sword.

Shaken, Chase stared at the body he'd burned in two. He didn't move until a gasp from inside one of the wagons redirected his attention: an old woman was peering out of the vehicle's covered back. She was so terrified that her wrinkled skin was almost the same color as the whites of her bulging eyes.

And she was crossing herself.

Chase looked at her in astonishment. When she noticed him doing so, she ducked back out of sight. But it didn't matter—she'd done all she needed to by reminding him of the Lord's presence.

Because it wasn't hellfire he was wielding.

It was holy fire.

* * *

After the red devils had burned his cabin—and their shaman sent those poor souls walking to their death—Chase had wandered the land for months.

Again.

Because its dirty heathens had deprived him of a home, casting him from it with nothing but the clothes on his back.

Yet again.

But this time a purpose had grown in his heart: he had the power to be a scourge. To act as an instrument of fiery purification.

He could be an avenger.

Until that old woman had crossed herself at the trading outpost, however, he'd thought of himself as the Devil's agent—no matter what he pretended to others ... An agent like Amadi, that undying tar skin who'd inspired his flames' first misfire and marked him with a black, burning hand.

Chase lowered his drink to shudder and shake his head, a motion the tavern's lone waitress interpreted (correctly) as a sign to leave him alone.

He deserved the brand on his forehead, though. His fire had been born in sin—no one could ever forgive him for what he'd done in New Kent. And a warlock like him would never see the gates of Heaven anyway. So as he'd hunted reds, raining fire on their unclean bodies wherever he found them, he'd done so with the grim conviction that he was no less bestial than his victims. Scum killing scum. Filth cleansing filth.

But he'd been mistaken. God _did_ have a purpose for him. The Lord had to. Why else would he cause a man like Chase to burst with magick? He hadn't been born this way. The witchery hadn't emerged until he was growing a little slower of step, a little thicker around the middle. Manifesting power like this so late in life wasn't an accident. It was design. And it was only a curse if you believed it to be so. The correct response—the one he hadn't known to adopt until that old lady crossed herself—was to see the fire as a gift. A blessing.

A purpose.

He'd just been using his fire the wrong way.

Now Chase did take a drink, lolling the flip—that wondrous mix of hot rum, beer, and brown sugar—around his mouth to soak in the homebrew's flavor: this town was too far out of the way to get many imports. But that was fine. Everything tasted good at the moment.

Largely because of the blunderbuss pistol: the fire had felt purer when it came from the gun's muzzle. As if it were a weapon granted to him, rather than a sickness spilling forth ... Perhaps the pistol was his holy weapon, his version of Uriel's fiery sword. The gun even looked the part: as was customary for a blunderbuss, its muzzle was formed in the shape of a wyrm's head. Some people actually called their blunderbusses "dragons," and the Netherns had taken it a step further by naming a whole unit—the "dragoons"—after the potent weapons.

But a dragon had never been in more appropriate hands.

Smiling, Chase glanced around the room. He wanted to explain his thoughts to someone—to trumpet his joy at realizing his purpose—but the other inhabitants were at least as disheveled as him, rootless men looking for a brief respite in the bottom of their cups. Would they understand? Would they even look up at him when he spoke?

Maybe not, but the words were already bubbling out of him.

"I don't know any of you, so I won't presume to call you friends." He stood and moved to the center of the room, cup still in hand. A few of the other men looked up. "But I will call you brothers—the color of our skin allows me to do that much. A color the red devils don't share." He had everyone's attention now. "And that color isn't just skin deep. It _means_ something to be white. It means we're Jesua's children. It means we're civilized. It means—and let's not make any bones here—it means we're _better_."

Some of the men grunted in appreciation.

"And yet the reds play at being the superior race. Capitalizing on their familiarity with the land, they harass our settlers, deny us food in our times of need, and magick our weak."

The last accusation caused some confusion. Chase also noticed—as he looked at each member of his audience in turn—that the waitress and bartender looked concerned. But he pressed on. "That's right, my brothers. I saw the terrible fruits of one of their heathen curses: an entire village ensorcelled to walk until their feet bled and the survivors begged for death. The jealous devils must have resented the small plot the villagers claimed for their own, even though all the people in Europa and Ruska could live in this land without feeling crowded."

His neck was tingling. This—speaking eloquently to a room of men—was exhilarating. He'd missed it. "A few weeks ago, I asked the good Lord why he allowed savages to oppress their rightful masters in such barbarous fashion. He didn't answer me directly, but he did grant me a weapon to help set things right: this dragon."

Chase jumped onto the nearest table and drew his pistol, dropping his cup in the process. The bartender looked positively alarmed now. "It may look ordinary, brothers, even common. But so did the Grail." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Yet what I have in my hand is no legend. It's real: a gun loaded not with shot, but holy fire."

He punctuated his claim by pulling the trigger.

The flame that sprouted from the dragon's muzzle looked unnaturally pure, even to Chase. He could barely feel the accompanying quickening in his body—it wasn't hard to believe divine force fueled the fire. "Behold!" he cried, raising his voice again to be heard above the growing commotion. He raised the dragon as well, thrusting it as high as he could, so high he—

Set a rafter on fire.

The timber ignited as the bartender yelled, "Stop!" Someone else screamed, "He's a warlock!" And within seconds, almost everyone was rushing for the door.

The waitress had enough wits to hurl a mug into Chase's forehead before she fled, catching him squarely in Amadi's palm print. As the vessel shattered, so did his concentration—he'd been about to extinguish the fire before it spread. But now he was bleeding from at least ten headwounds, some of them deep. And more pieces of crockery were starting to whiz by him: a plate missed his face by inches.

Time to leave.

Jumping from the table, he stumbled toward the kitchen. There had to be a backdoor. To make sure no one followed, he waved the still-smoking dragon behind him as he fled.

Blood was streaming down his face too fast for him to see much when he entered the kitchen, but he could hear a door flapping a few paces ahead: the cook must have had the same idea. Holding his hands up to avoid touching anything sharp or hot, Chase lurched toward the door and fell through it.

* * *

It took him a good ten minutes to dig the pottery shards out of his head. It was tedious work, especially without tweezers—his knife was too big for such precision. But eventually every remnant of the mug came out, and Chase was able to stop the bleeding by wrapping his shirt around his head.

At least he still had his eyes. That was something. And as far as he could tell, no one had pursued him into the forest. No doubt they were busy trying to control the fire he'd started, or scared of his "warlockness." Or both.

"Well, that went rather badly," he said to the sky. "Obviously." He looked down at his feet. "But what's not obvious is whether that was a sign ... or a test."

The sky didn't answer.

Of course it didn't. Why would the good Lord give him any direction? Any direction at all. And why would his All-Knowingness give him a purpose only to embarrass him with it at the first opportunity?

"I was trying to do your will," Chase muttered as more blood trickled down his neck. That bitch of a waitress had some arm on her. Tightening his grip on the makeshift bandage, he let his eyes wander until they lighted on the dragon, still lying where he'd dropped it once he'd felt safe enough to stop running. He knew it was only an ordinary weapon, a common, unloaded gun worth a few coins at most. He'd never lost sight of that. Not entirely.

But he needed it. The dragon felt _right_ in his hands, and he felt right about himself when he wielded fire though it. He wasn't sinning anymore, or enacting an abomination only the Devil would approve. He was doing something natural. Something the Lord wanted.

With the dragon, Chase had also been able to fire those men's hearts. Only for a moment, until he set the roof ablaze like the village idiot. But the confidence the gun gave him had spilled into his words. He'd always been articulate—even eloquent, in the right circumstances—but he'd never been captivating before. And for a few seconds in that dingy little tavern, he'd been downright spellbinding.

The rafter and the mug had been a test after all, then. God was only making sure he had a worthy instrument. If Chase were weak, he would let this setback break him, let the failure crush his resolve and doom his life to minor doings of little consequence.

He wasn't weak.

Chase unwrapped the shirt from his head and gazed at the sky again. "I accept your challenge." He drew the dragon from its holster and held it high. "And I accept your tool. With it I will rally the white man against the red and black, and conquer this land for the race that truly deserves it."

A drop of blood oozed over the palm print on his forehead and into his eye.

He blinked and smiled fiercely. "Whatever the cost."

#  Chapter Fourteen

Isaura: Three Winters Before Saint's Summit – Harvest Moon

"Here?" the swarthy overseer asked.

"Here," Isaura repeated. "Don't be fooled by the topsoil: there's good water twenty feet down." She dropped the branch she'd used as a divining rod—cut from a nearby willow tree—to indicate her choice of location was final.

The overseer chewed his tongue. "We'll see," he conceded.

Isaura knew that tone: it was the sound of a man who had trouble believing a _woman_ could be a dowser of such reputation. She knew the look on his face too, the mix of lust and contempt that caused so many of his ilk to stare with dangerous eyes at single women.

Experience had taught her how to deal with both reactions.

The skepticism she ignored. "Indeed you will," she replied in her cheeriest voice. "The best well you've ever dug awaits your shovel." The desire she handled by drumming her fingers on the butt of her holstered pistol, the deterrent she'd shown to every man she'd done business with since that Franc oaf came at her outside New Parix.

The overseer chewed his tongue again, looking less than happy to have the gun brought back to his attention. (She'd also patted it—absentmindedly, of course—when they'd met half an hour earlier.) "Well, it won't be _my_ shovel doing the digging," he allowed after another uncomfortable pause. "That's darkling work." He jerked his thumb behind him, where two tar-skinned slaves stood stone-faced and silent, each with his own spade.

Isaura nodded. She didn't like the overseer, but she wasn't fond of Meers either: Espania still had far too many of them, and the slaves looked like they could be cousins to the infidels who'd nearly subjugated her homeland. "Naturally. Now, if you'd be so kind as to pay my fee ..."

"Not until we hit water." The overseer's face tightened with ugly stubbornness.

"That wasn't the arrangement."

"It's the only arrangement that will get you this coin." He tapped the small pouch on his belt, in much the same way Isaura had patted her pistol.

It wasn't worth fighting over, so she put on her best smile. "I suppose I wouldn't mind waiting for the first drink."

Peeved that he hadn't provoked more of a reaction, the overseer shrugged. "Suit yourself," he grumbled as he turned to the slaves and motioned for them to start digging.

* * *

Isaura spent the day in Sheffax, the nearby town. Even if the two slaves worked at a feverish pace—unlikely, given the heat—the rough-out wouldn't be deep enough to draw water until evening. So she took the opportunity to relax. She hadn't been in a community of Anglos for several months, and she enjoyed practicing their language.

Although all anyone wanted to talk about was the Red Wraith, the indigenous butcher of recent legend. Apparently the shaman had revenged himself on a village called Rokoan, forcing its occupants to walk until they were consumed by a forest fire. It was supposed to be recompense for the "Walking Purchase," an agreement with the local tribes that allowed Anglo settlers to claim all the land within a day-and-a-half's walk of the Black Hill. The reds hadn't liked how the whites stretched the letter of the agreement by clearing straight trails and running off the distance.

Or so one old man in Sheffax maintained.

But Manuel paid no mind to the rumors—her caballo loved towns. He always stepped a little higher when he knew people were watching, which they often did when he and Isaura rode by: an Espan redhead on an enormous draft-cross tended to attract attention.

Pleasant as her time in Sheffax was, however, Isaura couldn't shake her frustration with the way the overseer had dug in his heels. He would have paid a male dowser—there was no doubt in her mind. Even if the male dowser didn't have her impeccable track record: more than fifty divinings now and no misses. She _always_ found water. No man could match her accuracy.

Of course, no man had her relationship with water. The ability to sense and smell it was acceptable enough in her role as a dowser, but the other things she could do would get her burned or beheaded were she to perform any of them openly. It was better to be circumspect: when she quenched—her latest euphemism for the process—she still only did it subtly and, if possible, privately.

Regardless, the overseer should have paid her.

The thought continued to weigh her down in the late afternoon, when a slender tar-skinned woman approached with a glass of fresh lemonade. "You water finder?" the slave whispered in Franc—clearly not her native tongue—as she lowered her head to show the proper amount of deference.

Isaura was taken aback. The slave looked calm, but she clutched the glass of lemonade as if it were a holy talisman. Maybe she'd never seen a caballo as large as Manuel before—he was sitting on the ground, legs tucked beneath him like a cat as Isaura leaned against his back—but then why offer a gift? And why wasn't she speaking Anglo? "I am," Isaura answered in Franc.

"You find water anyone?" The tar skin thrust the glass into Isaura's fingers as if she'd said she wanted the drink.

It took her a second to interpret the slave's question. "Anyone who can pay."

"Anyone?" the tar skin repeated, bowing as if Isaura had said thank you.

"If they can pay," she replied again, still unsure where this was headed.

The slave raised her head to look Isaura in the eye, studied her a moment, and nodded. "That good," she declared. After bowing again, she hurried back the way she'd come.

Leaving Isaura still very much confused.

* * *

She didn't have to wait long for the slave woman's intentions to become clear. That evening, Isaura returned to the plantation in time to witness the two male slaves strike water in the beautifully shaped well they'd spent the day digging. They still had a ways to go—the sides needed shoring, and the topper had to be built—but there was water pooling in the bottom of the rough-out, so the overseer couldn't withhold her payment any longer. Her drink of the well's pure water was the more-satisfying reward, however. First taste was a dowser's due: it was supposed to enhance divining abilities and grant a general sense of wellbeing. Isaura didn't need additional power—she already had far more than she wanted—but the cool water still felt spectacular as it slipped down her throat.

A draught well earned.

"Do you need a place to stay tonight, Miss Isaura?" the somewhat-humbled overseer asked after Isaura lowered her cup.

"I've already paid for a room in town." She hadn't, but she preferred not to let strangers know when she'd be sleeping along the road. Especially male strangers. "Thank you, though. Well, I'm off." She left with a sense of triumph, a mood Manuel seemed to intuit and incorporate into his jaunty gait.

But less than a mile from the plantation, their satisfaction turned to surprise as the female slave from that afternoon stepped out of the underbrush and blocked their path. "I need you find water," she said. "You find, I pay."

There was something different about the tar skin now. Even in the fading light, Isaura could see the woman carried herself with more pride than she had in town. Her shoulders were less hunched, her back was straighter.

And the deference was gone. "Slaves don't have money," Isaura eventually replied.

The tar skin smiled thinly. "Most slaves no," she agreed, "but I pay. You find, I pay. I swear."

Isaura was on the verge of saying no when the tar skin pressed the issue.

"You say find water anyone, anyone can pay. I pay. You find me water."

If this slave had money, it was probably stolen. And what would a slave want with a well anyway? If a master tired of sharing water with his chattel, he might commission a separate well. But _he_ would do the commissioning—he wouldn't send a slave to conduct the negotiations, much less a female one. And he certainly wouldn't tell her to be this forward.

So it was a vast surprise to Isaura when she found herself saying yes.

* * *

"How much farther?" Isaura asked, for at least the tenth time that morning.

"No far," Makena tossed back over her shoulder again.

After exchanging names, they'd traveled until dark and spent the night along the road, sheltered by the woods as Isaura had intended. But she hadn't been able to sleep. The situation felt false: there were too many ways fulfilling her promise could end up ruining the life she'd worked so hard to build. She shouldn't have said yes.

But she couldn't bring herself to say no. Not yesterday, when Makena had demanded her help, and not today, when every step Manuel took seemed like a bigger mistake than the last. There was something about this woman, an angry defiance that made her feel like a kindred spirit. Even if she looked like a Meer's cousin.

Isaura patted Manuel's flank, trying to soothe away the agitation he was undoubtedly picking up from her—he'd always been a mirror for her emotions. If she couldn't tell her own mood, she only had to look at him. It had been like that since their first days together. "I'm glad you're with me," she murmured into his chocolate-brown mane.

Telling Makena "no" didn't feel like an option—yet—but maybe it was time to broach the most important topic: "You're a runaway."

Makena didn't stop walking; she didn't even look back. "No," she answered matter-of-factly.

"Please don't lie."

"I a runaway a year ago when I run away. Now I free."

Isaura wasn't sure whether to scoff or smile at the insolent simplicity of Makena's logic. Everyone knew a slave couldn't outrun its master's ownership. Property rights were property rights, no matter where that property might get to. "You're not free until your master says you are."

She'd finally said something that caused Makena to stop moving: the tar skin whirled around so quickly, it was all Isaura could do to keep Manuel from spooking. "My master no ask me when he get me with two baby. Or when they born and he sell them. So I no ask him when I free. I say I free, I free. No him."

Unbidden, Isaura's hand went to the tear in her left ear—it had never properly healed after that Franc oaf had torn out her earring with his fumblings. She'd learned to dowse that day, but the cost ...

The cost was the connection she felt with this Meer's cousin. Makena's skin may be stained the color of tar, but she was still a woman, and men tended to treat women the same way.

But before Isaura could offer words of commiseration, Makena spun back around and resumed her march through the woods. "No much farther," she said, and then—for the first time—added, "Afternoon, we be there," as if hoping the information would forestall further questions.

It did: Isaura was silent for the rest of the journey, even when they came across an Anglo buggy whose driver clearly assumed they were mistress and slave, or when, in the early afternoon, Makena abruptly veered off the road and plunged into the underbrush. To follow, Isaura had to dismount and lead Manuel by hand, walking slowly for several miles until they emerged into a clearing filled with newly built structures and ... tar skins. Maybe thirty of them, along with four or five reds.

And not a white person in sight.

"You wait," Makena said before hurrying toward the central building, molded in an outlandish half-onion shape.

Isaura didn't need to be told to stop moving—she'd frozen in place when they broke through the thick tree line. Helping one runaway was dangerous enough; helping a _community_ of runaways was ... likely suicide. She wasn't sure, because she hadn't heard of a white person doing something this stupid before. For that matter, she hadn't heard of this many slaves running off together, red or black. When it was found, their illegal enclave would be made an example of. An _extreme_ example.

So: was a tenuous connection with a runaway slave woman—a connection that woman wasn't even aware of—worth risking the gallows?

No. Not at all. Not even close.

"Thank you for humoring me," she whispered to Manuel, "but I've come to my senses. Let's go."

She hadn't finished turning around before Makena reminded her of their agreement. "We pay," the tar skin woman called in Anglo—apparently Isaura wasn't the only linguist in the New World. "You find water, we pay."

Despite herself, Isaura looked back at Makena, who was accompanied now by a tall tar skin man of slightly lighter hue. Bald and naked to the waist, his bare skin gleamed with swirling, multicolored tattoos. He moved with a slight limp, but his voice was strong and commanding. "We pay," he said, also in Anglo, as he lobbed a purse in an arc that terminated at Isaura's feet.

She only looked at the purse for a second, conscious that every eye in the clearing was on her—how could she _not_ be the focus of attention when she was the only white person in a camp of runaways? "With stolen money?" she asked of the tattooed tar skin.

He smiled, but it was an angry smile. "Our money," he said softly. "We earn it."

Isaura tried not to look frightened as she pointed out the obvious. "Slaves don't earn wages."

The tar skin shook his head. "We work, they should pay."

There was too much emphasis on "pay" for Isaura's liking, but it seemed futile—and dangerous—to pursue the point. "What happens after I find water?" She began mentally preparing herself to swing onto Manuel's back and gallop away if she didn't like the tar skin's answer.

But he seemed sincere. "We pay," he repeated, nodding at the purse, "you go."

With a start, Isaura realized the tar skins standing closest to Makena and the tattooed man were the same slaves who'd dug the well outside Sheffax the day before. They even still had their shovels. But they'd left their stone faces at the plantation: both men were beaming with the relief and rebellion of escape.

Makena must have felt that way a year ago. All the runaways must have.

Just as _she_ had after leaving Laflorida and New Parix.

"All right," Isaura said slowly. "Cut me a forked stick, and I'll find you water."

#  Chapter Fifteen

Amadi: Three Winters Before Saint's Summit – Harvest Moon

In a way, the white woman's visit was as important as Quecxl's.

