The First Binding, page 100
I entered and spotted Krisham resting atop his desk. His head hung off the side, poorly supported, and one of his legs did the same. He’d wake with powerful soreness and aches through his neck and lower back. A piece of me wanted to leave him like that, still burned after our last encounter. I chose to be the better person.
Sort of.
I crept over to him, kneeling until my lips were just by his ears. He should have felt the warmth of my breath across his skin, but he didn’t. I cleared my throat then screamed. “Oi, dakha! Bandits! Quick, wake and stand ready!”
Krisham scrambled, falling from the table to a hard landing. A sharp yowl left his lips and he whipped around to look for his wooden sword. He came to his senses seconds later and fixed on me. “Ari, what are you standing there for? Didn’t you hear—bandits … wait, why are you here?” He frowned, his eyes growing distant as he fell into thought. “Wait, were you the one who woke me?”
I nodded and grinned.
He showed no signs of getting the prank. “But where are the bandits? I was about to go looking for Sheru.”
I swallowed a sigh and shook my head instead. “I guess you scared them off.” My voice held little amusement as his denseness deflated any pleasure I’d gotten from it. “I’m here to see Immi. Is that okay?”
He nodded. “I’ll take you.” The excitement had left him as well, and he’d returned to speaking in those odd distant tones. “She’s been on rather good behavior of late, you know?”
I followed after him as we stepped onto the stairs. “Really?”
“Oh yes. Not a day of scratching her fingers into stumps. Not sure what’s gotten into her. I sent for Rishi Ibrahm to tell him about it. He’s most pleased. He went to see her too. Don’t know what they talked about, but he came out looking as mad as he did happy.”
Huh. I hadn’t known about that visit and a part of me wondered if Immi had reneged on our deal to keep Shola’s visit a secret. I clenched tighter to my sack’s strap, wishing I could hold the kitten instead.
We made our way to Immi’s door and Krisham unlocked it, bidding me a good visit before he left. “Remember, knock so I can let you out.”
I nodded. “Just make sure it’s you who opens and not Sheru. No offense, but I’m not a big fan of the fellow.”
Krisham shrugged off my opinion. “He’s not to everyone’s tastes. Still, he’s useful to have around. You should see what he gets up to when he wants to walk atop the Crow’s Nest. Tricky binding that. But he has no problem bringing himself right up the walls to the roof.”
I blinked several times, not knowing if Krisham spoke literally. A binding that lets you walk up walls? I hadn’t seen a single one which demonstrated that possibility. Then again, what I knew of the bindings couldn’t fill a thimble yet. And there were moments when I began to ponder Rishi Ibrahm’s warnings, thinking maybe he wasn’t so wrong after all. Maybe I should let them go, especially the more I spoke to him and Krisham.
The door slowly fell open and Immi sat inside, waiting for me. She beamed after catching my face and waved. “Ari!”
I took that as my cue to step inside and shut the door behind me, letting my doubts fade. “Hello, Immi.” I matched her grin and warmth. “Krisham’s been telling me that you’ve been very good and not hurting your fingers. Is that true?”
She nodded. “I have. Besides, you promised a special visit. Is that why you’re here?”
“It is.”
At that, she scrambled toward me, coming to sit in the center of the room, still in her favorite cross-legged position. She rocked from side to side in anticipation as I set my bag down between us.
“Be very still and quiet for a moment, ji-ah? He can be shy. He’s had it rough by my take of things.” I uncinched the top and coaxed the lump in my bag I knew to be Shola.
A discontented mrowl filtered through the sack.
Immi stiffened, eyes wide, before leaning forward. Her mouth twitched and I saw the makings of a smile on it. The light I’d seen so often in her eyes that reminded me of Rishi Ibrahm had now left, replaced by a brighter, clearer sort. The kind that came from children, far younger than her, who were experiencing their first sense of wonder and awe.
