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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