Sea of Strangers

by Erica Cameron

  Just before midday, Tessen calls a halt, stopping as we near a rise and staying motionless.

  “There’s someone less than a mile up.” Tessen’s head is cocked like he’s not sure of what he’s hearing. “I don’t think they’re a danger.”

  “How can anyone who knows how to survive these mountains not be dangerous?” Sanii asks. “To people who aren’t us, at least.”

  “Their movements are so light.” He looks more confused. “It almost sounds like a child.”

  “If they know this area, they might be able to help,” Etaro suggests.

  Rai frowns. “Or they’ll report us to the Ryogans, and we’ll have the soldiers back on our trail. Besides, Lo’a said no one believes the old stories about the Kaisubeh anymore, so what could they possibly know?”

  “They don’t need to believe the stories. They only have to know Nentoado to give us something useful. A direction.” I glance at Tessen and Tyrroh, smiling. “And it’s not like we won’t be able to see them a long time before they see us. We can change our minds about talking to them once we see who they are.”

  Tyrroh smiles, a grin wide enough to part his full lips and flash white teeth bright against his dark skin. Then he nods at me as though I’m the nyshin-ma and he’s the second. But then he faces the others, expression turning serious as he changes the order of the line and leads us out.

  It doesn’t take us long to find the source of the sounds. Tessen was right; the person we find can’t be older than twelve. It’s hard to see much about them under their thick layers of clothing, but they seem skinny to the point of starved and small, shorter even than Sanii. And they’re in the middle of skinning an animal, and the animal is bigger than they are. They handle a blade well, each motion clean and practiced. And when, after Tyrroh signals approval for us to approach, the child rises to their feet with that bloody knife pointed at us, I fully believe they not only know how to use it, they’re willing to. Even when faced with more than a dozen grown strangers.

  “I like this one,” Rai says in Itagamin as we descend to meet the child.

  “Hopefully you’ll still like them after we say hello.” I don’t take chances. My wards have been up since Tessen first told us someone was nearby; now I make them absolutely impenetrable.

  “If you need food, go get your own,” the child calls, stepping in front of their kill. “This mountain don’t belong to no one, and I trapped this myself.”

  Tsua is in the lead, and I’m only a step behind her. She pitches her voice down, the tones even and low. “I promise we won’t take anything you’ve claimed. But why are you alone all the way up here? I didn’t think anyone could survive long so close to Nentoado.”

  “Definitely better for us here than bein’ down there with the rest of them. There’s dangers here, but—” They jerk their chin south, toward Ryogo. “That place is death.”

  “Oh,” Osshi murmurs. “It’s a hinoshowa.”

  The word makes the child stiffen. Tsua sends Osshi a sharp glare. “Don’t, Osshi. I never want to hear that word from your lips again.”

  Osshi shrinks back, but Tsua has already shifted her focus back to the child. “You mentioned someone else. Who lives here with you?”

  The child’s lips thin and their stance widens, body braced and ready to fight or flee.

  “Look at us.” Tsua gestures to us. “Does it look like we come from Ryogo?”

  “Not most of you,” they grudgingly bite out. “But what’s that matter?”

  “Because where we come from, there’s no word like the one you hate so much. The people born like you aren’t treated any different.”

  Oh. Maybe ey’s an ebet. If hinoshowa is Ryogo’s word for the third sex, it isn’t a kind description. Even now, the child’s wary, narrowed gaze jumps from face to face. Ey backs up a step when Tsua gestures to Sanii, beckoning em closer.

  “This is Sanii, and ey’s like you. So is Etaro.” Tsua indicates both of them as they step closer. “In our language, they’re called ebets.”

  Our, she says. It’s strangely nice to hear her claim my language as her own.

  A small piece of the wariness in the child’s posture fades. “Ebets? I thought you called that one Sanii.”

  “No. Girl,” Tsua says, putting her hand on her chest. “Boy.” She touches Chio’s arm. And then she points to Sanii and the child. “Ebet.”

  Ey relaxes a little bit more, but there’s sadness in eir brown eyes when ey looks at Sanii. “Was your mama punished, too?”

  “No,” Sanii says gently. “Yours was?”

