Blood Indigo Read online

  Sivan tried to smile at the old tease but found it difficult. Instead she smoothed at her long tunic as Cavodu, Commander of the Temple and therefore of the Western Islands, flipped his cloak to one side and swung down from his mount. Lamellar steel and leather rattled, sunlight and shadow both picking out the intricate stitches, and one hand rested upon an equally fine sword, slung at his hip.

  Primitive weaponry, but they’d found out long ago and the hard way that other sorts were often rendered useless. But even more significant: how her people needed to arm themselves for a mere trip to the southeast estuaries.

  “My sister would rather ride hunt for the table with her lover than heed any sedate pace!” Jorda, at Cavodu’s left stirrup, dismounted with a quick grin.

  Sivan returned it as the other riders dispersed through a gap in the ancient vines and columns. One took the reins to not only Cavodu’s but his son’s mount, following the others. As they passed into the green, behind them it twisted, shimmered briefly, then morphed into razored leaves and briars with finger-length thorns.

  The three were left alone on the great, living stair.

  A perfect time to speak. “My hunt fared even less sedate than you should believe, Father. I found a trail. One that you, Jorda, left cold but a few turns ago.”

  Her brother’s pleasant expression faded into puzzlement. Her father, on the other hand, seemed to fathom what had been left unsaid. Lips tightening, he climbed the steps towards the vine-shrouded entry and raised one arm.

  The vines shook, twined tighter for a breath then submitted, roiling and twisting in retreat. Beneath them a crystalline barrier revealed itself, shifting and refracting, small discolorations beginning to pulse more akin to blood than any creak of wood or stone. An opening limned itself, solidified and shuddered, then irised wide.

  Cavodu gestured, sharp, as he disappeared through the gate.

  Jorda and Sivan exchanged glances and followed.

  “ARE WE to just let this stand?”

  They spoke the tongue of the South Island’s ephemerals. Maloh’s first tongue. Not many of their own bothered to learn such things, and this conversation was one they’d rather not disclose. It was the same reason they kept to vocal speech; it was altogether too easy for thoughts, if Sent and Shared with more than one mind, to stray.

  “It isn’t yours to decide what shall stand and what shall not.” Cavodu had exchanged travelling mail for gauzy loose robes, and road-dusted boots for sandals. The latter gleamed no less than the burnished stone tiles. “Your sister acted heedlessly.”

  Jorda had not bothered to shed his riding clothes, though he was replaiting his dark hair. “Was she just to let the little creature die of poison?”

  “If such was its fate, yes!”

  “And you’re sure that was, indeed, its fate.” Sivan leaned against one of the wooden pillars in her father’s solar, fingers idling upon the smooth surface, eyes tracing the fingerlings of light through the roof of green leaves and crystalline tiles. She and Jorda had shared the same womb, but it took no twin- or psi-bond to know what he was feeling.

  “Sivan. Daughter. If you and Maloh felt the need to interfere, it should have been with more caution. Considering.”

  “Perhaps, Father, I was considering that most of all.”

  “You both know a decision made with care and craft cannot be set aside simply because it is inconvenient!”

  “Inconvenient?” Jorda repeated, dubious.

  “We have interfered enough with those little ones—you, Jorda, in particular have done! The decision was made long ago, by ones with more command-right than I: the native creatures are to be left alone. Protected, even.”

  “Like insects beneath a glass.”

  “Poisonous ones,” Cavodu said, sharp. “They fought us, once. It was decided to leave them to their strange myths and dreams. The latter in particular seem to have some hold over this place, and there is not a one of us who has forgotten the consequences.”

  “Consequences, indeed!” Sivan interrupted. “It was not a myth or dream I met in the Deeps. This boy’s very existence is Jorda’s responsibility. Whether we wish it or not.”

  “But does such a kindling truly run through him?” Jorda asked. “Could it possibly have caught light?”

  Cavodu crossed his arms, eyebrows drawing together.

  “More than you could imagine, my brother. I witnessed it myself, as did my companions.” Sivan turned once more to her sire. “Maloh has, of course, encountered the little ones before, but Rann and Vox had never seen one. Rann was open with her curiosity, and—”

  “Which is why we should not interfere.”

