The Burning City (Spirit Binders) by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Author:Alaya Dawn Johnson [Johnson, Alaya Dawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781572846685
Publisher: Agate Publishing
Published: 2010-07-19T22:00:00+00:00

Essel was everything I could have wished and nothing like I imagined. After we passed through the chain of garrisoned atolls scattered along its southwestern waters—forward guard against any of the predations from their Maaram enemies—it was a mere two day’s journey to the main harbor. The harbormaster demanded three hand-lengths of sennit braid just for one night’s docking privileges, which made me choke and which Parech paid without even bargaining. I realized that left to his own devices Parech would bankrupt us before the week was out, so I took it upon myself to inquire among the locals as to the best and cheapest place to moor a small trader’s canoe. The answer, I discovered, promised us a situation better than any of us had dared hope. Like Okika, Essel had its own farmland. Indeed, most of the rich soil south of the great sentinel of its volcano was nearly devoid of anyone but a few farmers. Certainly no one who would charge us for pushing our canoe onto the beach.

The area we finally selected was an idyll: a mile distant from a small farmers’ town but otherwise utterly still, and half wild. Tulo could see here as though there weren’t a city just a few miles inland, and the soil just past the dunes made every vegetable grow to the size of a baby. We used nearly all of Taak’s extortion payment for lumber from the dwindling red acacia forests on the eastern side of the island. In the meantime, we draped oil-infused barkcloth over tall stakes and lived like happy peasants. The land here didn’t seem to belong to anyone, and by Essel law, anyone living in a place for two years without someone else objecting had the right of ownership. When our resources started to run low despite our rationing, Parech had the idea to dig a deep pit and fill it with some of the fresh water used to irrigate a nearby farm.

“And what good to us is a mud pit?” I asked him.

Tulo grinned slyly. “You’re smarter than you let on, aren’t you, Parech? We’ll seed it with fish, Aoi. Fresh fish all year long, and we’ll always have money.”

Money was the curious form of payment the Essel chiefs had devised to help pay for their constant wars of conquest. Instead of something useful like food or mats or pottery or sennit braid, they had devised a series of stone chits that were supposed to represent value. They claimed that anyone could go to the hall in the center of the island and redeem this money for a certain length of sennit braid, but I had my private doubts. They seemed to be issuing the stone chits faster than even an army of fleet-fingered women could weave the tough cordage.

But we used the rest of the cord Taak had given us to buy the fish, and Parech spent days combing the city for advice on methods of raising them. In the meantime, Tulo and

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