Not in terms of immediate gains—Isaura wasn't saving lives like the Metican had. But the well she'd dowsed made Amadi think differently about the camp, even before the hole was dug. Fugitives used stolen buckets to haul water from a river; communities had wells. And that's what he was in charge of now: Omnira, a growing community of _free_ men and women.

It felt amazing.

Amadi wasn't the only one smiling as Omnira's two newest members put the finishing touches on the well. They'd dug through the night, working by moonlight to have the shaft completed in time for a dawn ceremony. At some point, Gunta, the smaller of the pair, had even gathered enough stones to ring the hole.

Amadi nodded in approval as Efosa, the closest thing Omnira had to a shaman, blessed the first bucket of water and passed it to Isaura as her dowser's due. She took a long drink and pronounced the water some of the best she'd had. Those who understood her uniquely accented Anglo cheered, and everyone else joined in.

They even sounded like a community now.

And that was no small thing. The original runaways had all been bought by doughy "Master" Jacobs, but they represented more peoples than Amadi had first guessed. Foim, Alladan, Oyon, Whydan—it was a long list for such a small group. Some of the runaways shared languages and religions, but most didn't have anything in common except historical hostilities.

Then there was the white man.

Isaura had been stunned when Falk emerged from his hut during dinner, but Amadi had been even more surprised two months ago, when the Nethern strode into camp with a question: "Kindling help?" He'd been the one who'd thrown the bite stick into the cellar, the bit of wood Amadi couldn't reach but still appreciated.

Apparently Jacobs didn't treat his indentured servants much better than his slaves—Falk had the whip scars to prove it. Inspired by how Amadi stood up to Rory, the Nethern had done what he could to ease the consequences. But after the slaves escaped, he'd been worked harder than ever, even when Jacobs bought replacements. Eventually, Falk resolved to break his contract and run away himself—on the same night Efosa stole back to the plantation and recruited its new slaves. Hoping for a fresh start, Falk had tailed them to Omnira.

It was a good story, but it wouldn't have been enough if he hadn't brought a sack of stolen tools.

And even though his needles and trowels proved immensely useful, the runaways only warmed to the Nethern—and each other—because of Makena. She was Foim like Amadi, but highborn, sold into slavery for political reasons she'd yet to disclose. Prolonged bondage had stolen none of her grace, however. She had a way of connecting with people, even those she couldn't converse with, and her easy manner had defused more arguments than there were people in the community; as much as Amadi hoped Nourbese saw who he'd become, and not only who he'd been in Ghelwa, Makena's presence was likely the real reason no one else yet knew the truth of his past.

Her charm was just as potent with Isaura: she went back to Makena's side to share a private joke as soon as Efosa pronounced the little ceremony over, and the two women laughed companionably. They'd become friends in less than two days—surely Makena's doing. She'd offered to share her hut with Isaura the night before, and the dowser had accepted happily. Now she was letting her new confidant convince her to stay another night so she could join in the evening's celebration. The two certainly made a striking pair, two slender beauties with contrasting skin: Isaura's the color of milk; Makena's the blue-black of Quecxl's obsidian.

Amadi shook his head. Again, his thoughts had turned to Omnira's first guest. But it made sense: these were similar moments. Quecxl had helped give birth to their community; Isaura was enabling them to mature.

And both visitors had found a place in Makena's heart.

Amadi smiled ruefully. It still hurt to think about. Makena had rebuffed his advances—gently—on more than one occasion, eventually explaining that she loved him as a _brother_. But her love for Quecxl hadn't been at all sisterly.

Amadi couldn't fault the Metican for loving Makena back. After what he'd done for the runaways, Quecxl had every right to stretch his stay from weeks to months, and to enjoy them in the meantime. And even amidst his heartache, Amadi had taken the pockmarked healer's appearance as a sign from the vodun that he—a Foimish failure—was finally doing right, that he was meant to lead Omnira, and that his ancestors in the shadow kingdom of Kutome were no longer restless with shame.

Even so, the memory of Quecxl's stay would always be bittersweet.

"Stop brood," Falk said in Anglo as he slapped Amadi on the back. "Isaura dowse the well, not piss in it."

Amadi smiled—genuinely, this time. "Still time for that. Gunta stole some of you white man's drink when he run."

Falk laughed. "Then tonight be good night."

It was indeed.

* * *

Gunta only had a pouch full of whiskey to pass around, but it was fiery stuff, and except for Falk, no one had much tolerance for alcohol. They also weren't accustomed to having music other than singing. A few days prior, however, Gildas, one of the Whydans, had finished making two drums from hollowed gourds and stretched deer skin. So they could finally dance to a real beat.

Isaura was reluctant to join in at first, but she didn't protest when Makena took her by the hand and led her to a knot of stamping women, the community's ahosi soldiers. Makena had formed the group with Amadi's encouragement; despite their very different experiences in Dahemy, they both remembered the Foim's warrior-women with pride—and suspected Omnira might one day need every hand to hold a spear.

"The Foim descended from leopards," Amadi overhead Makena tell Isaura. "And that blood truest in ahosi. But while we fight like cats, we dance like monkeys." Makena began prancing in exaggerated fashion, and the other ahosi helped a laughing Isaura mimic the steps.

Amadi smiled to see it. His limp made him too self-conscious to dance himself, but it warmed his heart to see the community lose itself in well-earned revelry. And it was fascinating to see so many kinds of movement—there were almost as many styles of dance as there were dancers. Even Chogan and the other red men hailed from different tribes. Everyone moved around the fire in a different way, but they moved _together_.

Isaura seemed to appreciate the collective spirit as much as anyone. When she was finally able to break away from the ahosi, she fulfilled an earlier promise to Omnira's four children by letting them ride her enormous horse, two at a time. They shrieked with excitement as Isaura led them from one end of the camp to the other, and she had to repeat the journey five times before they were satisfied.

Later, when the fire was dying down and the dancing drawing to a close, she had a long conversation with Falk before rejecting Amadi's payment. "Falk said 'Omnira' means liberation," she explained softly. "Keep it. You earned it."

"No, you earn it," Amadi protested. "You find water, we pay."

She smiled. "You already did," she said, gesturing around her at the lingering celebration. "This was my wage."

"Take it," Amadi tried again. It wasn't much money—only what Ehioze, the first runaway to join Omnira after its inception, had been able to steal when he escaped his master several months back. But it was Isaura's due.

"Keep it," she insisted. "I'd feel a thief accepting it."

There was no dissuading her, and when she left in the morning atop her horse's broad back, she took nothing from the community but what she promised were "good memories."

* * *

A week later, the dream ended in blood.

Amadi knew what was coming the instant the alert lines—stretched vine laced with shells—began clacking ominously. He knew before Etohan, one of the ahosi on sentry duty that afternoon, sounded the alarm.

He knew.

He knew.

He knew.

But he still fought like a lion.

Roaring for Omnira to arm itself, he sprinted for the nearest bundle of spears, a set Gildas had tipped with some of Quecxl's blades just the day before. Amadi tossed the longest to Chogan as the red youth dashed past, already ululating the battle cry of his people. The next two spears went to Isoke, the largest of the ahosi, and Gunta. The rest Amadi kept for himself, holding them ready until he found another freed man or women to wield them.

Or a white neck to sink them in.

He didn't have to wait long for the latter.

The ejeme catchers burst into the clearing from all sides, armed with muskets and pistols—weapons the community couldn't hope to contend with. But the white men held their fire, seeming to think their quarry would meekly acquiesce now that they'd been found. One of the ejeme catchers even began commanding the "slaves" to do so "in the name of the Firebrand."

Amadi's first spear took the white speaker in his grizzled throat, cutting his pronunciation of "surrender" off at "sir."

"That's right, Oseye," Amadi yelled in Gbe as he drew back to hurl another spear. "We will teach them to address us with respect! They will call us sir and lady before—"

Then the bullets took flight.

Amadi was hit by two during the opening volley. He still got his next spear away, though, and his aim was unspoiled: the blade found a white stomach, and the shaft sank deep. Grinning viciously, he reached for another spear, more than happy to trade blows with the ejeme catchers.

Until he remembered the rest of Omnira couldn't afford to.

Making an even bigger a target of himself, he dashed into the open and hurled spear after spear while screaming for everyone else to run.

"Chogan! Get them out!" Amadi yelled until the youth went down with a bayonet in his eye.

"Falk!" Amadi tried next, despite his suspicions. "The river! Get them to the river!"

"Etohan!" Amadi began after Falk proved himself by taking a bullet to the gut, but the ahosi was slumping to the ground herself, her chest leaking from more holes than her darting hands could cover.

And all too quickly, Amadi was alone with the white men and one spear.

He'd been shot three more times, but as always, the spirit armor protected him. The closest white men were reloading, looking more than a little disconcerted that he was still whole. He charged and killed them in rapid succession. The next-nearest ejeme catchers fell back before his fury, but he only pursued them a few paces before whirling around and sprinting in the direction he'd last seen a living member of Omnira.

Whoever it had been was gone, but Amadi noticed a flicker of motion from inside the first hut the community had built. Still sprinting despite his limp, he crouched low and slipped beneath the entrance's deer-hide flap.

Makena ran him through before she realized who he was.

"Amadi," she breathed in horror as her hands dropped from the spear she'd embedded in his stomach. "I thought—"

Despite everything, he laughed. "It's fine," he said as he jerked the shaft out. "You can't hurt me. Look. Look! It's fine." He tore the remnants of his shirt away so she could watch his spirit armor mend the wound.

"You really are like Quecxl," she whispered in Gbe when the hole had fully closed. "Can you heal us?" She pointed to herself and the others in the hut: tall Omalara and stout Nourbese, both ahosi, and wiry Imarogbe, Omnira's oldest boy.

They were all hopeful, and all badly hurt. In Omalara's case, probably fatally, and the other three were losing a lot of blood: a pool of it had expanded across the dirt floor, a red ocean fed by tributaries flowing from members of _his_ community.

But he wasn't Quecxl.

"I'll try," he said anyway as Makena leaned back with the others against the northern wall.

He placed his hands on her, but she shook them off. "Omalara first."

Amadi couldn't speak past the enormous lump in his throat, but he nodded and moved his hands to Omalara ... and then withdrew them. That wasn't how Quecxl had done it; not quite. After he'd finished saving the fledgling community, the Metican had explained—through Chogan—that before you could heal an injury, you had to _understand_ it. You had to feel it yourself. Quecxl hadn't been talking about gunshots, but Amadi thought it likely the same principle applied. And the pain of his most recent injuries still lingered in his mind.

Seizing on that remembered hurt, Amadi amplified its intensity until everything else was driven from his thoughts: the now-erratic musket blasts and anguished screams outside the hut, the labored breathing within it, the blood streaming from Makena in at least four places ... All of it was drowned out by the memories of metal balls penetrating his flesh and (temporarily) smashing his bones and muscle to pulp.

This time, when he laid his hands on Omalara, it felt right.

But he didn't get any further.

He could feel the spirit armor coalescing around his body, hardening in response to the pain he'd forced himself to relive. The thick energy was there too, prowling his skin as it scanned like a tiger for an injury to pounce on.

None of it transferred.

No amount of praying, pleading, or swearing shifted his protection to Omalara, or Nourbese when he switched his hands to her, or Imarogbe—whom Quecxl had healed in this very hut just a year ago—or even Makena. It was the same as it had been with Oseye: he could be a conduit for another healer, but he was nothing by himself.

"It doesn't work without Quecxl," Amadi mumbled as he collapsed to the floor. "Not for anyone but myself."

"You tried," Makena said in Anglo after a moment, the hope gone from her eyes and voice. "Thank you."

"Thank you," the others echoed softly—even Nourbese.

Their words only shamed Amadi more. "What now?" he asked no one in particular, ceding his leadership.

Makena assumed it quickly. "I no be ejeme again," she whispered fiercely, still in Anglo, so everyone in the hut could understand her meaning. "I no let them take me back."

Somehow, Amadi's heart found room to sink even lower. "I don't think they mean to take anyone," he murmured in Gbe.

"I won't let them kill me either," Makena replied in their native tongue. She repeated herself in Anglo, and when the others nodded, she set her blood-slicked chest against the tip of Omalara's spear, just beneath the ribcage. Makena positioned her own spear to strike Omalara in the same location. Nourbese mirrored the arrangement with Imarogbe, who was wide-eyed and trembling.

"No," Amadi said as the first tears ran down his cheeks. "It can't end like this. We can still fight."

"You can keep fighting, but it ends like this for us," Makena insisted, a sad smile on her lips. "You gave Omnira a year of freedom. It was worth it. Surely your ancestors applaud in Kutome." She turned to the others before Amadi could reply. "Ahosi warriors," she called, changing back to Anglo, "strike true, die free. Help brother Imarogbe do same."

The others nodded, and—without a countdown, or even a "now!"—the dying ex-ejeme drove their spears into each other's hearts. Except for Imarogbe, who faltered and only gave Nourbese a surface wound.

She hurried to turn the spear on herself, but Amadi placed his hands on the shaft before the ahosi could complete the act. There was no anger in her eyes, no reproach—and the lack smote him terribly. When she lay back and nodded, however, he didn't hesitate, affording her the same dignity as her sisters-in-arms.

Then he kissed Makena on her beautiful forehead, closed everyone's eyes, and limped from the hut to take his revenge.

#  Chapter Sixteen

Chase: Three Winters Before Saint's Summit – Harvest Moon

Snaring Amadi went almost exactly to plan.

After that first dragon had awakened him, Chase spent months discovering all he could about the Foim. His initial inquiries had been laughed off; few records existed for slaves. There were purchase orders, of course, but buyers often changed the most-convoluted Afrii names to something more pronounceable. Amadi was a man who attracted notice, however. Apparently he'd been carried most of the way across the ocean by a ship called _The_ _Minotaur_ , only to be thrown overboard after being found dead in the hold. Except the sailor Chase had talked to swore he'd seen Amadi open his eyes in the air, right before he hit the water.

The Foim had next appeared on the rolls of a plantation in the Carib. But there were no records of his purchase—he seemed to have just appeared one day and started toiling in the fields. Later, he was sold to Michael Jacobs' plantation on the mainland, where he continued to work diligently. Until the afternoon that doughy overseer Rory had pushed him too far, and he retaliated by escaping with most of Jacobs' slaves. They'd avoided detection for more than a year. But by the Lord's grace, Preston, a slave catcher in Chase's employ, had tracked the flight of two Sheffax runaways to Amadi's camp in the wild and found them digging a well.

Chase had laid his trap accordingly.

First, he'd let the slave catchers he'd hired—slave killers, today—deal with the other runaways, waiting to reveal himself until they'd been neutralized. Then, just as Chase had been about to yell a challenge and goad Amadi from hiding, the Foim had exited a hut and caught sight of him.

Perfect.

Chase responded by funneling a line of fire through the fanged muzzle of his latest wyrm-head pistol. The flame's immediate emergence was gratifying.

But he knew it wouldn't stop Amadi—the pyre on Jacob's plantation had proven that.

Sure enough, the Foim outlasted the flames, his flesh melted but reforming as he ran toward Chase. He was careful to look frightened as he retreated. It wasn't difficult; Amadi was fast, even with that incongruous limp.

Chase took the most direct path through the runaways' settlement, which was silent now except for the faint sounds of the remaining slave catchers moving into position. When he reached the well, he vaulted over its head and took another fives strides—long enough for Amadi to leap the head himself.

The fool was caught.

Chase spun around as Miller, Preston, and Abram stepped forward and threw full powder horns at the Foim. Their aim and timing were good: they all struck Amadi within an instant of Chase's second ribbon of fire doing the same. The resulting explosion knocked Chase and the three slave catchers off their feet, but Conrad, Gregor, Danny, and Roger—the other men who'd survived the fight with the runaways—darted in with poles to push Amadi's husk into the well, its crude upper wall demolished by the blast.

"Thoughtful of you," Chase called down after he heard a splash. "To dig such a deep hole in advance of our coming. I'd planned to make a pit for you, but when Preston spied your well ..."

No response from the hole, other than the increasing stench of boiled runaway.

"Maybe that did it?" Preston mused after the silence had dragged on for several moments. As ordered, he and everyone else stayed several feet back from the smoking aperture.

Chase shook his head and fired the opening again; no doubt the rope for the bucket had already burned away, but it would be imprudent to assume.

Yet after the flames receded, Amadi spoke. "You once claimed my king sailed bone ship down river of innocent blood," the Foim croaked from below, in broken Anglo. "Look around you, branded man—how it feel to become you own lie?"

Chase smiled grimly at Preston, then nodded for him and the others to set the rest of the powder horns. "I look around me, Amadi, of the Foim, and see righteous justice."

The runaway scoffed, his voice growing stronger—becoming whole. "You think you a judge now?"

"I am what I need to be."

"A butcher."

"A scourge. God's punishment for demons like yourself and the Red Wraith."

"Perhaps," Amadi—surprisingly—conceded. "But perhaps he and I scourges for white men like you."

Chase motioned for the slave catchers to work faster. They were using the poles to nudge the powder horns into place around the well, but it was slow going; the explosion had roughened the surrounding earth, and the horns kept lodging in jagged depressions. "You wouldn't say such things if you knew the truth of what the Wraith has wrought. Listen well—"

"We two be much the same, you and I," Amadi interrupted. "Connected."

Chase rolled his eyes and mimed an underhand throw to Preston. Better they get this over with quickly. If a powder horn or two skittered into the well, so be it.

"Before I an ejeme—a slave," Amadi continued, "I an ejeme-taker. I gather them, bind them, march them through Ko swamp to the port of Ghelwa. Good money. Easy. Evil."

Chase held back, even though most of the powder horns were finally arranged correctly. The Foim's tale sounded like a desperate fiction. But it didn't feel like one.

"I get careless, though," Amadi went on. "I ambushed by another ejeme-taker. He take my ejeme, chain me to them. They like that—having me close at hand. Beat me over and over. Break my ankle. Guards make me walk on it; never heal right.

"But here is difference between you and I, branded man: after vodun gave me spirit armor to survive worst attack in Ghelwa holding pen, I look at Oseye—she a young girl chained next to me. I look at Oseye, and hate what I done to her. Hate what I was. And so my spirit armor make me a better man. Quecxl's healing, Isaura's water do same for them. What your flames do for you?"

For all its obviousness, the ploy worked: Chase was suddenly beset by memories of his own first moment of magick.

"Look around you," Amadi commanded again. "You call the Red Wraith a devil. But whose power you see at work here?"

Chase jerked his hand away from the burn scar on his neck, but it was too late: his fingers had strayed to the old pain, and now the images wouldn't stop coming. Images of his house ablaze, the house he'd built with his wife. The house she'd died in after losing her fight with the flux.

The house that, at the moment of its incineration, had held James ... and Kip.

Amadi was out of the well before Chase could master himself.

The Foim must have wedged his way up, using their conversation to cover his ascent. Most of the slave catchers went for their muskets, but Preston rushed Amadi from behind and threw him back in the well. As the Foim vanished into the hungry maw again, he reached out and latched hold of Preston's ankle, pulling the slave catcher down with him.

Then Chase ignited the powder horns.

When the decimated settlement stopped shaking, and Chase could hear again, he gave the well a cursory look—it had collapsed as he'd hoped, burying Amadi (and Preston, the brave bastard) alive.

But now Chase understood it wouldn't be enough.

He understood that, even as he turned to go, to hunt the Red Wraith and others like him—perhaps this Quecxl and Isaura the Foim had spoken of?—Amadi would have already begun scrabbling his way to the surface, a journey he'd complete even if it meant a month of airless dark. And upon completing that journey, he'd begin another: a hunt of his own _._

"What have you unleashed, oh Lord?" Chase whispered as he led the surviving slave catchers away from the runaways' ruined haven.

"What have you begun?"

#  Chapter Seventeen

Quecxl: Three Winters Before Saint's Summit – Red Moon

Xihuitl squawked in distress as Quecxl slumped against the sick house's least-crowded wall.

"I'm fine," he muttered at the dirty bird while stifling a cough. "Just tired."

