“Observation: this one acknowledges the phoenix as a thought-sure being.”
“Well, yes. He's been fine company.” Esha shrugged. “So have you. Gods, if any of my field sisters heard me speaking this way, they'd think my goat traits have taken me over.”
Esha reined in her tongue — feeling foolish as a puppet, wondering whether to explain. But Sureness simply unwound his barbels from her arms, and balanced her back on her feet, and bade her to rest well.
Nimble still stood by her, coiled uneasy, flicking his gaze between Sureness's departing water ripples and Esha's moving face.
“Prediction: Sureness is going to apply for further exemptions.”
Esha put fingertips to her temples, to make dents in either side of her headache. It didn't help much but she satisfied herself with the slipping of long hair and rough fur through her fingers, and the damp air touching them both. Her damned goat ears flicked at the movement; she didn't touch those.
“I'm sure there'll be more exemptions and bargains and gods know what,” she said.
“Declaration: now that Human Triad is permitted in the Community, this one may show you additional growing projects!”
Esha frowned. “Can you show me tomorrow? I'm tired.”
“Request: this one has been anticipating ...”
Casting a look around, Esha didn't see Rooftop's beacon colouring, or any distinctive inch of Atarangi. Which meant they had brought the wheeled pack with them for safe keeping, and Esha had no way of walking her feeble self up kilometres of spiral ramp. For all the friends Esha had found, she was still far distant from some of the simplest things she wanted.
“I'll look at whatever you'd like,” she told Nimble. “If you can think of a way to get me there.”
Judging by the way Nimble chittered, Esha had just given him a wealth of gifts.
With eighteen lumps of silvery metal meant for writing leaves, and a show of lungta like watching marble carve itself, Nimble made Esha a wheeled pack of her own. He shaped the metal into curving bars and spoked wheels. Concentrated on the axels with an intensity that crinkled his brow. And then Esha had a seat to lower her creaking self onto. Nimble held out his blue-black tail fin, offered — and Esha loathed to grab it, fragile-looking membrane that it was. But the fin held like well-tanned leather, and Nimble began undulating his body, slithering along with cart-wheeled Esha jerking behind.
It was so absurd, harnessing him like a plough yak, that Esha bubbled up with laughter every time the wheels jammed against rock corners.
“You shouldn't be using lungta on things like that,” she said. “Isn't it needed right now?”
“Statement: this effort comes from Nimble's personal allotment. Also: Precious One, maybe this sight will give you strength? That one changes, transcends? Query?”
This was what friendship was. Esha had starved without it for a while and maybe she forgot, but she couldn't deny it now — that friends humoured one another and shared their tiniest precious sights. Even if the friend was a tar dealer, or a fire-starting bird, or a snake-fish lurking below. Esha had hooves and none of it mattered.
“If you think I should see it, Nimble, I'm sure it'll do me some speck of good.”
Nimble drew Esha's carriage down a winding path. It was lit blue by seed-yam-sized glass bubbles glowing against the ceiling, but dim enough to be soothing, dim enough that Nimble's finlights were a discernable garland. At a seemingly ordinary place in the path, Nimble earthshifted a cloth-thin rock wall away, and led further on. Light soaked into the walls from up ahead, light nearly the same white-warm colour as Nimble's finlights.
Soon, they came to the source of that light: threads rooted into the rocks that glowed like heated iron, except not red or white. They were the cool colour of a summer sky, and just as cool when Esha reached out to touch one.
“What are these?”
Nimble turned, slithering over himself in the narrow space, his fins flicking a mixture of emotions. “Statement: These are ( )grasp mushrooms. Pleasing decoration, and a keenly specialized breath-of-life for moving the body. Practical. Precious One, this is only part of my garden. Request: follow me.”
Esha couldn't say what she had been expecting. A garden like her own empire-enforced patch of earth, maybe — a few humble, leafy stalks that Nimble held more dear than an old-growth tree. The cave Nimble led her to was a completely different vision, and one that stole her breath away.
