189 - It is as it should be

Inside it was pitch-dark, and the air so thick with that intoxicating smell I wondered if I would have to be carried out. Somewhere very deep within and below, water thumped and gurgled, hugely. I shook off the idea—made more vivid by whatever I was breathing—that it was the stomach-rumblings of a giant sea creature whose mouth I had just entered.

I felt my way in with my feet, threading my way between rocks on a path of sand, until it widened. I lay down, on my back. Closing my eyes made no difference, either to the darkness or my state of mind, but I did. I slowed and deepened my breaths.

Light… distant… it grows like the end of a tunnel, as if this cave led into daylight. I thought I was lying down, but I am sitting at an elegant polished table, on a marble terrace more clean-lined than the Arkan style, by the edge of a brilliant blue sea. Tea-cups so fine the sunlight shines softly through them sit on it. A man sits across from me, young and smiling personably. I know him from somewhere. “Good to see you again, Chevenga,” he says, in inland-accented Yeoli.

“I am sorry,” I say. “You are familiar to me, but I can’t recall from where, or I’d greet you with your name.”

“Let me make it easier.” He alters, becoming Niah, his pareo black, white and red. “You need to tell the A-niah I said this: Eh sah si kampa. The message for you alone is: Mi en min araham.”

I had nothing to write on or with. I had to memorize. Eh sah si kampa eh sah si kampa eh sah si kampa… Mi en min araham, mi en min araham… I graved the words on my memory as with a chisel. The smell made it easier to imagine carving them in stone so I could read them back.

“Who should I say gives me this message?”

“They’ll know.” He smiles, lifting a tea-cup in one delicate hand. His teeth are a shark’s, row upon row of tiny triangular blades. He is Lord Friend. Si kampa, I remember Niku saying, Niah for Shininao. But if ‘mi en min araham’ is for me alone, who do I get to translate it?

He fades, and I find myself tumbling in water, as if the wave that was the second-last tester’s soul outside the cave got the better of me and I am being ground along the bottom by it. Then it calms, and I swim. I don’t know how deep I am, a man-length, a thousand man-lengths, but it doesn’t matter; somehow I can breathe, and know I can.

Vast shapes swim around me. I open my eyes. They are a black blacker than the water but have the green sparkle of the sea around them so I catch parts of their shapes. The smiling snout of a dolphin, the stickle-back of some huge fish, the tentacle of a giant squid… Crowds of jellyfish glowing brilliant blue and red and green pulse past me.

I feel the smooth swoosh of skin that turns into slime like a fish’s side, then hard current from a powerful tail. The creature turns in the water, and seizes me in human arms, that press me to human breasts, and we are moving through the water faster than any person can swim, as if we are flying, the water pressing on my face as the air did when Niku dove us down.

Her hair wreathing all around my head, the sea-woman kisses me with a cool salty tongue, making my manhood swell against her scales. “Narianty,” she says. “Narianty,” I repeat. Her laughter is a silver trail of bubbles.

“Ta saho zalo msah.”

I ran it over in my head. Narianty ta saho zalo msah… First was en sah si kampa then Mi en min araham.

“Ta saho zalo msah.” She laughs again. “Tai!” That I understand: “yes.” “Aeen omore!” Something about love… she tickles me, then muscles all down her go rocklike as she speeds us, whipping her tail up and down like a dolphin. Her immense strength turns me to fire with wanting her. We burst up out of the surface of the sea like a whale breaching, but don’t splash massively back down again; we keep rising as if we are on a moyawa, her tail propelling us through air now.

We are higher than Niku took me, and I feel she is coming to her limit of how high she can go when her huge hands wrap around my shoulders, and she flings me straight upwards, higher, then plunges down, leaving me.

“I will not fall, any more than I did on the moyawa,” I tell myself, knowing that if I will and believe it so, it will be. Below I can see nothing, not land or sea, as if the vault of the sky were not only above but below me, and all around; one can fall only relative to earth, so if there is none, it doesn’t matter. I float, still and wingless.

There are words, though. Vai... moy… sala. “Vai moy sala, vai moy sala, vaimoy sala…”

I thought the sky was insubstantial until Niku told me, while we were flying, that it has substance and you must understand that to fly. Now that substance cracks open like rock beneath me and there is a fountain of lava, spitting and surging eye-burning orange. “Vaimoy sala!” I say, so as not to forget the words out of astonishment.

I feel its heat on my skin as from fire. Heat rising under me is floating me downwards. I land in the top branches of a tree as wide as a city. Its roots run all through the Earthsphere and are what holds it together, I think. It is as lush and deep a green as all the trees on Niah-lur-ana, and from it blooms all their flowers, and ones I know from home; every type of flower on the Earthsphere is here, which makes sense. I fall gently in a sea of petals, that heap up around me as I find myself lying softly on sand.

The cave… the A-niah… I felt the sense of them, the weight of the crowd’s anticipation, and saw a faint reflected flickering on stone above. Like a dream… the words will go, I have to remember them… I ran them nine or ten times over in my mind before I tried to move, to make sure. Was my body still there? Did I know up from down? I had been moving, I knew, from the sand stuck to parts of me that weren’t against it.

Carefully, every feeling of motion so vivid it reverberated, I lifted my head, then went through the rest of getting up one movement at a time, most cautious as I stood upright. My mind full of water and sky and molten rock, and the words intoned over and over so I wouldn’t forget them, I wanted to lean against something on which I had a good grip. I walked to the cave mouth, willing myself not to stagger. I remembered what Niku had said, that there were two hand-grips. I found them, cool and polished, worn into the rock by the hands of all those who had done this before. There was something between my fingers: a flower. Someone was there, holding both his hands out; I gave it to him, and put my hands in the grips. The A-niah had raised a second fire close to the cave mouth, perhaps to light my way back. The crowd of dark firelit faces swam in my sight, silently waiting, then turned ghostly blue as the fire did, hissing.

