We turned off the pier and onto a street. Every doorway, every window, every balcony was jammed with onlookers. The Falali Mother and I put our waving hands on a constant swivel. Our mammoth labored forward, the howdah listing left, then right. People threw handfuls of powdered dye, the air filling with drifting poofs of turquoise and ruby and gold.
The Falali Mother said, “Thank you for accepting my invitation. I have great hope this gesture will improve relations.”
“As do I. Have you received the admiral’s messages?”
“That he wishes me to calm the Jebyl by making a statement? Yes.”
“Will you?”
“The Jebyl are frustrate-ed they’ve been shut out of Admiral Mnai’s government. Statement or no statement, that fact remains.”
“He just wants to calm tensions. He wants you to let them know their concerns will be heard.”
She looked me in the eye. “Will he actually make concessions?”
“I can’t speak for the admiral, but he asked me to invite you to the Ministry after the ceremony. If you’re willing, you can express your concerns in person.”
She seemed to chew on it, painted lips squeezed tight. “I’ve express-ed my concerns many times before, and it has made no difference. He refuses to acknowledge that the Jebyl cannot be ignore-ed. They are citizens of Free Maritinia, and they require a voice. They are the majority caste, after all.”
Frustrated, I bit my lip. I couldn’t go back without her. I was already on the outs with the admiral, and I had little doubt Captain Mmirehl would make maximum use of my failure. I had a missile-defense system to disable as well as a government to undermine, and I couldn’t do either unless I kept my place in the inner circle.
“I can’t promise much,” I said. “But I can promise you a fair hearing.”
Craning her neck to look at Sali, she said, “Your father is a stubborn man. I’ve never known him to listen to anybody.”
“I’m aware of how he is,” Sali said with a shrug.
“Did he say he would negotiate?”
The air smelled of chalk as wafting clouds of colorful powdered dye mingled. Bright dust covered people on the street. The crowded sea of mottled hair and clothes looked like fields of wildflowers.
I had to.
I would.
“He’ll listen to me,” I said with certainty. “Me and Sali, we’ll confront him with you. He won’t be able to turn us all down. We’ll see to it he listens. Really listens.”
The Falali Mother looked back at Sali, who nodded, and said, “We can assure you he’ll listen.”
Ahead, I saw one of the guards lean out of the lead mammoth’s howdah and signal the team of soldiers marching below. Catching their attention, he pointed to a man on an approaching balcony. The man was holding a white banner. The black image of a cuda fish had been painted on the cloth in a rough scrawl. The cuda’s mouth was open wide, jagged teeth drawn to resemble a saw’s blade.
The Jebyl man on the balcony began to wave the banner. Wearing nothing but his waistwrap, his gray hair hung over his shoulders in knotted braids. A pair of soldiers stormed into the tiny residence, disappearing as they headed for the stairs.
I looked at Dugu. He’d put the camera down. I turned to the Falali Mother. Her jaw had dropped, a deep worry line standing between her brows. She grabbed my arm, fingernails digging into my biceps. “Stop them.”
I waved with my free arm and shouted, my vocal cords straining to cross the gap, but my voice was helplessly swept away, like a paper airplane in a windstorm.
Two soldiers.
On the balcony.
Taking aim.
The old man’s eyes went wide like eggs cracked into a sizzling skillet. Purple fire struck, and the man toppled over the balcony wall and crumpled to the pavement in a cloud of multicolored dust.
She dropped my arm. “I will go.” Her voice dripped with disgust. “The admiral must answer for these outrages.”
CHAPTER 10
“The ocean is made of compeitng tiides and currents. Sme as a person.”
–JAKOB BRYCE
I’d left the parade two hours ago, but I still felt it all around me. Felt it in my ears, the crowd’s chants running in a constant loop. Felt it in my nose, the dank reek of mammoth wool still clinging to the insides of my nostrils. Felt it on my skin, powdered dye covering every last inch. And I felt it in my heart. The old man. Killed for an act of defiance I didn’t even understand.
The rest of the parade went without incident. And without conversation. The Falali Mother did her duty, a smile fixed on her face, but I could feel the hostility in the way she held herself so stiff, her eyes refusing to meet mine.
The parade route had ended at another set of boats, and those boats had taken us across the short gap between Selaita and the sunken volcano named Primhala. And there I stood. In the caldera.
Water lapped against the stone near my feet. The floor of the volcano’s crater was flooded by seawater flush with kelp. Enclosing the water on three sides, the volcano’s C-shaped caldera crested the sea with black rock carved into bleachers and terraces and stairs.
I chose not to argue the point. A few days ago, I couldn’t have imagined wanting to, but seeing all those people today, so many with such joy on their faces—dockworkers and street sweepers, seamstresses and fishermen, young mothers and fathers—they couldn’t all be cultists and extremists.
