Exile of the Seas

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Then the meal was done. Time to say our goodbyes and part ways. Jenna had spent most of her life around the same people, with very few new faces besides babies, and fewer departures—usually due to death. But Ivariel had become someone who said goodbye often. Metaphorically, anyway, as I bowed, receiving good wishes and offering the sign of Danu’s blessing when asked.

  I felt odd and presumptuous doing so, but I could hardly refuse. I did my best to have a clear mind and a clear heart, thinking of Danu’s bright blade and wisdom as I made Her sign. The group dispersed, heading to their inns or waiting conveyances, until only Ochieng, Hart, and I remained, lingering at the table.

  “Do you have an inn in mind, Priestess Ivariel?” Ochieng inquired. When I shook my head, he offered to escort me to one he liked. I shook my head again. I didn’t care for inns. The establishments themselves bore no fault for this. My experiences within them had soured me. And I felt energized enough that I wouldn’t want to hole up for the night yet, certainly not with the memories likely to rise up in such a place. I supposed I should set out for one of the cities, see where Danu guided my feet.

  Though that suddenly seemed overwhelming. Traveling all alone.

  You’ve been traveling alone, I told myself. This will be no different.

  “Hart and I plan to set out for Nyambura this afternoon,” Ochieng told me. “If you are heading in that direction, perhaps you care to walk with us? My trade goods should be loaded onto carts by now and we could always use another blade to guard against any ruffians we may encounter.”

  I hid the flutters of panic behind a calm face. Ruffians on the road, and me with my weapons little more than ornaments for a pretty dance. If outlaws attacked the caravan, I’d be expected to fight. Of course, if I traveled on my own, and outlaws attacked, I’d have to fight, too, and I’d be without a group to help. My chances would be better with Ochieng. Perhaps if it came to a fight, I could…hide behind the others somehow.

  I rubbed the back of my head, imagining Kaja smacking it. Then, pretending that I’d considered the option and had been ruminating on the possibilities, I nodded somberly at Ochieng.

  “Excellent!” He clapped his hands together. “If you wish, you might travel all the way to Nyambura with us. We’ve never had a Priestess of Danu visit that I know of—”

  “And you know all the stories, Ochieng,” Hart interrupted with enthusiasm, the glow of hero worship in his eyes.

  “Many stories, yes,” Ochieng conceded, but looking at me thoughtfully. “The world, however, is full of stories, and even my small corner holds mysteries. Nyambura will be excited to welcome you, Priestess Ivariel, should you wish to stop your journey there for any length of time.”

  I inclined my head, hoping to seem as if I granted a favor rather than desperately grasping at this offer.

  * * * *

  And thus I set out, not long after, walking along a busy trade road leading away from the harbor town of Bandari. Ochieng’s caravan consisted of three heavily laden carts drawn by negombe. Unfamiliar to me, even from stories or tapestries, these great beasts walked at a slow but steady pace, heads down so their long, curling horns swayed almost like a dance. Young men I took to be Ochieng’s servants for hire drove the wagons, singing chanting songs that they bounced back and forth between them, each voice taking a different part. The rhythm seemed to set the pace and they didn’t otherwise use prods or whips to urge the beasts along. When the men stopped singing, the negombe stopped walking.

  “They sing the song of the earth, and the cycle of the sun and moon,” Ochieng said, falling into step behind me. He’d been checking the steadiness of the loads and setting up Hart beside one of the drivers to learn the song, saying he might as well start acquiring a useful skill. “The song has infinite variations, as you can imagine it must, to last all day on a journey. They take turns leading the verse, then each picks up the refrain a line behind. The drivers compete among themselves to come up with new lines, with the best being adopted by the others and spreading throughout the land. It’s truly something to hear the song sung by a caravan of a hundred—or even more!—wagons, with the song winding to the very end before rippling up to the head again.

  “They replicate this at our annual festival of kuachamvua, which you may enjoy attending if you stay with us that long. The competitions are quite fierce, with prizes awarded to the winners of the songs best sung, and the most beautiful new creations.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Of course, the negombe don’t care. They walk if we sing, beautifully or not. This keeps us humble.”