Shola crept out of the sack, looking back at me with a squint that told me he was thoroughly disappointed for being woken from what was apparently the most important rest he’d ever taken.
I gave him a look back that conveyed my sincerest apologies, and maybe held a light mocking note in it as well.
He sniffed the air, above my sarcastic reply, then took to observing his new surroundings. Shola didn’t seem too appreciative of them. However, he instantly took to Immi, to her great delight.
She squealed but kept from reaching out for him as I’d advised.
His nose twitched as he smelled her once. Then again. A third time decided the matter for him and he crept closer, still slow and cautious. Satisfied she wasn’t a threat or something to ignore, he rubbed his head along her shin.
Immi looked at me in quiet questioning.
I motioned for her to go ahead.
Her smile widened further, and she reached out to stroke the top of Shola’s head down to the middle of his back. He shifted under the touch, but gave her a pleased and throaty purr that only encouraged her more.
“What do you think, Immi? Is this worth it?” I already knew the answer before I asked.
Shola finally helped himself into her lap where she picked him up and cradled him. The look of silent adoration on her face was more than enough to know I’d been right.
I let her enjoy the quiet time with the kitten, using it myself to let my thoughts wander from the loss I’d suffered at Nitham’s doing, not to mention the pain that still coursed over my hands. One of them shook for a moment before I got it back under control.
The motion didn’t go unnoticed by Immi, who’d snapped out of her reverie with Shola. “Why are your hands bandaged, Ari?”
I told her what had happened.
“That bastard!” Her tone could have stripped my skin better than my own strings.
I nearly choked hearing that. Immi had never used profanity, and certainly not with that kind of hatred. Before I could ask why, she went into it.
“Nitham’s always been a horrid person. Absolutely the worst.” Immi rarely talked about herself unless discussing what she knew of the bindings, and even then, she never mentioned how exactly she learned what she had. She always danced around it.
I knew asking what I wanted would get me a wall instead of an answer, but I had to try. “Immi … did Nitham do something to you?”
She fell silent and returned to petting my cat.
After a few more moments of awkward silence, I broke it to apologize. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“Yes you did.”
My stomach sank. “Yes, I did. I’m sorry.”
She took in a short sharp breath through her nose. “It’s fine. It’s not something I talk about. We should tend to your hands instead.”
“Hm?” I didn’t even have a chance to speak before she let go of Shola and took my fingers in her grip. Her touch reignited some of the hot bands of pain but I gritted through them.
“Do you trust me?” Her voice had gone soft as a morning breath of wind along the grass—distant, hollow, almost like Krisham’s.
“I do.”
She nodded. “Mhm. Don’t resist. Don’t worry. Just breathe and clear your mind. Think on anything you want that won’t resist me. It helps if you focus on something—just one thing.”
I immediately fell into the candle and the flame, not wanting to question her now even though a great part of me screamed at me to do so.
Then I felt it.
An unseen weight around my hands, almost like the air on cold mountains. Then an awareness of pressure, like warm fire. A tingling, but above my own skin, and I could just feel the edges of it. I felt the weight of the folds of the mind pressing against me, but they were not mine. I felt a silent desire to will, to ask, and to shape. And she had been right. It came as so foreign a thing my natural instinct begged me to resist it.
I sank deeper into the candle and the flame as I realized what she was doing.
“There. All better.” She grinned and proceeded to undo my bandages.
My hands looked like they’d never been cut at all. They felt the same. And a part of me grew colder than when I’d been up in Ampur.
Immi had performed a pair of the major bindings on someone else with as much effort as it took to breathe. In the space of a few moments, she’d healed what would have taken days through modern medicine and diligent attention to my wounds. A wonder.
Or, more accurately, magic. Storybook magic.
The kind I still sought.
“I felt it when you did the bindings, Immi?” My own voice came out as a barely audible breath.
She grinned. “That’s good. It means you’re learning, if you can pick up on that feeling from someone who has as much practice as me. It means you can feel when someone’s folds weigh on you.”