He'd spent all day healing, pouring stiff energy out of himself and into the plague-ridden inhabitants of yet another strange village. Cawgana, he thought this one was called. Peopled mostly by Hodensee—he'd recognized them by the three-finger-width crests of hair running down the men's scalps and necks.

That was about all he recognized about them, though.

The Hodensee he'd heard of were fearsome raiders, warriors of unparalleled ferocity and courage. But the Cawgana residents? They were subdued converts to the pale ones' religion, wearing the pale ones' clothing, speaking the pale ones' tongue, and venerating the pale ones' wooden crosses.

Still, the Hodensee here were dying. And Quecxl could help, so he did. He just wished Amadi were by his side. It had been so much easier when he could couple the night skin's energy with his own.

Xihuitl squawked from the rafters again, probably ordering him to rest.

Quecxl nodded reluctantly. "We'll wait a second—until Kateri comes back with the bandages."

The Hodensee medicine woman never seemed to stop moving. She didn't say much, but Quecxl liked her; he'd never seen someone with so much resolve in the face of death—a death she could very well share. Deskae, Cawgana's leader, seemed impressed with her too. And they'd both prayed to their new pale-one god when Quecxl had healed that first patient late last night. The words had sounded false, but it didn't matter as long as Deskae and Kateri gave him space to work.

He just needed to be faster—and stronger.

Curing someone of the plague took enormous amounts of the stiff energy, and two Hodensee had died that morning before Quecxl could get to them. He'd nearly collapsed saving a third, and then fallen outright two patients later. He knew he needed to pace himself, that he'd be able to help more patients if he did. But how could he hold back when the woman in the corner was struggling to breathe?

"Kateri's taking too long," he said to Xihuitl. "We'll have to get started again without—"

"No one is supposed to go in except me," the medicine woman called from outside the door.

"What's your name?" a stranger's voice asked from the same location.

"Kateri. You're not allowed in here." Quecxl imagined her matted bangs swinging like dark vines as she shook her head.

"Please," the stranger insisted. "I might be able to help them. I've seen this before."

For a moment, Quecxl wondered if his wish had been granted. Had someone like Amadi come to lend extra energy? And when Kateri entered the sick house a moment later, the smoky-haired young man who followed her made Quecxl think the answer might be yes—if this stranger was indeed the powerful shaman he appeared to be: Naysin of the Lepane, Chogan's Karakwa and Amadi's boy on the ship.

In Omnira, the two had swapped tales about the mythic figure (relayed to Quecxl via Chogan's translation) once they'd realized that they'd both been enslaved on the island of Bimshire around the same time, and that Naysin had probably met Amadi soon after leaving Chogan and his first band of runaways. But they'd had different opinions of the Red Wraith—the other name Quecxl had heard for him. Was the growing legend a feckless monster or a misunderstood savior? Best to be cautious until he gave an indication one way or the other.

The first signs were ambiguous: Naysin—if it was in fact him—seemed unaffected by what he saw in the sick house, even though there were bodies from wall to wall, living-but-dying bodies crammed into too few beds. And while the afflicted all had blankets under their bodies and pillows of furs under their heads, the house stank worse than anything.

Nor did this Maybe-Naysin move to help when Kateri picked her way to the back and applied the bandages she'd brought to a man sprawled across one of the beds. By the look of his pustules, he wouldn't be there long—not without other intervention.

And when Maybe-Naysin began walking around the longhouse, and some of the patients called out to him, he didn't respond.

Time to test him.

"Karakwa?" Quecxl said in a questioning tone.

Maybe-Naysin swiveled around, his expression one of mild displeasure—or was that guilt?

"Karakwa." This time Quecxl made it a statement. "So the savior lives," he added, trying to sound as if he were still deciding how that sat with him.

"As do you," Maybe-Naysin replied in perfect Nahwatl, approaching reluctantly. Hadn't Amadi said the boy on the ship spoke the Foim's language with effortless fluency? Was that part of his magic?

Quecxl felt another cough coming. "Not for long." But instead of suppressing the phlegm, he let it come. A good hack would only add to the pretense. Xihuitl squawked his disapproval.

Maybe-Naysin—no, _Probably_ -Naysin—eyed the bird for a moment. "You were on Bimshire?"

"Two years," Quecxl said grimly. "I made it longer than you thought I would, didn't I? Longer than most of us did, that's for certain."

Probably-Naysin winced. Good—that was promising.

"Without you," Quecxl said, trying to recall everything Chogan had told him, "we didn't stand much chance. I'm guessing you knew that. But we held our own for a while. Formed a camp in the center of the island and tried to steal a boat. Then the pale men found us. They came from all over—our island and others nearby. They were angry, and they killed most of us on the spot. The rest they hung at the plantation as an example. Degan wore the first noose; Oheo the next."

The names had been a bit of a reach—Quecxl wasn't sure he'd remembered them correctly. But they must have been correct: Probably-Naysin wore a stricken expression now.

"I lived," Quecxl continued, "because I looked dead. Imagine that." He squeezed out a few chuckles before letting another coughing fit seize him. When he resumed improvising, he forced his voice to take on the reverential tone Kateri had used when describing the pale priests who'd converted her. "One of the Black Robes saved me: Father Marcells. He came to the battlefield to send the dead on their way, and found me and two others still breathing. They died on the way to the harbor, but I survived to come to Cawgana and learn the true religion." He narrowed his eyes at Probably-Naysin. "Father Marcells is my savior now, along with the Lord Jesua."

"He did well by you."

Quecxl maintained his glare another few breaths before slumping back, as if the intensity were leaking out of him. "Did you know you have another name now?"

Probably-Naysin shook his head.

"Otonsken. It means devil—Degan named you that when the pale men fell on us. Before then, he kept saying you'd return. But when the ring of fire sticks began destroying us, he knew, just as the rest of us did, that our 'sun' was really a devil: bringer of false hopes, treachery, and destruction."

Clearly stung, Probably-Naysin shook his head again. "I'm not a manitouk," he muttered.

Quecxl shrugged and turned away, only to turn back with a hope he didn't have to feign: "Can you heal me?"

"No," Probably-Naysin murmured sadly. "But I can kill you."

"Quickly?"

"Yes. No pain."

Quecxl regarded Probably-Naysin for a moment. "That's it?"

"Yes. It won't hurt."

"That's _it_?" Quecxl repeated, pressing his back against the wall to support himself as he stood. Upon seeing him rise, Kateri started to hurry over, but he waved her off. "I was told you could run on water, rearrange the stars, summon fire and wind—Quetzalcoatl's balls, man, you even speak Nahwatl without an accent, when barely anyone within a thousand leagues can say so much as 'hello' to me in it."

Naysin—Definitely-Naysin, the real, true Red Wraith—scanned Quecxl's face, as if searching for clues to his intentions. And then the young man's eyes widened.

He must have finally realized that Quecxl's pockmarks were _old_.

"You already survived the plague," he said.

"Years ago," Quecxl retorted, suddenly tired of playacting, of testing, of believing. He gestured to Xihuitl.

"But your cough ..."

"Just a cold." An annoying one; he'd had it for weeks. And in the irony of ironies, he still couldn't seem to heal himself. Some master healer he was. At least he was hacking less this morning—maybe he was finally on the mend.

But his throat still tickled as a second truth revealed itself to Naysin: "You weren't on Bimshire."

Quecxl watched Xihuitl fly to the rafter above the woman in the corner. She looked further gone than anyone who drew breath in the longhouse; her blood was dark, and pustules had scabbed over her eyes, no doubt blinding her.

He'd wasted too much time.

A few patients murmured as Quecxl staggered across the room. Kateri offered her arm, but he waved her off again. When he reached the woman in the corner, he steadied himself and touched her forehead, where the blood was blackest. He stood like that for several heartbeats, reliving what it had felt like to suffer the plague's touch ... And wondering if he had enough strength left to prevent this woman from becoming another Ixtli. Then he summoned the stiff energy.

It nearly undid him.

But his anger—at the pale ones, for their deceitful words; at the Hodensee, for succumbing to such obvious falsity; and most of all, at this worthless Karakwa, for making him heal _alone_ —saw Quecxl through. And a few harrowing minutes later, the pustules on the woman's face un-scabbed, receded, and vanished.

"Thank you," she breathed, squeezing his hand before slipping into an easy, healthy sleep.

He coughed once and sank back to the floor, ignoring the prayers a few of the other patients offered to the pale one's god.

"You're Deskae's 'light against the darkness,'" Naysin said softly, humbly.

Quecxl grimaced. "Pale foolishness." He gestured for Xihuitl to move to another patient, but the gull just squawked at him to rest again. "Stubborn wet nurse of a bird."

"Hear me," he intoned instead, turning to Naysin, "I don't care about the invaders' 'true god,' and I wasn't on Bimshire, but a man I trust was. He knows you. Knows what you can do."

Naysin was still staring at the now fully healthy woman in the corner. "Who?"

"His name is Chogan."

Naysin grew wary once more. "How did he escape?"

"Much as I described, aside from the bit about the Black Robes." Quecxl gestured at Xihuitl again, but the gull reiterated its objection. Shaking his head, he slumped against the sleeping woman's bed. "Chogan succeeded in stealing a boat, which he rowed to the mainland. He had a day of freedom before being taken by different slavers."

"And you saved him?"

Quecxl chuckled tiredly. "You think too much of me now—I was still in the south. But a night skin liberated Chogan and many others. Amadi, of the Foim."

Naysin's eyes widened. "How?"

"He overcame their overseers and led the slaves who were willing to run to a safe haven in the wilderness. They call it Omnira."

"No, how does he _live_? I saw him drown himself."

Quecxl nodded. "Maybe, but nothing can stop that man. He lent me his strength when I needed it to save Omnira—I came upon them a few weeks after they'd founded their refuge. They were all dying of the plague. Except Amadi." He gestured a fourth time at Xihuitl, who finally acquiesced and flew to another near-dead patient.

"What about you?" Quecxl asked as he struggled back to a stand and stumbled after the gull. As before, the other patients murmured when he moved among them. "I knew you by your brand—it's exactly as Chogan and Amadi described. They also said you had powers to match a god's. Will you use it to help me?" He stopped and swung his arms out to encompass everyone in the room, nearly unbalancing himself. "Will you use it to help them?"

But Naysin was already at the door. "What's your name?"

He crossed his arms. "Quecxl. Of the Metica."

"The world should know your name, Quecxl of the Metica. Not mine."

"Too late," he said bitterly as Naysin exited the sick house.

The Red Wraith's reply came without a backward glance, hitch in stride, or scrap of hesitation: "I couldn't agree more."

#  Chapter Eighteen

Isaura: Two Winters Before Saint's Summit – Blue Moon

Rowtag laughed as a sudden splash of water extinguished the spark he'd struck from his flint pieces. Their campsite was more than forty feet from the river, and the sky was clear.

So it was obvious who was responsible.

"You lucky I best fire starter in East," he said in his shambolic Espan. "Otherwise I maybe mad."

Isaura smiled innocently and blinked away her quenching-induced tears—her bruja water, as she thought of it now.

Rowtag laughed again and turned back to his flint pieces, only to have his next spark washed out as well. "You like food cold?" he said with mock exasperation.

"But you're the best fire starter in the East," Isaura teased. "What's a little rain to such a man?"

"Little rain," he scoffed. "Rain fall natural. Only hit spark now and then. You water never miss."

"My water?"

"You water," he repeated, holding up his flint. "Unless you can cook with you water, I need start fire. I hungry."

She held up her hands to signal the end of hostilities. "Well, we can't let the best fire starter in the East go hungry."

Rowtag snorted and made a show of muttering to himself as he turned back to the firewood.

She couldn't help smiling again. Rowtag was the first man who'd made her feel comfortable since she'd been wrenched from Espania. He was ... easy to be around. And so expressive, much less reserved than the other reds she'd dealt with. But always respectful—unlike most of the white men she'd encountered the last six years. She felt so safe around him, in fact, that she'd revealed her ability to quench.

The ease with which she'd made that decision still surprised her. She'd seen Rowtag at several trading outposts—he was a well-known fur dealer—but he didn't _look_ like someone she should be trusting with her darkest secret. Not because he was red: she'd cared less and less about skin color after she'd met Amadi's runaways. No, it was the angle of Rowtag's eyebrows that did it. They sloped in toward each other so sharply he couldn't help looking mischievous, no matter how somberly he said, "I no tell."

But she trusted him. She really did. And now they were sharing a campfire. It made sense to travel together—they were both headed to Fort Kaska, and the road from Navar, the trading post where they'd bumped into each other that morning, wasn't the safest. Or at least, it made sense if she didn't worry about the rumors: walking with and sleeping near a "red devil" was sure to set some white tongues wagging.

Isaura didn't care, though. She was enjoying herself. And for once, she felt like she deserved it.

Manuel whinnied, seemingly in agreement with her thoughts. "Don't worry," she cooed in Franc, a tongue Rowtag wasn't conversant in. "You'll always be my first love." She stood and walked to the tree her enormous caballo was tied to. Her Manuel—her original companion. The one who'd carried her from St. Augstin. "I'll never forget that," she said as she scratched underneath his chin. "Not for anyone."

Rowtag cut the moment short with a whoop of delight. "You see?" he called to her as he pointed to the kindling smoldering at his feet. "Best fire starter in East. We eat soon. Best meal you ever have."

Isaura laughed as she gave Manuel a final pat. "So you're also the best cook in the East?"

"You laugh, but you see."

She smiled and sat down next to Rowtag. "Oh, I intend to."

* * *

They parted in Fort Kaska's outskirts, behind a grove of a trees that hid them from the settlement's guards. Isaura had a contract to fulfill in town; Rowtag had business with the local reds.

"Meet me here in three days?" Rowtag asked. He was speaking Kiksha now, his own language, one Isaura had only learned bits and pieces of. But she'd picked up enough to know there was no jest in his words. His question was sincere—he genuinely wanted to continue traveling with her.

And she with him. "Three days," she repeated in Kiksha. "Meet me here."

They smiled at the same time, he started to reach for her, and—

She flinched.

She couldn't help it, even though she'd spent hours last night picturing just such a moment.

Rowtag pulled his hand back slowly. He looked confused.

As well he might.

"Three days," she said again, with as much warmth as she could muster.

As if he'd donned a mask, the confusion and—yes—hurt vanished from his face, replaced by his familiar, joking smile. "Three days," he echoed, before nodding deferentially, turning, and leaving.

Isaura spent the entirety of those three days regretting her reaction. She'd _wanted_ Rowtag to touch her, to wrap his sinewy arms around her and fold her into an embrace, maybe even a kiss. But her body hadn't cooperated.

And she'd let it ruin everything.

What had gone through Rowtag's mind when she rebuffed his advance? How much had she hurt him? Would he still meet her in three days? Why should he bother? The questions tumbled in her head as she went about the now-mundane task of dowsing a well, but the farmer who'd sent for her was too excited to notice her detached manner—he was just happy to have fresh water.

Gideon, the owner of Fort Kaska's inn, let her be as well; the old man didn't seem to care much about anything other than the quality of her coin. Under different circumstances, that might have bothered her. But she had other things on her mind.

When the third day finally arrived, Isaura was in the town's outskirts shortly after dawn. She knew she was ridiculously early, but she didn't want to take any chances. If Rowtag was in fact going to return, she wasn't going to miss him.

And if he reached for her again, she wouldn't flinch.

Rowtag appeared in the late morning. He looked troubled, his eyebrows slanted even more than usual, bent so far they almost touched. Something was bothering him.

Isaura nearly died inside.

But then he saw her and grinned, and the doubts that had plagued her for three miserable days fell away like wet snow sliding off a roof. Because he was smiling, truly smiling. She wasn't the source of his trouble—she was a relief from it.

"I thought I best meeter in East," Rowtag said as he approached. "But you beat me here."

She couldn't help laughing. "Don't feel bad. You're up against the best meeter in Espania."

"You said your people always late."

"I didn't have much competition."

It was his turn to laugh. He was close to her now, within arm's reach, just as he'd been three days ago. And they were standing in almost the same spot.

Isaura couldn't have asked for a better second chance.

Before Rowtag finished chuckling—before he could say or do anything that might give her pause—she took a quick step toward him and kissed his beautiful mouth. She'd only meant it to be a peck, but something inside her wouldn't let her step back, wouldn't let her do anything but express her feelings for this man in the clearest possible manner. At least a minute passed before she pulled away, and that was only to breathe.

"It's good to see you too," Rowtag whispered in Kiksha before joining with her for another soulful kiss.

As before, he was the perfect gentleman, leaving his hands at his side until Isaura grabbed them with her own and pressed his fingers against the small of her back. Even then, he didn't do anything further without a prompt from her, and he didn't object when she ended things with their clothes still on.

How smart he was, how empathetic, to have correctly interpreted her reluctance three days ago. She needn't have worried. Not with him.

Manuel snorted as she and Rowtag stepped apart.

"Hear that?" Rowtag asked in Espan, his eyes still sleepy with pleasure.

"Hear what?

"You horse. I think he jealous."

"He should be."

"He say, 'Stop kissing red man. He best kisser in East, but I best kissing horse _anywhere_.'"

As she laughed, Isaura felt tears streaming down her cheeks. But not because she'd been quenching. She hadn't done anything unnatural with water since she'd found that farmer's well.

She was just happy.

Later—once they were less giddy—Rowtag revealed why he'd looked so troubled before she'd kissed him. "Fight coming," he explained dourly. "Pale men fight: Anglos and Francs. But originals in it too. Kikshas with Anglos, Hellani with Francs. Should no be spilling own blood for pale men."

"What are you going to do?"

He shrugged. "Tribe come first. I help Kikshas."

The hair on the back of Isaura's arms stood straight up—she felt like a porcupine. "So you'll fight?"

"They ask. I could no say no."

"When?"

"In half moon. Maybe full. Near here." He nodded toward Fort Kaska.

She was still scared, but she didn't hesitate. "I'll wait for you."

He could have responded in so many ways: speaking encouraging words; asking whether she had contracts she needed to fulfill elsewhere, or if she was sure; telling jokes about "the best waiter in East." But he just reached out to hold her hand, and it was all she needed.

"I'll stay in town," she said once she'd won free of the tide of emotion that had temporarily overwhelmed her. "There's an inn called 'The Cozy.'"

He squeezed her palm. "I come every few days. Much as I can."

Shortly thereafter, they parted in the outskirts for a second time.

* * *

Rowtag was as good as his word: he came to visit Isaura several times a week, sometimes more. At first they continued to meet in the outskirts, but it wasn't long before she wanted to meet in town. She was paying honest money for lodgings at the Cozy—why couldn't she use her room as she liked?

They still tried to be discreet, though. It was a risky thing to be seen together in a pale town, especially since _he_ was red and _she_ was white. If their sexes had been reversed, there might have been less danger. People still would have talked, but maybe not with quite as much intensity.

At least Gideon didn't seem to care. She'd gotten the sense the innkeeper's tune would change as soon as she missed a payment, but once again she found herself giving thanks for his singlemindedness.

When Rowtag was away, Isaura kept busy by seeking out additional dowsing opportunities and getting to know Fort Kaska, which wasn't actually much of a fort, or even very big—she'd seen a number of settlements with loftier ambitions. But there was a certain charm to the way people interacted here. Everyone seemed not just to know each other, but to _care_ about them. It was refreshing, especially after six years of seeing too much of the opposite.

Of course, the townsfolk had a common interest to rally around: the coming fight with the Francs. Isaura learned more details every few days. Apparently Francs and Anglos along the Messippi had been squabbling over territorial rights for years—Fort Kaska used to be a Franc settlement until recently—and within the last few months, larger tensions in Europa had turned the local friction into an international flashpoint. Both sides were girding for battle now, conscripting their white settlers and calling in favors from red allies. Fort Kaska's limited resources were being squeezed especially hard: several of its young men had been pressed into a brigade, and the town council was under pressure to divert ever-larger amounts of food to feed the growing army.