  An interesting metaphor, I thought, and it seemed to me that Ochieng agreed, though I naturally didn’t speak the thought aloud. He had a knack for conducting a conversation with me that didn’t feel one-sided, registering my responses, nonverbal though they might be.

  “Are you allowed to sing?” he asked suddenly.

  Surprised by the question, I considered it.

  “Exactly,” he continued. “If you can laugh with sound, perhaps you can sing. It would not be the same as speaking.”

  I mentally tested the boundaries of the vow, the sense of Danu’s hand laying over me, quieting the words. Then I smiled and shook my head at him.

  “Ah, well.” He smiled back, a bit of rue in it. “I suppose that would be cheating. As your goddess has a reputation for being merciless in Her justice and decisive in the wielding of Her sword, I imagine She’s not one you’d want to play stop-no-go with.”

  I raised a brow at his literal translation of the odd phrase, and he repeated it in his language. “It’s both a children’s game and a more general term. It means to try to get the better of another in a deal by sticking to precise wording rather than the intent. So, when children play it, one might say ‘you may go to the tree,’ but forget to say which tree, and the clever opponent flees the arena by going to a distant tree.”

  He glanced at me and saw I’d played a similar game and understood. “In trade…well, a person of integrity does not play such tricks. But there are always those who put greed and personal wealth above all else.”

  Most of life in Dasnaria, or in the Imperial Palace, had been layers upon layers of such games and tricks. I could play them all with superior skill, due to my mother’s relentless tutelage. It occurred to me that perhaps my vow to Danu did more for me than preventing the ill-spoken word with a too-revealing accent. While it might seem that silence allowed one to keep many secrets, it also prevents untruths. It’s impossible to lie outright without speaking. Though lies of omission work well to keep secrets, also.

  Another caravan passed us, going toward Bandari, the wagons loaded with barrels and crates of goods. The negombe moved briskly, encouraged by a different song than ours, supported by a dozen voices of the longer caravan. Then it seemed as if our song leapt to theirs and theirs to ours, a key refrain tossed from one to the other. The two intertwined for the time it took us to pass each other, then we moved on, our song changed by the encounter.

  Ochieng looked at me with a serious smile. “Exactly.”

  ~ 11 ~

  I became familiar with Ochieng’s “exactly,” which seemed to be less the Common Tongue denotation and more his own expression—a kind of celebration of exactitude and serendipity combined.

  The deeper we penetrated into Chiyajua, the less Common Tongue was spoken. Even Hart seemed to be picking up on the native language, which was apparently Chiyajua’s version of Common Tongue, developed to ease trading transactions. Beyond that, each province we passed through seemed to have its own dialect—and Ochieng spoke most of them.

  I only knew this because the lead driver of the caravan would summon him when we came to a new village, after the hails and pleasantries gave way to discussion of the goods on the carts. Then Ochieng would take over, settling in with them to talk trade. I’d also become somewhat familiar with the more common phrases, as if in my silence, I soaked in the
words spoken around me. They formed patterns and I learned some of their meanings, though Ochieng mostly spoke to me in Common Tongue. Hart did occasionally, when Ochieng pulled him into the conversation, pointedly including me, but the young man often forgot my presence entirely otherwise.

  We slept under the stars at night—a development that astonished me at first. But the nights stayed warm, barely cooler than the day, only lacking Danu’s intense regard via the blazing sun. I began to understand why Glorianna, goddess of the softer aspects of life, ruled over sunrise and sunset. Those marginal times of the day differed greatly from full sun and full night. Sometimes I imagined Danu and Moranu tussling over the world and who owned it, with Glorianna the peacemaker in between, mediating their extremes.

