“Greeting:“ she read, voice cracking only once. “We know great joys this pulse, sensing the approach of visitors.”
Atarangi pressed her mouth amused; Rooftop, craned over her shoulder, lifted delighted crests. That seemed to be the entirety of the message.
“Ah,” Atarangi said careful, “Greeting: these ones are honoured to be standing before you— You-the-many.”
Another metal leaf passed through barbels to Atarangi.
“Recitation: these ones calling themselves Human Triad, you negotiated with a land-claiming phoenix and, through that one, traded goods with my Deeplings. Query: correct?”
“Affirmative: we did.”
The Abyssal held the next metal sheet — simply held it. Staring at it with tandem-flicking pairs of its many eyes. Barbels twitching on its flank, rolling like wind battered them.
The aides saw the movement and darted to action — picking up blank-flasks and larger pots, laying their barbels in probing patterns on the Abyssal's wall-broad chest. They spoke their veiled fin-frill-braid patterns but tooth clicks interjected, too:
“Assertion: they cannot—“
They, Esha heard in her mind's ear. This Abyssal was called by we and they, simple words that dug toward more.
The Abyssal still stared through glazed eyes; three round pupils rolled toward the attendants and the behemoth spoke on clenched, ground teeth:
“Oncoming.”
They scattered. Venturers came at Esha and her friends with spread fins, snapping back, get back; Sureness was wrapping ropy grip around Esha's arms because her feet weren't moving fast enough. The Abyssal's finlights jerked and noise boomed through the cave from its tail slapping the water flat.
And the noise didn't stop; an earthquake took hold as Esha and Atarangi and Rooftop and slither-flowing multitudes of serpents poured from the chamber. There was nowhere to shelter from the entire crushing earth but the flow of serpents split three ways and Sureness dragged them rightward, into an alcove packed against clammy-cool bodies. Rooftop wheezed; Atarangi murmured; teeth clicked and someone's barbels held Esha tight.
The shaking subsided a few held breaths later. Serpents unwound from the safe confusion and slid back to their working positions; one of them instead approached Atarangi.
“Query: this one's triad is unharmed?”
After a hand laid on Rooftop's back, and a prayer of a glance to Esha, Atarangi said, “Affirmation.”
Esha didn't recall seeing this particular serpent before — despite their dapples and streaks and watery colouring sticking fairly well in her mind. This serpent wore his duty like a satchel weighing on his back, and he wore a silver wire around his neck — the first jewellery Esha had seen on these folk.
“Statement: this pulse is no less auspicious for being interrupted. These ones are the first humans to lay sight on the Abyssal's speech tiles. Addition: this one, Ceiling, is the first phoenix to do thusly in over eight hundred thousand pulses. The Abyssal receives few surface beings; most are unworthy to be visitors.”
That explained the confusion, and the excitement, and the scrutinizing of fingernails.
The serpent tucked his fins tighter. “No further tangent shall this one utter. Statement: the Abyssal requested that this aide speak on their behalf, if such unfortunate interruption should occur. Our Great Depth grows infirm. Fact: these ones have witnessed the consequences of such a righteous being's infirmity.”
“That earthquake— That was from the Abyssal?!” Esha blurted.
The serpent gave her a stare like a tin roof: not sharp enough to cut, just dripping.
“Apologies,” Atarangi said. “Your Great Abyssal is ill?”
With a little further staring at Esha, the serpent clicked, “Statement: in recent pulses, our Great Depth incorporated additional serpents. Assertion: one serpent disobeyed protocol; the Abyssal has contracted a mire fluke.”
Grazing in wet places, Esha thought with a chill.
“These parasites are removed with a simple process of healthshifting the affected — condition: under common circumstances. The Abyssal is nothing resembling common.”
Bowl-eyed, reaching for herb and pressing crisp edges of it into Esha's hand while she was at it, Atarangi nodded. “No, no — statement: the Abyssal is breathtaking.”
The serpent bowed his head. “Statement: the ascendence of combining brings gifts. Addition: it brings burdens.”