From what Isaura had heard, most of the community wouldn't have minded the war effort so much if it hadn't meant allying with the local Kikshas. Fort Kaska's relationship with Rowtag's brethren had always been strained, and in recent years land rights had become a bigger issue. But the Francs were already aligned with the powerful Hellani, and the Anglo generals didn't feel like they had any choice but to swallow their pride and join hands with the region's only other major red tribe.

"It's a mess," Rowtag agreed one night in her room, talking in Kiksha at her insistence.

"Biggest mess in East?" Isaura suggested, trying to keep things light. She learned more of his native language every time they met.

He smiled. "Second biggest. You pale ones being here at all is the biggest."

"You know I part of that mess."

"That's the only saving grace." He kissed her to emphasize his point, and it was several minutes before they used their mouths for words again.

It was an intoxicating few weeks: romance, secrecy, passion, war. Every second felt ... worthwhile. All of them counted, and all of them were magical.

But all too soon, the best period of Isaura's life drew to a close.

Rowtag sounded the death knell when he arrived at the inn one night and said a single word: "Tomorrow."

She suppressed a shudder, something she'd been getting better at as their physical interactions went further. "You're sure?"

"Yes. Tribe moves in morning, pale ones march. Fight come in few days. Probably in Edgeland Forest."

She knew it was pointless to try to talk him into staying, even though the local Kikshas weren't blood relations (his kin lived far to the south, at least a month's journey from any of this nonsense). He still felt obligated to participate. "Tribe come first," he'd said more than once when Isaura asked him not to go. "No choice."

So now, on the eve of his departure, Isaura sensed there was only one thing to say: "Then let's make tonight count."

They did so in slow, lingering movements, soaking in the feel of each other's bodies and glorying in every touch. Their clothes fell away bit by bit—almost of their own accord—until for the first time in years, Isaura was naked before a man. But she pressed her bare flesh against Rowtag's without hesitation: this was what they'd been building toward these many nights. He'd been so patient with her, and now that the moment was finally here, she cursed herself for every delay.

Morning came far too quickly.

"Three days," she told him in Kiksha as he dressed. "Meet me here." She knew it was a promise he might not be able to keep, even if everything went well, but she didn't want to say goodbye.

Neither did he. "Three days," he agreed with a smile.

They parted with a kiss that rivaled their first, and then there was nothing for Isaura to do but wait.

#  Chapter Nineteen

Quecxl: Two Winters Before Saint's Summit – Blue Moon

Quecxl was almost afraid to touch the carving—so far all he'd done was squat next to it. The little jaguar was so beautiful, so perfectly wrought.

It didn't seem real.

And if it weren't, and he touched it, the talisman would probably disappear, as figments of the imagination were wont to do.

But he had to know.

With a quick prayer to Huitzipochtli, Quecxl reached down and felt ... solid wood. Exquisitely shaped, masterfully manipulated wood.

It was real.

And it was just sitting here in the wilderness, waiting to be stepped on and destroyed, desecrated by someone who didn't appreciate the piece's magnificence. It didn't make sense—who would be careless enough to discard such craftsmanship?—but at least Quecxl's course of action was clear. "It looks like we have another companion," he announced as he tucked the jaguar in his pouch.

Xihuitl squawked noisily and flew back to the canoe.

"Oh, come on," Quecxl called after his temperamental companion. "It's only a carving."

The gull perched atop the boat's prow and turned his back on Quecxl.

He laughed. And then he remembered something he'd said the other day, about how he'd always assumed his nahualli was a jaguar. "Are you jealous?"

The bird didn't react.

"Unbelievable: you're actually pouting." Amused, Quecxl opened his pouch to look at the carving again. His people revered the jaguar—the most-prestigious warrior orders even used the noble beast as their totem. But what did it mean to find such a symbol so far from the Valley of Metica? Was he finally close to Aztlan?

He'd certainly been waiting long enough for a sign like this. After years of paddling north and east along the coast, he'd changed course and moved west through a series of enormous lakes. Several months of that had seen him to Cawgana, and then several months more had brought him to the mouth of this mighty river, where he'd heeded its call and turned south. It felt like he was on the last leg of a giant loop.

But he was still many, many day's travel from where he'd begun.

Even though he was easily diverted. Less than he used to be, but every few days, he still pulled over because he saw a village, or game, or sometimes—like today—just because he wanted to stretch his legs and explore. Most of these excursions lasted no longer than a few nights, but occasionally he found a group of people willing to put up with him for several weeks. Or, in the case of Omnira, several months.

Now _that_ had been a pleasant detour.

Quecxl let memories of his time with the mixed community wash over him: knapping blades again; leaving his hammerstone with Chogan, the fellow original man who'd become a friend after Quecxl proved himself; Amadi's respect; Makena's touch.

Quecxl lingered on the last memory the longest.

And then something wet and cold slapped against his feet: a fish. Dropped from above by a hovering, still-sulking Xihuitl.

Quecxl laughed again. "Is that a peace offering or a challenge?" The gull didn't answer, so Quecxl chose to believe the latter: that the fish was the gull's opening gambit in a new game. "Think fast, dirty bird!" he yelled, grabbing the flopping trout and preparing to chuck it at his nahualli.

But the sound of the sky breaking stopped him in mid-throw. Thunder. First one crack, then another, and then waves and waves of it.

On a clear day.

He couldn't see any lightning, but the storm—if that's what he'd heard—was too loud to be more than a league away. "Yes," he said when Xihuitl squawked in the storm's general direction, "I'm going to investigate. Stay here and eat your lunch." Dropping the fish, Quecxl glanced back at his canoe, confirmed it was pulled far enough up the bank, and broke into an easy trot.

Xihuitl caught him within a few strides, the fish in his beak and an annoyed look in his eyes.

Quecxl couldn't help smiling, even as the mysterious thunder began to sound less and less like something he should be running toward. It was too frantic. Too random, too scattered, too many. And there still wasn't a cloud in the sky.

Except ...

There _was_ a cloud, but it was emanating from the ground, not the heavens, snaking up the trunks of giant oak trees and obscuring all but their tallest branches.

Was this storm upside down?

Was the earth raining on the sky?

And how in Huitzipochtli's name could there be so much thunder without any lightning?

The answer to the last question became clear once Quecxl drew near enough to see men inside the upside-down storm. Running, shrieking, dying _pale_ men.

Of course.

How could he have failed to recognize the sound of fire sticks? It was the same noise he'd heard years ago on Tentocht's causeway, the erratic blasts of terrible weapons belching flame and death. He'd never heard or seen this many used at once before, but the cacophony was unmistakable.

So too, he realized, was the feeling of being struck by one of the fire stick's stones: the sudden pain in his abdomen was uniquely excruciating. Quecxl tried to keep running—to keep his legs moving and the rest of his body functioning as it should—but after a few, faltering steps, he collapsed on a pale corpse, and Xihuitl went berserk.

* * *

When Quecxl woke, it wasn't immediately apparent whether he was dead or alive. Mostly because his surroundings looked like the seventh level of Mictlan: blood-soaked earth, dismembered limbs, lifeless forms as far he could see ... It didn't take much imagination to believe he was in the underground realm of death.

But the pain in his stomach—and his right shoulder; had he been shot again?—was too sharp, too familiar, too ... _mortal_. And Xihuitl was squawking at him like a mother hen. Dirty, pain-in-the-neck gulls didn't go to Mictlan when they died, did they? No, they must go somewhere else. Which meant he was still alive. Dying, but still alive.

And he wasn't the only survivor: maybe twenty rod lengths to his right, a gray-haired original man was facing away from Quecxl, holding a fire stick in his hand and staring at the weapon as if it had betrayed him. A ring of bodies lay strewn around him. Original bodies. Had he killed them? Could one man really have stood against so many?

But why would original men fight each other when there were—or at least, had been—so many pale ones to kill? Unless different groups of original men had been allied with different factions of pale men. Quecxl hated the thought, but he knew it could happen: the Tlaxallans had been quick enough to join forces with the pale invaders who'd humbled Tentocht. Fools. Pale ones were everyone's enemy and no one's friend. They'd proven that again and again.

Still prone, Quecxl confirmed his new shoulder wound and then gently explored the cavity in his stomach. The hole was small, but it was deep—it felt like the stone had gone straight through. That was good. But he could smell the herbs he'd sprinkled on last night's stew. And that was bad. It meant his intestines had been pierced.

So he would die a slow, agonizing death, thousands of leagues from the Valley of Metica, amidst carnage so terrible one look would have put Tentocht's highest priests off human sacrifice for months. Even worse, in all his years of searching, he'd never found so much as a rumor of Aztlan's whereabouts. The city was probably just a fable. But it didn't matter, because in a short while, he'd be one as well.

With a worried squawk, Xihuitl drew Quecxl's focus back to the man in the clearing. He still held the fire stick like a baby's soiled rag, but his stance suggested something was about to happen. And after a moment, something did: the man adjusted his grip on the weapon's shaft and rubbed his hands against it, as if trying to wipe dirt from his palms. A breath later, the fire stick _became_ dirt, and he brushed it to the ground.

Quecxl knew pain could make the mind delirious, but he hadn't imagined that. The gray-haired man had caused the fire stick to _disintegrate_. And he'd acted—was still acting—like the feat was nothing special, just a mundane, everyday task on the order of eating breakfast.

Was that the Red Wraith?

Quecxl craned his neck, hoping to get a better look at the gray-haired man's brow. Was it marred by the telltale brand above the left eye? Quecxl couldn't heal himself, but maybe Naysin could. He'd just annihilated a pale man's weapon—maybe he'd found his purpose as he matured.

Yet the gray-haired man still faced the opposite direction, gazing into the distance.

"Karakwa," Quecxl tried to call out, remembering how he'd deceived Naysin with the same title in Cawgana. But now Quecxl was dying for real, and his throat had become too dry to emit more than a croak. He licked his lips to moisten them and ... stopped short of speaking again as something about the nearest corpse made him pause. The body wasn't just riddled with fire-stick stones: it had been torn apart, blasted into chunks too small to be the work of an ordinary weapon. The next closest body had been similarly eviscerated. So had most of the dead he could see from where he lay; pieces and pulp were everywhere.

This bloodbath, this slaughter—it wasn't just horrific: it was unnatural, the work of an angry god ... Or a fickle shaman who'd passed through Cawgana without lifting a finger.

With ominous timing, the gray-haired man clasped his hands behind his neck and walked away from what he'd wrought.

A failed savior indeed. Quecxl understood Chogan's bitterness anew.

Then the moaning began.

Soft and scattered at first, little whimpers that suggested one or two other men had survived along with Quecxl. But soon enough, agonized screams filled the forest and, as the wounded tried to free themselves, mounds of corpses wriggled and shifted.

Had this many men really been able to hold in their pain? Had the gray-haired man—Naysin, if it was him—inspired so much terror that even the fatally injured had been afraid to make a sound until he left?

As darkness invaded his mind again, Quecxl wished he could have died with a happier final thought.

#  Chapter Twenty

Isaura: Two Winters Before Saint's Summit – Blue Moon

Rowtag didn't come on the third day, but another original man did.

His average height and lean build were similar to her lover's, but Isaura didn't confuse the two for a second—even though she was dying to.

No, this man walked like he wanted to be seen, daring every passerby to look at him.

This man had hair the color of smoke.

This man had a swirling, black-and-white tattoo etched over his left eye.

This man was the Red Wraith.

Isaura was sure of it, even from the distant vantage of her room's second-story window. Like most people, she'd only heard rumors about the inhuman monster, a red warlock who'd marched whole villages to their deaths and incinerated plantations. There were other stories too, about how he could summon water dragons from the ocean and cause phantoms to rain down from a night sky—a lot of evil powers were ascribed to this man, many in contradiction to one another and most too fantastic to believe.

But none of the tales disagreed about his appearance: the gray hair and swirling tattoo were always part of his description. So was the claim that when he exercised his powers, his arteries glowed white and his veins gleamed black, making him appear ethereal.

Like a wraith.

Isaura hoped he wouldn't look like that today.

At the moment, he was just stalking around the far side of the street, staring at everyone he passed and looking frustrated that no one seemed to recognize him. Maybe people here hadn't heard the rumors yet, or didn't remember the parts about the tattoo and the hair. And maybe that was for the best—the Red Wraith was starting to look deflated.

Until he heard something on the other end of town and began walking toward it, a renewed spring in his step.

As he passed from view, Isaura sagged against the window frame and exhaled. If even a tenth of the things said about this man were true, Fort Kaska was in serious danger. So was she, for that matter: what could a bit of water do against a demon? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Except maybe comfort her a little before she died.

Shaking badly, she wobbled to the bed, sat down, and began beading small drops of water on her face. It was an old habit, something she'd done almost as long as she'd been quenching—she'd begun soon after she'd left Laflorida.

Oh God, she hadn't felt this afraid since she'd escaped that oppressive hell-hole. What was she going to do? If the Red Wraith started wreaking his mad vengeance here, could she do anything but run? Would that even be possible?

Maybe she should hide. Stay in this room and wait for Rowtag to return. Her brave Rowtag ... But he couldn't stand against the Red Wraith any more than she could. No one could.

Even still, she found herself moving back to the window, hoping she might see her lover walking into town, a smile on his lips and confidence in his eyes. And this time—just for a second—she thought it really _was_ him striding into view.

But only because she was being foolish: it was the Red Wraith again, and he was searching for something now, sweeping his head back and forth like a wolf scanning for prey. Then, without warning, he looked up at her—looked _directly_ at her—and his face assumed an expression that could only mean one thing: he'd found his quarry.

Isaura threw herself back from the window so quickly it must have looked like she'd been yanked by a rope. But she didn't move fast enough to avoid seeing him take a step toward the inn.

Oh God.

He was coming for _her_. Right now. Oh God.

But why? Because she could quench? Manipulating water paled in comparison to what he could do; what did he care if she was a minor bruja? She was no threat to him. No threat to anyone, really ... Except for that soldier in St. Augstin. Was the Red Wraith here to avenge him? No, that didn't make sense. None of this made sense.

What should she do? She couldn't hide now—it was too late for that. Could she flee? She might be able to make it to the inn's back door ... And then what? One of the stories told how he'd run—not walked, _run_ —across water in pursuit of a slave ship. How could she escape a man who moved like that? She couldn't. And if she couldn't hide, and if she didn't want to be cornered in her room like a scared rabbit, there was only one thing left to do. It didn't make sense either. But what choice did she have?

So she went downstairs to meet him.

#  Chapter Twenty-One

Chase: Two Winters Before Saint's Summit – Blue Moon

"There are some who say the red devils are the ancestors of the lost tribes of Isradell. That they wandered to this new land, devolved into savages, and lost sight of the path to civilization." Chase paused to shake his head, setting his blonde hair flapping like a flag in the wind. "But when I look into those brutes' eyes, I don't see a flicker of heritage in common with my own. These are not—nor ever were—a holy people. There's no reason to treat with them, succor them, or show them any mercy whatsoever."

He stamped on the old apple crate he was using as a stage. "There's no reason, in fact, to do anything but kill them."

This got a loud cheer. Chase had been priming his audience of rough-looking white men for almost twenty minutes, and he _knew_ their blood was simmering now. He could feel it. The anger in this village—Fort Kaska, someone had called it—was ready to boil over.

"And don't think they feel any differently about you. Oh, they're interested in your baubles, and the guns and liquor they can't make themselves. But they don't care two pence for the white man himself. If they did, would they scalp our women and children? Would they set our settlements ablaze? Would they, at every opportunity, confound our efforts to live honest, peaceful lives?"

"NO!" the crowd roared in answer.

"No indeed, my brothers. Because the term 'red devil' isn't just colloquial slang—it's a definition. The reds truly _are_ devils. Put here by God to test our resolve. Our holy conviction that there is only one pure race, and that mingling with others of a darker persuasion is a grave sin." He paused to let the crowd yell its agreement again. "Knowing this, we also know the pact your leaders made with the local devils was a grave sin, and that allying with devils against other white men—even Francs—is graver still."

"Now I'm sure your _leaders_ ," here he stopped to spit for emphasis, "told you how _keen_ the Francs were to take your land, and how _critical_ it was that you put aside your differences with the devils in order to prevail." He shook his head theatrically. "But you don't deal with devils." More yells. "Not when they're raiding your lands, poaching your livestock, and stealing your women." Even louder yells. "Not when the devils are little more than animals fit only for servitude and bondage." Still louder yells. "Not when your leaders are devils themselves." Confused quiet.

"That's right," Chase continued. "Your leaders are just as untrustworthy as any devil. Do you think it was _your_ interests they were thinking of when they conscripted so many of your sons and forced them to march with red devils and mercenaries? Your interests? Or those of their pocketbooks?" He shook his head again. "Men like that don't see red or white. They only see gold."

As several men shouted in agreement, Chase drew a pistol and raised it high. "But I see something else," he said, lowering his voice to an awestruck, pious tone. "I see red, but it's not just the color of a heathen's skin. It's also the color of holy fire, bequeathed to me by the Lord to purify sinners like your leaders, even if it means burning them to husks." To drive this last point home, Chase pulled the trigger and released a stream of fire from the gun's wyrm-head muzzle.

Several members of the crowd gasped and a few fell to their knees. "Holy fire," more than one repeated as flame continued to gush from Chase's blunderbuss.

"This weapon," he exulted, "this _dragon_ , was given to me for one purpose: to champion the cause of the white race. And every day I struggle to do so, even though the burden is sometimes more than I can bear—this weapon is not easy to wield." With his free hand, he tapped the palm print on his forehead, then grabbed his collar and pulled, revealing more of the horrific burn scar running down his left side. "At first, I couldn't control the Lord's gift, and it marked that failure upon my flesh. But now," he bellowed, with another flourish of flame, "now I am its master, and I call forth cleansing fires at will!"

He smiled as the crowd bubbled with "Hallelujahs!" He'd learned—the hard way—that people were less likely to call him a warlock if they believed the source of his power was his pistol. Or a musket. Or pretty much any gun at all. He'd been accumulating them for the last year, ever since he realized it wasn't the firearm that mattered; the real key was making it look like his abilities came from something other than himself. _That_ was what the Lord was trying to convey when he granted Chase his first dragon. To be an effective instrument, he had to help other men—other white men—see that his powers were God-given (rather than Devil-inspired). So now Chase had quite the collection of guns: three pistols and two full-sized fowling pieces. All empty. But all blunderbusses, whose decorative dragonheads made for effective props. He used a different one at each town.

"The fight is not an easy one, however, as I'm sure you know. In addition to their animal cunning, the red devils practice the dark magick of shamanry. Perhaps you've heard of the monster they call the Red Wraith?"

The crowd went quiet, except for a few mumbled affirmatives and whispered curses.

"I have too, my brothers. I've heard how he ran across the ocean in pursuit of an honest slave ship. How he burned a law-abiding plantation to ashes with _black_ hellfire." Chase emphasized the "black" as hard as he could—it was always wise to distinguish between this heathen's fire and his own, even if doing so required embellishment. "And what's more, I've seen this shaman's handiwork myself. For fun—for sick, savage pleasure—he magicked an entire village of white men, women, and children and forced them to walk until their feet bled and the survivors begged for death. No one survived."

More curses, louder this time.

Chase leaned forward on his crate. "The devils have declared war on us. With the help of Satana, the Red Wraith and abominations like him are trying to deny this land to the white man. And I, for one, will not allow it. No, my brothers, I will NOT allow it."

Several cheers erupted.

He had them now. All that remained was to ask if they would stand with him in the struggle against lesser races—

"The Espan lady!" a breathless boy interrupted as he rounded the corner of the closest building. "She's taking ..." He skidded to a stop. "She's taking another ... another red into her bed!"

"Slut!" someone in the crowd cried.

"Harlot!" another echoed.

"I went to get my Da some water," the boy explained self-consciously, nodding toward the man who'd called out first. "And I was ... I was going quick so I could get back in time to hear you finish talking," he continued, looking at Chase now. "When I saw a red go into the Cozy—"

"Our inn," the boy's father clarified for Chase.

"Where she's staying," the boy agreed. "And after a few minutes I ... I saw them together in her window!"