As I looked east, the faint pinpricks of stars were beginning to show through the dark blue velvet of the dusk sky. To the west, the last sliver of the sun’s giant orange orb was about to squeeze out of sight.
The stadium was almost full, yet people continued to spill over the rim and down the steep insides of the caldera. The ceremony would happen here. Soon.
I pushed against the fear nibbling up my spine. Captain Mmirehl had announced over the skyscreens that I’d have to face the ocean depths and ask the cuda for mercy. Whatever this ceremony was, I told myself it couldn’t be as dangerous as it sounded. These people loved Kell. They surely didn’t come to watch him die.
A hand grasped mine. Sali. “The musicians will start shortly. They won’t play long before you take the rites. The Falali Mother is ready for you. Her assistants need to get you prepped.”
“Very well.”
Hand in hand, we stepped onto a bamboo walkway that barely cleared the high-tide seawater. Bamboo planks creaked under our weight as we approached a Jebyl woman with a wicker basket full of black dirt. Fishing through the rich soil with her hands, she pulled out a glowgrub and ran a needle through its thickest part. The needle was tied to a silk cord, which she wrapped ar
ound a post. The wriggling grub—one of several—was now suspended in the air between posts. When we stepped over her basket, she touched her heart and smudged the breast of her sarong with the yellow glow.
We reached the main platform, suspended over the center of the small inlet. The round stage was crisscrossed with ropes hanging overhead, from which Jebyl suspended paper lanterns filled with fireflies. We made our way to the far side of the stage, where three small tents stood. Sali led me to the one in the center and kissed my cheek. “Good luck, Drake.”
Her smile was surprisingly soft. Looking into her eyes, I felt I was looking into a deep well of compassion. Quite a change from the prickly woman I’d come to know over the last day and a half, starting when her father failed to greet her at the Ministry.
I knew what it was like to pine for a father’s attention. And now I knew to look past the urchinlike spines to see the soft soul inside.
I gave her hand a squeeze before lifting it to my lips. “Thank you, Sali. I’ll be fine.”
“I know you will.” She turned around and walked away.
I watched her stroll down a walkway that led to stairs. Watched her gather her dress as she climbed to the raised balcony, which appeared to be reserved for Kwuba elites and Falali priestesses. I waited until she found a seat and turned to face me again. I gave her a wave and won a new smile for my efforts.
Buoyed by our first genuine moment, I lifted the tent flap and stepped inside. The Falali Mother sat on a three-legged stool. “Colonel,” she said. No touch of her heart this time.
“Dearest Mother,” I replied.
“Sit.”
I ducked under the paper lantern and sat on a stool resting on the other side of the tiny tent. With the back of my head and back pressed against the tent wall, I leaned to my right to see around the pole standing between us. She’d taken off her headdress, revealing dark hair with little touches of gray.
“I talk-ed to your soldiers,” she said. “They claim they were acting under Captain Mmirehl’s orders.”
Without hesitation, I said, “Captain Mmirehl is an overzealous ass.”
She smiled. “He is that, Colonel. What I need to know is if his overzealousness was order-ed by the admiral.”
“I don’t know.”
She crossed her legs, and her bare foot bobbed up and down. “Can I count on your support with the admiral?”
“Like I told you, Sali and I will make sure you get your say.”
“I’m seeking more than that from you, Colonel.”
I worked to keep the surprise off my face. It hadn’t occurred to me she might need something from me. “Like what?”
“This crackdown on free expression must stop.”
“Is that how you’d describe what that old man was doing waving that flag? Free expression?”
“What else would you call it? He was no threat. This Jebyl resistance the admiral frets about doesn’t exist. There are no cabals, no Jebyl militias. Only regular people with legitimate complaints. Admiral Mnai promise-ed schools for every child. He promise-ed medicines and liberties. Instead, he gives us soldiers and false conspiracies.”
Pol spoke in my mind.
I didn’t have time to respond before she spoke again. “Through fear, he may be winning their obedience, but he’s lost their hearts.”
I nodded my understanding.
“The admiral needs to be convince-ed this crackdown is unjust. But I can’t convince him alone. I need you to argue alongside me. I need you to marshal support within his navy, convince as many officers as you can to come forward.” She leaned toward me, her eyes zeroed in on mine. “Together, we can remind him this is suppose-ed to be Free Maritinia. What do you say?”
I rubbed my jaw, searching for the right answer. I didn’t want to anger her by refusing. No, I didn’t want to do anything that would make her renege on her pledge to accompany me back to the Ministry. But I also couldn’t let myself become an agent of her agenda. I had my own agenda to execute.
“I understand your reluctance,” she said. “You remember what I told you the first time we met?”
“Of course,” I lied.
“I told you your tide was strong. You were bless-ed by Falal, Colonel. Your kind is rare. Few are given the gift of such a mighty current. You don’t just draw people in and make them want to follow, yours is a current so powerful it can sweep history right along with it.”