  “That is exactly my point, Father! Rann couldn’t interfere. She tried to set herself within the little one’s mind, but he made parry with her! He responded, repelled her easily. As if her Sounding was an invasion he would not permit!”

  Cavodu’s eyes, shimmering-pale with anger, stilled and darkened, narrowing.

  “They will, one and all, corroborate what happened if you doubt me. I’m sure Vox would be happy to; he did not approve.”

  “Vox did well to disapprove.” Cavodu’s words were slow. “And I do not doubt you, daughter.”

  “What native youth could deny an empath of Rann’s calibre,” Jorda mused, “if he were not somehow privy to the Matrices?”

  Cavodu kept silence. Sivan slid a glance towards Jorda; he returned it and spoke guardedly—not to her.

  “You are willing to involve yourself with the natives of the southern and eastern continents, Father! Even when, as now, they make war upon our places!”

  “That in itself is enough to make the little ones of this continent of little importance!” Cavodu retorted. “We’ve enough trouble with ephemerals: the Cove Islands overrun, the harbour roads infected with brigands who capture our people and try to wrest what tech we have remaining… as if they could use it, did they have it! Savages, all of them, and we still have people held hostage we cannot retrieve!” He shook his head. “I understand, more and more, why the Domina extols the dangers of contamination. I never thought a day would come when I would curse a species’ evolution.”

  “And what of Maloh?” Sivan protested. “She isn’t contamination! She’s been one of us since she first came to our borders.”

  “Nor is she alone,” Jorda added. “Maloh and ones like her are nothing like those savages who took the Islands. Many seek us in curiosity and peace instead of conflict. And the ghoteh might be primitive, but the ones we’ve encountered are truly innocents, artless as any of the wild animals they hunt and live beside.”

  “Encountered. Despite the Compact forbidding it. I’ve heard the argument before, my son, and from your lips. You, of all of us, know what happens when boundaries are broached.”

  Jorda looked away, frowning.

  “What has already happened,” Sivan pointed out, curt.

  Hands behind his back, Cavodu stepped over to the open balcony, looking out over the tangle of green. “I find it more likely this native boy has been bred from his own kind.”

  “It’s been centuries since his kind has possessed any usable psi abilities.”

  “True.” Cavodu shrugged. “Yet rumours persist, hints that betray this much: the little ones might still hold this planet’s powers close and secret.” He turned, eyed his son and daughter. “You were born here; you did not experience Landing. And it is true that there is something about this continent in particular. A force seems to… guard it. Somehow. Perhaps it is merely the continent’s nature. Perhaps it is something more secret, and practiced.”

  Sivan frowned. “Something that can pass, unaffected, through a threshold matrix?”

  Silent for long moments, Cavodu let his gaze wander back to the open balcony and beyond. “That is troubling, yes.”

  “Also,” Sivan said, lower, “the boy informed me his people find ‘ghoteh’ insulting.” As her father’s nostrils flared, she admitted, “I cannot pronounce the full name. But he said I
might call them”—a pause, to curl the word properly upon her tongue—“kowehokla. First people.”

  “They have strange names, many of them. All twists and clicks, stops and slurs of tongue,” Jorda muttered. “It seems but a breath ago. Merely twenty cycles of a world around its star. Two heartbeats, nothing more.”

  “To them, twenty cycles is nigh to a fifth of their entire existence,” Cavodu inserted, stern. “If they survive to age, with the lives they lead.”

  “What is he like?” Jorda’s voice was soft, almost wondering; he leaned into the wooden post, nearly whispering to Sivan. “Do you know, I called his mother Brena because of the fire in her hair and the embers from it, all over and even darker than her skin. She called them ‘freckles’.”

  A slight smile quirked at Sivan’s mouth. “Well, the child of your little lost firebird has freckles as well. He stands barely here,” she cut a line across her ribs, “small and quick as a mouse. His hair is black as yours, but sleek and straight, with muted fire erupting beneath the sun’s gleaning. He has the animal eyes that gleam in the dark. And his soul is keen as starstone. But,” her voice hardened, “that soul is breaking. Jorda. It is your power that has wakened in him, not that of any throwback ephemeral. I would swear to it.”