Something finally occurred to me. “Immi … when you scratch your fingers down every day, and then bind them back to how they were, does it make it easier each time?”
“Yes. Though it’s really like breathing by now. I’ve done it so much I don’t have to think anymore. Just bind. Especially with bodily bindings under the second pairing. As within, so without. Start with whent, then go to ern. I understand the body really well, so it’s natural for me to bind it. Some binders use the second two to restore things. Others use them to shape things within their personal space, so as—”
“They’re not creating something from nothing, I know. You can’t do that.”
She nodded. “Mhm. Though, in old stories, there are mentions of early binders binding the elements with the second pairing. But it’s hard. They’re too…”
I searched for the possible words and chimed in. “Complex? Nebulous?”
Immi shook her head then waved her arms like a bird in flight. “Troublesome, lively, stubborn, and willful. It’s like trying to bind someone’s mind or heart. There’s too much going on there. It’s maddening and there are too many things to take into account. Your own mind and will know this. Even if you don’t think you have to worry about all that, you do. Your mind will still try to juggle all those things, and it will fail.
“Water, for example. It’s too fluid. It’s so changeable. It can be anything depending on what you do with it, or the temperature, and what you put it into. How do you shape and bind something shapeless? How do you take that into your mind and make it what you will, all while keeping its nature in mind? It’s…” She didn’t bother finishing.
I got her point, though. “Yeah, that’s understandable.” She may have used water to make her argument, but my mind turned to something else just as unstable and lively. Something I knew all too well from dreams and nightmares and having chased its smoke to find my family’s killers.
Fire.
So that afternoon, Immi and I continued discussing the second pair of bindings. I tackled them every which way I could until Immi decided we’d talked enough and felt it a better use of both our time to indulge Shola.
So we did.
I’d like to say that’s how most of my visits went after that point.
But it would be a lie.
I returned once a day every set until the end of the season. Immi noted the progress in my understanding of the bindings and felt I might soon be ready to finally employ one. I agreed.
We were both terribly wrong.
And the whole Ashram was about to learn that.
NINETY-TWO
THE FLAME ITSELF
Radhvahni. Festival of fire and light. End of the year and celebration of the new one to come. Students filtered through the halls weary of their intensifying classes and relieved for the seasonal break. Not to mention the spectacle tonight.
The whole of the Ashram had been decorated with elaborate constructs fashioned of bright metals and glass. The Artisanry’s top students spared no expense or time in crafting fantastical beasts and creatures out of mythology, all painted in dazzling colors. I’d been told many had been packed with powdered compounds that would ignite to shower the sky in colorful fire.
I’d heard of such things, fireworks, but hadn’t seen anything like them save for black powder.
Shola rode in my backpack as I went for my final visit to Immi for the season. The kitten now weighed noticeably more than before, sometimes requiring me to use both hands to wrangle him into my arms. And yet, he still managed to adopt all the properties of liquid when it suited him, making it impossible to lift his ass when I wanted him out of the way.
The wife of a tinker stood before one of the main courtyard trees that had now gone completely barren. She waved a large fan the red of poppies and directed students to take the long stairs down. The woman promised all manner of trinkets and treasures in her wagon to be sold and dickered over by her husband.
A few jugglers made the climb to the grounds as well, spitting fire and tossing odd mallets of which the heads had been set ablaze. I had no idea how they kept the flames from spreading down the tools or their hands spared. They tossed their hammers so fast that burning rings formed in the air, leaving dizzying bands of orange to entrance passing students. Many tipped them in tin.
Having a better appreciation for performers, I produced one of the nine copper rounds I still owned and tossed it to them.
One of the men caught a mallet, spun, and bowed his head in silent thanks.
I smiled and bowed back before continuing toward the Crow’s Nest.
Krisham greeted me inside, wooden sword in hand. He whirled and leveled at me. “Stop there, thug, thief—ne’er-do-well! You come before Athram, wielder of fire and the sword that bars the way. State your business and I shall judge whether or not you will pass.”