  The group set guards to watch at night while the others slept, taking shifts so everyone got sufficient rest. The ruffians, Ochieng explained, behaved like scavengers, creeping up on the edges of caravans to take the weak and unaware. They rarely banded together in enough force to attack in daylight along the busy trade routes. I nearly gave myself away as a total fraud when he included me in the rotation. He simply assigned me the early morning watch, saying he knew I liked to be awake for sunrise regardless, confirming that worked for me. I managed a nod, hoping my face didn’t show the shock and panic.

  That first night, the man on watch previous to mine came to rouse me, but I was already awake. Aboard the Valeria, it would be the third bell, my body somehow having absorbed the timing, much as I soaked in all the new things around me.

  It occurred to me much later, that my time in the seraglio had left me as a blank page. I’d been carefully crafted to be beautiful and obedient, but also to take the stamp of my future husband. As I traveled through the world as a woman alone, I became the one to create my own self, drinking in everything around me, filling those spaces in my mind kept so deliberately empty.

  While I could never be grateful for my former husband’s abominations and cruelty, if he had not treated me so terribly, I would never have found it in me to look for anything else. Courage hadn’t driven me to escape, but rather terror and despair. Only the certainty that I’d prefer death to more pain had pushed me to take that risk, one that had allowed me to become someone more than I’d been. To fill my own emptiness with what I chose.

  For the first time, it also occurred to me to wonder who my mother might have been, had her formidable intelligence been turned to something more than the machinations of the seraglio and the poisonous politics of attempting to influence the emperor through the bedchamber.

  That first morning I stood watch—the blackness even more complete than it had been on the Robin, as there had been lanterns here and there on the deck to light the path for the sailors—I brazened my way through it. All slept soundly, trusting in the skill I pretended to have.

  I spent the time circling, as I’d seen the others on watch do, and praying to Danu that nothing would come my way.

  Surely this was wrong of me. I should’ve been asking Danu to guide my footsteps and give me the opportunity to dispense Her justice. I’d seen the way the men and boys engaged in fighting, their brash excitement and masculine swagger. The men on watch likely hoped something would happen while they waited, eagerly expecting danger, waiting to flex their bravery. While I cringed at every sound, the darkness tricking my eyes into seeing movement, in my fear imagining how terribly I’d fail when the attack came.

  Finding myself spiraling into the bad place, the cold sweat breaking out, and my stomach curdling cold with dread, I knew I couldn’t fall into one of those odd trances. I finally drew my sword and dagger, and began using them in a different dance, not one of the three I’d drilled with Kaja.

  That kept my attention off thoughts of dread, as I had to be careful of the sharp edges, lest I slice myself with them. The new leathers made movement easier, the boots formed to my feet like an extension of myself, and the supple, thick clothing moving with my body.

  I didn’t dare sink into the dance, as I had to still pay attention. If an attack did come, and I lost my nerve to fight it, I could at least wake the others. But doing the old, familiar movements soothed me and absorbed the nervous energy. I danced a circle around the sleeping camp, moving silently as I could when I tried, though I occasionally made noise when my boot fell on a clump of dry grass or snapped a twig. Very different than bare feet on smooth stone. It made for a good game, to set my booted feet so they wouldn’t encounter such traps. Different than wearing bells that shouldn’t ring, but also the same.

  After a time, I noticed I could see better to choose where I stepped. Glorianna taking the night gently away from Moranu’s heavy sway. The blackness became deepest blue, like looking straight down into the ocean, and Danu’s bright stars—her insistent piercing of Moranu’s night, I fancied—began to dim.

  In the grayness of the lifting shadows, a movement. Animal detaching from night. Eyes gleaming at me. I froze, gripping the hilts of my weapons tightly as the cold sweat slicked them. Another shape joined it. Then another.

  Cats. Only more enormous than I’d imagine a cat could be. These were not the cats of the seraglio, by turns cuddly armfuls and then fierce hunters stalking the mice and fish. These were the mighty ancestors of those, taller at the shoulder than my waist, though slinking with the same lethal grace. Lions, perhaps, but female ones without the massive manes of the males in the family crests and tapestried tales.