  A hesitation, then the child nods slowly. “She can’t talk no more.”

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Mama can’t call me by a name, but I wanted one I could say, right? So I gave myself one.” Ey puffs up eir small chest, pride and defiance in eir stance. “I’m called Ahta.”

  “Ahta, can we meet your mother?” I’m curious to meet the woman who raised em out here.

  Ahta inches away, all eir earlier wariness back. “Why you want to do that?”

  “Because we’re looking for something hidden in Nentoado, and you might be able to help us,” Tsua says. “And because we’ll do what we can to help you while we’re here.”

  “We can’t feed you,” Ahta says after a stretch of silence. “We got barely enough for us.”

  “You don’t need to,” I promise. “We’re carrying enough for ourselves, and we’re more than capable of hunting our own food.”

  Ey eyes our swords for a second before ey nods. “Fine. One of you carry that and follow me.”

  “After all the protesting about us staying away from your kill?” I ask.

  “I can run faster without it if I gotta lose you in the mountains.”

  Sanii laughs, and Ahta seems to relax a little at eir reaction. It doesn’t last. The farther east we follow Ahta, the more often ey looks back at us, clearly conflicted.

  I let the quiet settle until Tessen signals there’s noise in the distance. Then I ask, “Before we meet her, what’s your mother’s name, Ahta?”

  “Dai-Usho. She changed it after…” Ey shakes eir head. “Call her Dai-Usho.”

  “You said she was punished. Why?” Sanii asks before I can.

  Ahta’s face clouds. “Everyone knows that.”

  “We don’t,” Etaro says quietly. “Whatever happened to her isn’t something that happens where we’re from.”

  “Wish I would’ve been born there, then.” Ey heaves a sigh that sounds too weary for someone so small and young. “The only time a hinoshowa is born is when the mother’s done something horrible and angered the Kaisubeh.”

  “What did she do?” I ask.

  “Nothing. She didn’t do nothing. She wrote it so herself, and always told me we should never lie.” Ahta crosses eir bony arms and glares. After a beat of silence, eir shoulders slump. “But there’s gotta be somethin’ or I wouldn’t be here, and she wouldn’t have been tossed out of the family, and she wouldn’t have lost her voice to a knife, and she— I don’t know.”

  It takes me a few seconds to fit those pieces into an appalling picture.

  Tessen’s voice is filled with all the disbelief and horror spinning through my mind. “Her family slit her throat because you were born an ebet?”

  Ahta shrugs stiffly with poorly feigned indifference. “Her husband did it.”

  Husband and wife. Tsua explained the partnership like a sumai pair without the soulbond, yet Dai-Usho’s husband drew a knife across her throat so hard it broke her voice?

  “He cut her throat even though he didn’t know what she’d done wrong?” Rai looks like she’s bouncing back and forth between baffled and furious.

  “I’m here,” Ahta says scornfully. I can’t tell if that scorn is directed at emself or us. “What other proof did they need?”

  “How did she survive an injury like that?” A cut deep enough to keep her from talking should’ve killed her first.

  “I wish I knew,”
the child mumbles. “That’s a story no one’s ever gotten from her.”

  “This place really isn’t the paradise Varan said it was,” I mutter in Itagamin.

  “This is nothing like paradise. Bellows, Khya! This explains so much about Varan’s crimes,” Rai says in the same language. “I hate to think about what Varan would do to this place, but whoever is leading Ryogo might be worse.”

  “They’re not worse,” Etaro says before I can. “But I don’t think he’s any better, either. This is… None of them deserve to lead anyone anywhere. Except straight into Kujuko.”

  Ey might be right. No one in the clan went hungry except when long droughts killed too many crops and hunting grew too hard. No one was punished without evidence of a crime. No one was banished from the city…ever. It didn’t happen. Either your crime was serious enough to deserve death, or you paid for it with service to the city.

  Which is why Tessen, Sanii, and I wouldn’t have ever been able to return to Itagami if we’d escaped with Yorri the first time we tried to rescue him—we would’ve been killed for our crimes. But we wouldn’t have been abandoned to the wilderness. No one was ever abandoned the way it seems Ahta and eir mother obviously were or punished the way the citizens of Uraita have been. Unless their death or disappearance served to keep Varan’s secrets or gain him something he wanted. Then, apparently, there’s nothing he wouldn’t do and no one he wouldn’t risk.