“Colleague?” A small, reedy aide approached. “Great Depth has been stabilized. They wish to attempt discussion again.”
Clenching his teeth like a bitten oath, the serpent relented. For the second time, Esha, Atarangi and Rooftop were led to see the great, unfortunate soul.
The Abyssal laid there, their dozens of eyes glassy, their neck full of lung fronds labouring. Where they stretched, Esha could see blue-dark lines like looping veins, shapes that commanded her attention until she recognised them: serpents. Entire serpents, laid together like bricks in a magic-bound behemoth of a god-beast.
Esha gaped. She watched nightmares moving, she stood beside a thrashing thing of incomprehensible lungta arts — but her legs were water and somewhere amid everything, a cord of sympathy tethered her from running. The Abyssal wasn't one unfortunate soul, but many.
“Apology:“ came their chorus voice on hundreds of glinting teeth, “Did— Not wish—“
They heaved breath. Serpent aides continued pouring pails of water over their back and rubbing salves on their wet-wicking skin.
“Human, Precious One.”
That was Esha. The enormity knew her name; the rules all leeched out of Esha's mind like water into sand.
“Yes?” came her voice.
“The surface flower within that one's cutting tool: had potent corrective lungta. Must request more. Without— W-With—“
Aides waved their barbels; the Abyssal spoke no more, only breathed, and the spokesman serpent beckoned them out.
“Statement:“ he clicked low, “without treatment, some of the Abyssal will be lost. In a worst outcome, our entire Abyssal will be lost. Warning: millions of ( ) live within them.”
That gap of a word overflowed with inadequate Grewian meanings: songs, stories, poems, loves, aches, histories and all the stitches that held a society in place.
“Assessment: The Community would be blinded in our truth's eye.”
Atarangi answered immediate, as Esha knew she would:
“Pledge: we will do what we can.”
They gathered around another fire and another boiled meal, and began scratching ideas into the dirt. Clamshell brought her chick this time; she sat just beyond the firelight's touch and put millet globs in the chick's seeking mouth.
“Our pockets definitely won't support this effort,” Esha said. “Not even yours, Atarangi.”
She hummed, flat but not disagreeing. “I don't believe my influence stretches that high up this mountain.”
“That lungta flower,” Rooftop asked, “we can't find it wild-growing?”
“Burn red, no fuel,” Clamshell said. “All purple-wordsmithing-song flowers of that petal one are in human troves.”
“They are,” Esha said. She stared into her bowl. Memories whipped like blizzard snow. The perfumes of orchid and plum blossom, changing as their soft-pelted petals were chewed. Oiled treewood put out for others to envy. The glass ceilings of hothouses, glinting like armour. Nobles on High Plateau lived by their negotiations but also by their coveting of plants that had once grown wild beside gumgrass and gwara spit.
Humans decided what and who was worthy, as though they had any such godforsaken right. As though they held all of Tselaya in their palms and truly understood its workings, and all its people. Esha had nearly believed it. For all of her life, she had guarded her Kanakasipt khukuri and nearly believed it.
“Esha?” Atarangi watched her careful. “What are you thinking?”
Atarangi's beak tip was luminous in the middle of her face. She looked fine without the mask. Mor
e people would live whole lives if humans loosened their covetous fists and learned to look a bird in the face.
“I'm thinking,” Esha said, “that I'm from the Kanakisipt house. I've seen where they keep the orchids — they're guarded, Atarangi. Guards patrol around the orchids. Same as rangers snatching up every decent scrap in the forest, like— like low-castes don't deserve more green than a bamboo shoot's edges.”
“You're saying ...?” Atarangi knew: her smile was unsure but solid.
“Maybe ...”
This thought chafed Esha's old sense of honour, the proper one she had endured for no gain.
“Maybe we should take the orchids back. Just ... take them back.”
Atarangi and Rooftop considered. And Clamshell kept feeding her chick but her crests swelled with pride.