Chase considered his next words while the crowd worked itself into a lather. What a gift. What a well-timed gift. Truly, the Lord was with him today. "This has happened before?"

"Aye," the boy's father answered. "Up until a few days ago, she was with a Kiksha trader. But the town council," here he paused to spit, "kept us from rectifying the situation: they didn't want to endanger their precious alliance before the Francs had been fought."

Chase shook his head. "You see what I mean about your leaders having only their own interests at heart? Their word means nothing to me. I will _not_ allow another impure union to take place just because there's been precedent." He jumped off the apple crate with enough force to send the box flying backward, took two quick steps forward, then stopped to cock his head and stare into the crowd's center. "Will you?"

"No!"

"Hell, no!"

"By God, NO!"

"Then show me your inn," Chase said, smiling viciously.

#  Chapter Twenty-Two

Isaura: Two Winter's Before Saint's Summit – Blue Moon

From the top of the stairs, the Cozy's common room looked all but empty. Gideon was sweeping the floor near the counter while his wife Selah tended to the wood stove, but that was it—no paying customers to worry about. Neither of them gave the smoky-haired demon on their doorstep a second glance.

But Isaura couldn't take her eyes off him.

The Red Wraith was skinnier than she'd realized, built more like a runner than a warrior. And his face was that of a young man's—was he even eighteen?

But dear God, did he look deadly.

It was partly the brand that did it, that swirling black-and-white tattoo above his eye. The ink wasn't actually moving—Isaura knew that was foolishness. But she felt sure it _could_ move, and had before.

Most of his menace came from smalls things, though. The stiffness in his stance, as if he were coiled to strike. The press of his lips, as if he were holding back a heinous incantation. The bend of his fingers, as if ...

As if she were being foolish again.

As if the little she knew about this young man came from rumors, and she was letting her imagination run wild with them. Could he even do magic? She had no proof of it. Maybe there was only one bruja in the room: the excitable woman scaring herself silly at the top of the stairs.

Isaura doubted it, but she went down to meet the stranger anyway.

He watched her descend, his gaze curious. On the bottom step, she paused to return his scrutiny. He seemed ... uncertain. Perhaps he was just a boy after all.

After a brief impasse, Isaura crooked her finger at him, turned, and walked back upstairs.

That was bold.

Bolder than she felt, and probably bolder than was wise. Even if he wasn't the Red Wraith, Gideon and Selah wouldn't approve of her inviting another red man up to her room. Not that it mattered—she was paid up through tomorrow.

But if this stranger _was_ the Red Wraith of legend ...

Better to face him with courage than fear. Maybe boldness was the wisest course after all.

And there was no turning back—the stranger was on the stairs now, following her closely, his swirling brand no doubt aimed directly at her back.

Isaura resisted the impulse to take a deep breath as she approached the end of the second-story's dimly lit hallway. She didn't increase her pace either—slow, steady steps were all she needed to take as she opened the door to her room and stepped inside.

But she couldn't help starting a little when the stranger moved in after her and shut the door. Hopefully he hadn't seen her flinch.

_Stay calm, Isaura._ _Stay calm, and stay alive._

If only it were that easy.

"You are Red Wraith?" she blurted—not at all calmly—in Kiksha after the silence became too much.

With two words, he justified every ounce of her terror and then some: "I am."

But he didn't seem angry at being recognized. "What's your native tongue?" he asked politely.

"Espan," she said, switching to it. "You can understand me?"

He nodded.

Should she still be scared? It was hard to tell. "I thought you were him."

"How did you learn to shaman _Mir_?"

Now she was just confused.

"To manipulate the chaos around you," the Red Wraith explained. "The fast energies. The ones that make air move, fire burn, water flow ..." He trailed off for a moment, then gathered himself and pressed on. "I felt you doing something. That's why I was looking for you."

She could have denied it, but he'd been truthful thus far. "I was washing my face," she admitted softly. Bowing her head, she flicked her wrists and summoned tiny flows of water to reach out and kiss her cheeks. When she looked back up, her face was beaded with drops of water. "I can only move water," she said as she reached for a small towel hanging from one of the bedposts and used the cloth to dry her face.

"And the burned man at the end of the street? Can he move more than fire?"

"The preacher?" When he'd entered town the week before, Isaura had recognized him immediately: he was the Anglo with the ropy blond hair—the man who'd set fire to St. Augstin to help her escape those many years ago. "I didn't know he could move anything," she said honestly. But now she knew how he'd started the blazes; apparently there were more brujas around than she'd realized.

The Red Wraith nodded and started pacing. "Why did you come down to meet me?"

She followed him with her eyes for a moment before answering. "I await a man like you. Not _like_ you," she amended, "just ... He's also of the original people—a friend. When I first saw you, I thought it was him. And by the time I realized the truth, you'd seen me ... What's your name? Your real name?"

He didn't hesitate. "Naysin. What's yours?"

"Isaura."

He actually smiled at this.

Until she followed with, "Are the stories true?"

Now his smile vanished, and Isaura cursed herself for pressing her luck when she was fortunate to have any to begin with.

Thankfully, the Red Wraith—Naysin—seemed content to change the subject. His tone altered too, though. "How did you learn to use water?" he asked accusingly. "And speak a tongue like mine? And why is an Espan woman in an Anglo village?"

"You make it sound as if I wished to become a bruja."

He winced.

It helped, but she still didn't feel obligated to tell him everything. "It just happened. I conjured to save a woman who was being raped."

The half-truth remained brutal enough to make him stumble.

"As for the rest ... The friend I await taught me to speak like him. But his tribe allied with the Anglos, and when they left to fight the Francs in Edgeland Forest, I said I'd await him here. I had contracts to fulfill nearby anyway."

Naysin stopped pacing. "Contracts?" he asked, but not in a way that suggested he really cared about them.

"I dowse wells."

"Because you can sense where springs in the earth run close to the surface?"

"Yes."

He regarded her for a moment, then changed the subject again. "The Francs—were they also allied with original people?" He sounded more interested in this. Why?

"They were rumored to be." Isaura took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. "Are the stories true?" she repeated. When he didn't respond immediately, she forced the issue further. "Do you use ... _Mir_ ... to do terrible things? Are you truly the Red Wraith?"

Swallowing hard, Naysin answered the question very differently than he had just a little earlier: "I don't mean to be."

Before Isaura could respond, the sound of feet sprinting up the stairs filled the lull, and a voice yelled Naysin's name and what sounded like a warning—albeit in a strange language— from the hallway.

"What is it?" Isaura asked him as he strode to the door and opened it to reveal a panting, milky-eyed original woman.

Naysin seemed to know her. "She wants us to get out," he translated after the woman flashed him several rapid hand signals.

"Why?"

The woman unstrapped a fancifully decorated staff from her back. The shaft rattled—rhythmically, sounding almost like a rain shower—as she twisted its top and bottom. But there was nothing musical about the wicked-looking blades spiraling out of either end.

Naysin shut the door. "A mob of pale men," he said. "They're coming for us."

#  Chapter Twenty-Three

Chase: Two Winter's Before Saint's Summit – Blue Moon

The crowd mobilized to do Chase's bidding with a primal, bloodthirsty roar.

It sounded glorious.

This was the way to hunt. Willing minions at your side, your quarry trapped on the second floor like a cat in a tree ... There was no escape from true justice. Chase let his voice join the roar as he ran in the center of the mob, his dragon raised high and spouting flame.

Within a minute, they were at the inn, and a few seconds later they were up its stairs. It felt like being part of a giant wave, a titanic force that couldn't be stopped until it finished smashing everything in its path, including any door locked against it—Chase was holding the only key he'd ever need. "Stand back," he said as he gestured with his pistol for the front-runners to move behind him.

As soon as he had a clear path, he started streaming fire out of the gun again, but this time he focused the flames into a thin line, a razor's edge of heat so sharp it cut through the door like a knife slitting a fish's belly. When he'd finished outlining his new entrance, the severed wood fell inward with a crash.

The men behind him cheered, but from his better vantage, Chase could see their prey was escaping—somehow, they'd created their own opening in the wall opposite the door. And they were jumping through it. All three of them: there were two women, not one. The Espan and a milky-eyed she-devil who glared at him as she vanished from view.

"It's a heathen orgy!" Chase shouted as he and several of the men behind him rushed into the room. "There!" he yelled, pointing to the gaping hole that had once been a window. "They jumped out there!" He ran to the edge of the opening and—

Hesitated. It was more of a drop than he'd thought.

"Quickly," he said after a moment's reflection, waving at the nearest members of the mob. "Don't let them escape their fate!"

Two of the men didn't stop to think; Chase had to dodge out of the way as they ran pell-mell through the hole and leapt to the ground. He'd definitely fired their blood.

"They're on the street!" he yelled to the other hunters, most of whom were milling about the room looking for something heathen to punish. "Quickly!" he repeated, sprinting through the door and down the stairs.

Footsteps pounded behind him, and when he emerged from the inn, he could see more of his audience swarming the near area. So this was what commanding an army felt like.

"The church!" someone cried. "They're in the church!"

The mob wasted no time converging on its town's largest building. But once again, the door was locked.

Chase wasn't as willing to cut into a holy structure, however. "So," he shouted instead, opting to begin with words, "you think the people of this town will let devils and whores take refuge in the Lord's church, allow red heathens and white sluts to fornicate in our place of worship." He paused to catch his breath.

And never got the chance to continue.

A voice from the church cut him off. A booming voice that grew so loud every member of the mob fell to the ground, hands clasped over their ears. As he did the same, Chase saw blood trickling through several of his neighbors' fingers.

Most of what the voice said was lost in the cacophony of echoes its sound created, as reverberations ricocheted around the town and crashed into each other with deafening force. But a few phrases came through clearly:

"... I burned the plantation ..."

"... marched ... invaders to their deaths ..."

"... been named the Red Wraith."

Then a shadow fell over the mob. Chase didn't look up immediately—like most of the men, he'd bent his head in terror—but he forced himself to raise his gaze after he heard several gasps from those around him, and found that the men who'd already looked had good reason to exclaim.

For there was a monster in their midst: a titanic red devil kneeling over the church, cords of gray hair long as fishing lines shrouding his face and the door.

More all-but-incomprehensible words erupted from the church, and the titan's veins and arteries shone in a black-and-white web of sorcery. Most of the mob fled immediately; some found the strength to run, but a good number only managed a frantic, scrabbling crawl. The rest scattered when the gigantic devil tilted his head—revealing the telltale brand inscribed over his left eye—stood, and shot streaks of shadows and light from his outstretched palms.

Within seconds, Chase was alone.

He almost ran himself, but a memory flashed across his mind: an image of a woman, her skin as tattered as her clothes, advancing on a forest fire with a joyous look on her face and the words "Make it stop!" on her lips.

A woman who'd wanted those flames to end her misery no matter what Chase said or did.

A woman this heathen—this Red Wraith—had doomed to a horrible, protracted death, along with the entirety of her village.

"Self-confessed demon spawn!" Chase screamed as he leapt to his feet and let his own sin rise with him. "You do not scare me! You do not scare the people in this town! And we will NOT allow evil of your ilk to propagate!" Looking up at the sky—past the fiendish specter towering above the church, and toward the heavens—he crossed himself and nodded deferentially. "Forgive me, Lord, but this is no longer your place. It belongs now to the fires of HELL!" Then, summoning every ounce of flame he possessed, he hurled an inferno at the church door.

His heat ate through the wood like a million starving termites.

Within seconds, he could see the trio of fugitives through the resulting opening: the Espan whore—who looked strangely familiar; the she-devil who'd glared at him as she jumped out of the inn; and the Red Wraith. The real, life-sized one, and not the illusion he'd conjured. All three were backpedaling and vulnerable.

Chase redirected his dragon, pulled the trigger again, and—

And there was steam everywhere. Steam, and smoke, and more memories.

As visibility vanished and the heat intensified exponentially, Chase staggered to the other side of the street. Something about the angle he'd been standing at when he loosed the second gout of flame—the way he'd been staring into the building with the intent of purifying its interior—had conjured up unwelcome images from New Kent: flashbacks of his return and his confrontation with James.

Chase didn't realize he'd started running until he was sprinting through Fort Kaska's outskirts.

#  Chapter Twenty-Four

Isaura: Two Winters Before Saint's Summit – Blue Moon

Isaura's world was steam.

Buckets and buckets of scalding, boiling steam—a searing mist too hot to control. As tear after tear evaporated from her eyelids, she clasped her hands to her face to keep from going blind. But it burned to see, it hurt to breathe, and there wasn't anything she could do except broil in the deathtrap she'd created by foolishly saving the Red Wraith.

She hadn't intended to. But when the preacher confirmed his bruja nature by launching a stream of hellfire at Naysin, she'd blocked it with a geyser of water.

And now she was going to broil for it.

Unless a hand grabbed hers—ripping it away from her eyes—and extinguished the heat with ... darkness. Compressing, all-surrounding darkness, so close it didn't just hurt to breathe: she couldn't breathe at all. She was being squeezed, pressed in a vice that wouldn't stop tightening until there was nothing left of her but a thin line no one would see because it was too cursed dark—

Air. The darkness was gone, and she could breathe again. She sucked in her first breath so quickly it gave her hiccups. But she kept inhaling until there wasn't an ounce of room left in her lungs—until she'd pumped life down to her toes and back—exhaled reluctantly, and drew in another enormous gulp of air.

So it went for the next few minutes, until Isaura regained her bearings and realized that she, the Red Wraith, and the mysterious milky-eyed red woman were safe in the center of town.

And coated in dirt.

* * *

"We had to get out of the church," Naysin explained after they'd brushed themselves off, fetched Manuel from the Cozy's stable, and left Fort Kaska. "It was the safest way I could think of."

Isaura didn't press him further. The experience had been horrific, and the less she knew about how he'd tunneled them under the earth—or summoned that titanic avatar of his, or peeled open the wall of her room at the Cozy—the better.

The preacher, though ... What had happened to fill him with such hate? Was it the scars? Had he earned them that night in St. Augstin? The one on his forehead had the look of a man's hand; perhaps the pain of it explained the venom in his voice (a poison so forbidding that she'd turned around every time she'd tried to approach him to give thanks for helping her—and that was before the altercation in the church). Had the cost of saving her driven him to his dark crusade?

She wasn't sure she wanted to learn more about this subject either.

The milky-eyed woman, however ... Isaura wanted further knowledge of her. Where had she and her outlandish clothing come from? How did she cause blades to rise and fall from her staff like prairie dogs? And what was she communicating with those flashes of her hands?

But the only thing Isaura learned was the woman's name: Tay.

And once Isaura had her wits about her again, that was all she wanted to know. Because she'd just thought of another name: Rowtag. She'd barely survived her ordeal—how had he fared with his?

"I need to find my friend," she told Naysin after they'd traveled a safe distance from Fort Kaska.

He studied her a moment, the tattoo over his left eye boring into her and peeling away her thoughts. But he let her go. Gracefully: he even asked if she'd be able to find food on her own.

So much for the legend of the merciless Red Wraith.

His power still terrified her, and he really did look like a wraith when his arteries glowed white and his veins gleamed black. But their conversation at the Cozy had made him seem ... human. A man who didn't know what to do with his godhood.

Which was fair enough, considering she didn't know what to do about being a bruja.

But all that was irrelevant now. The only thing that mattered was finding Rowtag: the ordinary man she loved.

* * *

"No," Isaura whispered as her initial shock faded and the full extent of the carnage assaulted her senses. Her eyes were battered by glimpses of corpses and vultures; her nose by smells of gunpowder and rotting flesh; her ears by cries of pain and desperate pleas for help.

After a day of circling Fort Kaska, she'd found the battlefield.

It was impossible to tell who'd won. It was impossible to tell anything.

Except that there were scores of men left for dead in the forest. Red and white, Hellani and Kiksha, Anglo and Franc—they didn't look very different when they were dying in the dirt.

"Rowtag!" she called, shaking off her horror enough to tie Manuel to a tree and start moving again. "ROWTAG!" Suddenly frantic, she began racing through the devastation, hurtling around trees and over bodies. "Rowtag! Rowtag, if you're here, please talk to me!"

Part of her hoped he wouldn't respond. Because if he did, he was hurt, probably badly—some of the bodies were little more than fleshy puddles. But if he didn't answer ... He could have departed with the survivors, or ...

Or the other option wasn't an option. He was alive, here or somewhere else in the Edgeland Forest. And if he was injured, she'd clean his wounds with the purest water the world had ever—

There. In that clearing: someone was _standing_. Dying men didn't stand. Dying men didn't walk either, and that's what the figure was doing. His steps were slow and uncertain, but they still filled her with unreasonable hope—she burst into the clearing expecting to find Rowtag waiting for her with a ridiculous greeting like, "Why you worry? I best survivor in East!"

But it wasn't him.

At least this man wasn't the Red Wraith. He was stockier, his hair was shorter and blacker, and he looked ... foreign. Even more so than the Wraith's milky-eyed companion had. He'd also been shot in the stomach and shoulder, something Isaura couldn't imagine happening to Naysin. That man had too much power to be hurt by something as mundane as bullets.

This red was clearly more vulnerable; the smile he offered Isaura as she stumbled to a halt was weak with pain. But he didn't stop moving—after acknowledging her presence, he staggered past her and into a bush.

She could see other men moving about the clearing now. None of them seemed injured, despite the gore on their hair and clothing.

They also weren't fighting.

Isaura watched in confusion as a Franc and an Anglo worked together to uncover a Kiksha trapped beneath the pieces of several dead Hellani. When the Kiksha was free, his rescuers shouted a word in a language she didn't recognize and then waited until a _seagull_ swooped down next to them.

Once the bird was settled, the two white men moved on, presumably to look for another survivor.

She didn't have time to care, but what was happening here?

As if on cue, the gut-shot red reappeared from his bush, looked around the clearing, and stumbled to the Kiksha. The latter was trying hard to master his pain, but it was clear from the tears in his eyes that his shattered leg hurt terribly. The gut-shot red knelt down, nearly falling on top of the Kiksha in the process, reached back, and ...

Isaura almost jumped out of her skin as someone stepped on a branch behind her. Whirling around, she found a Hellani emerging from the bush the gut-shot red had just left. The Hellani was smeared in blood too—especially around his neck—but he moved freely.

Whirling back, Isaura watched as the Kiksha began to thrash, moaning in pain and then amazement as his broken leg _reformed._

She blinked, but it wasn't a trick of the light. The tattered flesh knit together like shards of pottery mudded once more into a single vessel. Except there were no seams at the joins, no scars to mark the new unions—when the gut-shot red withdrew his hand, he left nothing behind but smooth, unblemished skin.

He was a healer.

Through some power more useful—and saintly—than her own, the gut-shot red could place his hands upon terrible injuries and make them vanish.

Which meant he could heal Rowtag.

She knew her love was hurt—she could sense it now. Amidst all the pain, she could feel his agony. He was here, in this clearing or nearby, and if she could just find him, the gut-shot red would heal him.

For the next several hours, Isaura raced from body to body, stopping only to ask the survivors to look for Rowtag. They didn't seem surprised to encounter an Espan woman seeking her red lover. Compared to the miracles and disasters that had taken—and were still taking—place all around them, her presence was barely worth registering.

But some of the men listened to her, and eventually two Kikshas found Rowtag. When they called for her, though, she knew. Oh, she knew. In her mind, in her heart, in her soul, she knew. And for the first time in what felt like years, she slowed to a walk, because she already knew what she'd see when she reached Rowtag's stone-faced kinsmen.

The most beautiful corpse in the East.

#  Chapter Twenty-Five

Quecxl: Two Winters Before Saint's Summit – Blue Moon

When Quecxl woke several hours—days?—after seeing Naysin, his stomach still felt shattered, Xihuitl still watched over him, and men still moaned in every direction. But there were far fewer cries than before. The same number of bodies, but far fewer cries.

No smoky-haired man, though. Karakwa seemed to be truly gone. For the most part, Quecxl thought that a good thing. But part of him still wanted to believe. Still hoped a man who could break a battlefield so easily would also put it back together once the suffering he'd caused became clear. Or at least heal the original men. Quecxl could understand letting the pale ones rot, but to walk away from original men in pain? No savior did that.