“I went… elsewhere,” I said, finding myself suddenly breathless. “The young man with shark’s teeth in black, white and red… your Lord Friend.” There were a few gasps from those who understood Enchian, then gasps all around as my words were translated. “Everything they said was in Niah, so I understand almost none of it… Eh sah si kampa, was his message to you.” They let out a strange sound, somewhere between a sign and a moan, and many spoke words that sounded like they came from a ritual, and made hand signs. “Then I was in the sea... and there was a merwoman. The words she gave me were, Narianty ta saho zalo msah,” then “aeen omore.” There was such silence, it was as if they’d all stopped breathing. “She threw me up into the sky, and the words there were Vai moy sala.”

Riahla nar sept Daeka sat down hard on the ground, as if she’d been struck a head-blow; several others did likewise. I glanced at Niku. She had the same grin as she’d had the first time we were alone after I’d defeated Riji. She raised her fist in the victory sign. The Oracle lifted her staff. “And how did you come back here?” she asked me.

I described, as best I could, the lava, the tree and the flowers. As if offering evidence in a court, the apprentice showed everyone the flower. Several people were staring at my hair; reaching up I found another flower twined in it. But it was a dream… a vision… not real… how…?

“Chevenga.” Breicia: she said it sharply, as if calling a warrior to attention, then spoke a string of Niah words in an impassive voice, watching my face closely as she did. I thought I heard “kampa” and “fahkad,” which meant something similar to the Arkan fik, I knew from hearing Niku curse. It couldn’t be, I decided, not in the midst of a sacred rite. She waited for my answer.

“Speaker to Armies, I know hardly any Niah… not enough that I understood that,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “Will you repeat it in Enchian?”

“Nar! Nar!” those who knew Enchian exclaimed to her: no, don’t!

Breicia, it turned out, spoke no Enchian. She said something to me stiffly in Niah. “She apologizes to you,” a man interpreted for her. “She just cursed you using the worst blasphemies in our tongue, to see if you understood.”

Still ringing with the vision too much to have even thoughts of anger, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Tell her, what I don’t understand, I can’t be offended by, so you needn’t apologize.”

The Oracle signed to the man who carried her. He lifted her so her eyes were level with mine. “What the Gods said to you was this,” she intoned.

“Lord Friend said, ‘I am your friend,’ but it means close-friend, heart-friend.” How true that is, I thought. “It is the way he introduces himself. Ama Kalandris said something every Niah knows, since it is part of our story of how the world came to be, and a hundred other stories of the Sea. She said this first to the first Rojhai, who led us here on the first wings. ‘Don’t fear. It is as it should be.’”

“Things are going as they ought to.” She raised her chin in the Niah chalk-sign. Meaning, Niku did the right thing telling me, and they will do the right thing if they make us all family, and share the secret of the wing. No wonder Niku’s grin.

“Then, aeen omore, it is either I love all of you, or we all love one person, you—without other words with it, I cannot tell.” Good either way, it seemed.

Riahla was still sitting, but now in tears, that seemed to be of relief; many other faces shone wet in the firelight too, and other people were beginning to leap in excitement. She and the Oracle exchanged some words, and I heard a distinct tone of ‘I told you so’ from the Oracle. The other Speakers to Sea came close, and she took their hands, and they intoned something formally. Niku told me later it was the withdrawal of all objections.

“Come,” the Oracle said. I let go the grips in the rock, and stepped out of the cave-mouth, and Niku was beside me, holding my hand hard, her body singing with excitement. I realized: some of the words I had told them had not been translated to me. “Love,” I whispered, “What does vaimoy sala mean?”

“You’ll find out soon,” she said, her thrilled grin showing her teeth bright in the firelight. Someone somewhere close began beating a huge drum.

--

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188 - The shulpiteh

“Now I can whisper in your ear,” I asked Niku, as the council broke to prepare for shulpiteh, “what are they going to do to me?”

“Don’t worry, love, you can handle it,” she said. “It’s easier than fifty chains in the Mezem.”

“Easier than fifty chains in the Mezem! That’s reassuring.”

She laughed. “Come, omores. We have to go to Wasteega Ensal—the island of the Oracle. Well, we’re caught in the crowd, and the wait will be long anyway.” I understood what that meant when we got to the cliff-edge. There are several stretched wires, with the seat-harnesses on them that convey you across the strait, but so many people wanted to go that there was a crowd around the end of each one. “We could windboard instead—or swim, if I get someone else to take the baby.” Some others were doing that; looking down I saw distant human silhouettes outlined in the green glow of the sea, cutting across in the easy way A-niah swim, and the faint shapes of windboard sails.

“I want to try this,” I said. “It’s not as if it can start without me anyway.” It was a little like flying, except that you sit instead of hang prone, and the seat would fit three and a baby. They got me to sit in the middle with Vriah slung, and Niku and Baska, who knew how to do this, took hold of the mechanism on either side, ran for all they were worth to get it started, and leapt on, on either side of me, just as it left the cliff. “You A-niah, with your modes of transportation,” I said. “That’s three I would never have conceived.”

We gathered on the beach, by a cave—not the same as the Oracle’s cave, Niku told me, but just as sacred. The fire was burning high by the time we got there. From the great stone entranceway, I could hear a weird hiss and moan of air and water. Several A-niah wearing only loincloths were taking positions before it, at least half of them men, including one who was a good head taller than me and built like a boar. Know more than one of us carnally… I had eventually had success with Lakrisi, but not easily, and only once.

“What do I have to do?” I asked Niku, trying to tell myself I was not afraid.

“They will test you. You need only to trade perhaps a dozen blows with each, to reach the door to the Gods.”

“Bare-handed, you must mean,” I said. None of them were armed. “That’s all? Just sparring?”

“You must stay on the path. They will try to throw you off the way to the Gods.”

“And then?”

“The Oracle will tell you what to do.” They had carried her here; she threw the powder on the flames, making them hiss and turn blue again, and the people went silent. The testers waited in a line, firelight glinting off their muscle-ridged bodies. “Niku, you said carnally—” She hissed me quiet. There was no ceremonial; the Oracle just looked at me, raised her gnarled stick, and pointed to the mouth of the cave.

I stripped down to my loin-cloth, Niku kissed me for luck, and I faced the first, who was a man.

