Soon, the lead guard serpent issued small-circuit security clearance to two humans and a phoenix, they who are Human Triad. With their stone leaves full of earthshifted writing, the guard serpents dispersed, to disappear into water pools at the room's corners. Some of the guards slipped into the water but circled immediately back out, and took posts along the walls where they stood sentinel, watching.
Sureness was the only guard serpent by their sides now; Nimble's fins trembled with the exertion of waiting and Sureness wound a barbel brief into his, a sharing of calm. Then they both circled away.
Another wall of serpents waited, with their attentions fixed hopeful on the Human Triad. These ones were closer to Nimble's size, and carrying lumps of glinting metals. As a brave few approached, they shifted their lumps into writing leaves the size of blankets.
Once Esha understood, she didn't mind their gathering enormity so much: these serpents were scribes. They came to document everything worth knowing.
They begged attention from Atarangi and Rooftop, the more skilled speakers who had aphorisms worth recording. Esha sat on her wheeled cart, uneasy no matter how she shifted her shrieking joints. But soon, a triad of serpents noticed her and approached, slithering gradual and fluid as though sharp motions might make Esha somehow capable of bolting.
“Query:“ one asked her, “this one is Precious One?”
“Statement: this one is.” Their language made a building effort out of even the simplest ideas; Esha hoped she had enough bricks for anything she might want to say.
“Request: will you answer our queries?”
She supposed she could try.
In the unchanging light of the glass bulbs, she answered their endless questions. About all the reasons she was wearing clothing, and how flexible her hands were, and how she survived in the wind-scoured, light-baked conditions of the surface. It seemed, Esha thought with a patience-sugared amusement, that serpents found humans as hardy as yaks and only a little more intelligent.
“Query:“ a scribe asked, “the human species cannot earthshift, not even slight?”
“No, we can't. Lungta is for speaking, and nourishing our bodies. That's mostly it.”
The flexing fins around Esha spoke one clear message: oh, poor things.
“Assurance:“ another scribe clicked, “your kind will reach ( ) advent, in some future pulse.”
That felt like sincerest reassurance — but it was a thought that rippled uncomfortable through the rest of the scribe triad.
“Addendum: human ones earthshift with muscle-force?” one tried. “With claws, hypothetically?”
“Claws? Oh.” Esha held up her hand to smile at her hoof-thick fingernails. “These aren't claws, they're only nails. Mine are thicker than most humans', but it's no matter: I don't dig with them. We use spades for that, we farmers. It's something I always—“
Esha was explaining, digging into the pack underneath her and drawing out her farming spade — and in that simple instant, the serpents' pinning fins made no sense. Neither did their scrambling, climbing backward over themselves in panicked loops as their toothy mouths opened and barking cries tore out. Ringed with the chaos, holding the ordinary handle of her farming tool, Esha didn't understand and she sat frozen as a guard serpent darted to the forefront and threw their spread hands against the floor. A force like gale wind crashed against Esha and she was on the rock ground, joints stabbed with the impact — and Esha couldn't move, couldn't even draw a breath.
“No!” came Atarangi's shout. She ran to a guard with open hands, and her terror-wide eyes locked with Esha's for a heartbeat. “Query: what wrong did she commit?”
Statement, the guard was clacking fierce. Weapon. Not tolerate hostility.
“C-Can't,” Esha murmured with what air she had. There was rock curled cold and enormous around her, so tight that she could feel her hammering heart against her emptied lungs.
“It wasn't— Statement: the situation was misunderstood. Esha, what was your—“
Their eyes locked again. This time, Atarangi saw the full trouble.
“Alarm: this human is dying! Release her! Release her body, she needs air!”
Clicking rang harsher. Black spots consumed Esha's vision. Serpents came wet-sliding to her side and then the pressure was gone, and Esha was staring at wet-speckled rock while gasping deep and thanking each and every god.
“Esha!” Human hands laid on her, Atarangi's warmth with Rooftop's thin keening above her. “Breathe, kin. Just breathe.”