  Jorda looked down, lips tightening. Sivan turned from him and walked over to Cavodu, hands open and beseeching. “Father. When the Domina speaks of contamination, you always speak of responsibility. Our people have set this in motion through action, unmeant or not, and now this little one will suffer because of what we have left undone!”

  “Is your charge of nonintervention with these gho… these khowehokla so made of star-metal and fire that we cannot answer a call to which we gave voice?” Jorda followed his sister, steps measured. “We cannot hold out our hand to aid in a circumstance we made?”

  Cavodu did not turn to them, but his eyes shifted, spinning with flecks of light, echoing the tangled jungle and ever-moving waters far below.

  9 – Council

  He and Palatan weren’t late, after all.

  Just outside the entry to the Council dens, the chieftains waited. A full assemblage, this time, of the allied tribes and moieties, with myriad Clan- and tribe-markings, their ceremonial attire comparable to Skybow’s arch through light and wet. Conversation, just as multihued, rose up into the massive, overarching branches of the ancient ones guarding the entry to the council den: a pair of grandfather wyrh trees, thick and gnarled, intertwined as the veins tracing a ropeKeeper’s forearms.

  Našobok had possessed scarcely four-and-one summerings the first time he’d climbed those wyrh trees… and received two Suns’ of ostracism for his insolence. There were few severe punishments meted to ahlóssa; Našobok had in his youth encountered them all.

  As they came closer, the talk dipped into murmurs, then whispers, then ceased altogether as they noted first Našobok, then Palatan walking beside as if they were equals.

  Nevertheless, greetings were tendered: full honours for Alekšu, bare nods for the wyrhling. None moved forwards or offered to include them.

  “I gave you warning,” Našobok murmured towards Palatan. “You should have come in from behind.”

  “My favourite thing, that,” Palatan quipped, and Našobok gave a groan, retorted:

  “I’ll say, considering how many offspring you’ve sired. It must be true, how you always claim any good stallion drives his herd before him.”

  Another grin. “So now you’re one of my mares, wyrh-chieftain?”

  “Ai,” Našobok drawled, “and that’s likely.”

  Palatan laughed outright. A few eyes cut their way, just as swiftly turned aside. The great wooden door bordered by the wyrh trees gave a thick, powerful rumble and conversation ceased once more, this time expectant. The door was flung open and Darhinu, elder a’Naišwyrh and Inhya’s helpmate, stepped through, followed by Inhya herself.

  Despite his problematic relationship with Inhya—though she would have said they had none—Našobok had to admit a grudging admiration for his brother’s spouse. The only sound Inhya made as she trod towards them was the slight jingle of bells hemming her colourful woven layers of hipscarves and kirtles. She’d the grace of the spear fishers a’Naišwyrh, and her Earth-hued eyes, matched by tawny threads running through her turquoise headwrap, missed nothing. Including beside whom her younger brother stood. An irate spark leapt to life in those eyes; as she tucked her chin, the beads decorating her headscarf batted at a jaw clenching tense.

  Našobok crossed his arms, returned her glare with a tiny cock of head and a ghost of a smirk. Inhya might be deaf and blind to what Power had won her brother Alekšu’s sacred horns, but her heart was solid as Earth. Inhya loved the boundaries of custom, hated with a passion anything to challenge it. Even now, she could scarce believe Našobok was staring her down.

  A hard elbow to the ribs nearly made Našobok yip; it did make him drop his eyes. “Yuškammanukfila ikšo!” Palatan hissed into his ear, hard fingers sliding up to grip at the base of Našobok’s skull. “You take entirely too much pleasure in baiting my sister.”

  Denying it was pointless. Našobok did, however, point out, “I’m not too much a thickwit to rut you. Thwarted, a’io. But you’re going to get more than you bargained for if you insist on clutching my nape.” He slid his eyes to meet Palatan’s. “In front of that same sister, I might add.”

