“She is considering things,” Orluvoq replied. “Eighteen is a tumultuous age.”
“You fear that she isn’t your daughter, hasn’t been for years, and never will be again.”
Tiaavuluk. No one cared a whit for her tonight. In fact, the last time she’d felt human warmth was when her father visited two years ago. She cursed herself again for leaving Nunapisu.
“Why do you hate me so?” Her voice trembled.
“I do not hate you, wife. I—”
“You just love yourself so much that the outcome is the same.”
The moment stretched into pregnancy. The underglow of blue cast the king’s face into caricatures of villainy. Orluvoq’s stomach did a pocket-size dance. Had she just silenced Qummukarpoq?
At last, he moved, pausing at the doorway. “Sulluliaq must be open when the moai is complete. You will take beauty within two weeks.”
The prospect of having this conversation again now wilted her, so she let him walk away unanswered. The muscles down her chest and stomach relaxed.
Failed. Again.
Why? Why had every move she’d made to find strength in the last thirty years only left her more helpless? Rejoining her clan, besting tuuaaq, gaining beauty, conquering the blue flame, becoming queen, rescuing her daughter. It seemed that any crutch could be weakness, even a crutch that would be called strength in any other light.
She sought sleep, but the muscles around her stomach hadn’t relaxed as much as she’d thought.
So, she pretended.
26
Orluvoq
The Nuktipik were not a people much given to war. Winter’s inclemencies tolerated little save barest survival, and summer’s pleasantries brooked only a scrape above that. If your clan of thirty only had six strong hunters and your hunters must double as warriors, it wouldn’t be long before your clan of twenty-seven only had three hunters.
As Orluvoq sat on the not quite comfortable ice throne listening to a woman explain why the queen needed to interfere personally in a clan dispute turned bloody, she wished she had been a better student of the islanders’ warmonger ethic. But more accessibly, she wished she could dispatch a detachment of Rapai’ian matatoa to go and knock some sense into these people’s heads. That would be much simpler than working it out herself. A canny ruler delegates.
“And how long did you say these… troubles have been going on?”
“For three weeks when I left to come here. So, unless they’ve reached a truce, then about a month.” The woman nodded, more to herself than to Orluvoq.
“Total losses on either side?”
“Well, you must see. They started with a clan of fifty-two, and us of thirty-nine. They’ve always encroached on our territory, but this time they stole raw kills that our hunters had brought down. So, we—”
“Total losses?” Orluvoq didn’t need to hear the story a second time.
“When I left, we were down to thirty-four and them to forty-six.” The woman gave her self-affirming nod.
Orluvoq sighed. The inertial aspect within her ached at the thought of skywalking north, but it would be good to get away from the castle—and Qummukarpoq—for a while. Maybe she would even stay a few days to make sure things remained quiescent.
“I will go forth, if not tonight then the following one. We will see this conflict resolved, or else Nunapisu will soon have eighty new bodies.”
“Thank you, thank you,” the petitioner said, bobbing her head each time and wiping at her eyes.
As an attendant stepped up to direct her out of the hall, the king strode through the doorway with a girl in tow. The three attendants and the one petitioner all bent at the neck in obeisance.
Qummukarpoq spoke as he walked to the middle of the hall. “I will fulfill this entreaty, wife.”
Orluvoq bridled her surprise, giving only a genteel nod. “If it is your wish, husband.” She burned to ask what the girl was here for, but a putrid feeling in her gut told her she already knew.
He gestured and waited for the petitioner to be led from the hall. “Now. You will take this girl’s beauty.” He placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder and steered her in front of him. She couldn’t be more than seventeen, and her loveliness would go unnoticed by none.
Olruvoq’s spine stiffened toward paralysis. She wanted to flout the call to vampiric action, to instead hunt her new path. But after last week’s failure with Qaffa, how could she hope for anything besides fumbling? The path lay yet afar off. Besides, she had consumed the beauty of hundreds, and what was the weight of one more?
