Storm of Locusts

Chapter 35

The Amangiri Resort and Spa is bigger than it seemed from Aaron’s brochure. And colder. Not in temperature, although the desert has dipped to freezing with the sun down, but in architecture. All the buildings are built along sharp angles, the materials not adobe or even wood, but cold concrete. The place has none of the curves of the earth, nothing that speaks of Dinétah, of wooden hogans or warmth. It is entirely foreign. A place made by bilagáanas, for bilagáanas. That is a truth I feel deep in my bones. Bones that plead for me to turn around, that I don’t belong here, that this place has no love for a child of Dinétah. But I do my best to ignore the cold dread that warns me to turn back. Because if I don’t belong here, Kai doesn’t either.

Aaron’s brochure turns out to be helpful, giving me a general layout of the grounds. The main hotel building of the Amangiri is a sort of shortened L shape, centered around a pool in a courtyard. The main area at the top of the L shape appears to be the entrance to the building, with a series of rooms for guests trailing down the long body of the L. The spa is a separate building on the other side of the pool, and up the hill opposite us, there’s a an individual residence. A mansion, really. If Aaron is right about his brother, that’s where I’ll find Gideon.

I approach from the southwest, keeping low and moving quickly through the darkness. Large walls of windows face outward to the desert, lit from within. I look for cameras, guards, some kind of security, but there’s nothing. Either I am expected and it’s a trap, or the White Locust’s hubris is as vast as the land around me. I’m able to look into the rooms as I pass. All of them seem to be lived in, if currently empty. There are no bars on the wide windows, no chains forcing doors closed. I stop to test a sliding patio door. It opens easily, a puff of a whisper on an oiled rail. I tense, remembering they could be alarmed, half expecting to hear a warning shrieking into the night sky. Nothing. I could just walk in. Anyone could just walk in. Or out. I slide the door closed and keep moving, looking for . . . something. Some sign that one of these rooms is Kai’s and that he’s being held against his will. But they are all variations on the modern concrete cube, clean lines and sand-colored furniture, pre–Big Water stylish but entirely nondescript. I don’t know how I’m going to tell.

And then I do.

The room is the last one in a long row, closer to the main common area than I’d like. But as soon as I see it, I know it’s his. There’s no sign of the man himself, but I know this is where Kai’s been living. The room itself is the same plain box of concrete and pale wood as all the others, only this room feels warm. Living. A pool of rich golden light falls across an oversize desk, and smaller puddles cascade from tall, thin silver lamps placed around the room, the warmth of light a tonic to the stark concrete. They illuminate books. So many books. Books covering every surface, twice as many as Grace’s library. There are books lining floating wooden shelves, books sitting in haphazard piles on the floor, books spread lavishly across the bed, allowing only the edge of a gray blanket to show through at the far corner. And these books look important, totally the opposite of Grace’s well-loved paperbacks. These books are thick, hardbound, stacked three or four deep on the desk, higher on the floor. And besides the books, there’s maps. Hung on the walls, even a few on the floor, like someone had hunched over them, studying their arcane lines. The maps on the wall have been written on, marred by crisscrossing black lines and scribbled numbers in longitude and latitude, others in letters and numbers that look like math equations. Maps of Dinétah and the Malpais, maps of Page and the surrounding area. I think I recognize the dam, the one Aaron called Glen Canyon, but from out here beyond the glass door, I can’t be sure.

My heart beating loud in my ears, hands shaking, I slide the door open.

“Kai?” I call softly, even though he’s clearly not here. It feels almost blasphemous to enter his space uninvited, but I’ve come so far and waited so long. If I can’t be close to him, at least I can be close to his things.