I wanted to believe her. Wanted to believe she was talking to me. To Jakob.
She batted the paper lantern, and the tent suddenly brightened with awakened fireflies. “You mustn’t allow yourself to become the admiral’s show toy. It was through your courage and strength we cast off the chains of the Empire. The admiral didn’t engineer the coup. That was you.” She pointed a finger at the spot between my eyes. “You.”
That wasn’t me, I said to myself. That was Kell.
“Mistake me not,” she continued, “we will be forever indebt-ed. But Maritinia needs you again. All over this world, people are suffering. Kelp is the driving force of our simple economy, and thanks to the Empire’s embargo, so many have lost their livelihoods. The young and strong can fish for themselves, but the weak and elderly are in crisis. Our churches are overflowing with the frail and malnourished. People are dying, Colonel.”
I listened quietly while she continued. “This is a time for people to pull together, but Admiral Mnai insists upon tearing us apart by stoking old tensions to pit Kwuba against Jebyl. We are a strong people, capable of caring for one another, and this is a bountiful world in which no one should ever go hungry. We need leadership that will foster the bonds of family and clan. Instead, he stokes fear that encourages hoarding instead of sharing. We desperately need a unifier. You must convince the admiral to become that person. And if he won’t, then you must be that person.”
My eyes widened in surprise. “Are you advocating another coup?”
“Those words won’t leave my lips,” she said. “But I fear the path we’re on.”
“I will take your thoughts into consideration,” I said with all the false earnestness I could. I didn’t need to get involved in this world’s internal politics, especially not to help heal any breaches. All I needed was time, just six more weeks of the status quo. Six weeks before the Empire made its glorious return.
“Very well,” she said with a slight bow of her head. “I will afford you time to consider. The ceremony will begin very soon.” She stood and clapped her hands.
Two attractive young women entered the tent, dressed in traditional Jebyl sarongs, their hair tied with thick ribbons made of eel skin.
“Wash him,” said the Falali Mother before exiting.
Stepping up to me, one unwrapped the flag around my neck while the other worked the buttons on my shirt.
Outside the tent, I heard the slow beat of a lonely drum. Then a voice. A coarse, grating wail.
Oh, Governor
You better run
Run for the sea
Cuda goin’ get you
Fly for the sky
Sky goin’ poison you
Coaxing me upright, the women took off my shoes. My pants. My underwear. Resisting the urge to cover myself, I kept my eyes looking straight ahead.
Outside, more drums joined in, each beat a unique pattern, all the patterns interlacing into a textured whole. I felt the vibrations in my eardrums. Under my feet. In my rib cage. The voice again. I’d never heard anything like it. So harsh. So abrasive.
Oh, Governor
Run, governor, run
Run for the rocks
Rocks goin’ crush you.
Run and hide
Machete goin’ cut you.
I spread my
arms wide as I could in the cramped space as the women ladled water over my head and shoulders, causing my skin—still caked with powdered dye from the parade—to streak with rivulets of inky water. They scrubbed me with wet cloths, excess water draining back into the sea through the bamboo slats underfoot.
The drumming stopped, followed by the same haunting voice, its scraping wail sounding like a throat full of broken glass.
Governor goin’ burn
Governor goin’ burn
Governor goin’ burn
Voices joined in, thousands of them, the crowd bellowing the repetitive chorus. A chill tickled my wet skin as the gravity of their animosity toward the Empire sank into my bones. Perhaps the Empire’s return wouldn’t be so glorious.
One of the women pulled a waistwrap from a bag on the floor. Silk the color of thunderclouds. They wrapped the cloth around me, once, twice, then tied it in place with a cord of cobalt blue. A second song started, and the young women left.
Alone, I tipped my stool forward to run the water off the seat and noticed the carvings in the bamboo. Fish swimming through kelp fronds. I tapped the lantern to get more light and ran my fingers over the etchings, remembering a time when I was a boy, a time when I used to carve birds and turtles, a time when I wanted to be an artisan.
A time before I fully understood the trappings of family expectations.
The etchings were expertly done, the rounded surface of bamboo adding to the difficulty level. Hard to imagine how such fine carvings were created without metal gouges or chisels.
One of the young women poked her head in. “We’re ready for you.”
I ran my finger across the carvings one last time, across the fins and fishtails, the scales and teeth.
So many teeth.
It was time to face the cuda.
CHAPTER 11
“A mission like theis requires tyou commit all theway.”
–JAKOB BRYCE
I knelt at center stage, my waistwrap hugging my thighs, a sleeping mat under my knees. Dugu watched from a few feet away, his camera transmitting a live feed to the skyscreens. The Falali Mother stood before me, her voice firm and sturdy. “Falal weaves our hearts into one cloth.”
Tides of Maritinia Page 8