Exchange a dozen blows, I thought as I came within striking distance of him. Does that mean if I get in ten and he gets in two, we’re done? I guess I will find out.

A few times, when we’d had time, Niku and I had sparred, both with and without weapons, so the on-the-toes Niah fighting style, with its high leaps and spins, was not entirely strange to me. It is not natural to me to go in cautious, but here I had to, since no one had told me all the rules. I wasn’t even sure how many people I would face.

The way he fought was snakelike, somehow, curving and devious. He was light on me, aiming only to touch, so I did likewise with him, waiting for him to step it up before I did, and we had swapped and blocked about a dozen when he stepped back and bowed his head. I did likewise.

Stepping further down the path, I was further from the fire and so in greater darkness. I caught a whiff of a smell so strange it was almost taste more than smell. The woman who waited somehow brought another creature to mind: a dolphin. I went lower in my stance. I’d guessed right. She went at me harder, smooth and slippery, trying to push me off by getting under my weight, and I made her slide around me. Did it matter if I threw them off the path? Perhaps; she stepped back and we bowed.

I went further, and the smell struck me again, stronger; this time it made me a touch light-headed. I fought it, shaking my head hard. People were following, walking along with me; as I shook, there was a laugh. They were expecting that… I looked ahead, and shark-skin armour was suddenly in my mind, then the sense of shark in general. He will fight that style, I thought, as the man before me came in, as aggressively as I usually did myself. He was not pulling his blows at all.

Then I should not pull mine? Would it not be a problem if I hurt one of them badly—or they did me, for that matter? Thinking too much, I evaded a kick that was like a bite, aimed for my guts, by a hair. I would make rules for myself at least, I decided, and pulled the knife hand I got on his temple so that it just staggered him instead of laying him out. He straightened and shook it off, but stepped back and bowed.

But if my head doesn’t clear, if whatever I’m feeling gets worse, will I be able to pull well enough? No matter with the next one—I got a flash of a huge creature with tentacles, an octopus or a squid, and felt a woman bigger than me, trying to seize me in her arms, which were very strong, the moment we closed. Is it not affecting them? She had me around the shoulders, but too high; I got my hands on her thigh—a woman does not have sucker-cups on her leg, like on a tentacle, I am imagining them—lifted her up by it as well as her own hold on me, and flung her off the path into the sand.

I’d broken a sweat now. I shook it off, and the world spun from the motion of my head. I wanted her, I realized; I wanted the shark-man, too. I took a deep breath and tightened my thoughts with will, as I would do after taking a head-blow. It was the big man now. Boar; he does not just look like one; he is one in spirit. He charged me, very low for one so large, letting out an unearthly squealing war-cry.

Sheer strength. I didn’t doubt for a moment he could get me up onto his shoulder with one arm, throw me with ease with two. The moment he got under me, it was over; even if I got a grip on him, he need only walk off the path carrying me, and I was off it. I spun aside from his charge; if I tried to take it straight on I’d be knocked flying. He charged again, this time with his arms wide, so I dropped to my hands and toes under him, then came up hard under thighs, so he was flung feet over head. He sprang up and came right at me again, too low for that so I dived over his back and rolled back up onto my feet, still on the path, making several people cry out in amazement; Boar himself laughed. Now he hesitated, bristling and snarling again, but not sure what to do, so coming in slow. Not the right spirit; I did a two-step charge and stunned him with a temple-blow before he could get his hands on me, and he made his concession.

My body’s mind is clear, I thought; it’s my thoughts that aren’t. My head was filled with that smell, now; it was stronger the closer to the cave I got. What is coming at me—did I take a wrong turn and end up in the sea? It was like a dream; I tried to shake my eyes clear. There was a standing sea-wave in the path, deep blue at its base, pale at its top, just beginning to curl over. I saw no person in it, to fight like a person. I closed my eyes, and it was no different.

Take it as if it is indeed a wave. I had learned how to maintain my balance even with big ones on Haiu Menshir, one hand forward, one hand back, a little jump and don’t let feeling the immensity of its force scare me, don’t lose my feet or it will wash me under and grind me rolling against the sand all the way up the beach…

I would swear water, warm and salty, crashed over me, pulling at my body all over, an undertow dragging the other way at my legs so I had to root them to the earth in my mind. But then it was past, and I was dry except for sweat, and I was aware, though I did not seem him or her, of someone bowing to me. I bowed back.

How many more? I was not tired, but I felt as if I could be still I would have visions; they were poking me from the back of my mind already, Niah things, of salt and sea and wind, of bright flowers and flashing fish. I was only a few steps from the cave door, now, the sounds somehow deafening. I took a long deep breath, down to the pit of my lungs. One more, I sensed. The A-niah crowd went very quiet.

A breeze touched my face; then it grew to a fair wind, then a stiff one, then it was thundering in my ears and whipping my hair as if I were in a storm. It will knock me over if it keeps strengthening; I dropped very low and wide. No… be a wing. As the sun had set again and so Niku had known it was time to come down, she had put us into a dive like a hawk’s spotting prey, making the wind scream through the wires and rip at our faces and hair; I’d had to close my eyes. But it did not throw us back or tear us apart because we were cutting through it. I leaned forward and flung out my arms, hardening my hands flat like wingtips, stretching my fingers. By angling them down, as Niku had angled the wing, I could use the wind to help keep me on the path instead of blowing me off.

Now, distantly, I heard the A-niah cheering. The gale was suddenly gone, almost pitching me forward, and I saw who was there. It was the Oracle, sitting on the ground beside the mouth of the cave. She bowed her head, I returned it, and she beckoned me with her hand to go in.

“Omores!” Niku ran up behind me. “You have to leave your loincloth here… go in, lie down and talk to the Gods. If They speak to you, come to the door again—there are two hand-holds, worn from people doing this, where you put your hands—and tell us what They said.”

I went in.

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187 - We are the flying family

I told her… she asked me to marry her anyway… rather emphatically… did I dream that? Am I dreaming still? The sun hung low in the sky, golden yellow. We had dozed; the pig was probably ready and people wondering where we were. We heaved ourselves up and put ourselves back in as close as we could get to order.