I circle the room, trailing my fingertips across everything. The desk, a spiral notebook full of his writing, the gray blanket on this bed. His scent is here, that smell of cedar and clean tobacco, and I close my eyes and inhale it. It calms me, heals me. And makes me miss Dinétah so much it feels like a physical ache in my side. I keep moving, letting my eyes travel carelessly over the maps. And I begin to see a pattern. I was right that one of the maps on the wall was of the dam we crossed to get here. But I see other dams too. The Hoover Dam, which I recognize from school. And smaller ones I’m not familiar with. Grand Valley, Navajo. The routes of the Colorado River and its tributaries are highlighted over in different colors of permanent marker, the places they flow into Dinétah inked the thickest. And next to them, notes on force and time and acre feet. I turn to look at the books. Many of them are accounts of ancient stories—the Hebrew Bible, a story of something called a Tiamat from Ancient Babylon, another book with a Chinese dragon and what looks like a tortoise on the cover. I pick the Tiamat one up at random and flip through the pages. It’s a poem, and hard to follow, but it’s definitely about a primordial flood.

And a dull worry starts to gnaw at my belly.

I set the book down and pick up a different one. This one has a tan cover and the book itself is flat and twice as wide as a normal book. It’s a side-by-side analysis of the story of Noah, a story I recognize from a brief stint in Christian school as a kid. Alarm blossoms at the back of my brain as I realize the stacks of newspapers around me are all accounts of the various events that led up to the Big Water. It seems obvious that Kai is studying the world-ending floods of history, looking for I’m not sure what. But combined with the maps of the Colorado River and its tributaries through Dinétah and the massive dams used to manage the river . . . and I’m starting to see the method to Gideon’s madness. And the part that Kai, the one-time King of Storms and student of the Diné Weather Ways, may play in it all.

I leave Kai’s room and slide the glass door shut behind me, feeling shaken. Gideon may be some kind of madman, but if he is, why is Kai staying here?

Because Kai is helping him. There’s no other way to explain it.

Kai was always smart. Having been raised by scholars meant he knew his way around books and libraries and research in a way that I never did. Never will. And he’s helping Gideon with this plan to do what—flood Dinétah?

It’s too much. Too different from the Kai I know. And it makes me think that maybe I’ve misunderstood him. Maybe I don’t know him like I thought I did. Maybe I need to admit that even though he was willing to face death for me to be free of Neizghání, perhaps that sacrifice has blinded me to the ways he deceived me when he thought I was the monsterslayer of his nightmares. And maybe there’s something true to Rissa’s suspicions, to Nohoilpi’s interrogations. And instead of feeling a happy nervousness to see Kai again, my body feels heavy, my feet drag, and all I feel is dread.

There’s a small fence separating the hotel rooms from the pool area. I vault the gate and move soundlessly, following the line of the building. I turn the corner only to pull up abruptly when I realize that around the corner is a wall of glass. And on the other side of that wall of glass are people. I can hear the buzz of their voices now, rising and falling in conversation. Laughter and the clink of utensils and crystal cups. And under that, music. A familiar song I can’t quite place. Something from my childhood, so ubiquitous as to become anonymous, something about the snow or the cold and staying inside near a warm fire.

I hunch down low and peek around the corner, hoping that the bright indoor lights will blind the people inside enough to keep me hidden from a casual outside glance. They are in the main dining room of the hotel. The room is understated. Low-backed modern chairs in shades of honey and sand cluster around sleek modern tables. And on every table, a white candle glows, encased in a glass lamp. Golden boughs made of foil hang tastefully along the walls, interspersed with sprigs of sage. Here and there, big golden ornaments are arranged artfully on piles on the floor, and in the center of the room, behind a massive table that could seat fifty people, is a huge artificial pine tree that touches the ceiling. It, too, is decorated in golds and ivories and long coils of foil. And I realize that the White Locust and his Swarm are having a Keshmish party.

A Keshmish party.

It’s so outrageous, so unexpected, that I have to cover my mouth with my hands to keep myself from laughing. I was expecting . . . something else. A militarized force, armed to the teeth with black-market guns and hoarded explosives. Doomsday fanatics in long robes and shaved heads. At the very least, people held prisoner, wings cruelly grafted to their backs, faces caught up in some beatific trance like Caleb.

But these people look normal. Happy. Laughing and drinking at a lavish Keshmish party.