  “It’s not far, but…” Ahta stops and turns sharply, facing us down with determination in eir brown eyes. “No one comes here. She’s not gonna be expecting people, and definitely not so many. If you hurt her or scare her, I’ll make sure you don’t ever get off this mountain.”

  Even though I doubt the little ebet could manage to follow through on the threat, I believe ey’d die trying if we caused eir blood-mother harm. It’s devotion I understand.

  “We will do everything we can to avoid scaring her,” Tsua promises. “And I swear to you on the Kaisubeh and the mountain you’ve made home, we won’t hurt either of you.”

  Ahta watches us, eir teardrop-shaped eyes unblinking. Finally, ey sighs. “C’mon, then.”

  Less than a hundred yards later, we break through a thick growth of trees and see the place Ahta and Dai-Usho call home. Their small dwelling is cleverly built into the side of the mountain, a rock ledge serving as a roof, but it’s the clearing in front of the house that makes my eyes widen.

  Ahta and Dai-Usho cleared a broad swath of the valley, keeping enough of the trees to offer protection from wind and discovery and turning the center of the area into a carefully tended garden. It partially explains how these two have survived up here for more than a season. In the worst weather, the stone and wood building must be almost completely shielded from the elements, and if they store it well, the food they collect and grow should sustain them. It’s impressive. And so incredibly lonely.

  When the short door to the dwelling opens, someone who has to duck low under the top of the frame hurries out. Long black hair hides their face until they straighten. Dai-Usho’s eyes widen when she sees us, and she freezes, becoming as still as the mountain behind her.

  I can’t keep myself from wincing. I can’t keep my hand from rising to my throat. I can’t keep from staring at the long-healed scar of a wound that should have killed a normal person. Ahta had told us about Dai-Usho’s injury, but seeing it… It seems like only magic could’ve allowed someone to survive that. The scar is thick, gnarled, and pink against her beige skin, and it’s an angled half circle under her chin.

  “It’s okay, onyo,” Ahta calls across the garden. “They’re not Ryogan, and I don’t think they’ll hurt us.”

  She gestures and signs, the motions practiced and precise even if she seems agitated. Each shape her fingers make remind me of the signals we use in Itagami, ways to communicate without speaking a word. As ey jogs toward eir mother, ey responds in words and gestures simultaneously. We approach much slower, giving Ahta time to explain, and we stop a good twenty feet away from the house. Even with Ahta’s assurances, Dai-Usho doesn’t begin to uncoil until Osshi and Ahta explain about Sanii and Etaro.

  Osshi and Tsua lead our conversation with Dai-Usho, explaining only some of what we’re doing here. There’s danger headed to Ryogo, they tell her, and we believe a power hidden within Nentoado might be able to stop it.

  Mother and child share a long look when the story is over. Dai-Usho seems unconvinced until the end of another hurried conversation of broken sentences and gestures. Then, she nods.

  Ahta’s round face is set and determined. “We’ve been here a long while now—more than half my life. Some years, we had to travel pretty far to find food. ’Specially before we brought up enough soil here to grow anything worth eating. We haven’t been through the whole Nentoado, but we hunted up in those mountains before and…” Ey crosses eir arms and shakes eir head. “Don’t care how hungry we get. I’ll steal from the valley cities before I go back there.”

  “What did you see?” Tsua straightens.

  “Found some tufts of fur and tracked the beast. We thought it was a tenrai.”

  “A what?” I quietly ask Osshi.

  “Big cat,” Osshi says. “Thick fur and sharp claws.”

  “Then we found prints in the snow. They were too big and the wrong shape. Don’t know what that was. I never wanna see it.” Ahta shakes eir head, the motion sharp. “We ran back down fast as we could.”

  “Are you sure they weren’t just…big?” Sanii asks doubtfully.

  “Not like this. Tenrais are about that size.” Ey gestures to the beast ey’d killed, a creature that is bigger than Ahta but smaller than Tyrroh. “What left those tracks was big. Big as the house. Bigger. Nothing’s that big.”