Or. There was perhaps one avenue of defiance. A thread of strength in a tapestry of helplessness.
“What is your name, dear?”
“Kukkujuits,” the girl mumbled, eyes only staying on the queen for brief periods, then returning to the safety of the floor.
“And how did you come to stand before me today, Kukkujuits?”
“The king…” Kukujuits stopped with a minute glance backward.
“Speak freely. I have required it.”
“The king, he, um, he came to my village last night, woke me in my bed, and said I had to come with him. I couldn’t say—well, it was the king, you know? I didn’t know that he was taking me to you, but…” She bit both lips.
“I see. And now that you are here, do you offer your beauty of your own free will? You know it serves to keep Sulluliaq open and trade flowing between us and Rapai’i and the other islands.”
The girl faltered, repeating the word “I” four times before moving to the next word. “I will do… what must be done.”
Orluvoq’s eyes shifted to her husband. “You ask treachery of me. This girl had no choice but to come, and she absolutely does not want to be here.”
“No girl has ever wanted to stand before you.” The king stared tense serenity at her. “From the thousands of clans to the thousands of islands, not a one has approached your feet with relish. Blandishments and threats from kith and kin are all that bring them here. And after hundreds of offerings, you blanch before this one because I have brought her instead of her father?”
Orluvoq’s vitals prickled as with morning frost. The king esteemed the subtlety for naught, so it would do no good to attempt a defense of her position. “I will wait for a willing woman to come before me. Kukkujuits, you have nothing to fear from me. Unless you’d like to declare your willingness in plain speech?”
The girl shook her head from side to side as though beset by hypothermia.
“Then you are free to go.” Orluvoq motioned to an attendant to show her out of the hall, and Kukkujuits took a few jittery steps backward.
“Go nowhere,” Qummukarpoq commanded, eyes still on Orluvoq.
The attendant vacillated, throwing a glance to the queen. Kukkujuits’ hands took to wrestling each other.
“The kings above tax their people plenty,” said Qummukarpoq. “This is no different.”
“They tax material goods,” said the queen, “not the very bodies of their peoples.”
“Not so. The people have no material goods save they first expend their bodies in some way to acquire them. Physical possessions are but a manifestation of bodily sacrifice.”
“But strength rejuvenates. Beauty does not.”
“In the end, nothing rejuvenates.”
Orluvoq couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “What a heartening philosophy. Act on every evil inkling, for death erases all.”
Qummukarpoq adjusted the crown of tusks on his head. “If it is true, your appraisal of how much it heartens is immaterial. You can deny the winter is deadly because the mere intimation treads on your feelings, but doing so will get more than your feelings trodden on.”
Orluvoq shifted in her seat. “So you believe it?”
The king’s gaze sloughed pressure onto her like fat cut from narwhal bones slamming snow. “I live it.”
She had known he’d say something in that mold. He maintained a supposition that his stock was more elevated than those
he came in contact with, and that his angakkuq prowess would carry him to some inverted, celestial Nunapisu heedless of death’s timetable. At the same time, he knew that her usage of “evil” had substantial overlap with his usage of “expedient”, and she in turn knew therefore not to take his statement at face value. Twenty years of even an aloof marriage left the occasional indelible impression.
“Well, I do not.” She returned the gaze as best she could. “You speak of taxes. I do not like your taxes. They would take away a woman’s birthright simply because she’s unfortunate to be born under your rule. When merchants and emissaries come to breach Qilaknakka and travel Sulluliaq, we charge them a fee to keep the passage open. If they do not wish to pay the fee, they need not use our services.
“And look. That is exactly what they’ve been doing the past several years. Fewer and fewer of them see the value in the price, save those islanders addicted to tuuaaq, and most of them have run out of girls they can convince to make the trip with them. We are a dying fashion that you’re trying to force back into popularity.”