“I—I thought ...”
“It's alright.”
She left too soon, to ask in a steely voice what the meaning of that was.
The meaning, it turned out after a timeless moment of discussion, was an imagined attack. A glimpse of steel in a human's hand: that typically meant blood spilling a moment later. An idiotic assumption, said Esha's gut. It was a demeaning, gossip-slimy thing to claim, on a mountain where guards carried blades and humans shunned anything not like them.
The scribes had fled. Esha climbed back onto the wheeled pack, and dug out herb to chew, and waited for her shaking to subside.
In the shadows of Esha's side vision, a new serpent crept closer.
“Request:“ she asked, clicking quiet and steady as two sewing thimbles, “may this one make queries?” She straightened to full torso-height: she stood barely taller than Atarangi, with a round-eyed face as delicate as a cat's.
Esha took another deep breath for good measure, deep enough to taste the moisture and must of the cave. She rubbed her face, though her terror tears were already gone. “You may.”
“Query: that one was unable to respire, despite your head remaining fully freed. Are human lungs not the round nodes on the sides of your heads?”
That took a moment to percolate into understanding. Then Esha buried her forehead in her palm and smiled the widest, purest smile she had ever known.
“Ears. We call those ears.”
Esha spent more time with Bravery, the new little scribe. Together, they drew ugly but highly accurate diagrams of humans and serpents, with arrows detailing how each one drew breath.
“Gratitude:“ Bravery told her, rolling the metal leaves into manageable tubes, “this information enriches the Community. Query: may this one ask further queries later?”
With her tired-wobbling vision and her body sore in new and old places, Esha nodded. “I see no reason why not.”
Atarangi lost her strength soon after that. She sank against the wheeled cart and ate the slightly crushed chapattis Esha passed her.
“Morning Sky learned a lot today,” Rooftop said, while sharing the pack's sitting space with Esha. “This is a new-growing field for us to take seeds from.”
“That's fine,” Esha said. “I hope I'm not the pigshit turned into the soil, though.”
“Language,” Atarangi murmured.
It was the last time she spoke that evening: some serpents dragged mats of green-dense moss over and laid them out as a semblance of human beds. Despite the pond slime smell, it was the most welcome thing Esha had ever laid her head on.
Chapter 21
Time didn't make any more sense when Esha awoke. She felt in her sinews that it was morning. Rooftop tried to explain the pulses — apparently some timing system related to the golden tube along one wall — but he folded his crests confused once Esha asked how long a pulse was supposed to be.
With water, betel nut and cold rice sitting uneasy in her belly, Esha called a guard serpent over. It made everything inside her shake with fear, her ingrained obedience and her fear of gigantic strangers, too, but she couldn't live in a place where a digging spade was an object of terror.
“Statement:“ she said uneasy, hoping she was getting the patterns right, “my spade, the metal thing I had earlier. It can't injure anything. Request: I can show you?”
After fin-folding hesitation, the serpent went to a phalanx of others. They all came, fanning to surround Esha: one held the spade in a tigh
t-wound barbel, high above Esha's reach.
“You can hold it lower. Statement: it's for growing plants. The edges aren't sharp. You— Query: you must have noticed that it isn't sharp?”
Surprise rippled through the serpents present. They were astonished that humans were complex enough to plant things and then wait, Esha gathered from their flicking and tendril-folding. Graceful of them to discuss it in front of a yam farmer.
But they gave the spade back, poised for the consequences. With open hands, Esha reached to the spade's metal edge and put the pad of her thumb against it. She pressed, and then lifted the thumb so the serpents could see the complete lack of blood. They clicked; their snake bodies untensed.
“We use these to scoop the soil. Because we don't have earth-moving lungta — you recall?”
“Query:“ one clacked, “humans use metal tools for more than aggression?”
“Yaah, yes, we have plenty of tools.” Esha's eyes went wide. “Did you think that every metal thing we hold is a weapon?”