  “Could the desosa change an animal like that?” I ask in Itagamin. My understanding of what we’re capable of doing with magic, and what it can do on its own, may be limited, but a power that changes the world around it without a human hand to guide them? Not even anything in Lo’a’s stories hinted at that.

  “I honestly don’t know.” Chio spreads his arms, palms up.

  “If whatever’s there was powerful enough to make Varan immortal, it’s not too strange to think it could alter the animals, too. This is a starting point at least.” Tsua responds in the same language, but then she focuses on Ahta and asks in Ryogan, “Do you remember how to get to that place? How long will it take from here?”

  “You’re gonna go now?” Ey and Dai-Usho both look at us with wide eyes. “It’s too cold! The storms have been bad the past few moons, and it’s just gonna get worse with the seasons.”

  “We don’t have time to wait, and—” Tsua looks at Rai and Nairo, signing an order.

  With delighted smirks, both our kasaiji snap their fingers, engulfing their hands in flames. Ahta and Dai-Usho jump back, crying out in wordless shock.

  Tsua’s smile stays gentle. “We’re not unprotected. If you can point us to a path, we should be able to follow it.”

  They blink, shock slowly turning into something else. Curiosity, in Ahta’s case. Ey steps closer, eir hand stretching out as though to touch the fire. “Can you all do this?”

  Rai shakes her head, lifting her hand toward Ahta. “We all have different skills. This one happens to be mine. Think it’ll help where we need to go?”

  Ahta nods slowly, eir expression showing none of the fear I’ve gotten used to seeing in Ryogans, only eager interest. Zonna, I notice, is watching em with just as much curiosity as ey’s showing us and a small smile. That expression grows when Ahta says, “If all of you can do tricks like that, it might actually be enough to keep you from dying.”

  Once Ahta and Dai-Usho agree to help, Nairo, Wehli, and Miari make food—combining our stores with some meat from Ahta’s kill—and Natani, Rai, and Etaro keep watch at various points around the clearing. The rest of us sit with our new allies, our limited maps of the area spread between us. The drawings don’t help Ahta—no one ever taught em to read a
map—but we can use what ey tells us to give us an idea of where to go.

  Even after we’ve eaten and gotten basic directions, it doesn’t seem like either of them believe we’re going to go through with this trip. Their fear of the place is fierce. When we finally convince them we’re serious, Ahta insists we stay the night instead of pushing on. “The day’s more than half gone already, and there’s not many places to stop after this. Especially for so many people. Stay and rest. Where you’re going, you’re gonna need a good night of sleep. Or a week of it.”

  “We definitely don’t have a week,” I say.

  “You gotta stay tonight,” Ahta insists. “Won’t be the same deeper into Nentoado.”

  Tessen has been watching the little ebet with interest, but now he smiles at em with admiration in his eyes. “How old are you?”

  “Not quite twelve.” Ey’s chin is up, but eir shoulders are curving in, like ey’s not sure if ey should be defensive or defiant. “Why?”

  “Because you seem older, and you have a talent for survival,” Tessen says. “Your mother is lucky to have your help here.”

  “Yorri would like em,” Sanii murmurs beside me.

  I’d been thinking the same thing, my fingers finding their way automatically to the red cord hidden under layers of cloth. “Because ey would remind him of you.”

  Sanii blinks and an uncertain smile begins to spread across eir long face. “I’m going to pretend you mean that as a compliment.”

  “You go right ahead,” I say with a smirk. Ey laughs, smile getting brighter, and I’m glad. Smiles have been rare from em since the day we met, but when I see a real one, it shows me a little bit more of the ebet my brother loved deeply enough to secretly bind his soul to. Of who ey was before being placed in Itagami’s yonin class. And before we thought Yorri had died.

  We spend the cold night piled inside their small house and don’t leave until the first rays of morning creep through the cracks in the shuttered window. Moments before we’re ready, Ahta asks us to wait. Ey has a hurried—and entirely silent—conversation with Dai-Usho, and ey rushes into the house. When ey comes back a minute later, ey’s overburdened with a pile of cloth and furs almost as big as ey is.