Floodpath

by Emily B. Martin

  “No,” I say. “He was not.”

  He’s expecting a lie, and he frowns almost triumphantly. “I have three separate officers who personally vouched for seeing him with you—”

  “I didn’t say he was not there,” I say. “I said he was not my accomplice.”

  “But he was—”

  “He was my hostage,” I say. “I was using him for protection. I knew you would not kill him.”

  Kobok stares at me. Beside him, his servant’s charcoal stick scratch-scratches on the parchment. “And how did he happen to fall into your hands?”

  “He came looking for me,” I say. “He thought I could help him. Instead I took him prisoner. I meant to ransom him in Moquoia, but he got away.”

  “How?”

  “Slipped his rope. While I was robbing the ashoki’s coach.”

  “He wasn’t assisting you with the ashoki?”

  I squint up at his face, washed out in the glare of the lantern. “Have you met him? Do you really think he could rob a coach?”

  Kobok considers this for a moment, his scribe still dutifully recording my words erasing Veran’s crimes.

  “No,” he acknowledges. “I suppose not. I admit I was surprised to hear otherwise—particularly as my sources tell me he has a weak constitution.”

  I think of Veran slogging across the Ferinno, sunburned and exhausted, hauling me toward cover and hand-digging a twelve-inch hole for water. I think of him felling a redwood, and of how much he didn’t want to fell that redwood. I think of him navigating his world every day of his life, all the tiny choices and tethers.

  You think he’s weak?

  I’m struck with how much I’d like to punch Minister Kobok.

  I link my fingers in my lap, forcing my tensed shoulders back down.

  “But there were others with you during the attack,” Kobok continues. “Who were they?”

  I shrug again. “Just other outlaws.”

  “From the Ferinno?”

  “I don’t know where they were from. It’s not hard to find desperate folk in tavern corners, ready for a chance to earn some income.”

  “Ashoki Novarni is convinced it was Tamsin Moropai inside her coach with you.”

  I fight to keep my face smooth. “Who?”

  “Tamsin Moropai, the former ashoki,” he snarls. “The one you attacked in Iksi outside Vittenta. She was thought to have died. Did she join you, instead? Or . . .” His voice tenses with a kind of new excitement, as if something just occurred to him. “Has she been in league with you all along? Spouting anti-industry rhetoric, infiltrating the court, influencing the prince—have you been partners this whole time?”

  I almost raise an eyebrow at the absurdity of this story—that Tamsin would work to become the country’s ashoki, the most influential position in Moquoia, only to give it up before the work was done and go back to being a nameless outlaw robbing coaches.

  Kobok must mistake my silence for guilt. “Well? Have I struck a grain of truth?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  “I’m not,” I say, marveling that he’ll believe a lie about Veran being a hapless victim but not the truth about Tamsin being unconnected to a grimy, dirt-poor criminal.

  “Consider that this bit of information might ease the final hours of your life,” he says curtly. “Tell me that Tamsin Moropai was operating with you, and I will advocate for a private hanging.”

  “No,” I say. “It’s not true.”

  He moves forward, and I flinch despite myself. He sets the sole of his boot against my stomach and leans on it, pinning me against the stone wall. I spasm, tears springing to my eyes at the race of pain. My fingers jump to his ankle, trying to relieve the pressure, but he doesn’t let up, setting one elbow on his knee and drawing his face close to mine. The chain clinks, betraying the shaking in my linked wrists. Behind him, the guard with the lantern shifts to be sure the beam still hits me around his shadow.

  “Tell me Tamsin was in league with you, that you infiltrated this court through her.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” I say through teeth gritted so hard they’re making my head pound.

  He pries one of my hands off his boot and holds it—loosely, gently, like someone might hold a child’s hand. With his face still close to mine, he bends his thumb and digs his nail under mine. My head swims at the new pain.