As I look more closely, I see that the decorations are not quite as bright and new as they first appeared. The golden paint is peeling off the ornaments. The white candles are melted-down stubs, reduced to pools of watery wax. The tinsel is frayed and peeling around the edges. They must be the last decorations the Amangiri used before the Big Water, likely stored in boxes for years before Gideon and his people came along to pull them out and string them throughout their dining room.

Gideon’s people are dressed in their party clothes. Nothing in comparison to the wealth I saw at the Knifetown auction and certainly nothing as otherworldly as what I remember from the Shalimar. But the people look clean. Well fed. Their clothes well taken care of. A swirl of a red dress here, the shine of a dark suit jacket there. And then there’s the wings. Not everyone has them, or at least has them on display, but enough do. They look a bit like fairies, more ethereal than insectoid under the Keshmish lights. They are strange, but beautiful, too. More artwork than grotesquerie.

As I watch, they gather around the huge table, taking their seats as if their places were decided, leaving the head chair empty. The energy in the room seems to climb, a sense of expectancy in the air, like everyone’s waiting for whoever belongs to that seat. It has to be Gideon, and I welcome the chance to finally get a look at the monster in the flesh.

And then I hear it. That laugh. The one that saved me so many times. That pulled me from the darkness in my head. That made me feel safe. That saved my life.

Kai is seated at the table, one seat away from the White Locust’s chair. His back is to me. He’s wearing a royal blue velvet suit jacket that gleams soft and lush in the golden light. His head is bent in conversation with the person next to him. A woman with long blond hair that cascades down her back. Kai’s hair is longer, too, grown out in the time we’ve been apart. It covers his neck, brushes the tops of his ears, and hangs down in a thick wave across his eyes. I watch as he tilts his head back, pushing his hair from his face with long, elegant fingers, familiar turquoise rings catching the light. And God help me, my heart does a little flip-flop. It’s not that I’d forgotten the effect he has on me, the sort of otherworldly beauty he possesses. But maybe I had forgotten how susceptible I was to it.

And I’m not the only one.

I watch as the blond woman takes a small bite of something from her plate and holds it up for him to eat. He tries to take it from her hand, but she pulls back teasingly. He gives her a little half smile and opens his mouth. She feeds the morsel to him, her fingers lingering against his lips. And then she leans in and kisses him.

And something inside me free-falls.

She pulls away, giggling. Touches a hand to her chest and rolls her head back, a pantomime of pleasure, and Kai smiles.

I’m on my knees. The rough concrete bites through my leggings, tearing my skin. Nothing, really. Bruised bone and torn flesh. Such a small pain.

Kai slips his arm around the back of the blond woman’s seat, leans close to whisper something in her ear. And for a moment his eyes flicker my way.

I press my hand to the glass.

The color on his face drains. His fingers tense, digging into the back of her chair, and his eyes . . .

I wonder what he sees. A girl on her knees just past the glass doors, palm pressed against the barrier that won’t let her in. A stubborn fool stuck out in the desert cold, while he laughs and feasts and kisses golden-haired women in the warm light.

He starts to rise from his chair, when something draws his attention back to the room. And then everyone is standing and applauding. A bilagáana man, midthirties, enters. Tanned skin and brown hair. Tall, fit, handsome. He greets people as he moves through the gathering, shaking hands and touching shoulders. He smiles with sparkling white teeth. I hear them shout his name, even from out here. Gideon. He’s wearing jeans, a matching denim shirt, a leather bolo with a silver medallion shaped like an insect. A locust.

Kai tries to leave, pressing a hand to the blond girl’s arm and mouthing excuses. She looks back over her shoulder, directly at where I am, but I can tell by her expression that she can’t see me.

But Kai sees me. I can feel it.

She grabs his hand, not letting him go. He tries again, but now Gideon is there, wrapping an arm around Kai’s shoulder and giving him a one-armed hug. And he’s saying something, and I can barely follow his lips. But then I do.

Son. He’s calling Kai “son.”

Kai shoulders fall slightly, but he covers it with a smile. The blond woman gazes at Kai adoringly. And Gideon takes his seat at the head of the table, with Kai on his right.