He spoke Anawanama to the boy who offered him water, a mute child of nine or ten. Quint’s age. “You must feed the void-smoke to the crossroads gods, or else it slips through a wise-woman corridor and storms the everyday. Feeding crossroads gods is tricky. The spell is almost impossible.” The boy shrugged and thrust a cup at him. Djola pushed it away. “I need fire, not water. Calling fire is the pivotal spell. Xhalan Xhala is a spell of spells.”

The boy stomped off, pouting like Bal. With Djola an honored guest on a pirate ship, Nuar would try to turn Quint into an Anawanama chief. Yari would be a better teacher. Sweet Yari, bold Yari went off to train Sprites, to teach the future. They had no future unless—“I was meant to find Amplify Now!” He shouted as if Yari stood near. Vie wouldn’t teach him Xhalan Xhala, proclaiming, Better for ancient wisdom to be lost than perverted.

Why write down conjure unless you wanted somebody to learn it? Once he mastered Xhalan Xhala, he’d sweep away corruption and bring fools back to the peace fire. Yari and Kyrie would return to the stone-wood table. Djola would offer his family and everyone a good life.

“What words are you chewing?” a pinched voice demanded in Empire vernacular.

Djola almost threw a knife in Captain Pezarrat’s placid brown eye. The rascal appeared in the sick bay door without a sound. Lahesh flame-cloth pants were cinched at his ankles and glowed in the dark. “Why are you here?” Djola also spoke Empire vernacular and slid the blade back up his sleeve. “I thought you—”

“You don’t know me.” Pezarrat’s pockmarked face revealed little. He scratched tight beads of hair on a sun-bronzed scalp and watched Vandana and the old healer stumble around swaying bodies. “My ship, belowdecks or above.”

Djola nodded. “It’s your fleet, Captain.”

Pezarrat held out a bark-paper scroll. A resin seal smelled of cathedral forests. “It appeared on my bunk. How does Kyrie do it? I don’t even know where we’ll go.” Djola tucked the scroll in his Aido bag. “Why don’t letters appear on your bunk? Is Kyrie trying to scare us?” Pezarrat eyed the barrel of books. “You tell that old mountain bitch how good we treat you. Books, meat, tree oil, a boy or girl or veson if you want.”

Djola grunted at pirate largesse. Pezarrat got quieter. “You feed the whores your meat rations. Don’t you worry they’ll die a poison death meant for you?”

Djola fed them antidotes too. “Why waste worry? They’re your spies.”

“I have to pay Vandana and Orca two shares each.”

“A share and a half,” Djola muttered.

“Who wants to sleep near a man who conjures ghosts and bad weather?”

“Haints come of their own accord, and we are the weather.”