Then the memory of his own failure atop the temple of Tentocht's fourth quadrant floated up like a spirit, and Quecxl realized saviors didn't _do_ anything—they didn't exist. There were only men like him, undeserving idiots who misused their power more often than not.

Still: it was better to try, right? And if you died trying ... Then at least you'd died trying.

Quecxl took a deep breath, tried to stand up, and nearly died. Or maybe he just would have blacked out again. But two memories helped him hang on to consciousness: the specter of blood on an ancient altar, and the much more recent sight of Naysin turning his back on the misery he'd wrought.

"Just give me the strength to try," Quecxl muttered, even as he wondered if Huitzipochtli was reveling in the woodland carnage. "Just help me walk to that man there and let me try."

Celebrating or not, Huitzipochtli helped—or at least didn't prevent—his disciple from reaching the nearest moaner, an original man who also looked to be gut-shot. Quecxl smiled despite the pain; it wouldn't be hard to imagine how this injury felt. Ignoring the man's feeble attempts to ward him off, Quecxl placed his hands on the tattered stomach opposite his own and began to weave. The stiff energy came quickly—within a minute, the man was gawking at his unblemished skin.

After establishing that they didn't share a common tongue, Quecxl pointed to another moaner and then at the man he'd just healed. It only took a few repetitions to get the message across: "Find me more survivors." Once he understood, the man began racing around like a demon. Quecxl only had to redirect him once, when it became clear he was ignoring original men who didn't look like himself. But Quecxl didn't care about tribal rivalries right now, and after the fire in his lookout's eyes subsided, neither did he.

Then it was Quecxl's turn to be corrected.

Xihuitl joined the effort once Quecxl had healed too many lookouts to keep track of by himself: the gull would fly to one lookout, wait for Quecxl to stumble over to the wounded man the lookout had found, and then fly to the next lookout. It was an enormous help.

Until the dirty, irritating bird settled next to a pale man.

Quecxl was almost on top of the man before the color of his skin became apparent—the white bits were barely visible under all the blood and dirt. "What are you doing?" Quecxl demanded of his nahualli. "There's no time for them."

Then he heard the voice Xihuitl was trying to summon for him: _"You were sick. I could help_. _"_ Ixtli. It was the village with the plague-ridden pale men all over again, a memory Quecxl would have preferred not to revisit. But ignoring it would dishonor Ixtli's compassion.

"Stupid bird," Quecxl muttered as he placed his hands on the barely conscious pale man. "Stupid, meddling bird."

Xihuitl squawked once in response and then flew to the next lookout.

Quecxl didn't heal the pale man to full health, though. Not right away—not without knowing the invader's intentions. "You," Quecxl said, jabbing the man's chest once he was conscious, "find more survivors." Next Quecxl pointed at the closest lookout and the moaner he was standing next to. "And I'll heal them." Then he patted the knife at his belt, a blade he'd knapped in Omnira. "If you don't help," he continued as he drew a finger across his throat, "I'll sacrifice you to Huitzipochtli."

At first he wasn't sure his meaning had gotten across. The message was more complicated than the one he'd acted out for the original men, with oceans of room for misunderstanding.

But after a few seconds, the pale man pointed to the closest lookout and nodded.

Part of Quecxl wished the pale man had chosen differently. But since he hadn't, there was nothing to do but summon the stiff energy and heal the injured man. At least he looked suitably amazed when his wounds finished closing. He thanked Quecxl with a stream of nonsense words, sobbed uncontrollably for a minute, and then scrambled to fulfill the conditions of his salvation.

Soon enough, Quecxl was healing as many pale men as original, albeit with a slightly different approach: he continued healing the original men _first_ and _then_ asking them be lookouts; for the pale men, their agreement was a prerequisite to receiving help. But it didn't matter—none of the pale men turned down his bargain. And within an hour, there were so many lookouts that Quecxl asked them to work in pairs to unearth the less-accessible survivors.

Other than this slight shift in tactics—and the appearance of a determined, auburn-haired pale woman—everything had become a blur for Quecxl: find Xihuitl, stagger over to him, heal the moaner the bird had led him to; find Xihuitl again, stagger over to him, heal another moaner.

It was endless, and exhausting, and ... somehow doable.

He should have collapsed long since. Through his haze, Quecxl knew this. He'd lost too much blood, worked too hard for too long. His wound should have killed him already; he never should have been able to heal more than the first few men. And yet, with every injury he healed, his own hurt a little less.

Maybe it was Huitzipochtli lending him strength. Or maybe it was Xihuitl's stubbornness. _No resting Quecxl_ , the bird's eyes insisted, _not yet, not while that man over there needs healing. You're done with him? Good. There's another man over here._

But whatever the source of his impossible energy, Quecxl was still walking, still weaving wounds together, still living. And for a long time, it was all that mattered.

Then, as abruptly as it began, the ordeal was over.

Initially, Quecxl didn't believe the original man—one of the first scouts—when he signaled there were no more injured men to heal, and that the time had come to bury the dead. But eventually Quecxl realized no one was moaning, and Xihuitl had stopped acting as a beacon. Those that could live had been saved. Everyone else was lost.

Quecxl slumped to a sitting position, dimly aware that the survivors were looking at him with reverence in their eyes. He tried to hold on to the energy that had sustained him, but it was flowing out fast, leaking forth with the blood from his open wounds.

He wasn't going to cheat death: he'd just delayed it. At least he'd been able to do something worthwhile with the borrowed time.

Resigned to—and even a little relieved by—his fate, Quecxl fumbled in his pouch for the jaguar. It was sticky with blood, but the red sheen only enhanced the carving's vitality. "I'm not sure you were worth dying for," Quecxl whispered as he lay back against the ravaged earth, "but I'm glad I found you." He closed his eyes.

And reopened them in shock. A piece of his right arm had broken loose: he'd felt it detach and roll down his hip.

Quecxl jerked back to a sitting position, ripped open his ruined poncho, and found nothing but skin. Clean, unbroken flesh marred by nothing more than the pockmarks that had been there for years. Next to his side lay the stone of a fire stick, the stone that had lodged in his shoulder during his first blackout.

The stone his body had ejected when it finished repairing itself.

#  Chapter Twenty-Six

Amadi: One Winter Before Saint's Summit – Hunger Moon

The pantsless plantation owner fired his shotgun into Amadi's chest. "I warned you, tar skin," the white man crowed as smoke obscured the already dark room, "no one enters my chambers without leave!"

But when the air cleared, Amadi still stood, and his ribcage was knitting itself back together.

"I give leave," he replied softly in his broken (but improving) Anglo. He was naked to the waist, gleaming with the sweat of his run through the white man's lands. Lands tended by ejeme this fool apparently shot for knocking on his door at an inconvenient time. "She even your wife?"

The white woman in the bed whimpered and drew the comforter up to cover her candlelit breasts. She looked plump and terrified. The white man didn't respond; he was too busy fumbling for more shot and powder, trying and failing to reload his puny weapon. Amadi rolled his eyes, took two quick steps forward, ripped the gun away, and bent it over his thigh. The plantation owner—who suddenly seemed even smaller—swore and backpedaled until he slammed against the bed and fell onto its rumpled sheets.

"You're the Black Resurrection," the white woman breathed as she dropped the comforter to grab the white man from behind and wrap her arms around him.

Amadi laughed. "That white name for me now? Better than 'tar skin,' I guess."

The adulterers didn't share his amusement. "You marked the Firebrand," the white woman continued, as if she couldn't help herself. "You hunt slave catchers down like rats, you run through the night, you sack plantations and murder their—" She stopped abruptly.

"You can't be killed," the white man added in horrified wonder, staring dumbly at the portion of Amadi's chest which should have been a gaping hole.

"No," he agreed. "Still, white men keep try."

"The Black Resurrection," the white woman named him again.

He took another step toward them, grunting in satisfaction when the adulterers shrank away from him. "My name Amadi," he clarified as he stretched his fingers. "In Dahemy, I known for other things." The white man looked to be in shock, but the woman was watching Amadi intently. So he continued, amused by the opportunity—normally, he never said more than a few words in these instances.

"My true story," he said, pointing to the tattoos festooning his chest, arms, and neck. "This cat here: he first lion I kill. I only twelve. This woman? She my mother until die in childbirth. Now she with these ones, my ancestors, watching me from Kutome. The monkeys my family's vodun, them and Legba—he trickster. And ..." Amadi stopped as his fingers lighted on the image of a whip, done in black. "Well," he eventually resumed, "some parts of stories not worth telling.

"I want more, though." He drew the knife from his belt, one of the many flint blades Quecxl had knapped when he'd stayed in Omnira. The edge was still sharp, even three years on. "But my spirit armor not allow it. I try to make mark every time I deal with a greedy white leech." He pointed at the adulterers and used the knife to make two deep cuts in his left shoulder. "But record never stay." On cue, the cuts vanished, healing over as the first drops of blood hit the floor. "Well," he repeated, "some parts of stories not worth telling."

Then he gestured for the white woman to leave, waited for her to flee, and finished his business with her consort.

* * *

"They'll kill us." The dark woman wasn't as beautiful as Makena—a little too round and coarse—but she spoke with the same authority, and she clearly had the same type of standing with her fellow ejeme.

Amadi shook his head. Even among people like him, he was still the tallest in the room by several inches. "They won't blame you," he said in Gbe, glad this woman and at least a few of the others knew his native tongue well enough to translate for those who didn't. "I let the plantation owner's mistress go. She recognized me, and she'll never stop saying so. You'll be safe if you stay."

Almost-Makena gave him an unreadable look. "But you think we should go."

"Yes."

"Where?" She threw up her arms, nearly hitting her neighbors on either side—they were in the biggest slave house, but it was still a small room. Impeccably clean, though. They always were. "Where would we go? How would we live? This isn't Dahemy, or Allada, or Whydan—none of us have been here longer than a season. We don't even know where to find water. If the white men don't kill us, this land will."

Amadi shrugged. "Then stay and live as an ejeme."

"Or run and die free? That's the choice your great heroism has given us?" Almost-Makena's eyes spat fire. Her mouth was a spark short of doing the same.

"Did you have a choice before?" Amadi asked quietly as he turned to go.

"This isn't a choice!"

"It is, but only for a little longer." He looked back from the doorframe, weary down to his marrow. "If you go, run west—they'll expect you to go east, toward the sea. A half day from here, there's a red man's trail called the Warrior's Path. It goes north and south through the forest—the Hodensee use it to raid in the spring, but no one will be on it right now. Pick a direction, and don't stop for a week."

"Wait." Almost-Makena still seemed angry, but her voice had a hint of something else in it now. Hope? Fear? Either would work. "Will you at least show us the way?"

He shook his head again. "No. You're better off without me."

This time, when he turned to limp away, no one stopped him.

* * *

Amadi heard the first sounds of alarm—shouting men and barking dogs—as he entered the woods bordering the plantation. But the moon and stars were obscured by a thicket of clouds. The pursued would have the advantage tonight.

Would he be the only runner?

It was hard to say. Almost-Makena looked strong enough to convince her fellow ejeme to seize the opportunity he'd created—if she believed it to be an opportunity. They stood a fair chance of survival if she did. He was headed east; he'd draw the white men's dogs. And it didn't matter if the bastards caught up to him. They wouldn't take him, not unless they were smart enough to pin him down. Few were. Most white men just fired their impotent muskets until it was too late.

But if even a few of the slave-hunters went west instead ... Well, he'd played his part. There was nothing left to do but run. One stride at a time, good leg in front of the crooked one. Which the spirit armor continued to ignore; gunshots, self-inflicted wounds, the wear and tear of long-distance running—the thick energy took care of it all. Everything but his twisted leg.

It sustained his flight that night, though: his ankle held, through to dawn and then into afternoon of the next day. He hadn't heard signs of pursuit since the sun rose, but he kept running, enjoying the exertion. He didn't stop once, not for the black bear that woofed at him as he brazenly crossed its path, or the delectable-looking mushrooms growing on a rotting log, or even the dead red village which made him think of Chogan and the first time the red man had shown him the Warrior's Path.

But then Amadi saw the woman in the tree.

Her face was as delicate as it was warm, with a smile that lit up the surrounding air. Her hair was drawn back to reveal two gracefully pointed ears, and she wore a fascinating mix of red and white women's clothing. She also carried a musket.

Such contrasts.

Such beauty.

Such craftsmanship.

Amadi had never seen anything like it: an entrancing image ringed by cavernous pits, as if the earth itself had ached with awe and split asunder. It felt like the woman was about to step out of the tree. She looked _alive_ , more so than anything else in the little clearing—including himself. For a wild moment, he wondered if the carving was in fact a real woman turned to wood. The piece was that evocative; he was on his knees before he realized he'd stopped running.

And inevitably, his thoughts turned to Makena.

"I wish I could do something like this for her, Oseye," he breathed into the wind. "She deserves it." He reached for the woman in the tree, but his fingertips skirted around the edges of the carving like smoke over water—he couldn't bring himself to touch the masterwork. He was too afraid of defiling it.

But it felt good to be nearby.

He spent the rest of the day close to the tree, studying the woman from every angle. His thoughts ranged across the ocean and back, but they always returned to _her_.

Was the real woman who'd inspired the carving this beautiful? Or had the artist taken liberties to enhance the effect?

How long had the carving been here? It looked recent—very recent—but work of this caliber tended to have an ageless quality.

Did the artist live in the area? Maybe in the dead red village? Or had he just been passing through?

Had he also crafted the turkey figurine Amadi had spied on the side of a trail several weeks back? The carvings were similar in style and skill.

Questions, questions, questions—and no answers. But Amadi didn't need them. Uncertainty didn't matter here. He felt at peace in _her_ presence. At peace and safe. He slept like a babe that night, curled next to the tree in one of the shallower pits.

The next morning, he left the tree only to do something about his rumbling gut. After he'd found enough berries to comprise a meal, he brought his pickings back to the clearing and ate his breakfast in front of the carving.

The following two days followed this pattern without exception: long periods of contemplation in front of _her_ ; brief absences for bodily necessities. It was a cleansing time.

But on the fourth day, he felt the need to do something different. He wasn't ready to move on, but his curiosity had grown, and the dead red village was only a short distance away. If the artist _was_ there ... Amadi wasn't sure what he'd do, but it seemed worthwhile to find out.

Except the village was truly dead.

Completely vacant, and devoid of any signs of recent habitation. If the artist had ever lived here, he certainly didn't now.

But the trip wasn't totally unproductive: as he searched the abandoned—and in some cases, rotting—buildings, Amadi realized there were two styles of architecture in evidence. The long houses, sized to fit multiple families under one roof, had the look of other red villages he'd come across. But there were newer buildings as well. White buildings, filled with white implements.

And there was a sign.

Amadi couldn't read the words—he thought they were in the Anglo script—but there was an image beneath them, a painted picture of a red man's scowling face. Lines of black and white crisscrossed his cheeks, and a swirling tattoo nearly obscured his left eye.

It didn't make sense at first, but then Amadi remembered a story he'd heard: was this the village the boy on the ship—Naysin of the Lepane, now a shaman of legend—had supposedly marched to its death? Because the whites had taken the land from the reds? Had someone left a marker recording his revenge?

The idea made him angrier than he could express. Through violence, trickery, or sheer weight of numbers, the whites always seemed to get their way. Maybe they'd "bought" this land from its original owners, but it was far more likely to have been paid for in blood.

And if the Red Wraith had repaid the whites in kind—well, he had cause.

Despite her beauty, the woman in the tree did nothing to calm Amadi's rage when he returned to her. Seeing her magnificence again made her creator's fate feel even more unjust. And now Amadi knew the artist had been red: he could feel it in his bones.

But that was beside the point.

Tearing his eyes away from the woman in the tree, Amadi began trotting south, the most likely direction to find another plantation.

#  Chapter Twenty-Seven

Quecxl: One Year Before Saint's Summit – Worm Moon

As he bent to pick up the wide, flat rock—the perfect shape for a grave marker—Quecxl fought the urge to clutch his stomach. It was only a phantom pain—he'd closed that wound long since, and no one had tried to kill him for a whole three weeks. So he couldn't be gut-shot again.

But for a moment it felt that way.

He still couldn't believe he'd survived the slaughter in Edgeland Forest, when Naysin had misused his abilities so heinously. But ever since then, he'd recognized the transfer of stiff energy for what it was: a minor healing of himself every time he healed someone else. Helping one person, or even twenty, didn't result in much more than a little extra energy—about what he'd get from chewing a coca leaf. If he healed a lot of people, though ... Well, that was why he'd survived being gut-shot.

But that wasn't why he did it.

And he was wasting time. "Why are you letting me dawdle?" Quecxl asked of Xihuitl before turning back toward the village's central field and beginning to trot. "Letting me dwell on past pain when someone else is in agony now. Really, what good are you?"

The bird squawked in annoyance as he flew back to their grim cargo.

But Quecxl couldn't help smiling. The gull was insufferable. Yet without the bird, who would he make fun of? And who would make fun of him?

It didn't bear thinking about. Especially with such dark work ahead.

At least he knew how to do the first part. He'd dealt with more than his share of corpses since leaving Tentocht. This village's lone survivor—an original man, like Quecxl—had indicated he wanted his wife's body buried, not burned. Quecxl had been taking her to the communal cemetery when he caught sight of the rock. Now that he'd collected it, setting it on top of her and carrying them the remaining hundred feet only took a minute.

Digging a deep enough grave proved to be significantly more work. The only shovel he'd been able to find had a loose head—he had to retie it four times over the course of the next hour. And although the ground had thawed, it was still hard. But eventually the hole was dug, and he could lay the woman to rest.

Except it was always more difficult with bodies in such good condition—the woman couldn't have succumbed to the plague more than a day ago. She still looked like she might open her eyes at any moment. But Quecxl knew from bitter experience that waiting for such a miracle was the worst kind of foolishness. Best to put her spirit at ease as quickly as possible.

As gently as he could, he lowered her into her grave. Then he paused again. This was usually the next stopping point, the moment when he felt compelled to say something. Something eloquent. Something meaningful. Something better than what he usually said. But what words were right for someone whose entire village had been struck down by an indiscriminate plague? Probably not a generic funeral prayer to Huitzipochtli—almost certainly _not_ the god this woman would answer to—but nothing else came to mind. So Quecxl held his peace.

The last moment of hesitation came and went quickly this time—he only waited a moment before casting the first shovelful of dirt on her body. Then the process became a simple race to hide her form from view. Within a few minutes, the thing was done, and he set the rock above the space where her head lay.

Correction: the first thing was done. A simple, unambiguous act he was far too practiced at. He didn't have any idea how to handle the second task.

Quecxl shook his head. If he hadn't heard the little thunder of a fire stick earlier that morning, he probably wouldn't have bothered to search the village's smallest house. He'd already found the supplies he needed, and he didn't like lingering in dead communities longer than necessary. But the sound had been unmistakable, and he'd entered the house expecting to find a pale looter performing a random act of destruction.

Instead, Quecxl had found a shrunken original man slumped against the far wall with a fire stick lying next to him. The man hadn't shown any signs of the plague, but blood had been oozing between the fingers he'd clasped to his stomach.

Another gut wound. At least Quecxl knew how to heal them. But when he'd tried to put his hands on the man, the village's last resident had knocked them away with surprising strength.

Quecxl had considered forcibly healing the man, but something in his grief-stricken gray eyes had communicated that he didn't want help—he wanted to die. He'd reinforced this message by pointing at the knife on Quecxl's belt.

"No," he'd answered vehemently, thinking back to the last time he'd tried to execute someone with a knife. "No," he'd said again, shaking his head to make his meaning clear.

The dying man had responded in a language Quecxl didn't understand. When he hadn't replied in kind, the man had closed his eyes and wept.