The plan had enough pieces to cobble together. Serpents moved underground; surely they could get Esha close. Phoenix allies could keep watch for guards and other witnesses. And Esha held gem-valuable memories. With a bamboo sliver in the dirt, she sketched the Kanakisipt home and surrounding streets as best she could remember them.
“This all might have changed,” she conceded. She threw one hand toward the sky, even as she sketched a performance hall property with the other. “It's been more than three decades. But they're a traditional family — I don't think they'll have rebuild Kanakisipt manor just for the sake of it.”
Atarangi studied them, brow furrowed. “I can't set foot on High Plateau for this plan, Esha. If I'm caught, I'll be stripped of caste and thrown to the bottom of the mountain.”
“No, no, you don't need to.”
“You'll be stripped of caste.”
“Why should I care? Goats don't have caste.”
With a press of her lips, Atarangi tried again. “High-caste properties sprawl out large. The serpents can earthshift tunnels for us, but still — can your legs manage this?”
She yanked off one sock. Rusty-red goat fur and pitch lumps of hooves were Esha's answer; only a few thumbnail patches of brown human skin showed through.
“They're hurting less. I think they're nearly done turning.” That meant a cacophony of truths that Esha didn't care to consider just yet. “Get me to a wall's edge with a selfrope in my hand and this goat holding me up, and I'll manage.”
Nodding, her smile trickling back, Atarangi said, “This sounds like a blood-racing hunt you've got planned, Esha. We'll need more counsel to make it work, though. Rooftop?
“Am your kin.”
“Go visit our serpent friends, if you would. I've got some questions I'd like their answers for.”
Chapter 23
Esha's sandals barely held between her goat toes. She stuffed them into her satchel, never to be worn again. She wore only her socks, with packing jute wrapped around them to obscure shape.
“I'll just make myself out to be elderly,” Esha said, weaving bamboo leaves and sticking them with pine pitch. The effort was different from her dollmaking but the leaves were melding together into a passable enough mask. “No one with a gram of tact accosts a stooped old woman trying to walk on her turning legs.”
Picking the finer fabrics out of her own supplies, Atarangi looked to Esha. “Even on High Plateau?”
“They've got decency that high up, I should hope.”
betel for dye. Fashions some of Atarangi's packing material into a cloak, since it's actually pretty nice fabric.
“This might draw stares,” Atarangi ventured.
“It'll draw plenty of stares. Doesn't matter.”
With thinning lips, Atarangi swallowed more concerns. “If you're stopped by a guard, you should have some sort of contingent. A seamless excuse, or at least a distraction.”
“Seamless? I'm not a house to be caulked.”
By the fire, preening her chick while plainly listening, sat Clamshell.
“I can think of a fine distraction, though.”
Clamshell pledged her support — she did owe Esha the use of her wings. And as Esha's disguise came together, Rooftop came fluttering back up the spiral ramp Tied into his stringfeather was a silvery leaf of serpent writing, a strange partner to his diplomat's tag.
Serpents wouldn't need to earthshift new passages, he reported: there were already tunnels leading up to High Plateau's elevation. They were a pilgrimage path leading to a sacred place; clearance to visit that place was granted without any further need to ask.
“Also,” he said, “Sureness and Nimble give their orange-bright kinship. They want to help.”
“Thank you, dear kin.” Atarangi stroked his neck, so he leaned into the touch. “Esha will need all the allies she can gather.”
Wrapping her orange-patterned sleeping blanket into a cloak, Esha said, “That's always been true.”
Down in the Community, the venturers all scrutinized Esha's disguise, and made notes, and asked scribes to amend the notations on the landholder phoenix. Clamshell was going to benefit, Esha realized, from this human-aided orchid theft. Fate had a way of working in circles.
With Sureness and Nimble flanking her, Esha went before the Abyssal's aides. The sacred path began at the Abyssal's chamber and climbed like a cliff ivy, up into the mountain heights that serpents spoke of with clipped awe.
The spokesman serpent saw them again; he gave Esha another tin-roof stare but considering this time, black eyes roving over her supplies piled onto a serpent-made wheeled chair.
“Statement: this one suggests ambitious effort.”