The clearing wasn’t as far away from the gathering as I’d thought. Talk could not be heard, but raised voices could. “Oh, there are the lovebirds!” Sach said.

“Lovebirds who sing loudly,” Krero said.

“What? Where?” Niku said, blinking innocently. “I’m sure we were sparring.”

“Obviously,” Sach grinned. “I know I grunt in perfect rhythm whenever I spar.”

“I’ve never had a complaint about my song, I’ll have you know,” I said. Vriah was awake, and rooting, so Niku took her to the breast again. “Our chocolate child, conceived from love in the halls of death.” I felt happier than I had for a long time, perhaps ever, right down to my bones.

The pig had been disinterred and lay on a trestle, red-brown, gleaming and smelling indescribably good, charred tree-leaves folded back from it. Everyone got handed a banana-leaf with a big piece of pork, an opened bundle of spiced earth-apples and mangoes and a polished sea-shell full of roasted cormorant egg, the white cooked hard, the yolk a thick yellow soup. Cormorant meat and oil are both inedible, apparently, but the eggs have a delicious, delicate flavour, a bit like shellfish.

As we finished eating, the sun sank towards the sea, turning orange. It was time to go, before the wind died completely. I had to stand on rank with Krero.

Sent by the breeze caught in the windboard’s sail by Niku’s skilled hands, we skimmed standing across orange-sparkled water, my weight joined to hers by my arms around her, the baby slung happily on her shoulder. The main island of Niah-lur-ana, Ibresi, had good cliffs to launch from, she told me. “We have to climb fast to catch the last of the light, omores.”

A-niah have moyawa-bases at the top of good cliffs, I learned, with buildings in which the wings are stored. As we climbed, my heart began to pound, as I saw wings in the air, here and there, like square-winged birds. We went inside to get one; Niku said, smiling, “Maybe this looks familiar,” and touched her hand affectionately to one of the rolled bundles on the pole-shelves. I recognized the blue silk that I had helped sew together in Arko. The wing that was your and Vriah’s freedom, and my first taste of flying. My eyes burned, just a little.

“Hah,” she said, moving on. “What you did there was… elegant leaping. Now, my love, you are truly going to fly.” She picked a larger one, and we put it together near the cliff edge, the wind still strong enough up here to whip our hair. Vriah cooed and burbled happily. A few other people were around, some jumping in startlement when they saw me, some just staring.

We harnessed in, Vriah slung tightly on Niku’s back, and squeaking excitedly, knowing what came next. “Now I know you are not used to running off cliffs, love,” she said when we’d done the enshachik, the test of the harness while we hung. “Because it seems like death. But what you must understand is that now it’s the opposite. You stop running as we’re about to go over, and that is death. For all three of us. Got it?”

“Second Fire come, I won’t stop,” I said. Having felt a wing lift me when I’d entrusted myself to it before would help.

“Hold tight,” she said. “Your body is one with mine, else we are a ship with no rudder; got it?”

“And death for all three of us again, got it,” I said.

“Good. Go!”

It happens faster than should be possible, for something so wonderful. A few steps of that most mundane thing, running, and then the ground is gone, your weight is on the harness instead of your feet, and you are a bird, a hundred man-lengths high, the world suddenly turned into the place of dreams. The sun had sunk beneath the sea, leaving the sky a band of orange across the western horizon and purple at its apex, with a few high curving clouds touched with orange, like frozen flames. Land distant, the tree-tops hazy black below us, we were of the sky.

With unthinking skill, she steered us seaward. Look back, I saw we were not falling, but rising, the cliff-edge now below, an updraft like in mountains lifting us. “The sun always rises in the east?” she said smiling. “Watch this.” As we went higher, its brilliant scarlet edge came back up over the horizon, like dawn. Red light caught each strand of Niku’s black hair, ruffling in the wind, and the curly golden wisps of Vriah, who giggled in ecstasy.

The ground so far below, all our lives entrusted to this tiny craft, and not a shred of fear in either of them… again I felt the mind’s protest, I can’t believe this is happening, as I had in Arko, while reality flew, so to speak, in its face. “Here, omores,” she said. “You take the chamir. You know enough.” I put my hands on it, and she let go. My body still had the feel of it, from the grass-faib field in Arko. She laid her hand on my cheek.

We are the flying family, I thought. She will marry me though she knows. I was suddenly blinded with tears. Life was too perfect to bear dry-eyed.

†

It was almost pitch-dark when we came to the council fire, which was on a beach held as sacred on Ibresi. She had handed Vriah off to Baska, again, for this. The Oracle and the Speakers were all there, as were many more officials I had not met, many of them obviously military. One hard-eyed woman who wore armour with the sigil of a wing on one shoulder and a windboard on the other, a longsword, a shortsword and two Niah axes, looked me up and down without pretending to hide it. I had come unarmed, to show trust; they far outnumbered me anyway. “That is Breicia aht Krashna, nar sept Maekun, Speaker to Armies,” Niku whispered to me, “our high commander.”

The flames of the fire suddenly turned blue for a moment, and all talk ceased. They have a powder which does this when you throw it on a fire, I learned later; it was the sign that the council would start. There were some ritual words, and then Riahla stood, and said something coldly to me, which Niku translated.

“So here you are. The first stranger to own our secret, after thousands of years.”

I had not sat down. “I don’t consider myself owning it,” I said in Yeoli, and Niku translated to them. “But I know that I have been extraordinarily honoured.”

“It was our charge to keep, our safety, our strength,” Riahla said, her voice thick with emotion. “And now we are told it is no longer. The Oracle spoke… but who are you, that our Gods know you?”

“What I am to Them, I cannot say. I do not know Their minds. I know what I will be to Arko, though.” How would they take that? There was silence; many had their eyes closed, giving my words, or Niku’s translation of them, full attention. I moved closer to the fire, to let those who were watching see me better.

“Best if I don’t say my plans in detail; but I see a way to drive Arko entirely out of Yeola-e. It will be costly to them, of course, in lives, which means a relief for every other nation that is beset by them.”

“So you are saying that it would be better for us if we sent our warriors to fight with you rather than stay here and fight for ourselves?”