  They gazed at me, unblinking, their eyeshine golden. I had no idea how I’d fight a lion, remembering well how easily the little felines of my growing up had sliced with their much smaller claws. I stood between these goddesses of cats, these queen lions, and the sleeping camp.

  One sat on her haunches and washed a paw, while another sniffed the air. I swear it seemed as if they conferred. Then the three moved on, melting into the shadows again, as if I’d dreamed them.

  After a time, perhaps of waiting for them to reappear, or perhaps of re-equilibrating to a world where I didn’t see such creatures before me, I sheathed my weapons and began the prayers to Glorianna. The goddess of love prefers her worship from open hands. As if rewarding me, she painted the arching sky in glorious shades of pink that seemed to last forever.

  I think that, even had I been able to give voice to the experience, I might not have told the story to anyone. It meant something to me that went beyond words, even in my own mind.

  * * * *

  When the attack did come, it happened while everyone was awake, in waning daylight, and not from the big cats, but what I’ve come to learn is the most dangerous animal of all. A man.

  We’d departed a village at midmorning, Ochieng well satisfied with his trading, and we had pared the caravan down to two wagons. Like the songs passed between the caravans on the trade routes, the empty wagon and its crew became part of one headed the other direction, back to the coast and the sea.

  As for us, we traveled deeper inland, the jungle fading and the land rising into sweeping plains of grass. From there on, Ochieng told me, we’d travel from oasis to oasis, which meant shorter travel days and longer rests, because they’d been spaced apart to accommodate the slowest, most ponderous of caravans. We moved fairly swiftly, without even trying, so reached an oasis by late afternoon.

  No one warned me—to be fair, they likely assumed I knew, as it’s well-known among those accustomed to such things—that the oases tended to attract the ruffians and brigands Ochieng had mentioned. Just as the predators came to the water, not only to salve their own thirst but to prey on the other animals who came to drink, the unsavory elements of Chiyajua sniffed about the edges, hoping to take their piece of the trade goods or coin that stopped for the night. Though Ochieng likened them more to the scavengers, generally unwilling to take on much of a fight, hoping for a weak target to gnaw to the bone.

  Deep in Chiyajua–as had been true my whole life—I turned out to be the weak target,
the only female in my small, cheerful caravan, laden with tempting goods from foreign lands.

  For all the times I’d spent peering into the darkness, standing watch on those black and silent mornings, every sense pricked for danger, I wasn’t at all ready for this attack. I wasn’t alert or aware as Kaja would have expected. I’d wandered off a ways, admiring the gleam of the water and how it reflected the sunset. I was thinking mainly of taking a swim in the part of the oasis marked off for such things, when a man grabbed me.

  He tore the hat from my head, groping my body, dragging me away, and hissing in my ear demands for coin and any treasure I carried. Words I knew well, even in that language, as many conversations on the trade route revolved around them. Part of me quailed in gibbering terror, flashes of my former husband’s hands doing the same, his face called into sharp relief in my memory. Rodolf, pillaging my body without pity. The memories took that part of me under. Another part, though, enraged that his name had been awakened from the grave I’d laid it in, erupted in fury.

  Blade in my left hand slashed up and out, howls and blood following. I gained space to draw my sword and spun into the final frenzy of the ducerse, where I am all powerful womanhood. There the points of my boots. There the edge of my sword. Spin and slice. Spin and kick out. Spin and spin and spin.

  Until the trance faded and the man lay in a gibbering, bleeding mess at my feet.

  And I stood over him, his blood dripping from my blades. A ring of men from our small caravan around me. Beyond that, men and women from other caravans circling around. Then a chanting cheer went up, not quite musical enough to make the resting negombe move, though they did stamp their feet, echoed by finger clicks and foot stomps of the company. Calling out appreciation for the ruffian’s downfall.

  Uncertain what to do next, I sent a prayer to Danu, in thanks for possessing me when I needed it. And to Kaja, heresy though it might be to align a mortal woman with a goddess, for being right, that knowing the dance would allow it to guide my blades.