Esha chose to take it as a flat-spoken compliment.
“In addition, however ... Keynote: this is deception against your own race. The taking of lungta plants is also cause for retaliation. Query: will there be repercussions for you, Precious One?”
“If they catch me,” Esha said, flat as tamped snow, “yes.”
Atarangi's hand laid on Esha's shoulder. “Sister, what a change in you ... But if you're caught with nameplates or property tokens— Well, please let me hold those for you.”
Untying token-heavy pendant cord from under her clothing, Esha shot a sidelong glance to her. “Don't trade them all for one plate of dumplings.”
“I'll make no promises,” Atarangi laughed. And she drew Esha into a hug and, briefly, Esha was happy and entirely warm.
Then Atarangi left, her cloak and topknot an outline burned into Esha's recognition, her face more memorable than her mask had ever been. Atarangi had promised to guard Clamshell's chick like her own child: that was a promise she spoke like her own personal hymn.
Rooftop landed on Esha's shoulder, the wind making her flinch but his weight oddly similar to Atarangi's touch. “We will meet you at the top, kin. Blue-grey underground places are not meant for phoenix kind.”
The spiral ramp was already narrow for Rooftop's tastes, barely allowing his wings at full spread; it followed that he didn't want to chance anywhere smaller and neither would Clamshell.
“Alright,” Esha sighed. “Don't get shot by a guard before I get there.”
“No, no! I need to help, to keep you safe. Yam-growing is hard: you need to help.”
Esha wouldn't be doing much of that in the summer to come, with the rate black hooves were creeping over her cuticles. But she left Rooftop the comforting illusion.
With Sureness and Nimble for company, and her wheeled chair full of supplies, Esha began. She went where the aide serpents led — past the Abyssal, who watched her pass with dozens of smiling eyes; past the rock tables crowded with flasks and tools and lichen stems; into a tunnel entrance unlit and nearly invisible.
“Statement:“ the spokesman said, “this holy path has few lights, that a serpent may feel connection to the earth. Direction: speak few sounds. This human is admitted for a practical purpose, but show no lack of respect.”
“Statement: this one, Sureness of Azure Triad, will ensure it.”
“Statement:“ Nimble said, honest but stumbling, “Nimble will assist.”
That was all: the spokesman fanned wide in agr
eement. They began the climb, with Nimble leading and Sureness behind, balancing the wheeled chair on his back. As darkness took hold, Esha had only their finlights for company — and her own thoughts, and the anticipation knotting her gut.
Journeying up to High Plateau would take a week for a noble, lounging in a yak-drawn cart and eating herbed candies. A cannier — or poorer — person would scale the spires. If heaven favoured them, a skilled messenger might traverse the spires from Millworks to High Plateau in fewer days than they had fingers on one hand.
By serpent roads, Esha made the climb in a single day.
It was dark as a moonless night, broken only by blue-glowing algae dotting the ceiling. Water trickled, its echoing consuming the space, its dampness slick underfoot. Esha slipped a few times, skidded on the unforgiving surfaces, until she yanked off her socks and let the goat's hooves make themselves useful. Traction wasn't an issue for a serpent: their bellies gripped with a sound like a village's worth of hands trailed over the stone.
She took a cold meal, a ball of rice cloyed with herbs; the serpents crunched some sort of dried pondweed cake. They kept on. The algaes spread to cover the ceiling in luminous mats, nearly bright enough to drown out Nimble's finlights.
“Statement: we approach the Stillwaters.” Sureness clicked hardly louder than the echoing water. “Advisory: Precious One, you will look upon the transcended forms of many serpents from time past. Touch nothing without permit.”
“Alright,” Esha said. “Are they anything like the Abyssal?”
Sureness paused, chewing over the question. Esha's things clicked as he rounded an especially steep step.
“Statement:“ Nimble replied, “transcended serpents are somewhat like the Abyssal! They are finlight-luminous. Additionally: they are wise.”
“Statement:“ Sureness decided, “transcended ones are not so large. Enough discussion. Request: silence.”
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