“I am saying, do both. It will take only a few of you fighting with my army to make the difference an army has with wings. Scouting, breaking sieges, these things take only a few. I broke a siege as one of ten once.” Again, I shouldn’t be too modest, as I asked them to entrust themselves to my command. “There’s no way that few can be more effective against Arko than by being the eyes, as it were, of a great army, as well as the instant siege-breakers. You know better than I, for serving Bodjal City Breaker and the others. I will see where the Arkans are blind. Say a hundred of you join me; how great a loss is that, when you can muster thousands here? But it would be like having thousands added to my army.”

Breicia spoke, in a firm voice that reminded me of Emao-e. “Sometimes that hundred can be very important in the right place.”

“Exactly. That’s what I mean. But if you mean here, you have another hundred. Speakers and commanders of Niah-lur-ana, even if only ten of you joined me, I would still have eyes where the Arkans were blind.” No one argued with that. “Another possibility: the Yeoli navy was not entirely destroyed, though all our harbours are in Arkan hands. We have more than a hundred, now, sailing as privateers. Perhaps part of our alliance pact can be their aid here.”

Breicia snorted, raising her chin. “We need no aid from ships.” And groundlings, I heard between the lines. Well, no harm in offering.

“You’ve been given something no commander we’ve ever worked with before ever had,” Riahla said. “Knowledge of the wing.”

“Yes, and I think because of that I could do things with it that no groundling general has ever done. I want to learn to fly myself. I already have, some.” Riahla’s mouth thinned into a taut line, paling her brown chin.

“Here is what I want to know, Chevenga.” A clear-voiced middle-aged man, who by his headdress looked like he might be the next rank down from Breicia. “Niku affirms the Arkans do not have the secret. But we also know that you were truth-drug-scraped in Arko, after she left. How can that be?” A deeper silence fell.

I told them, as close to verbatim as I could, how the Mahid had refused to believe it. Smiles began twitching at solemn faces; then the Oracle laughed, and most of the others took that as permission. “Later when they wanted truth out of me again, a Sereniteer took a tool to my privates. I asked him why couldn’t he just truth-drug me. He said, ‘It doesn’t work on you.’” I felt at ease enough now to say, “Oh, sure, go ahead and laugh! It wasn’t so funny for me.”

But Riahla was still standing, stiff with anger. “How do we know you will cherish it as we do?” she said.

I spoke from my heart, still singing from flying. “How could anyone not?” I recounted trying it in Arko, and how I had felt. “Tyromos was what Niku said I was: sky-mad, right?”

Riahla was not mollified. “Cherish it, yes... enough to want it, certainly,” she said. “We’ve killed to keep it from being stolen. Others, and ourselves. Now one of ours has just given it away.” I felt Niku go tense beside me. There was muttering among the others.

“If you were to name the price you wanted,” I said, “what would it be?”

That was a mistake. “Now all those deaths count for nothing, Yeoli Speaker? There is no price! We cannot sell this!” The muttering grew.

“Speaker to Sea,” I said, “if I leap off a cliff so that only A-niah know it again, I take Yeola-e with me. What did the Oracle say? Did I misunderstand?”

“No,” she said, casting her eyes down. “You did not. But I am no Oracle, nor a God. I feel angry as a person, and a Niah.”

The best thing always, with that, is to hear it. “I don’t blame you,” I said. “You had your choice taken away.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What would you endure to make it right for us?” The muttering was suddenly loud again, and I heard the same word several times, shulpiteh.

“What are you proposing?” I said. “I would endure anything except that which harms my people.”

“Because you are their Speaker, I understand,” she said. That was how she and I were most akin; I remembered what Niku had told me about how the A-niah ran things by semana kra.

“Right now, I’m their only hope against Arko, also,” I said. If we were conquered, every nation on the eastern Miyatara was weaker, they knew. I would be banking on that as I sought alliances.

Riahla looked to the Oracle, who, though I wouldn’t have thought she could see well enough in firelight, lifted her chin yes.

“I would be content if our Gods spoke to you,” Riahla said. “If you know more than just one of us emotionally and carnally, then I will be content to have you as family.” In the quieter talk of the others I heard it again, shulpiteh.

I slipped a glance at Niku. She looked as if she hadn’t quite expected this, but was not afraid.

“I agree to that,” I said.

“Good,” Riahla said.

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186 - The proposal

Vriah let go the breast, arched her back and let out a scream as if she’d been scalded. “Toto, Vriah-os, birdling, it’s all right,” said Niku, pulling her in close. “Chevenga… what is it? Are you all right?”

In the Mezem, you only plan up to your next fight, or escape attempt. We had never spoken of marriage, because that meant admitting how steep the odds were against us, for so many reasons, and neither of us had wanted to do that. I hadn’t even had the foresight to remember I could procreate.

So I had never told her what I knew of my future.

“I’m fine, I—” My tongue locked up like stone. I wanted to run away down the beach, or into the sea. I made the sign for wait. Vriah went on screaming, despite Niku both rocking and joggling her, and my hand caressing her head.

“No, you aren’t, omores, you just went pale as shell. Should I call your healer?”

“No… shh, Vriah, love, shh shh, it’s all right… Niku… there’s something... there’s something I have to tell you. In private, totally private... I’m sorry.”

The baby’s cries eased a little. “For what? You’ve done nothing.”

“You’re thinking it’s madness; don’t worry, it’s not. You’ll understand why I’m apologizing when I tell you… Not here, not now...”

“I want to know. When she’s full and asleep again, I’ll hand her off.”

“My mother would love nothing so much.” The shrieks had fallen to moans; with a little coaxing, Niku got her suckling again. We walked back to the gathering, I smiled and hand-clasped my way to my mother, and she took the baby, now asleep. I tried to pretend to myself that everything hadn’t changed in my sight, all of it a different colour underneath its disguise as the same. If she changes her mind about marrying me, what does that do the alliance? We walked away again, hand in hand, to ribald comments in two languages.