Nobles had gardens like this. The richest florists on Tselaya's highest peaks had such tall-swept ceilings, filled underneath with a colourful array of blossoms and leaves and glass-delicate vines. Nimble kept mainly bizarre serpent crops — in watery shades of blue and green and purple, some of them giving off a dusty glow — but Esha didn't need to know what these were to know that they were many, and precious.
“Good gods,” Esha breathed. She came farther into the garden, through the latticed beams of light — drawn down by bamboo. Hollowheart bamboo, maybe, since she could see a blanched-blue circle of sky. The light hurt her eyes; she bent to consider of one shaggy plant. It bent for her fingertips, a thing like the hybrid child of a cliffside lichen and a fruit tree. “It's beautiful. Did you do all this yourself, Nimble?”
“Assertion: all of this belongs to Azure Triad.” In the corner of Esha's vision, he swelled with pride. “Request: share insights! Has this one cultivated well?”
“I'd need to know what these are, first.”
“Statement: they are lungta plants! Reserves fit to bolster the Community! That one you scrutinize is notch-fronded ( ), best for intricate speech. The plant beside it is spiritgrasp, best for ( ).”
There were even lungta avenues that Esha had never heard of, never applied a word to in her thoughts. The world was a bountiful place, she thought while running leaves through her fingertips.
“Conclusion: that plant under the harshest light — it is this one's greatest achievement.”
Esha's breath caught in her throat. Before her, haloed with sunlight and hung with shadow, was a sesame plant more robust-looking than anything Esha had ever grown.
“Explanation: this plant's seeds were given to Azure Triad in a day's ration. This one planted a few exempted seeds instead, and read walls until growing parameters were found. And this one added more light tubes. We feared it would die without its hostile typical environment, but I was able to redirect enough harshlight!”
“Th-This ...” Esha took a furred leaf between careful fingers. “Low-ranking humans grow these. Men and women as simple as I am, in our gardens beside our houses. You want plants like this?”
Touch laid on Esha's shoulders — Nimble's barbels, as relaxed as rope. He shifted to Esha's side and here were his fish eyes, round and honest as ever. “Plea: these are valuable, Precious One! The seeds of this plant have apt lungta for limb dexterity and also for increasing a healthshifter's precision.”
Healthshifting. If that was remotely like earthshifting, then the serpents were gods secreted away in the dark.
“It was an honour,” Nimble went on, “to savour five seeds between my teeth and keep as many for this own garden.”
“An honour?”
“Affirmative!”
Esha pressed her mouth. Powers like gods, but yet one heaped handful of sesame seeds would be a revelation to the serpents. Esha could buy that much for pocket money.
“Humans grow many fine plants,” she said. “Some of them are so valuable, they're locked away where a low-rank like me could never hope to lay eyesight on them. You could do a lot if you swallowed plants like that — clever folk like you.”
Nimble's touch vanished. He slithered away, and bent toward a tiered colony of lichens.
“Aspiration: this one wants to see such plants. Any and all! Query: if that one obtains rare seeds or cuttings, please show this one. Such opportunity would mean the deeps to me.”
Nimble wheeled her back to the spiral ramp's base. This time, Atarangi and Rooftop stood prominent, within a
semi-circle of serpents who watched her mouth and hand movements, rapt.
“Atarangi,” Esha told her when she finally approached, “sister, let's go back to our surface. I want a hot meal.”
Her face had never been more honest. “That sounds like heaven.”
ever again would Esha take steaming-fresh grain for granted. She and Atarangi hurried rice and boiled yam into their mouths, blowing through stiff-arched lips like they blew clouds through the skies.
“You kin don't like the serpents' food?” Rooftop asked. He waited on restless-shuffling feet for his own yams to cool.
“It tastes fine,” Esha mumbled around her scorching mouthful. “S'just always cold.”
“Mm, I agree.” Atarangi gulped and spoke more graceful. “They make leaf-dressings like nothing I've ever tasted — but fire and cooked food don't seem to be a fixture for serpents, as it is for humans.”
A fixture: that was an apt way to put it. Esha shook her head. “If I had known getting my khukuri back would be such a legendary effort, I never would have darkened your door, sister.”
“Aren't you glad you did, though?”