Around her, leviathans shifted, shrinking like folding up their sensibilities.
“Statement: the matter has a long history,” one guard said. “Abbreviation: yes.”
Atarangi must have overheard the discussion: she came to Esha's side, with Rooftop still an assistant fixed on her bare shoulders. She took over explaining and she used the eloquent words the matter needed.
Esha listened for a while to Atarangi's summary of human peace talks. Serpents came, offering baskets of lichens and pondweed and even arrays of whole fish dressed with fragrant vinegar; serpents took from these baskets and ate; Atarangi did the same, her hands raising tempted toward the fish but she apparently had no plans to swallow one whole like the serpents did.
Esha drifted away, chewing the foulness from a lichen branch. She hadn't looked close at the fine-etched walls yet.
She mostly enjoyed the looks of the walls, at first. The lines leading her eyes around the carved pole-holsters. Not a single pole jutted from any wall she could see; maybe, Esha supposed, the holes were only used on occasion. For flags, or torches, or something else she couldn't imagine.
Esha was considering etchings — and having little luck forcing her lungta to the task — when a guard serpent approached.
“Query: this one is uninjured?”
This was Sureness, Esha was moderately sure; the sight of his phoenix scar confirmed it.
“Well, my ribs hurt — they weren't gentle. But I'll live.”
He shrank, all his fins and fronds folding at once. “Apology: this is a failing of Deepling society. Venturers are excessively enthused, at times.”
“Venturers?” The word had crevices in it, meanings too subtle for Esha's betel to push into.
“Statement: venturers are those who go into the skylight.”
Skylight was a word Esha could translate; it felt strangely like cursed or lost.
“Statement:“ Sureness went on, “few serpents have the needed attributes to venture. Size and muscle-strength are needed, to intimidate those who would strike serpents down. Earthshifting aptitude is vital. Inclination to panic must not be present.”
It did sound like guard caste — except with a missive to explore, not to simply pace circles around known territory. And without an inclination to bother low-castes. And, Esha guessed, Sureness probably didn't accept rupee bribes.
“It sounds like you've got an honourable position,” Esha tried.
She meant it as a beige, neutral statement. But Sureness flared his fins and clicked gratitude. Honour, Esha had to remind herself, was something to want.
Sureness stayed at her side while she limped along the District's round walls. He explained some of the written meanings. There was a hatchery all serpent eggs hailed from. There was a time of life where hatchlings wandered the Community, studying every etched word that serpent society had to share. There were fountain-like pulses of water within Tselaya, which serpents directed into tubes and measured time with. It was enough to fill a library to its roof beams.
As Esha's steps slowed, Sureness offered his largest right barbel to lean on. It didn't look sturdy but, Esha found, it bore her weight as well as any sure-fastened selfrope.
Nimble joined them. He chattered delight at the things Esha had learned; he suggested reading further.
“Statement: learning abounds!” He then extended a barbel into a pole holster, leaning to stuff the appendage in as far as it would go, beaming open-mouthed at Esha.
“Learning? Wait a moment — what are these holes for?”
“Statement: stories dwell within! Enrichment!”
Esha stared, with her own mouth open to match. “Are there ... carvings in there?”
“Assessment: humans cannot use story-passages,” Sureness said, quiet with disappointment.
“Well, no— I don't have anything on me that'll fit.” Esha shuffled to the next story passage over, and stuck her fingers in until her hand stuck tight. Ridges met her fingers: she just didn't have the right lungta in her belly to shape sense out of them. Earthshifting, she reminded herself. It was an incredible skill, something more suited to demons or gods than to people.
“Regret:“ Nimble said, tugging himself free of the wall, “this one and her Triad cannot read story passages.”
“Regret:“ came a demure clicking behind him, “humans would benefit from doing so.”
Bravery circled, staring up at Nimble and Sureness with eyes like the lungta-shining sky. “Query: has this human been informed of the Deflected Words?”
Nimble tightened his looped self. “Objection:“ he clacked, “that knowledge would not aid the Human Triad.”