  “Where is Tamsin now?” he asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where is Prince Iano?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The pressure on my ribs and under my nail increases. The light from the lantern burns my eyelids. I shut my eyes to block out his looming face.

  “What do you know?” Kobok asks, so close his breath puffs on my cheek. “Anything could help you. Who assisted you in the desert? Who sheltered you in Moquoia? Who were your accomplices?”

  I stay silent and silent and silent, my mind shrinking to a bare rock. Silence and stillness have always been security, they’ve always been a means of control in a world moved by other people. I don’t know where that notion came from—that with an identity formed around fighting, silence has always seemed the real strength.

  A spike of pain creates a flash of movement in my mind’s eye—an image of cloth fluttering idly, as if in a breeze. The angry lantern becomes the soft play of sunlight. The clinking of my chain morphs into something I can’t place, but I don’t have time to wonder at it. The strange moment is over in the next breath, overtaken by the sensations of now. My rib crackles beneath his boot. My thumbnail bends.

  We hold our positions for an eternity, my head dizzy with the lack of breath in my lungs. Finally, Kobok straightens, his motion causing one more deepening of pain, and then his boot disappears. I draw a terrible breath, both agony and relief. Kobok neatens the creases in his dark gold jacket.

  “You have tonight to do the remainder of your thinking,” he says. “A cell guard will be posted outside—feel free to inform her if you have second thoughts. Otherwise, you will be executed at midmorning tomorrow on the outer ramparts. There will be quite an audience by then—do not expect things to be done swiftly.”

  He thinks a slow death is somehow different from the rest of my life? The only change he’s making is getting other people interested in it.

  I don’t reply, slouched against the wall, the stone cold against my back. Kobok gives one final look of disgust, and then turns for the cell door. A guard opens it for him. The servant with the scribe board tucks her charcoal into a pouch, shuffling after the others.

  I unlock my clenched jaw.

  “One question,” I say.

  The minister doesn’t turn around, but I hear the sneer in his voice. “You hardly have the leverage—”

  “Not for you,” I say flatly. “For her.” I point with the toe of my boot toward the servant, and she looks up, startled.

  “For who?” Kobok asks, following my gesture as if seeing the girl for the first time.

  I tilt my chin at her. “You have the brand?”

  She blinks at me, frozen. Kobok snaps back toward me, his face twisted with anger. He takes one step forward, his hand raised. I’m too tired to brace for it, so I let my limbs go loose to absorb the blow. His palm strikes my cheek, and my head whips to the side. I stay that way, my gaze locked on the damp stone wall, while Kobok turns on his shiny boot heel and strides to the door. His entourage follows him, all moving quickly to match his pace.

  All except one.

  Without turning my head from the wall, I slide my gaze to the door. The servant is following the final guard with her head down, moving just a half-step slower than the others. With her gaze on the floor, her finger hooks the hem of her sleeve.

  As she slips silently past the guard, she turns her forearm just barely toward the lantern light, showing me the pale, ridged scar curving under her sleeve.

  Tamsin

  Giantess Township is busier than I’d have
thought first thing in the morning, but perhaps I’m out of touch with village life. People, adults and children alike, bustle through the mist breathed out by the redwoods, clutching shawls and coats against the cool damp. I hitch the horse to the post by the massive tree stumps in the center square. Reaching into one of my bulging bags—I thankfully managed to unearth Soe’s traveling saddle from the paddock shed—I withdraw a short stack of folded papers. From another sack I draw Soe’s dulcimer. Tucking my cargo under my arms, I climb the steps to the stage.

  I stop short at the top. Two children are there, standing at one of the corners. They glance at me when I’ve climbed the steps, and then go back to their task. One fumbles at the fastening to the si pennants fluttering from the corner post. The second holds a bundle in her arms. While I watch, the first finally pulls down the turquoise pennants, which drop in a limp heap on the stage, and takes the end of the new string offered by the second child. She loops it over the hook and it begins to unfurl, the threads catching the early morning light. The fabric is a dark burnished yellow.