I rolled my eyes, not in the mood for Krisham’s oddities today. “I’m just here to see Immi, Krisham. Relax.” I raised a hand, palm facing out.
It did nothing to calm him. “And what says you deserve to see her, hm? Should you find this Krisham, tell him who sent you off to meet Brahm.”
I blinked at that. He’d never once taken umbrage with my requests. “Are … you all right?” I never got the answer as he jumped toward me, screaming.
“Aiiieeeee!”
I yelped, leaping to one side, lashing out with my binder’s cane. Staff and sword met with the hard clack of heavy wood against stone. The impact rattled through my fingers and settled in my wrist with an ache I knew I’d feel a candlemark later. “Brahm’s blood, Krisham, what’s gotten into you? Who the bloody hell is Athram?”
“I told you! Wielder of fire and the sword that bars the way.” He swung his blade in a horizontal cut meant to strike me across the broad of my chest.
I raised my staff to block, once again absorbing the vibration. There had been moments where Krisham had fallen too deeply into the folds and consequences of his bindings. And when he did, he’d adopted the personality of Sheru, a figure out of legend. I’d managed to coax him out of these spells with humor at times. It felt worth a shot, I just needed to set him up for a painful pun that would draw a smile out of him.
“I don’t see any fire at the moment.” I waited for him to take the bait.
But he never did. He pulled away from me, looking down at his sword. “True. Well spotted. Let me remedy that.”
“What?” I hadn’t expected him to respond like that.
Krisham ran his hand along the length of wood, muttering to himself, but I heard the word. “Burn!”
I flinched, leaping away, but nothing happened.
He looked down at the weapon, frowning. “Oh, right. I need fire. Wait there so I can find some, then I’ll burn you proper.”
“Why would I wait here for that?” I lunged, trying to jab him with the head of my staff.
He batted it aside and moved toward the lone candle burning on his desk. Krisham touched the tip of his blade to it and muttered again. The bulb of fire flickered fast then bled onto the weapon, racing along it until flames engulfed the whole sword.
My eyes widened and I lost all the breath in me.
He whirled around. “Now, ashes to ashes, cinders and embers. Let me give you one last sight to remember!” Krisham yowled, bringing his flaming sword overhead with the clear intent of bringing it down on my skull.
Only, that didn’t happen.
The wood gave way and charred, turning black as coal until it crumbled and the flames extinguished.
Krisham blinked, looking up at the soot and debris slowly falling on his face like tar-colored flurries. “Huh. Maybe I made the binding too strong for the wood to hold it. Hrm.” He turned his attention back to me. “Ari, why didn’t you stop me? Do you know what I’ll have to do now to get another sword?”
“… Buy one?” I didn’t know if he wanted me to answer.
“No. I can’t do that. Rishi Ibrahm yelled at me the last time he saw me with a weapon, even a wooden one. I’ll have to bind and shape one again, but I can’t take the wood from the Crow’s Nest.” His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Someone would know. Also, no one answers a rhetorical question. It’s asinine, Ari.”
“So is attacking me for the hundredth time, Krisham.” I narrowed my eyes. “You are back to being yourself, aren’t you?”
“Of course. Wait, did I go somewhere? I don’t recall.” He put a thumb and forefinger to his chin. “Oh, I suppose I borrowed trouble from someone else. I thought I’d snuck out and had forgotten again.”
My mouth nearly fell open. “You leave the Crow’s Nest … without permission?”
He put a finger up to his lips. “Sometimes. I make sure to come back before Rishi Ibrahm’s check-ins.”
“Where do you go? How do you go?”
He grinned—full of gleaming teeth and a boy’s mischief. “With bindings, and on adventures. There’s a whole wide world out there to see. Sometimes I’m a pirate. Other times I’m saving princesses from wild hungry ghouls.” Krisham shrugged and returned to his desk. “It’s whatever I feel like.”