This time she led me from the beach into jungle, so thick with the song of birds and insects that it was almost irritating. Birds the colour of sapphires and emeralds and rubies, or with wild long black on white tail-feathers and thick yellow beaks, flitted from branch to branch; what seemed a flower of an eye-stabbing orange edged with iridescent turquoise turned out to be a butterfly, flapping off as we came close. The A-niah colour everything brightly, I saw, because that is what is around them.

She took me into a clearing with a circle of uncarved standing stones around a central slab, big enough for us both to sit on. “No one will hear us here,” she said, and took both my hands in hers purposefully.

“We are serious about marrying, as we weren’t in the Mezem… else I’d have told you. I was thinking I would tell you after we escaped… what I’ve told every other woman I’ve talked marriage with. Something she ought to know.” I heard my own voice, a hoarse whisper. “When I was seven, the day my father was assassinated…”

She closed her eyes to listen, a Niah custom; their feeling is that it allows fuller attention to the words. When I said, “I saw myself, dead,” they blinked open. “Young.” They fixed on me, like two arrowheads.

“How young?”

My hands were trembling. What matter, I thought, if it shows? “Younger than thirty.”

She put her arms around me, but it was not in gushing sympathy, which I would have taken, but not happily, nor with the desperation of the last time; it was more, we need to touch while I think about this. Could it be, I have not changed for her? “Thirty?”

“I’ve been certain of that my whole life, since then,” I said. “You see why it didn’t matter in the Mezem. I would have told you by letter, except I wasn’t willing to commit that to paper… You want to marry me, but you didn’t know this till now.”

“I see.” So calm; Niku, I wanted to say, can you thrash and scream and rail so that I know what you’re thinking? “You’ve told this to how many others you wanted to marry?”

“Two. In Yeola-e... when I was in my teens. I swore them to silence, which they’ve kept.” I suddenly realized, I had told her without asking the oath first.

“I’ll hold my silence on it,” she said. “So you asked them to marry so young... because of it.”

“I didn’t ask; in Yeola-e it’s the woman. I dropped very broad hints. Shaina and Etana don’t know... because our agreement is totally one of convenience, as we all know and agree on…” I’m blathering, I thought. My heart pounded, roaring in my temples.

“But this doesn’t change anything, as far as I’m concerned, Chevenga. This war could kill either one of us tomorrow. Same as the Mezem, except not so evenly-scheduled. I’m the lucky one who gets to ask you.”

The world froze again. She took my face between her hands, and looked into my eyes. “I will love you always and forever… for as long as we have.” I couldn’t move; I couldn’t breathe; the world started going black and white. “Unless…” A smile pulled the corner of her lips. “You don’t really want to marry a chocolate woman? I’ll ask you again. Chevenga, will you marry me?”

Tears blinded me. “Are you sure? It’s not the chance—we’re so used to the chance—it’s the certainty.”

“Fourth Chevenga Shae-Arano-e, semanakraseye of Yeola-e, will you marry me?”

I dashed them away to see her face, but more came. “You’re thinking, it’s so far away... put it out of mind... It will be here sooner than we know. The children you have by me will have no father in eight years or so. I’m used to it, and there’s no escape for me. But for you…”

“I’d rather have you for a handful of years than not at all!” she snapped. “Quit trying to wiggle out of it!” That ended my capacity for words. She pulled my head to hers and kissed me hard, while I frantically wiped under my nose so I didn’t get snot on her lips.

“You still have to answer me,” she breathed. “Or I’ll just keep asking.” She filled my mouth with her hot tongue again, and her hand slid under my kilt and into my loincloth. Her grip closed hard on my manhood. Her other hand whipped up under my shirt and clasped my swordside nipple. I could do nothing but moan and squirm.

Beside the stone slab was soft grass. She pulled me there. “Are you su—” She silenced me with a kiss again, hiked up her pareo and took off my loincloth with one yank. Pushing me back in the grass she threw her legs astride my hips and lowered herself, already dripping, onto me, seized my nipples with both her hands, and tenderly bit my lower lip. “Will you marry me?”

“I… I… ai… aigh… aigh…”

She rocked, mercilessly, then, even more mercilessly, slowed down. “Will you marry me?”

“Niku, I shouldn’t aaaaiiigggh!” She pinched me, hard, three places at once.

“Will… you… marry… me!?”

“Niku, you really want—” She froze, a worse agony than anything else, and my hips thrust upwards of their own accord.

“I’m going to have to tell our children I had to force a yes out of you!” she hissed. “Will you fikken marry me?”

“You really mean it—” She clenched on me, then again, drawing out my yells. “Look, aiigh! when my father was killed aaaaghh!! I knew how it was for my mother ohhh no All-Spirit don’t stop…”

“Will you marry me?”

“I saw how she grieved aiigghh! so young, I don’t want you aaagghh—”

“You don’t want me?”

“No, no, nooooooo that’s not what I meant aarrrrggghh does it seem like I don’t want you!?”

“Then marry me.” She stopped again, leaving me gasping, helpless.

“I know I can’t prevent the pain of those who love me,” I breathed. “There’s nothing I can do…”

“If I have to fight this hard to get a yes out of you, maybe I should stop trying so hard?” She took her hands off me and set them on the ground as if she meant to get off.

“Niku,” I whispered, blinded with tears again. “As always, you choose.”

She jammed herself back on me hard with a snarl, and grabbed my nipples between her nails again. “Will you marry me!? Do you want me!?”

“How can… I not want you?” I heard the agony in my own voice. “I just don’t want to hurt you!”

“Just give me a fikken yes or no!”

“I’m not saying no!”

“Well… then… say… YES!”

I was on fire, my body with pleasure, my mind with pain. I was going to explode with it soon. “Y… yes…”

“Good enough Ama Kalandris aaaiiiiggghhh!” She threw her head back. Her climax set a spark to mine, which felt as if it would kill me. “Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes oh All-Spirit Niku All-Spirit Saint Mother Niku Niku ye-e-e-e-E-E-E-E-SSS!!”

†

I didn’t think it was possible to maintain the peak of ecstasy for that long. Even before I’d been tortured, I hadn’t thought it was. It was like several, but as if they never really stopped in between, joined together. I lost all sense of time. She did too. Afterwards we lay in a tangle of limbs, limp and sweaty as fresh battlefield dead. Half-conscious, I breathed, “I’ll… marry… you.”