But Quecxl hadn't given up, and eventually they were able to enact a reasonably informative pantomime: the man's village had indeed been struck by the plague; his children had been among the first to die; his wife—lying on the bed in the far corner—had been one of the last; he'd tried to kill himself with a fire stick he'd traded off a pale man, pulled back at the last second, and been hit in the stomach when the fire stick's stone ricocheted off an iron pan (also traded off the pale man).

Quecxl had offered to heal the dying man again, with no more success. But the man had agreed to let him bury the woman, and he'd jumped at the excuse to go back outside, even though doing so meant performing yet another set of funeral rites.

Which he was done with.

"Come on," he said softly to Xihuitl, "we can't avoid that room forever."

The gull squawked in agreement, but flew in the wrong direction: through an open window and onto a table.

"Bird," Quecxl began in a warning tone before falling silent. A fire stick lay on the table, its barrel gleaming with polish. Quecxl didn't have any use for the weapon, but maybe the dying man did. The stick he'd tried to end his suffering with was out of stones; maybe this one wasn't. After trotting over to his nahualli, Quecxl scooped up the fire stick and carried it gingerly back to the first house.

Where he found the dying man yanking out his intestines through the gruesomely enlarged hole in his stomach.

"Stop!" Quecxl shouted as he struggled not to vomit. "You were supposed to wait!" Before the man could further damage himself, Quecxl slapped the fire stick against the dirt floor and slid it within arm's reach. "At least finish the way you started."

For a moment, the man seemed like he wouldn't relinquish his innards, but eventually he put his guts down and grabbed the fire stick. Before he pointed the weapon at himself, however, he used it to make a digging motion.

Quecxl nodded. "Yes," he answered quietly, feeling compelled to speak even though he knew the dying man couldn't understand. "I buried her. And when you've ... done what you need to do ... I'll bury you next to her."

It was the dying man's turn to nod. His expression of thanks—for his wife and the fire stick—seemed heartfelt. Then he pointed the fire stick at his head and, without the slightest hesitation, pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

No stone, no smoke: nothing. Apparently it was out of stones too.

Crushed, the dying man tossed it aside and wept again.

"Here," Quecxl said—even more softly than before—as he walked over to the man and pressed the knife into his hand. "Die with dignity. Die with an original man's weapon."

The dying man flashed another look of gratitude, adjusted his grip on the knife, and ... froze. His resolve had vanished again—Quecxl could see it on his face. The man was beset by fear now, probably the same terror that had caused him to redirect the first fire stick at the last second.

He needed strength.

Not sure what else to do, Quecxl loosened the strings on his pouch and withdrew the jaguar he'd found on the outskirts of Edgeland. The little carving was so beautifully wrought, and—much to Xihuitl's chagrin—Quecxl often gazed at it for inspiration and comfort. Maybe it would inspire this man too and give him the fortitude he needed to end his ordeal.

Or maybe it would cause his face to light up with recognition.

What?

Suddenly animated, the dying man pointed first at the jaguar and then at the back of the room, where a table rested against the far wall. On the table were more carvings. And stone figures, and all manner of other creations, each crafted in the same transcendent style.

A few quick strides brought Quecxl to the table's edge. He never would have overlooked the collection under ordinary circumstances, but dead and dying bodies tended to demand attention. Now that he'd done as much as he could, he felt free to compare the masterpieces to his own. The jaguar was still his favorite, but most of the other pieces were just as extraordinary in their own right. He was particularly drawn to the woven image of a grieving woman—she looked like a mother mourning the loss of her child. Sad, but beautiful.

And then Quecxl realized fashioning art of this caliber took more than just skill: the creator of these works had a _talent_. A wondrous talent, a talent on par with abilities like healing, generating fire, even felling entire armies. A talent being put to good use.

Unlike his own.

Stricken with guilt, Quecxl spun back toward the dying man and all but flew to his side. Before the man could do anything stupid—like find the courage to stab himself—Quecxl slammed one hand against the man's forehead and the other over his oozing stomach, muttered a lightning-quick prayer to Huitzipochtli, and summoned the stiff energy.

It came quicker than ever, so fast the dying man wasn't able to do anything more than make a feeble attempt to cut Quecxl's lower arm. Then the stiff energy filled the man to the brim, and he sat stupefied while Quecxl manipulated his power as if it were needle and thread. When he was done, his patient's stomach was smooth as fresh snow.

"Where did you get those?" Quecxl demanded as he extracted his knife from the man's limp grasp and jabbed it at the table piled with wonders. "The carvings and the figures—who gave them to you?"

Stupefied, the man ran his fingers along his mended flesh.

"Did you make them?"

The man looked up with wide eyes.

Quecxl mimed building something, then pointed at the man. "Did—you—make—them?"

He blinked, shook his head, and pretended to pick things off the ground.

"You found them?"

Nodding, he moved his hands back and forth as if exchanging something.

"And traded for them?"

He nodded again.

Quecxl made a searching motion. "Do you know where they came from?"

The man nodded a third time and finally spoke a word Quecxl understood.

But not one he believed.

"Who?" Quecxl asked, wanting to be sure he'd heard correctly.

The other man repeated the same name, the name Quecxl had cursed occasionally since Cawgana and daily since Edgeland.

"Karakwa," the man said reverently. "Karakwa."

#  Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chase: One Moon Before Saint's Summit – Thunder Moon

Chase stretched the fingers of his right hand back until his palm was the closest part of his body to the kindling. He imagined every ounce of his concentration surging down his arm, through his wrist, and into his hand. Every iota of focus streaming toward his palm, building to a storm of energy that would ...

Not erupt.

Not produce a flame.

Not ignite so much as a twig.

He swore—again; his voice was hoarse from all the oaths he'd yelled today—and finally gave in. Ripping a blunderbuss pistol from his belt, he aimed it at the kindling and pulled the trigger. A cone of fire burst from the gun's wyrm-head muzzle, incinerating the wood he'd gathered to cook breakfast.

Swearing again, Chase hurled the pistol into the nearby forest. Two birds burst out of the foliage as the weapon clattered off a tree and disappeared in the underbrush.

It didn't used to be like this.

He didn't use to need a "dragon" to light a damn campfire. Once upon a time, he could call forth his holy fire with nothing but a thought. But now ... Unless he held a pistol, or a musket, or a full blunderbuss—anything with a trigger—he was as incapable as an old lecher.

"I bet you think this is hilarious," Chase muttered at the sky. "Thigh-slapping, foot-stamping good humor. Oh, I understand," he said with a forced smile. "I do. It's not about me. It's about being your _scourge_. Your _instrument of purification_. And I accept that. I embrace it. I love it." He looked directly at the rising sun. "But did you have to make me so damn helpless?"

No answer. Never an answer.

Expecting one was presumptuous, of course. He knew that. After all, he was no angel. This—the mission the Lord had bequeathed to him with that first dragon—was Chase's path to redemption. He wasn't there yet.

And maybe the helplessness, the impotence, was as it should be. Did he really deserve holy fire unless he was wielding it to do the Lord's will? After the things he'd done? Maybe once he'd tipped the scales, outweighed his many wrongs with a few glorious rights. Maybe then.

But until that moment, he'd have to live with his reliance on firearms. Most men in this savage land were no different. Was he really arrogant enough to expect special treatment?

Swearing a third time, Chase rose to his feet and stalked into the woods to search for his pistol.

* * *

Someone muttered in his head.

Chase stepped back from the ladder and looked around the barn, even though he knew he wouldn't find the voice's owner. Because the words—whatever they meant—had originated _inside_ him. Crazy as he knew that was. But there was no other way to describe the sensation: it was like his thoughts were whispering to each other.

And when your skull starts its own conversations, what did you do? He'd been about to climb to Wicke Parson's loft—today he'd earn his board by tossing down the farmer's hay bales—but the murmurs in Chase's mind had eroded his coordination, and his burn scars suddenly itched as if they'd been overrun with ants, particularly the ruined flesh on his left side: it crawled and writhed at least twice as much as the palm print on his forehead.

More unintelligible words. They sounded like a garble of Anglo, Espan, Franc, and heathen, still voiced internally. But Chase kept looking around him, desperately hoping to _see_ someone playing a trick on him. A prank they'd regret for the remainder of their very short life ...

No one but the cow was paying attention to him. Once—back in the Old World—he'd seen a jester who could throw his voice. Wicke and his boy, Stukely, didn't seem remotely capable of such a feat, however. Honest folk, but unskilled at anything that didn't involve dirt and sweat. That much had been plain when Chase volunteered for a day at the local school and spent more than an hour teaching Stukely to write his name.

No, it wasn't anyone in the barn. Chase raised his gaze to the ceiling, wishing his eyes could bore through its cobwebbed rafters and view the clouds above. "Is this another game?" he muttered. Surely this was just another incomprehensible divine joke.

The image that invaded Chase's vision absolved God immediately: a red devil was responsible. _The_ red devil. Standing on a hill, eyes closed, arms extended, arteries shining white, veins glowing black.

It was him. Even before Chase spied the telltale tattoo over the heathen's left eye, he knew it was him.

The Red Wraith.

Taunting him more than a year after their confrontation.

The farmer and his boy had no idea what Chase was seeing—they were busy clearing a landing space for the hay bales. This message was for him and him alone ... But then why was the Red Wraith still speaking in tongues? Even when the shaman opened his eyes and gestured to make a point, his meaning remained indecipherable. He'd spoken Anglo when they'd fought in Fort Kaska. Why didn't he speak plainly now?

As if in answer, another apparition commandeered Chase's eyes: an image of himself. Climbing the same hill, his favorite dragon—the first wyrm-head pistol bequeathed to him by the Lord, and the one he'd tossed into the woods that very morning—clutched so tightly his knuckles looked whiter than pimples on the verge of bursting. The Red Wraith wasn't visible anymore, but Chase knew the heathen was still at the top of the hill, waiting for him to reach the summit and renew their struggle.

Then the images and words vanished, and he had full control of his senses again. But not before the last piece of the vision—the sense that the Red Wraith was _expecting_ him—embedded itself in Chase's consciousness. It felt like a tick had burrowed into his brain.

"Did you want to go up?"

It took a moment for him to realize Wicke was asking about the ladder. "No," Chase eventually responded, still thinking about the hill. "No, I don't."

* * *

But the tick wouldn't give him a moment's peace. It kept gnawing at the back of his mind, nibbling at his concentration a little more intensely each day. The only relief came when he moved south: he could still feel the tick, but it stopped chewing as long as he didn't change course.

The tick was herding him.

Chase was sure of it by the second day. The Red Wraith wanted him to come to the hill, and the tick was making sure he kept moving in the right direction. If he strayed from the path, the tick fed with ever-increasing appetite. But if he kept heading south like a lamb to the slaughter, the tick left him alone.

So he went north as often as he could stand. It was relatively easy at first, but after three days he had to bite down on a piece of bark to bear the pain. On the fifth day, the tick gouged him so voraciously that he had to move east or west with every other step. Eventually, even that became too much, and on the afternoon of the seventh day, Chase had to stop advancing altogether.

Fortunately, that morning he'd passed the small town of Trenton. Backtracking to its outskirts meant heading south, which felt like giving in. But appeasing the tick for a few hours also felt immensely _good_ —he'd almost forgotten what it was like to not have pain penetrating every thought.

When he reached Trenton, though, Chase swore a solemn oath he wouldn't move another inch southwards. Not until the tick shriveled up and died.

Or he did himself.

* * *

"Go on, then. Pull the trigger." Chase gripped the barrel of the blunderbuss with both hands and pressed its wyrm-head muzzle to his sweaty forehead. "I absolve you of responsibility."

The boy looked out at the small crowd, no doubt for reassurance.

A grizzled smith—the boy's father?—gave it. "He's bluffing, Danny. He doesn't want to die."

Chase smiled in agreement. "Go on, Danny," he echoed. "Pull the trigger."

Danny was still wide-eyed, but after a second, he nodded and did as he'd been asked.

Click.

That's all there was: the sound of the flint hammer striking the primer's frizzen. No ignition of powder. No discharge. Nothing but the harmless noises of a dryfire.

"You see," the smith called out in a voice that betrayed a hint of relief. "Bluffing."

"But isn't that exactly what I promised would happen?" Chase patted Danny on the head and motioned for him to return to the crowd. "An empty gun. Empty _dragons_ ," he emphasized, pointing to the other blunderbusses he carried on his back and belt. "Every one of them unloaded. No more dangerous than a walking stick."

Chase nodded to acknowledge the chuckles drawn by this last remark. Despite his renewing pain, he was in good form today, his second in the little town of Trenton. He'd begun as he always did, by sounding out the locals. They hadn't heard of him yet, but that was probably just as well: he wasn't in the mood to live up to the "Firebrand's" reputation. Still, he wanted to rally these farmers and craftsmen to his cause, especially if he was going to be stuck here awhile. The tick had resumed digging shortly after he'd stopped heading south, but as long as he didn't move north more than a few steps at a time, he thought he could last another week. Maybe less, but even a couple days might be enough—he'd gotten the sense the Red Wraith wanted him to appear at a specific moment. And if he could resist until the moment passed, he might not have to climb that damn hill after all.

"Harmless dragons," Chase resumed, "to you, or me, or any other decent person. As you would expect. But to a devil ..." He leaned forward for emphasis. "Well, to a devil these dragons of mine are positively deadly." Raising the blunderbuss, he pulled its trigger and sent a gout of flame spewing from its wyrm-head muzzle.

The crowd gasped, then bombarded Chase with enthusiastic applause. Excellent. He had them now. Every one of them, from the looks of it. So he bypassed the rest of his usual preamble and cut to the big finish—his call to action. "The good Lord gave me a quest when he granted me these dragons and their holy fire: to take this land for the Anglos once and for all. Will you join me, my brothers?"

A few of the men cheered, but Chase didn't deal in partial inspirations.

"Will you help me hunt down the evil infesting your borders?"

More cheers.

"Will you help me claim the frontier that, by God's grace, belongs to the Anglo man and the Anglo man alone?"

A unanimous roar. Now he'd fired everyone's blood.

"Then gather your own dragons, and—"

A surge of pain cut him short: it felt like the tick's fangs had grown as long as Chase was tall and knifed through his body. No one said a word as he fell to the ground, voice silenced, dragon extinguished, will broken.

* * *

At his request, the villagers sent him south on the first wagon out of town. The pain lessened immediately, but it was still several hours before Chase could sit up. In the interim, he lay listlessly between sacks of wool, damning the Red Wraith with every thought.

When Chase was finally mobile again, he asked the driver to stop for a moment so he could crawl over the wool and sit in front like a proper passenger. Then he went through the motions of proselytizing, but his heart wasn't in it, and he trailed off when the driver reacted indifferently. Parting ways at the next village—where the driver would be turning east—didn't change anything. Resignation weighed down Chase's every thought.

The next two weeks were much the same: steady walking, little eating, desultory conversations, and a southward bearing. Always south, or, as directed by a prick from the tick, occasionally southwest. No preaching. No fire (other than what he needed to cook his irregular meals).

Nothing but what the Red Wraith commanded.

During the last week before Chase reached the hill, however, he started to regain some of his spirit. Maybe he couldn't help coming when the Red Wraith called, but that didn't mean he had to welcome execution. No, he still had his dragons, which meant he still had his fire.

Which meant he still had his fight.

"Is this your final test?" Chase asked the sky one day. "Is this what you were preparing me for? To take on the most powerful heathen of all? The devils' deadliest shaman? Then I accept the challenge gladly," he snarled, picking up his pace. "My dragons are hungry, and they _will_ feed on that murderer's flesh. I swear it. Before you and your angels, I swear it, my Lord. I swear it."

Finally, a month after the Red Wraith implanted the infernal tick, Chase came to the devil's hill.

#  Chapter Twenty-Nine

Isaura: One Moon Before Saint's Summit – Thunder Moon

"Good morning, little one." Isaura smiled as Shoteka stretched and struggled to open his tiny eyes. But the rising sun was too bright: he gave up after a few blinks and cried for milk.

She gave it to him gladly, offering her breast to the little boy who looked too much like his father. Her baby's wispy hair was auburn like hers, but the rest of him ... That was all Rowtag. Same strong nose, full lips, slanted eyebrows, and red skin—the likeness was so pronounced it hurt.

But it was a good hurt, one that made her love her little man all the more.

She hadn't been sure she would. Not at first, when she'd discovered she was pregnant three weeks after the Edgeland Massacre. She'd hated how her morning sickness had reminded her of that slaughter. Part of her had hoped for another miscarriage. And the difficulty of the birth hadn't done anything to dispel her doubts.

After leaving that awful battlefield, she and Manuel had withdrawn to a small hut near the Messippi. A few years ago, it had been the dwelling of a red family she'd dowsed a well for. But when she'd returned a scant eight months later, she'd found that plague had struck down the husband, the wife, and all three of their children, along with the rest of their tribe. Isaura hadn't been surprised—the original people were dying in droves—but she'd still been saddened. No one had claimed the empty houses, however, and when she'd decided to step out of society for a time, the little hut near the mighty river had been the first place to come to mind.

She paid her respects by treating the cozy structure as if it were her own home. It wasn't hard: facets of its construction and decoration kept reminding her of Rowtag. The door's decorative ridge curved at either end like one of his jaunty smiles; the shelves along the cooking wall were constructed in the sturdy fashion she imagined he would have built things; the way the window's wind chime danced in the breeze brightened her soul, just as he had ...

No, it wasn't hard to consider the hut her home. Bittersweet, but not hard.

Which was fortunate, because soon enough her belly had begun to grow. She'd spent the early days of her pregnancy—while she still had most of her energy and mobility—cleaning the hut and laying in stores. On occasion, she'd traveled to a nearby white settlement to buy Old World supplies, or visited the local reds to barter for "original" equipment. But mostly Isaura had kept to herself, especially during the later months when traveling became more trouble than it was worth—the heat was terrible, and by the end of her term, she hadn't been able to walk more than a hundred feet at a stretch.

Then, while she was making stew one morning, the labor pangs had begun. And within a few hours the discomfort of the previous nine months seemed like no more than a prick of the finger. Labor had been agony, something she'd never felt before and never wanted to feel again.

At least the midwives she'd consulted had given her good advice. Their descriptions of the pain didn't do it justice by half, but their tips on how to survive—those had been her salvation:

" _Find a solid stick to bite down on_ ..."

" _Don't just lie in your bed waiting for the thing to pop out. Move around as much as you can_ ..."

" _Use the first few hours to make your preparations—you won't be able to later_ ..."

The midwives had also said a good deal about how "foolish" she was to attempt childbirth alone, but those weren't the words Isaura chose to recall when her water broke. So while the contractions were still relatively far apart, she'd gathered swaddling cloths, sharpened the knife she'd use to cut the birth cord, hobbled Manuel on his favorite pasture, made her bed as comfortable as possible, laid down a receiving cushion, and done everything else she could think of until the urge to _push_ forced her on her back.

She'd kept telling herself how close she was to being done, but it hadn't helped. Each contraction had felt like a lifetime, and not a happy one: no highs—only less painful lows. One of the midwives had said to think of the final pangs as individual waves, growing in size as they raced toward the shore. Every time one of the waves crashed onto the beach, you were supposed to push. She'd tried, but the rhythm kept escaping her.

Isaura stroked Shoteka's head as she remembered how close she'd come to giving up.

But quenching had saved her.

The ability she'd never wanted, the talent that made her at least something of a bruja. The power she was _still_ troubled by, even though she only used it to provide drinking water and dowse enough to make a living.

Yes, she'd resorted to it in her hour of greatest need. And yes, she recognized the irony.

But she'd needed to see what was happening when she tried to push. Another of the midwives had suggested a mirror, but initially Isaura hadn't liked the idea of witnessing any more of the process than she had to. In the throes of labor, though, it had made sense. She'd known so little about what was happening to her—the more she could observe, the better.

So she'd caused the moisture in the air to coalesce into a waterfall just beyond her legs. The reflection had been exactly what she'd needed: her baby's head had started crowning, and the visual provided the focus she needed to sync her pushes with the contractions.