  Palatan gave Našobok’s nape-hairs a sharp tug. “K’šo,” was his correction, removing the “rut” but keeping—albeit shortened—the “thickwit”. To deny the grin quirking at his lips was also pointless; instead Palatan leaned closer, whispered, “Better at your neck than where I’d rather have my hands about now.”

  “You have never played fair.”

  Našobok felt, rather than saw, Palatan’s shrug. “Then keep your talk at the back of your tongue and save that tongue for something better.” A slight push. “Go, cheeky outlier. Don’t make old Grass Weaver enter alone.”

  Indeed, the yakhling chieftain was approaching Inhya. She moved with some deliberation, clad in her brightest with all her wealth displayed: bangles of copper and silver around her throat, ankles, and feet; dried grasses further lengthening a headful of white braids.

  First in/last out was the unspoken rule for those who held low—or no—status. A group of the lower-ranking leaders milled, new-come to their duties and therefore keen to appear conscientious. They were not, however, so impatient as to make the mistake of going before any outcast.

  “I’m looking forwards to your revenge,” Palatan furthered, leaning into Našobok one more time then stepping away to greet another chieftain. As if he’d just mentioned Sun’s rising and not what he was hoping Našobok would do to him when they got against each other and naked.

  Našobok took a very deep breath, held it as he walked forwards, let it out as he greeted the two females with hand to heart, head and outward. “Yakh-chieftain. Hearth-chieftain.”

  Inhya’s return greeting was composed, formal. Našobok offered Grass Weaver his outstretched arm, which she accepted with a wordless nod.

  She waited to speak until he’d escorted her through the entry and into the long tunnel leading to the great dens. “You’ve a good heart, Našobok.”

  “You’re wise to not say so before my once-brother’s spouse.”

  Grass Weaver’s lined face stretched into a wide smile. “I’m wise enough to take a supportive hand when it’s offered—and to know honour when I see it.”

  “Hunh. Don’t say that too loudly; you’ll sink my reputation.”

  “And better these mastiffs a’Naišwyrh shouldn’t realise this old doe is weak in her right hind.” The slight limp was all the more noticeable as he held her arm.

  “The blood swelling again?”

  “A kindly Matwau called it by some name sounding more of spat phlegm than any truename of what plagues me. He tried to foist all sorts of advice and outLand potions on me, but I know my body better than any Round Eyes. I at
e too many sweets at the last gathering, is all. Everything has a price, wyrh-chieftain.”

  How well they both knew.

  “Those tight-bound to Land and Law will be glad of what other talk I gleaned from the Matwau,” Grass Weaver continued. “Open Council hasn’t come too soon.”

  “Hunh. I too have outLand information to share.”

  The clay floor cushioning their steps was well swept, covered here and there with mats of sedge, many of those laden with food and drink. Extra blankets lay, here and there, in neat folds, though most chieftains would wear their own, extra finery mixed with practicality. Fire burned in the midst of this circle, in Ša’s great cob-clay hearth where Ša was well respected, never allowed to die. All had a place near the cleansing flames thisSun; none would have the chance to feel slighted by pride of place or have a chance to complain they’d been seated where they couldn’t be heard. Even the light ochre and cream wash upon the sandstone walls bid the light reflect, bring any dark feelings into illumination.

  Aylaniś knelt at the hearth, settling a few more logs.

  “Meddler,” Našobok fondly accused.

  “I hear that from my spouse enough, lovemate.” Her tone changed from light chide to respectful concern, “I’ve extra blankets there for you, grandmother.”

  “If that is meddling, then I accept,” Grass Weaver remarked.

  “Things are different in duskLands.” Aylaniś slid her eyes over to Našobok. “We lie down with all sorts, there.”

  “Not enough of late.” Našobok let out a heavy sigh.

  “And whose fault is that, outlier?”

  Grass Weaver chuckled. “You’d sooner hamstring Wind, horsetalker.”

  “Hamstrung he’s of little use.” Aylaniś shrugged. “But an occasional thorn in his foot might nail that foot to one place for more than a small brace of Suns.”