“Fikken right,” she breathed back. “I thought I’d have to club you over the head and drag you away with me.”

“Try to explain that to Krero.”

“Hold you captive in a cave and feed you nothing but chocolate.”

“What a fate.”

She tongued my neck under my ear, delicately. “I like a bit of salt with my chocolate.”

“Never mind thirty, you’re going to kill me now.” All-Spirit, do I have more in me? If anyone in the world could find it, it was her. “Niku… you’re really sure—”

When she’d released my mouth, she said, “Yes. You already said yes, you can’t go back on it.”

“Niku… It seems too good to be true. I’m going to have so hard a time learning to believe it that it might take… well…”

She smiled wickedly. “A lot of proving?” All-Spirit, she’s finding it… “Always… and… forever…” she whispered, from deep in her throat. “Every… fikken… instant… we have.”

I seized her hips. I was done with holding back. I was fire and water at once, the second time, like the molten rock that roars up from the earth’s heart, fire from my loins, water from my eyes, and no boundaries between me, and her, and all the world.

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185 - Time to share the secret

Riahla acknowledged with a upwards jerk of her chin. Then we exchanged gifts. Of course the A-niah have a secret without compare for pleasing by gifts—chocolate—though they also gave me a beautifully-wrought comb made of tortoise-shell, and some of the rest of us bowls made from cormorant eggs. Niku had told me what can be found on Haiu Menshir much more easily than on Niah-lur-ana; some more obscure medicines, glass bottles and metal tools. By their smiles they were pleased enough.

There would be no more formalities until after dinner, Niku told me. The A-niah all settled on rugs and blankets, the younger serving the elder cups of juice, and Niku showed us the best place to swim in the sea and a freshet where we could wash off the salt. “My son, may I speak with you a moment?” Esora-e said tightly, just as I handed off a happily sleeping baby to her mother. Here we go, I thought.

“Fourth Chevenga!” he hissed, as soon as we were under a tree far enough away. “I can’t believe, with all Yeola-e waiting for your return, you brought us all the way here to visit an… an… object of your lusts! You said it was for an alliance!”

“It is,” I said. “What do you think all that formality was for? You don’t know this because it isn’t so well-known in Yeola-e, but I learned it while I was away: they are the best scouts in the world.” That was not secret, I thought, so why not? “They aren’t populous, no matter; we don’t need many, to make a very great difference against Arko.”

“But… but… she’s the colour of… of… chocolate!” But tastes even better, I thought, but refrained, with some difficulty, from saying. “And you’ve had a child with her—a half-chocolate-faced child!—and you’re holding that child as if you want to… raise her…” His face was full of creeping horror. “Look… no harm in dalliances while you were stuck in that bloodsport pit, but… they shouldn’t have lasting results!”

“Esora-e, will you do something good for your people?” I said. “Do absolutely nothing to offend the best scouts in the world while we’re conducting delicate alliance negotiations with them?”

He let out his breath in a huff. “Fine… but you’ll be hearing more about this if you don’t see sense. And not just from me. All-Spirit… every time we let you out of the country, there’s trouble! What do you have against Yeoli women? Next thing I know you’re going to be wanting to marry her!” I didn’t answer.

“Do we have time before dinner for a walk on the beach, just the three of us?” I asked Niku, lacing my fingers in hers. She leaned close, so that Vriah’s head touched my chest too, and said, “Omores, I want you so badly I’m on the verge of cold-cocking you and dragging you off into the grass.” I took that as a yes.

“You should know where the argument stands now,” she said, as soon as we were out of earshot. “You’re going to have us as allies, either way. And we must adopt you as son into one of the septs, at least, as I wrote. But if the plan is to bring the secret of the wing out entirely—which was what the Oracle pointed to—Yeola-e has to become the fourth sept. We adopt the whole nation as family.”

“The whole nation?”

“Yes—and someone has to come down to live here, willing to be the Yeoli Speaker to Sea.”

“Immediately? I can’t leave any of us who are here now; they’re all warriors and Yeola-e needs every last one. But I’m sure I could talk someone into it. All I need to do is describe this place. ‘No snow up to the eaves, no shoveling, no dying if your fire goes out…’ I will find one non-warrior who bitches a lot about cold.”

“So, you need to get your Assembly all right with this, yes?”

“Yes, to appoint an ambassador. Right now, they’ll do anything for allies. I won’t be able to explain to them just how much of an effect such a small unit can have; but you’ll prove it soon enough.”

She looked at me, a touch displeased. “Your people will only think it is an ambassadorial position, while my people will think of it as you becoming family, because how important we hold our secret... Chevenga, this might not work.”

“It doesn’t matter what my people think,” I said. “It matters what the ambassador thinks. Diplomatic types are used to going through the local ceremonies of belonging to other nations.” One diplomatic non-warrior who bitches about cold, I corrected myself in my mind. “It matters what I think… but I don’t mind becoming family to the A-niah. I’m already family, through her, to you.” I couldn’t help a grin.

“As long as your people understand it’s not just keeping an office here…”

“What does it involve, precisely?”

“Well, you and I are going to marry, right?” she said, as casually as any other part of the planning.

I stopped up short, blinking, then felt myself blush down to my neck. “Well… if… if you were to ask… I’d… answer.” Did women do the asking among the A-niah, like Yeolis, or men, like Enchians… or was it usually arranged by parents, like in Laka or Arko, and she was bucking hers? I realized I didn’t know.

“All right, first things first. Will you marry me?”

“Uhm…” I felt the blush go further down. There are usually more formalities, I wanted to say. “Well… in Arko we were married in spirit,” I finally said. “So we still are, really.” She seized my head by my hair and was about to seize my mouth in hers when I said “Wait, wait, love… I’m not finished … a semanakraseye’s marriage generally has to approved by Assembly.”

She took a deep, exasperated breath. “I see... more diplomacy... right.”

“Normally it would just be a formality. Because you’re not Yeoli, someone’s going to kick up a fuss. My shadow-father already wants to, I can tell.”