From there, it had only taken a few minutes. Her child had come out healthy and whole, and as he'd sucked at her breast, she'd kept quenching long enough to divert the waterfall and use it to clean them. Then she'd let the water go, unconcerned about the red lake it had formed beneath her bed. All she'd cared about for some time was nursing Shoteka, a name she'd chosen several weeks earlier.

A Kiksha name, to honor his father's heritage.

"You were worth it," Isaura whispered to her baby as he continued feeding, lying in the same position he'd adopted that first morning. "You were worth every second of it."

* * *

She had another flashback in the afternoon, but this remembrance was far less enjoyable. The trigger was a message from a monster she'd prayed never to hear from again.

It began shortly after she laid Shoteka down for his midday nap. While he rested, she'd planned to cook a small rabbit she'd caught the day before. But as she built a fire, a jumble of words invaded her thoughts: someone else's words, in too many tongues to understand. Dropping her kindling, Isaura ran to the hut's window. But there was no one in sight, no laughing intruder she could desiccate for violating her mind.

A few seconds later, a man appeared _in her head_ : the Red Wraith. Standing on a plateau and shining in his unholy black and white glory, just as he had in Fort Kaska's church. He was still talking in what amounted to gibberish, which was fine, because Isaura wouldn't have listened to him anyway.

But then he projected another image. An image of _her_.

"How dare you," she hissed as he forced her representation to climb to him like a supplicant. "I am not your puppet—you _will not_ manipulate me."

The Red Wraith disagreed. As he did away with her image and ended his nonsensical monologue, he left something inside her.

Something she could feel, an unwanted presence in her mind. Something she couldn't get out—it was all she could do not to claw through her eyes and scrape away everything in her skull.

Because he'd marked her. Forcibly implanted her with his seed.

And he was going to die for it.

* * *

Isaura had almost succeeded in calming herself when images from Edgeland flooded back to her—images and sounds and smells: faces of dead men, cries of dying men, the smells of gunpowder, blood, and sap ...

She'd spent the last year and a half trying to wall it all off, but right now she _wanted_ to stay angry. So she allowed herself to wallow, nurturing her rage with memories of the Red Wraith's hellish handiwork; it was said that in the middle of the battle, he'd descended from the sky like an angel ejected from Heaven, showering the battlefield—and maybe Rowtag—with misery and death.

A sharp contrast to the actions of the gut-shot red and, of all things, his pet seagull.

The original man who could heal ... Isaura hadn't thought about him in months. But his example, the way he'd soldiered through his pain, had helped her survive that nightmare. Following his lead, she'd washed the wounded one by one, and when they were clean, bathed what was left of the dead by raising and lowering a gentle river.

Then she'd buried Rowtag, shoveling every spadeful of earth herself—he deserved better than the mass burning the other fallen received. By the time she was finished, he'd been washed again, this time by her tears.

No one had called her a bruja. She'd never been that open with her quenching, before or since. But compared to everything else that had happened in the forest, the power to summon water must have seemed almost ordinary.

Faces of dead men ... Cries of dying men ... The stench of gunpowder, blood, and sap ...

She wasn't able to stop obsessing over that terrible day until Shoteka woke from his nap. He was hungry again. He was always hungry. But he was beautiful, and even now, at her angriest, she wouldn't have changed the past if it resulted in a future without him. He was exactly what she needed: the act of nursing soothed her as much as it did him.

* * *

But the Red Wraith wouldn't let her be.

Whatever he'd left inside her head worked as a goad, an ever-present reminder of violation and massacre. Even worse, after a week it started to _tug_ , as if he'd sunk a hook in her head, left it there, and decided—at his fiendish leisure—to reel her in. The pull grew stronger each day, making it clear the bastardo wanted her to climb his plateau and grovel her way up to him.

At first she thought she'd be able to resist his summons. She'd meant it when she said she wasn't his puppet: no man would ever pull her strings again. Hook in her head be damned. But as the tension increased—inch by inch and day by day—her will started to crumble. And after three weeks, her resistance was gone, ground to nothing along with her pride.

It didn't feel like she needed to go far, but she knew she had to go. So she made arrangements for Shoteka and Manuel. Fochik, a Kiksha friend, agreed to watch them while Isaura was away. She hated entrusting her baby's welfare to someone else, but it was less risky than taking him with her to face the Red Wraith. And when it came to caring for an infant, there was no better choice than Fochik.

She was the Kiksha's equivalent to a midwife, and a five-time mother still nursing her youngest. She was also the only person who'd checked on Isaura after her horrendously hard labor. Isaura hadn't asked her to, or even shared when she thought she was due—Fochik had just shown up the next day with a basket of food and poultices. And she kept coming every few days for the first two months, until Isaura was able to move and sit normally again. Without Fochik's help ...

Well, it didn't bear thinking about.

"No trouble, no trouble," she said when Isaura explained how she meant to further impose on the older woman's generosity. "I teach him be strong Kiksha boy like his father," she continued, positioning Shoteka's arms as if they were pulling back a bowstring.

Isaura nearly cried at this, but she managed to hold in her grief until she'd said goodbye. Once she was out of sight, however, she let the tears rain. Better to get them out now, before her confrontation with the Red Wraith. She couldn't afford to be weak when she met him on his plateau. It didn't matter that he'd shown her a temporary kindness at Fort Kaska. What were a few minutes of protection against the butchery of thousands at Edgeland, a slaughter he must have committed just hours before he met her? The smiling, deceitful fiend ...

No, she had to be strong when she followed his infernal fishing line to its source. She had to do what was needed.

To that end, she spent the better part of an hour searching for sage bells—her name for the flower that had helped her escape St. Augustin. She'd heard other terms for the blue wildflowers—including "weed"—but she liked hers best. Once she'd found a patch of it, she spent a second hour weaving the blossoms into her hair, crafting an intricate pattern of braids and petals, more complex by far than anything she'd risked since leaving that terrible shack.

"I'm coming," she whispered to the Red Wraith as she completed her hair hex and wiped away her tears. "Damn you to every one of the nine Hells, but I'm coming."

#  Chapter Thirty

Amadi: One Moon Before Saint's Summit – Thunder Moon

The men had been castrated, their mouths stuffed with each other's severed genitals.

The women had been violated with blunt instruments, probably muskets.

All of them were naked and hanging from the lowest branch of a towering oak tree.

Amadi stared at the corpses for most of the afternoon. His heart pulsed with rage, but it was the guilt that kept him paralyzed. "Oseye," he mumbled eventually as his eyes focused again on Almost-Makena, one of the few bodies whose face was still recognizable. "Makena—my first Makena—said it was worth it. But how can such endings be worth anything? They didn't deserve this ... They didn't, but I do." Halfheartedly, he drew his black dagger and slit his throat.

As always, the spirit armor responded immediately, channeling thick energy into his severed jugular and repairing the fibers. He barely had time to choke on his own blood.

Shaking his head, Amadi wiped the knife clean and returned it to its sheath. "The vodun aren't done with me yet, Oseye. They must find this amusing. They must _want_ me to dishonor my ancestors in Kutome. Because all I make are mistakes—and everyone pays for them but me." He spat and forced himself to stand.

The sweat that had coated his skin when he first came across the massacre had dried, leaving behind small, residual salt stains that dulled the sheen of his tattoos. Makena had always joked that, in the right light, his pate shone like a torch, but its gleam was probably muted now too. Even the forest itself seemed drab and listless.

Amadi spat again, studying the tree he'd have to climb if he was going to cut down the bodies. The slave catchers must have mutilated them as a warning. Why else would they have hung them over the Warrior's Path? The bodies were fresh, though, which meant the group hadn't been caught right away: they'd survived for several seasons. The thought was comforting enough to get him up the tree. He'd never know why they'd returned to the path, but at least they'd had a taste of freedom.

Amadi stamped on the branch to dislodge the flies. He regretted the action immediately: it set the corpses jiggling like rotting puppets. Cursing, he hacked at the nooses until all the runaways had dropped to the ground with a sickening thud. His landing was awkward too—the ankle of his crooked leg twisted badly on impact—but the spirit armor saw that he didn't suffer any lasting ill effects.

As always.

"I owe them this much, Oseye," he said as he began digging with his hands in the middle of the trail. "This much and far, far more. But this much I can do."

Amadi dug through the night, without stopping for food or water. He only paused when he went into the trees to relieve himself—soiling the pit would have made a mockery of his intentions. His hands were filthy, and they ached from being used as spades, but the spirit armor buffered the worst of it.

Finally, when the sun began to rise on his second day amidst the flies, he felt ready. His head barely poked out of the hole when he stood straight, and there was a space for each body. The surrounding ring of dirt looked like a miniature version of his homeland's dusty mountains. He'd moved a tremendous amount of earth.

And yet, it amounted to so little.

"But this much I can do," he repeated as he lowered the runaways into their final resting places. He arranged them in the Foim fashion, one hand over the eyes and the other over the mouth. Several of the former ejeme looked like they hailed from other tribes—the oldest woman was surely a Hausan—but Amadi only knew the burial customs of his own people. "This much I can do," he said again, almost chanting the words as he climbed out of the grave and scooped a handful of earth from the nearest mound. A priest would have said something profound, but Amadi's mind was blank. After struggling to think of something suitable, he gave up and tossed the dirt onto Almost-Makena.

And as the little clods bounced off her body, a shimmering image obscured Amadi's sight while a cacophony of voices assailed his ears.

* * *

It was the boy on the ship.

Amadi's gaze was on the grave he'd finished filling, but his eyes still saw a hill topped by a red man glowing black and white with lines of power. A red _man_. On the ship—the slave ship that had carried Amadi most of the way across the ocean—it had been a red _boy_ : Naysin of the Lepane, small and starved. But the lines of power were the same, flickering across the man's skin as they had over the boy's those years ago.

The message had come from the boy on the ship. A boy who'd grown into a man; a man who'd become the Red Wraith. Amadi wasn't anywhere near as formidable, but they were cast in similar roles now, colored scourges of the white man—brothers in arms of a sort.

He would have been more eager to meet if the vision hadn't concluded by planting a whip in his head.

The lash flayed his thoughts with increasing frequency—clearly, Naysin was trying to summon him. "He should have just asked, Oseye. No man has the right to whip me, shaman or not."

Maybe Naysin _had_ asked Amadi to come, though. The message had been too garbled to understand, but what was it if not an invitation? And the whip could be borne. So could the many miles between here and the appointed location—he sensed he had a great distance to travel. With a shrug, Amadi gave in and heeded the lash, settling into a loping pace that would carry him to the hill in the vision soon enough.

Where he would ask the boy on the ship how much _he_ regretted _his_ abilities.

#  Chapter Thirty-One

Quecxl: Morning of Saint's Summit – Red Moon

Was this all that was left of Aztlan?

A hundred years ago, the city of his ancestors would have been an impressive sight: an enormous plaza, a bustling marketplace, a million people.

Now it was dust.

Quecxl sat down heavily enough to raise a cloud of it. Xihuitl landed next to him and emitted an unimpressed squawk.

"I know," Quecxl agreed with the gull. "It's not much to look at." That wasn't entirely true. What remained of the pyramid—an earthen construct whose base was bigger than any he'd seen—was still an immense feat of engineering. He preferred the stone versions in Tentocht, but Aztlan's central structure retained a certain mightiness, despite decades of neglect.

Yet he'd been hoping for more than ruins.

For eight years he'd roamed the northern wilds in search of his ancestral homeland. Eight years of detours and misadventures and death. He'd been expecting to find a diminished city—otherwise someone would have heard of it—but this ... This was just empty space.

This was nothing.

Xihuitl squawked at Quecxl disapprovingly when he observed as much out loud.

"You're right," he replied, "I shouldn't have said 'nothing.' There are still lots of pretty birds here. You fancy that one with the red bosom, don't you?" He pointed at a robin sitting on a badly decayed post.

Xihuitl squawked again, sounding no less annoyed.

But where were the fearsome progenitors of the Metica? The indomitable barbarians who'd conquered the South and given rise to the greatest empire the world had ever seen, the only people with the strength to stand up to the pale men? Had his ancestors really just faded away? Fallen victim to the plague?

Or were they still out there somewhere?

Maybe they'd moved, migrated to better land, or ... Maybe this wasn't Aztlan after all? Maybe he'd just assumed wrong when he saw the earthen pyramid's peak impaling the horizon. The image had quickened his step, but that didn't mean anything.

Reluctantly, Quecxl turned his attention back to the matter at hand. He hadn't just happened on the remains of this city, be it Aztlan or some other forgotten metropolis—he'd been summoned. First by a voice, speaking in Huitzipochtli knew how many tongues. Then by an image, a vision of a man shining black and white on the summit of the aging pyramid.

Karakwa.

Quecxl had known who it was even though he'd only seen the failed savior twice, once in a dark plague hut and a second time through the trees amidst the carnage he'd wrought. In the vision, he'd looked older, more worn than the two years since warranted. But more commanding too: when Naysin ended his communication by showing Quecxl an image of himself climbing the pyramid, he'd realized he was expected to do just that.

Why was left unexplained. But Quecxl hoped—despite the avalanche of doubts threatening to bury him at every step—that Naysin had finally decided to harness his power and use it to do ... good, as naïve as that sounded. And if he really was done with senseless butchery, then Quecxl was willing to at least hear him out. No one else had that much power; no one else had the potential to affect so much change.

But what could such a man possibly want with a failed Otumban knapper?

Nothing immediately. That seemed obvious—Naysin's merciless guide had stopped pricking Quecxl's mind; the master shaman didn't seem ready for his supplicant to climb the pyramid yet. Very well. He wasn't in any hurry, and resting before the coming encounter would probably be wise.

Except he couldn't sit still—his legs were too anxious. So he sprang back to a stand and started walking again.

Maybe he'd found Aztlan, and maybe he hadn't. Either way, he owed it to himself to look around before coming to conclusions.

* * *

A bit of wandering didn't reveal anything more about the pyramid's origins, but Quecxl did find a pale man.

The invader's skin was even whiter than most of his kind's—or maybe it just looked that way because the burn scars on his face and neck were so dark. He was frowning even before he realized he was no longer the only person prowling the rotting buildings and small mounds that flanked the pyramid.

What was he doing here? Had Naysin summoned him as well?

Whatever his story, the pale man had certainly come prepared to fight. Quecxl counted at least five fire sticks strapped to various parts of the man's body, and he was holding another. Like the rest, its tip was shaped to look like a serpent's head; unlike the rest, the beast's maw was pointed at Quecxl, its forked tongue extended an inch further than the metallic teeth.

Nice touch.

Fortunately, pale ones were terrible shots at distance with their strange weapons, and Quecxl was a deadeye with his sling. He reached for it casually and fit a stone in the hide pocket as the pale man began to close the distance—about the length of a chinampa growing field—between them. He looked equally calm ... until Xihuitl landed on Quecxl's shoulder.

Then the pale man shouted something in a barbaric tongue and charged.

"I'm not here for you," Quecxl responded, whirling his sling to the necessary speed. He knew his words would be just as unintelligible as the pale man's, but they still needed to be said. "I don't want to cast this, but if you don't turn around—"

The white man leveled his fire stick as its muzzle belched flames: not the usual flash that signaled the ejection of a bullet, but a _crimson_ _ribbon_ that rushed toward Quecxl like a god's burning arrow.

He stepped back instinctively, robbing his throw of some of its momentum as the stone disappeared into the inferno. There wasn't time to dodge. The pale man's fire was coming too fast and—

Gone. It was gone, and the pale man was clutching his wrist where Quecxl's stone had preserved enough momentum to shatter bone. The serpent weapon lay next to its owner, smoking but silent.

Now it was Quecxl's turn to charge. He was on the pale man before the invader could react, knocking him down and pressing a foot against the invader's throat and an obsidian dagger against his chest, just below the sternum.

But before Quecxl could finish either motion, Naysin's guide stirred in his head and began goading him back toward the pyramid.

And the pale one grimaced, as if reacting to the same pain.

Reluctantly, Quecxl withdrew his knife and stepped away. But it wasn't enough for Xihuitl, who squawked at him until he yelled, "All right!" and dropped the blade. Then he spat in the pale man's face, struck his fractured wrist to simulate the stone's impact, and flooded the injury with stiff, healing energy.

The pale man's cry of protest died away when his bone and sinew began pulling back together. Within a few breaths, his chalky hand was good as new, and his eyes were filled with confused wonder.

"Go," Quecxl said irritably, gesturing away from the pyramid and ignoring the tiny burst of wellbeing that had reflected back on him. "Go," he said again when the pale man didn't move immediately. To prompt the stupid invader, Quecxl picked up the fire stick and threw it as far as he could to the east. "Go NOW. I have somewhere to be."

With a nod—of thanks?—the pale man scrambled up and hurried after his weapon.

"Why do men with such power wield it so badly?" Quecxl asked Xihuitl as they watched the pale man run into the distance.

The gull didn't have an answer.

As the pale man faded from view, Quecxl's right hand wandered into his belt pouch and removed the exquisitely carved jaguar figurine, the work of a gifted, powerful artist.

Who might or might not be Karakwa.

Was Naysin scattering beauty as he wandered, balancing his acts of destruction with offerings of creation? Since healing that collector last winter, Quecxl had heard of other such pieces: a boulder sculpted into a bear, a hill terraced into a coiled snake, a tree shaped into a woman's face. _Someone_ was leaving amazing things in their wake without claiming them. It was hard to imagine that person being the same man who'd turned away from Cawgana and butchered hundreds at Edgeland.

But maybe it was.

Quecxl grimaced, then caressed his jaguar to remind himself that, while flesh was a very different medium, he could perform similar works of artistry. And what he did saved lives.

"Can you say the same, Karakwa?" he mused out loud. "I hope that's why you summoned me."

Maybe it was: at that instant, the guide stirred again. And after securing his dagger and sling, Quecxl answered the call, breaking into song to dispel his misgivings.

#  Chapter Thirty-Two

Chase: Morning of Saint's Summit – Red Moon

Chase stopped running when he found his dragon lying between two especially dilapidated heathen buildings, but he didn't pick it up, even though his wrist felt good as new.

No ... _because_ his wrist felt good as new.

He'd been lying to himself for years, arguing that everything happened for a reason, that God _wanted_ him to have "holy" fire. But his first moment of magick—the initial manifestation of his warlockness—had been far from sacred, an act more in keeping with Satana or his proxy on Earth: the Red Wraith.

Maybe they had more to discuss than Chase thought. He brushed a tear from his cheek while several more evaded his fingers and trickled down his lower burn scars' hideous grooves.

And what other fiends would be waiting on the summit when Chase succumbed to the tick's renewed call? Would Amadi—the "Black Resurrection"—be there? What about the Espan witch who'd conjured a column of water in Fort Kaska's church? Or the she-devil who'd accompanied her?

But the healer who'd spared his life and mended his wrist ...

That man was proof that magick didn't make people evil; they did that themselves.

And Chase had done an excellent job of it.

Dry-eyed now, he unstrapped the rest of his dragons and arranged them with the first so that their barrels formed a gleaming cross speckled by wyrm heads. Then he bowed his head and began walking toward the earthen pyramid.

* * *

A minute later, Chase fought through the tick's punishment and returned to his arsenal. After reclaiming his favorites, including his original dragon—the battered pistol that had once seemed so prophetic—he kicked the rest into disarray, turned, and went to face the Red Wraith and whoever else.

Along with the judgment that awaited them all.

#  Afterword

Thanks for reading _The Ascenders_. As I said at the outset, this story isn't complete in itself. If you want to see what happens to Chase, Quecxl, Isaura, and Amadi when they climb the earthen pyramid—and meet Naysin and Tay on the summit—check out The Red Wraith.

Or, to get a free short story and updates about new releases, subscribe to my newsletter. I promise not to do anything nefarious with your email address.

#  About the Author

Nick Wisseman lives in the woods of Michigan with his wife and daughter, ten dogs, sixty cats, and forty horses. (The true number of pets is an order of magnitude smaller, but most days it feels like more.) He's not quite sure why he loves writing twisted fiction, but there's no stopping the weirdness once he's in front of a computer. You can find the complete list of oddities on his website: www.nickwisseman.com.
