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

yeomen aren’t covered like warriors.”
    He laughed and stretched his arms high above his head, for he had somehow divined that I found this ensemble attractive. “And I doubt most Maaram yeomen have battle scars. People see what they want to see, Ana. Most aren’t as perceptive as you. Also, you’re a wetlander. A Maaram couldn’t tell a warrior mark from an ink stain. Don’t worry.”
    “What are you two speaking of?” Tulo said, not bothering to look up from her weaving. I realized that I had spoken to him in Kukichan.
    “Of his brilliant plan to play a Maaram farmer in the city,” I explained in Essela. “But what about us? I don’t speak Maaram very well.”
    Tulo gave a wicked little smile and said, “Then we should only speak Maaram, Parech, so Aoi can practice.”
    I stuck my tongue out at her—a petty pleasure, since she couldn’t see it. “Is that really necessary? Kukicha isn’t at war with anybody.”
    But, oh no, there was Parech grinning like it was the fire festival, and I knew that Tulo had gotten her revenge. She probably thought that I spoke to Parech in Kukichan to share something with him that she couldn’t. She probably thought I was jealous of whatever was weaving between them, leaving me as the onlooker, and she was probably right. Tulo was far prettier than I, and far more compelling in her harsh, proud way. I had thought I was willing to concede the competition, but maybe not entirely.
    “When we get to the city,” Parech said in Maaram, “I think Aoi should work as a road sweeper, don’t you?”
    Tulo laughed. “Yes, and I’ll weave baskets you can sell in market.”
    “I have no intention of sweeping anything,” I said in Essela.
    “Hmm?” Parech said, touching my hand. “What’s that? You love the idea?”
    I ground my teeth. “Want. . .don’t,” I said, forgetting the proper Maaram word order and making Tulo and Parech break into laughter.
    After a moment I joined them. Parech grabbed me and we fell to the ground beside Tulo, giggling and dirtying our clothes again in the soil.
    “We’re almost ready,” Tulo said. “Why don’t we just enjoy ourselves today? We can leave at dawn tomorrow.”
    This seemed like a marvelous plan, even in hideous Maaram, and we all decided, as though we could read each other’s minds, to strip and race to the gully a few minutes upriver and swim.
    Even Tulo jumped in from the ledge, though I saw Parech’s tension in the water below and the careful way he made sure she surfaced. In many ways, she could see far more than either Parech or I. But in everyday, practical ways she was as blind as any ancient soothsayer. I wasn’t only jealous when I saw them together. Or even mostly. The way my heart squeezed, I thought, sometimes, was just love.
    We played in the water until the sun reddened and dipped below the trees. Then Parech went upriver and came back with two plump catfish so quickly I’d have thought he’d used a geas, if I wasn’t already familiar with his skill at fishing. We ate them under the waning rays of the sun, giggling, delighted by the salty-sweet taste, the languor in our muscles, and the drowsy beauty of the late-summer forest.
    “I think,” said Tulo, her head on Parech’s chest and her hand splayed across my bare stomach, “that it is impossible for life to be any better.”
    “Here?” Parech said, gesturing toward the forest like a Maaram lord would at his peasant’s hovel. But the laughter, as always, lurked just beneath his words. “Scavenging in the woods like buzzards?”
    “No!” I said. “We’re like the gods in the legends, the ones that lived before the age of the spirits. This forest is our perpetual garden, filled with all the bounty we need to be happy.”
    I said this in Essela, but they were too punch-drunk to chastise me for it.
    “So what is it?” Tulo said. “Are we buzzards or gods?”
    “Is there much difference, Princess?”
    “There’s all the difference. It’s between