“I suppose so, yes.” That fell honest from Esha's lips. “Forgive my lie, if you would. The climbing, the hauling ... I'd do it again.”
“From what I can gather,” Atarangi said, glowingly pleased, “the serpents recently hatched a large clutch of eggs. It's a community event, everyone hatching their eggs together.”
Rooftop trilled. “I like it. Sounds like kin-family. Can we ask to see the hatchery?”
Atarangi scratched his ruff in answer. “They've been feeding the new hatchlings, and also shifting new living spaces, new aquaducts to farm algae and deepwater pond weed — all typical burdens on the serpents' lungta crops. Then, around three months ago, a medical procedure came into being.”
Esha frowned.
“I agree,” Atarangi said, “that's no answer. There's treasure at the bottom of that sea. Whatever this procedure demanded unusual amounts of lungta, and it's related to all the earthquakes lately ... That's all I've been able to discern.”
“The ... Abyssal? One of the scribes told me a morsel of gossip she shouldn't have. Sureness is trying to get us clearance to be told what the entire trouble is. Yaah, even the emperor's nearest aide isn't so tight-lipped.”
Pausing, thinking, Atarangi relished her rice. “Whatever the serpents' trouble is, we should draw our own lines of permission. Are we willing to continue trading maize, vegetables, herbs ...?”
Esha nodded; Rooftop bobbed.
“I'd expect no less. However, if they need enormous quantities of lungta ...”
“We can't pull that from our own satchels.”
“No.” Eyes narrowing with a smile, Atarangi said, “How loyal are we to our fellow humans, Esha? A few trades among blackflags are no trouble, a few slights to this Empire we live under. But the serpents eagerly took your khukuri. Its orchid must be valuable to them.”
“Did you manage to ask about it?” Then, like a bolt from heaven, Esha said, “No, actually. Don't tell me. And if you haven't asked about it, don't bother.”
“You feel that it's gone?”
“It's ...”
She sighed. Rooftop tossed a yam chunk down his throat and then flexed smiling crests at her.
“I don't want the khukuri back anymore. Let the serpents have it, if it'll actually make one godsdamned bit of difference to their.”
Nodding, Atarangi scraped a last bite of rice onto her fingertips. “And what do you think, Clamshell?”
Esha didn't need to turn around to know the intent-glowing eyes in the tree behind her.
“The watersnakes have not black-watched my territory since you dove into the earth-hole. I give no flame to the serpents, none flickering-plucked from my tail ... But you kin talk yellow-wound-sense.”
Atarangi vanished that evening. She was there when Esha dropped her head to her bedroll, and she was gone from cold blankets when Esha rose. The wheeled pack was gone with Atarangi — but, always one to provide, she didn't leave Esha hungry. Rooftop fluttered onto her wheeled-chair to show her: Atarangi left a breakfast's worth of millet on the seat.
She returned while Esha was pouring pond water onto the snarling cooking embers. Atarangi's cloak looked odd, even larger than usual around her frame — but she smiled with weary delight and lifted both sides, for Esha to see all the bulging pockets.
“That's all the rupees I have,” she said. “Until my next Empire stipend, or until I scratch up a translation deal.”
“Or until we sell our shoes.”
“I would truly rather not. We need to make this last. But still — use it if you need to. Share it, give it to Nimble to tinker with, I don't know.”
She reached under her cloak, behind her own shoulder blades, and after some squirming produced a thick packet of pig leather. Inside was a pile of herbs, every pain herb Esha knew and some new ones, besides.
“That,” Atarangi said, “definitely needs to last.”
They pulled away the yankvine mat covering the spiral ramp, and began the descent. Esha was just wedging a rock under her chair's wheels — and mustering her strength to help Atarangi pull the cover smooth above their heads — when tremors gathered.
Earthshifting, Esha hoped in a frozen moment. Maybe it was a serpent earthshifting, but the earthquake took hold too strong for that. She and Atarangi stumbled to the passage walls, and crouched. With the yankvines blotting out the sky, Rooftop couldn't fly; he only huffed rapid until it was over.
