Free The Burning City (Spirit Binders) by Alaya Dawn Johnson

bandages. And yet, he had laughed off worse.
    “You don’t know anything, Princess.” His voice sounded as though it were being scraped from his chest. I wanted to punch Tulo myself, but didn’t dare release her arms.
    “I know you Akane do whatever your Kukichan masters tell you.”
    He had his breath back now, and the hard stare he leveled at Tulo was tempered by a certain gentleness in the set of his lips. “Are you so sure of that? No one likes to be another’s slave.”
    “And yet you happily help the Maaram enslave my people.”
    “No. I happily eat .” Then he laughed abruptly and shrugged. “And maybe enjoy being on the other side, too. Who wouldn’t rather be the master?”
    Tulo swatted at me and I reluctantly released her. She probably wouldn’t attack him again. “I would never,” she said, her voice so stiff with pride that even I nearly laughed.
    Parech eased himself carefully upright and raised his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you? And yet you were a princess of your tribe, and you possessed more than anyone else. And I’m sure you had servants who worked harder than you and received barely a fraction of what you wasted in the evenings just by virtue of your birth. And I’m sure there were others even lower than that, who ground your corn and dug your privy holes, and you never once thought of how much your life differed from theirs. Now tell me, Princess, how was their lot any different from yours now? How are they any more conquered under a Maaram slave master than under a Kawadiri princess?”
    To my surprise, Tulo started to weep. She trembled with the force of it and Parech shot me a worried glance. I shook my head. Tulo’s shoulders were still rigid with righteous fury. She wouldn’t appreciate any comfort from me. “It is not the same,” she said, barely able to choke out the words.
    Parech moved toward her slowly and reached out to touch a coil of her wild, springy hair. “No,” he said, with such resigned tenderness that my heart seemed to wring itself like a rag. “Not quite the same. And I’m too much of a hypocrite to rail for justice. My parents did, you know. The Akane might be meek now, but perhaps only because there are so few of us. We rebelled thirty years ago. And the Kukichans slaughtered every adult they could find until the only ones left were squalling babies.”
    Tulo, of course, couldn’t see the look he gave me as he said this. Parech could not be completely serious about his own death, and yet now he could pose as a spirit of implacable fury. Tears stung my own eyes. I hadn’t been alive, I wanted to say. But my parents had been. Had they taken part in this massacre?
    “I didn’t know,” I said, but I could hardly hear my own voice.
    “I’m sorry, Parech,” Tulo said, as his fingers traced her jaw. She tipped her head onto his palm.
    “I’m sorry, too, Princess.”
     
    We prepared to leave the forest. Parech recovered faster every day. We wove baskets from drying breadfruit tree bark to carry our supplies. We washed our worn clothing in the river, though I’d taken to leaving off my shirt in the Kawadiri manner. It was much too hot and wet in the forests at this time of year to behave like I was still on Kukicha. I was not used to eating meat, but Parech caught one of the pygmy boars that rooted around the undergrowth and roasted haunches of its flesh over the fire. The smell revolted me, but he assured me that we might have need of it in our trek. I thought, but kept to myself, that surely the fruit and fish would be plenty. Parech found a tree with green salo fruit, the juice so sour it could stop your tasting for a week, and went off to the river. When he came back, his wavy hair was close-shorn, and bleached the same shade of pale yellow favored by the upper castes in rural Maaram. And, indeed, when he cocked his head just so, and spoke with the right accent, the effect was fairly convincing.
    “But what about your tattoos?” I asked. “Maaram