  Dequasi. Gold.

  Mokonnsi is over. It’s the first of September.

  My stomach gives a funny jolt. I’ve been so out of touch with the passage of time that I hadn’t even realized the new si was approaching. During my brief career as ashoki, the end of each month meant a rush of new composition, of delicately twining my messages in with the concepts associated with the upcoming color. I’d been attacked at the start of Iksi, July, the deep green of the forest and the si of kindness. I spent Mokonnsi—friendship—in the cell and then on the run. Now it’s Dequasi—the si of new beginnings.

  This morning, all across the country, townspeople will be celebrating with music and food, and replacing the old colors with the new. In Tolukum Palace, this feat is achieved the night before by the army of servants and bond slaves, climbing teetering ladders to switch out massive wall hangings, removing dyed fish from the fountains and replacing them perhaps with sparkling lanterns or falsely colored water lilies. Tiles are pried up and relaid, lantern glass is exchanged, food and drink are curated and colored to be marveled at the next morning by courtiers dressed in their finest interpretation of the month’s colors.

  But outside the bubble of the palace, the changing of the si is done by people in the first light of morning. Children replace baubles in windows and scatter petals over house stoops. Adults take down hand-stitched banners, bundle them carefully away for next year, and replace them with new ones, sewn together during long nights in front of the fire, or at stitching bees and gatherings. Every town has their favorite recipes, motifs, and traditions to herald the start of the new si, but it’s always a town event, the chance to gather with neighbors and regroup to face the joys and challenges of this shared life.

  I look through the gauzy mist to where the Giantess looms across the common, her trunk swallowed fifty feet up by the swirling mists. Down around her girth, a cluster of people hold the base of a ladder while another fixes the end of a new si banner to the rope around the bark. As I watch, the person on the ladder shifts carefully, the fabric bundled to their chest, and then they fling it into the air. Gold unfurls in a shining stream.

  There’s a frustrated murmur at the corner of the stage. The children are at the last post, but the hook is higher than the others. Both are on tiptoes, trying to hook the pennants to the nail. I take a step closer and finish the job for them.

  “Thanks,” says one. They gather up the old turquoise pennants. “Bright Dequasi to you.”

  “Uah, an’ you,” I reply.

  They scamper off. I look again at the new pennants fluttering on their hooks.

  Dequasi—the color of new beginnings, of harvest, of changing leaves, of the sun.

  I’m not dequasi gold. I am Tamsin in-Ochre, the si given to me by my parents, and the si I chose to keep upon gaining a right to title from Iano’s father. Ochre is a narrow color, a finicky color, difficult to match, difficult to wear. A color that needs just the right circumstance to shine.

  Maybe this is the time.

  Maybe ochre, anyway, is just gold in the ordinary world.

  I set down my papers, laying them carefully at the edge of the stage. I lay Soe’s dulcimer over my lap, giving the strings a few experimental plucks. The cool mists have thrown them out of tune, and I take the opportunity of fiddling with the pegs to change my plan of attack. I’d planned to simply play some background chords, something to get people’s attention, but now I file quickly through the tunes sung at the beginning of Dequasi. I settle on my favorite, one that emphasizes new beginnings by forming a round, the opening melody circling back time and time again.

  I give a few experimental strums on my strings. They’re the first notes I’ve struck since the attack on my coach. My fingers are stiff. My body aches from the fall down the hill yesterday; my back protests from the hundreds—possibly thousands—of times I ratcheted the screw press up and down last night. I’m fuzzy with exhaustion after only a few hours of sleep. But the melody of the song is bright in my head, and pushing my aches aside, I begin.

  At first, it’s mostly children who flock to the stage, recognizing the opening lines of the round. They sing happily and chaotically, missing the harmonious off-set lyrics. I smile at them to keep them going. They hop around, singing. After a few times through, two young women pass behind them, wearing wreaths of black-eyed Susans in their hair and carrying baskets piled with goldenrod. They smile at the children, too, and add their own voices, giving a sweet backbone to the recurring rhythm. A man with a hammer is next, using the excuse of counting the nails in his pouch to stop and hum along. A few parents drift over to check on their children, and soon their voices join in.