She didn’t add that nearly everybody from Nunapisu to the far isles held her in contempt, nor that this entire endeavor had been a massive exercise in neglect of their daughter.
A tuuaaq craving clipped her with an oblong, hollow twang. She wrung fists within her gloves to direct her thoughts to a bit of violence instead. Funny how she could go months without sparing a thought for the stupefacient stuff, even when taking minute doses, only for it to pounce on her at the least leisurely of times. Sometimes she wanted nothing more than to find Ikingut, her old ship’s angakkuq, and repay him for the tuuaaq he gave her three decades ago.
“I will explain that which you ought know by now,” said the king.
It rankled a little that he didn’t appear even a little rankled at her harangue.
“Sulluliaq exists so that the Nuktipik might gain a moai. The instant we saw their power, we saw the path to our vanquishment. We are outrivaled, and that must be amended. They might have shown us peace these twenty years, but their lust for war will eventually turn toward our depths. And when it does, I will be stationed here at the portal through the ocean sky to dissuade them with the power of a moai-bound angakkuq.
“Until then, we must show constancy in maintaining this rent in Qilaknakka. Any breaking of the treaty will see us accused of subterfuge and the agreement annulled. Enjoy it or despise it, the world became bigger when we opened Sulluliaq. So, if you think it evil for me to secure the future of the Nuktipik people, then evil I gladly sew into my life. You are obviously content to spare one girl when every child of the ice could perish under the unopposed assault of the islands and their thousand kings.”
Orluvoq held his gaze, but her insides felt no less desiccated for it. She wanted to stand and revile; to aim a righteous finger at his miserable gnarl of a spirit and reprehend him into decency. She could nearly feel the juices running across her tongue and down her chin from the delicious bite of denying him his megalomaniac wish. And she should. Unless she needed five more minutes of feigned sleep…
But she couldn’t. Because he wasn’t completely wrong.
As she wrestled with the wording of a logical denial, Qummukarpoq placed a hand on Kukkujuits’ shoulder and steered her in front of him. “Orluvoq. Do your duty as queen of the Nuktipik.”
Orluvoq examined the girl and found her no less or greater than any of the countless others she’d siphoned youth from. It was Orluvoq who was different. She wanted to purge from her this numbness. Now that the appendage came sizzling back to life, it nettled like an onslaught of subdermal teeth jabbing for freedom. She’d either have to let it painfully revivify, else roll back on top and smother it insensate.
Smothering struck her as the more attractive of the two options. The weight of failure. The sleet of her husband’s argument. And one additional fact scampered by with every third thought.
She was getting ugly.
Merely having the thought irked her, but the implications rattled her, and that irked even more. She was still comelier than most—well, all—thirty-eight-year-olds. More eye-catching than any eighteen-year-old, even. But she could feel her stolen beauty fading. The same miniscule, back-of-the-face sag that had first whittled at her twelve years ago, the only time she’d ever let Sulluliaq shut.
She looked at Kukkujuits again. What was the weight of one against hundreds? What would it hurt to wait until the moai rested in the castle to finally cast aside helplessness? She placed a hand above her pocket and felt the bulge of candles within.
“Husband,” she said at last. “I will do my duty and keep the tunnel open. But I, myself, cannot bear to forcibly take any girl’s beauty. Bring me one who is willing. Bring four past their prime. So long as they are willing, you will find that I am also willing.”
What was the weight of one against hundreds?
Enough.
The king briefly looked to an attendant, but they had all relinquished their beauty years ago. He fixed his regard and all its weight upon Orluvoq for too many cold heartbeats. She distantly noticed that he held no candle.
“I will make it so.” The king turned in a swooshing of white and paced out of the hall.
Tension ran from Orluvoq’s torso, and she succeeded in not exchanging any looks with the attendants. They shouldn’t know her true heart. She instructed that Kukkujuits be provided for. The girl reminded her too much of Qaffa. Thinking of which, she should appeal to Nalor to see if he could go topside and complete the work she could not.