They were fortunate that the passage didn't cave in. They were fortunate that, lower down, the collapsed rocks were few and scattered enough to climb over, and drag Esha's chair past. And once they reached the entrance to Deepling Community, they only needed to wait a few moments. All around, rigid-finned serpents slithered fast as garter snakes, and passed writing leaves, and put their barbels to cracks in the history-laden walls. But still, Sureness arrived, veering wide around shards of a broken light bubble.
“Statement:“ he clacked hard, “Human Triad's clearance to meet the Abyssal has been granted.”
Chapter 22
Esha didn't know what to expect. Serpent society didn't seem to know, either. The food serpents paused in their hurried circuits, frill-flicking what looked like greetings — before a swarm of other venturers shooed them away and demanded to inspect Esha and Atarangi's hands.
Esha considered explaining, as the venturers eyed her hoof-thick fingernails: possible weapon rang in their words. Some god must have been keeping guard over her: the goat's hoof points weren't grown in yet.
“Statement: human fingernails aren't sharp,” Atarangi volunteered. “Even when we allow them to grow long, they never become pointed claws.”
The venturers seemed to agree, braiding and clicking, pressing their barbels against Atarangi's fine nails and showing no discomfort.
“Query:“ Sureness offered, mildly present behind them, “how resistant are human nails?”
“How— Query: how hard? Not very. Statement: Human nails split and bend, often for no immediately discernible reason.”
“We sound like strange beasts sometimes,” Esha muttered.
Atarangi hummed agreement. And then she opened her mouth obliging, to show the same lack of efficiency humans had in their teeth.
After more discussion and explanation and wary prodding with barbels, the venturers declared human bodies a minimal threat.
“Directives:“ one told them, clacked dire. “These ones must speak when the Abyssal queries. These ones must utter no lies, and no insults of any similar kind. Lastly: the Abyssal is the greatness of depths. The Abyssal is many and venerable. Make no base presumptions.”
“Request: elaborate. Which base assumptions?”
The venturer shifted fins; it bought time in which to think. “Observation: humans have ... rigid concepts of personal being. Make no base assumptions.”
“Statement:“ Atarangi replied, unflin
ching, “we will strive to comply.”
As soon as the venturer moved a stone's throw away, Esha leaned to Atarangi.
“I still don't understand.”
“They mean, ah. Don't choose words carelessly when you address the Abyssal.”
Still clear as brick to Esha. “I just won't say anything,” she said.
“Except if the Abyssal-person addresses you,” Rooftop added, joining the close discussion. His beak felt like a varnished stick against Esha's cheek. “It's a sand-itchy problem ...”
“In a raging storm,” Atarangi said, “the sea floor still exists. If you offend their Abyssal, I'll still be here to negotiate.” She found Esha's hand and squeezed it. “I'm joking. This'll be fine. Just speak as though to a noble, and don't spit out the first thing through your head.”
That, Esha was fairly sure she could do.
More venturers came, and went, and discussed. Smaller serpents wove between them; leaves were passed like autumn flurries. Esha and Atarangi were led to one room, then another — and it was an utter surprise when they reached the great chamber.
It was a cavern larger than imagining, like the night sky was a construction diagram for a god's throne room. One half of the room was a rippling flat plane, a still pool of water. Lanterns hung from walls and ceiling, to shed gentle light like a sky full of stars and life.
Then, the lanterns moved. Esha understood slowly, in snowslide terror, that most of the lights were finlights bristling from the creature called Abyssal.
With a long shuffling — like leather dragged over stone to consume the space — the Abyssal turned toward them and lowered its massive head nearer. Its chin hung metres above the floor, its barbels falling, winding, into piles. There was so much of it that Esha's mind couldn't find sense until she looked into every glinting eye and picked the two most central ones to hold contact with.
Aides brought metal lumps to the Abyssal. Its tree-trunk barbels lowered, to grasp with clusters of smaller barbels like boneless, gelatinous hands. Leaves roared at a whisper volume as it earthshifted. Then the Abyssal passed the flattened writing metal back to scurrying, scraping aides, to be brought reverently to Atarangi. She swallowed. She looked to the Abyssal like into the faces of her childhood sea-beasts, and then she lifted the Abyssal's message.
Tinder Stricken Page 25