“Rebuttal:“ Sureness clicked mild, “it might.”
Pausing, letting the gravity steep in, Bravery regarded Esha. “Proposal: this one aspires to her name. She has achieved little toward its validity. Ergo: this one will recount the Deflected Words events that both humans and Deeplings might avert their attentions from.” She wound away. “Request: follow. Hear me.”
Unsure if she wanted to or if she was simply obeying, Esha followed. Sureness matched her pace, barbels a net of support; Nimble slunk along by Esha's other side.
Her fins standing sure now, Bravery stopped at a story passage and gazed into its word-heavy depths.
“Assurance: ask any hatchling beginning to study the storied walls, and they will tell you of the Deflected Words. Statement: that event occurred over five million pulses ago, when this deep-born breed commenced extending the Community to ( )-( ) elevation. One triad went into skylight to gather surface-pond plants. Then humans came.”
Bravery turned cat-bright eyes to Esha.
“Statement: the triad stood in the shallows, offering words. Emphasis: words. But contradiction: the humans would not listen. They bared weapons.”
“Really?” Esha said. “The serpents didn't menace the humans at all?” The story ran counter to everything Esha had ever heard, every story called plausible by a town arbiter.
“Statement: one serpent escaped. That one was mentally shattered from the experience. But he testified that his triad made no aggressive overtures.”
Esha had nothing to say. Her Kanakisipt grandparents hadn't even been born at that time — she guessed, since five million pulses sounded like a lot. “That's all you know about it?”
“Statement: it is. The incident has been discussed in all the pulses since, by every student of our philosophy. Quandary: how can an individual know what is objectively true?”
Esha certainly couldn't. She looked away into the glass-lit dampness. For all the times other humans spoke fears of serpents, she would have imagined actual attacks were made. Maybe not fuelled by malice — maybe just from the two breeds startling one another in the forest, or from one hungry serpent not fussy about its meal.
Her legs hurt. So did her head.
“Supposition: the Deflected Word was an event we must continue to discuss. If we cannot understand the past, it will inevitab
ly return to plague us.”
Sureness clacked irritable. “Statement: the story is told. Query: what do you wish Precious One to glean?”
Gathering her thoughts, Bravery relaxed her poise; she was a tall candle melting from its own flame. “Statement: this one wished to tell a human of the Deflected Words. Hypothesis: since serpents secret ourselves from humans, they may not know. They may not have preserved the information.”
“I didn't know,” Esha admitted. “There's a lot I don't know. But it seems that friends' patience and a slathering of lungta can fix it.”
Bravery looked again into the story passage. “Assurance: that is a wise answer.”
“Bravery,” Sureness intoned.
“Suggestion: those ones should tell the Human Triad of our Abyssal.”
“No.”
Glowering with spread fins — at the rude phrasing, Esha was tentatively sure — Bravery clicked, “Statement: it must be done. When asking for trade accords, one's goals must be transparent.”
“Rebuttal: they do not need to be burdened with the knowledge.”
“Suggestion:“ Nimble tapped small, “maybe they should be burdened with it. Then those ones may more effectively assist us with our burden.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Esha said. In purest honesty, she was losing the will to care; the thought of pain herb and steaming hot millet was calling to her.
“Assertion: my goal has been accomplished.” Bravery settled all over, like relief escaping from under her fins. “Request: Azure Triad, tell the Human Triad why we are striving to establish relations. Precious One, consider well what you are told.”
Sureness and Nimble escorted her back to the spiral ramp landing. This was no time to lie to herself: Esha appreciated the company. She wanted even more of it, wanted to find Atarangi and Rooftop and Clamshell's chick and maybe even Clamshell, to ring herself with like a house full of tied-leaf dolls.
“Query:“ Esha asked, “you're going to do what Bravery said, aren't you? Tell us the whole foundation of this trade effort? Or, rather, tell Atarangi and Rooftop — they're the diplomats.”
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