  Finally, after another round, one of the adults spots the pamphlets. She moves for a closer look. She picks one up, examining the title.

  She frowns.

  But she reads.

  I watch, doggedly continuing the tune, adding a few flourishes to spice up the repetitive melody. The woman’s partner joins her, looking curiously over her shoulder. The hammer-carrying man comes to pick up his own pamphlet. Soon the adults are clustering around. More people drift from their morning tasks, drawn by the singing. More people pick up the papers. More read them. Some walk off, their gazes still fixed on the page. I watch one young man carry one to the porch of the public house and rap pensively on the door—he misses and hits the lintel first because his head is tilted toward the paper in his hand. The mistress appears in the door with a dishrag. He shows her the pamphlet, their heads crowded together in discussion.

  My tired heart jumps.

  Two people, a man and a woman, look distinctly scandalized. They peer around at their neighbors, give me dark, furious glares, and storm away. But most stay, or else hurry off purposefully, some after grabbing a handful of pamphlets. A few return bearing others, shunting them to the front of the stage. My stacks dwindle, but I don’t stop to get more out of my saddlebags. I’m going to need every copy I have, and besides . . . the seeds have been planted. It’s better they share, anyway. Share and discuss.

  I play until my fingers sting, switching tunes halfway through to the one about the man who finds a gold piece and gives it away, only for it to return to him in his time of need after fourteen stanzas. By this time the mist is burning off. Gold winks all around the square, and my crowd is thinning. A long table has been set up in front of the public house, laden with honeycomb cakes and mead, and what’s left of my audience heads toward the small crowd gathered. I see my pamphlet change hands.

  I strum the last few chords of the final stanza and rest my hands on the dulcimer. My pamphlets are all gone. A few people tossed coins, mostly spare coppers and one thick silver crescent, placed on the stage by a man who read my essay in full, lifted his stunned gaze to me, reached into his pocket, and purposefully pulled out the coin, holding it out for me to see before he set it down. I loop the dulcimer by its strap around my back and crouch to sweep the coins
into my palm.

  When I reach the public house table, several people crowd around me.

  “Look here, miss, I have a few questions for you—”

  “My sister had to take a bond for six years, she says exactly the same as this here . . .”

  “I’ve always said bond service is a curse, haven’t I, Ham? But will anything come of it, that’s what I want to know . . .”

  “Who scribed these? They’re practically identical!”

  I wave all the commenters away, gesturing mournfully to my throat. I make a few sad rasping noises. A few people look concerned, and then turn back to themselves when they realize they’re facing a mute. The snub that would have wrecked me a few weeks ago—cut out of the buzzing conversations around me—only fills me with satisfaction now, to the point that I have to fight off a grin.

  I’ve given them my words.

  Now let’s see what they do with them.

  I use the copper coins to buy five honeycomb cakes and a bottle of mead from the pub mistress. Then I fetch my horse, and, munching one of the cakes, turn toward the post office.

  I take the silver coin passed on by the man who so intently read my essay, remembering the puckered scar that just showed on his wrist beneath the hem of his sleeve. I bring six neat stacks of my pamphlets inside, tie them up with string, and trade the coin for shipping to every town along the south coach road.

  Buoyed by honey and a kind of furious excitement, I return to the horse and carefully pack away the dulcimer and the rest of the pamphlets. Then I mount and turn her head north up the track—toward Tolukum.

  Veran

  My medallion gets me as far as the town of Ossifer’s Pass in the back of a hay cart. The farmer driving isn’t going into Tolukum, but perhaps feeling guilty about the high value of the silver in return for dropping me off short of my destination, he gives me a crescent, enough for a meal and a bed at the town inn.