Orluvoq left her throne and stumped through the halls, trying to work out the rest of the tension. Her beggar’s victory felt empty. The people of the ice weren’t the only ones with access to great power. If Sulluliaq closed, the islanders wouldn’t accept silence and mystery. They would sail out with all their greatest moai and forge Sulluliaq anew—or something cousin enough to transverse. What, then, would her thawing morals and new strength be worth? And what would they have cost?
A new path. A new price. If the better path cost the world, was it really the better path?
27
Qaffanngilaq
Most flowers looked dazzling, smelled delightful, and tasted pathetic. That had been one of the first bits of woodcraft Qaffa picked up as a six-year-old on Rapai’i. Most flowers, however, didn’t include the puati.
Qaffa nudged aside woman-sized leaves and pliant, arm-thick branches as the forest sucked her deeper in search of a puati. She’d only seen its pink and orange flourish of anatomy four times, being allotted a single petal on each occasion. It always hit the tongue and melted into a mellifluous muddle more pleasurable than any fruit.
Often, foragers would seek for three or four days before finding a single puati. Qaffa had only been at it two hours, but she felt victory lay just around the next fern. Not that she would mind if it took four days. Puati was always worth it. And the time might help cleanse her spirit.
Floes of resentment and bewilderment bumped their way around her heart. Her mother’s visitation of a week ago still had sufficient claws under her skin to reagitate at every unwary move.
What right did the queen think she had? Leave Qaffa to flounder about for years of youth, then come and impose rule once she was old enough to decide for herself? Orluvoq should have tried that long, long ago. Not that father would have let her. Qaffa evaded considering what blame was her father’s portion. It disagreed with her much more than focusing on what her mother—
She slowed as a subliminal buzz leaked up her neck. She was being followed. Likely some tree cat. She’d been walking too long for a human to have trailed her. She should have been probing out with tuuaaq to make sure of it. No better time to remedy that than now. Her hand reached to her sealskin bag to arm herself with a candle.
Something cracked across the back of her head and she pitched to the ground. The scent of unwashed sea witch exploded between her eyes and vented out her nostrils. She groped around the forest floor for the candle,
pleading for her vision to recalibrate. A blurry woman’s form reached down and snatched up the tuuaaq taper.
Addicts. Of course. If anyone would track her through miles of jungle just to get a fix, it was addicts. She needed to regain her wits before they started searching her for more.
Too late.
A man without a moai rolled her over and pilfered her bag of the remaining candle. A woman with a far too obtrusive lower jaw shoved grimy hands into any weave of Qaffa’s clothing that might conceal a candle. She threw off Qaffa’s every attempt to push her away.
“Two?” her pinched voice demanded. “Two’s all you got?”
Qaffa’s rubble brain was returning to grooves and paths. “It’s all I needed. I can get more if we go to the palace.”
The woman scowled, bottom lip folding over the top. “No. You’ll just get us killed. Two it is.” She looked to the man. “Kill her.”
That shocked Qaffa’s brain back into paths and grooves even quicker. She tried to raise up to her elbows, but the woman leaned a knee against her chest.
The man looked from side to side. “But Kinoki, I already gave her a real big bonk. I don’t want to do no killing. We got the tuaku. Let’s go.”
Kinoki’s demeanor darkened to nightshades and she cuffed him across the ear. “How dumb? How dumb are you? We let her go and she goes straight to Ariki Haka’atu, then he’ll be after us with aaaallll the power of his moai. Do I gotta say it again?”
He rubbed at the side of his head. “No. But I… She’s not so bad, right? She’s the ice princess. Maybe she can just go home to the ice instead?”
“Amomo!” Kinoki’s eyes bulged. “Do it now! She’s a tuaku burner.”
Amomo stared down at Qaffa a long time, and she poured all the pleading she could back at him. Then he finally looked down at his tuuaaq spoils, said, “Okay,” and reached for her throat.
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