“Yes,” she said knowingly. Wonderful, Esora-e, you’ve already let something show. “And possibly your friend, your guard captain. Merao always said we were almost the colour of Lakans.”

“Light-coloured Lakans. Esora-e and Krero are both good hearts, just a little rough around the edges.” I had a feeling I’d be saying the same to them about her, soon.

We talked more about what the bond between Yeola-e and Niah-lur-ana would look like as we walked. I told her what I had not been willing to commit to writing, in case it was intercepted: how the Arkans had failed to get the secret out of me after she’d escaped. As I told her how the truth-drugging went, her shoulders began to shake, and she gasped, “Take the baby!” I did, and she sank right down to the sand, curled on her back, laughing so hard I thought she’d break ribs.

“I imagine it must have been terrifying for your people, knowing a prisoner of Arko knew,” I said, when she was able to stagger back up, with my help. We could not keep our hands off each other; it was to reassure ourselves, I knew, that the other was truly alive.

“It was the wildest argument around the council fire you’ve ever seen here. They were within a hair of deciding to kill me once she was born.” I felt my hand in hers tighten so much I hoped I didn’t hurt her fingers.

“Did they consider sending assassins to Arko to off me?” I said. “If I’d been them, I would have.”

“They were thinking of it; I mentioned it in a letter.”

“The first few I remember a little fuzzily, still,” I said.

“But that’s where the dream and my decision not to kill myself came into play. The Oracle believed me that I dreamed true of Lord Friend. And then we did the Oracle.” There are two meanings of the A-niah word, the person and the ritual. She told me how it had gone.

The grotto of the Oracle is on the westernmost island, which has such high cliffs and wild winds that people traditionally go there only by harnessing themselves to wires which they’ve joined the next island to it, and sliding across. The cave is dry except when wind comes strongly from the west, so it usually fills with water during the day and empties again when the wind dies down in evening.

Six figures were carved of sacred camphor-wood: a sea-eagle representing the A-niah, a land-eagle for the empire of Arko, a circle for Yeola-e, a tiny wing for the moyawa, and a woman and a man doll for Niku and me. Before dawn, to incantations of voice and shell-flute, they were set standing on the wet sand of the cave’s floor, in a pattern that reflected life: Arko and Yeola-e locked in war, me close to Yeola-e but close to Niku too, the A-niah and the wing together. Waves filled it, their crash echoing up through the spout at its apex. When darkness had fallen, the people went back inside to do the divination by where the figures were now.

“Arko’s eagle was gone, swept out to sea,” she said. “The sea-eagle was where it had been, pretty much. The wing, the circle and I were heaped together, the wing furthest out towards the sea, so that the sunlight of dawn touched it. At first I didn’t see you, and my heart went sick. If it’s a person it means they’re dead, or matter none, which for you would mean you were dead. But as we were looking at it someone yelled, ‘There!’ You were on a ledge, higher than our heads… standing.”

The Oracle had read that to mean, first, that Niku’s vision had been true, absolving her, and second, that it was time to share the secret of the wing with the world, as they would have done sooner, had the world been kinder. They hadn’t ratified it yet, though, wanting to speak with me first, but the prospects were good.

She’d told me in a letter that since, like me, she had learned much about Arko as a slave there, she’d been given command of a hundred-twenty-eight strong unit of flyers once she’d been absolved, and fought until she’d become too big. Now she told me what she’d spared me while I wore the green ribbon: the Arkans had attacked the islet the A-niah use as a hospital, killing everyone there including a Haian, and razed it. I wondered if Dinerer had called all her people out of Arko yet.

“But one thing that baffles people about the Oracle,” she told me, “is how you could rise high, when… you know.” My country is four-fifths conquered and my army barely exists, as you’re too kind-hearted to say, I thought. “You’re going to have to argue your prospects.”

“I am with everyone,” I said. “No point in wasting time starting.”

“Will your guard captain, and your family, be all right with letting you come alone to the council fire tonight?” she asked me.

“If not, I’ll stand on rank.”

“It could be that you say the right things tonight, you might be adopted tonight... I could be getting the wing together in the next few days.”

“Just what I need,” I said. “More parents.” We shared the laughter of people in their early twenties.

“Everyone I want in the wing already knows. They are the best, at flying, teaching and building.”

“What are the right things to say?”

She stroked her hand through my hair. “Just be yourself, love. Let them know you’re trustworthy as I know you are. Will you be able to talk to everyone? You said your tongue tends to lock up now.”

“It’s fine as long as I don’t talk about being tor—” She looked at me startled, the spot at the centre of her brow darkening with concern, until it came to her.

“Which you just tried to. Ama Kalandris… I was going to get you out.” I made the sign meaning the stroke of the past, several times, hard. “I want to take you on a real flight, pehali, as soon as possible.”

“Take me?” My heart lifting freed my tongue.

“Yes, by moytsva—double-wing. One pilot, one passenger.”

“When? It has to be when my people aren’t looking.”

“The instant I can get you way from them. I have to come get you tonight anyway, since the council will be on Ibresi.”

“How… high…” I was breathless. “…can we go?”

She looked up. “That’s Sijurai—Baska’s love—up there, keeping watch, see? Not that high at night, but close.”

I couldn’t help but let out a giggle like a boy. “My captain thinks he’s a sea-eagle!”

“So do most foreigners around here.” In my arms, our tiny daughter stretched, and began fussing; I passed her to Niku, who popped her onto the breast without even a glance. They were both experts. “I’ll have to be so careful, with my baby on my back and my love harnessed beside me! I’ll only be able to do tame things.”

“You take her up? Start them young? Of course, she had her first flight when she was a tadpole swimming in the pond of you. There must be no A-niah with fear of heights.”

“No. Nor Yeolis, if you’re any indication. You know, it will be good to be unburdened of secrecy; people forget that hiding something eats away at your soul.” Vriah let go and carped; Niku flipped her around expertly to switch breasts. “You haven’t flown from childhood—I can’t imagine how strange that must be—but you were learning fast in Arko.” She ran her hand through my hair again, making my loins surge, and smiled. “And you have plenty of years ahead of you to master it.”

My tongue, and the world, froze.

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