Blood Indigo Read online

  Unexpected, this recognition. And possibly dangerous.

  THIS IS… unexpected.

  Cavodu shifted foot to foot, sandals creaking in the damp. He hated the Grotto. He always had. Dank, dripping, reeking of brine. But it was where, this centum, she had fashioned herself to reside.

  They all had ways of dealing with exile. Or choosing not to deal.

  Yet you come by slow and primitive means, and with news of this import!

  Skimmers were hardly primitive! “I thought ’twould be better to speak in person. You know the Matrices are less… secure. Or reliable, come to that.”

  Very true. Even our own tech has become contaminated by this place. And now, your own children have succumbed to the lure of it. Despite the Accord.

  “I fear it’s inevitable, the drift,” Cavodu replied. There were many reasons they had decided upon treaty and nonintercession: for scientific study, for expediency, to avoid further contamination…

  And because they’d had no choice.

  Drift is one thing. Choosing a savage’s things over our own? That is worrisome. A flit of blue-white skin in darkness, then a swirl of bubbles loosed in a flutter of translucent membrane as the Domina floated past the clear portal.

  She had always been graceful. Cavodu remembered—as few did—how she had danced with the Dominus in the Great Halls of Mount Klariyon before it had blown, coaxed by the savage powers into volcanic eruptions of fire and ash. She’d been a creature of dry land wrapped in layered veils of shilla-weave… eons ago? Or a mere hundreds of this recalcitrant world’s rotations about its meagre sol?

  Cavodu wasn’t sure. But the Dominus had betrayed them in the end, as surely as this world had betrayed them: a trap laid in the click-tick passages of a small and powerful world’s rotations, of their own bioengineered flesh grown obsessed with corporeal realities.

  Adaptation had been the only answer. It wasn’t one they cared for. Time—a bare philosophy flung against a distant future—was catching them up.

  Time, indeed. She followed some thoughts as easily as she slipped through the salt waters of the now-extinct volcano. Which got us into this disarray. Then. And now.

  Other thoughts Cavodu kept close. “I don’t think”—careful, go careful—“that either of them chose this path.”

  Another flash of pale in the dark beyond the crystalline viewing portal; another spin and swirl of seawater. She preferred her present form and its physical expression. Cavodu had tried it once; not unlike a long-ago memory of space, and freefall, disconcerting if held too long. Full gravity had its drawbacks, but still. Preferable.

  Your Sivan has chosen a native lover. Jorda chose to aid one of the little animals when he should have allowed it to whelp in its own fashion. And you—her eyes spun with the Sending—chose to allow it.

  “They were born here.”

  Another choice that should not have been allowed.

  “But it was, and here we are, Domina.” He inclined his head, respectful. “What is your will?”

  She circled once, then twice. Already the natives gain ground against us. They’ve evolved with our help, and now prey on us as we travel, attack our ports, raid our places! They’ve taken the Far Atoll, and our own people enduring unspeakable cruelties at their hands! If the Big Island also has decided to break the Accord we made with them… if the life force that continues to thwart us is actively turned against us again—

  “Why would a native boy want to do such a thing, even if he could?”

  She stopped before the portal, hanging in the brine. Never forget, Cavodu, the seeds of our present ignominy were sown long ago by a traitor’s choices! What if your foolish son has switched on some oddling genetic pattern? Triggered some default we thought long deactivated?

  A chill, nothing to do with the damp, draped Cavodu’s shoulders. “Surely there’s no possibility of that!”

  But if there is? We once refused to believe in the sentience of this parasitical planet—and that to our ruination. If there’s any possibility it could gain a final weapon against us, it likely will. The risk is too great. We’re vulnerable. We must act. This creature must be found again, by any means necessary.

  She didn’t openly say that the native boy shouldn’t have been allowed to leave their territory. But then, she didn’t have to.

  Your son and daughter will go and find him. She begun swimming back and forth, swift and almost nervous. If they can. The little savages are nomads.

  “Not all of them.”

  Have our contacts converge on every edge. Disperse a description, offer a price they won’t refuse. Not for a corpse, mind, she interrupted just as Cavodu started to protest. If it’s truly been engineered, then it could prove much more useful to us alive. Haunt the ports, the slave markets—

  “Domina, all of this is against the very Accord you speak of! It protects us as much as it does the Big Island!”

  Cavodu. She flattened both hands upon the portal. You know what’s at stake here.

  He did, more the pity.

  And as to the Accord? She pushed away, membranes casting a swirl of bubbles and foam. In light of this, it can no longer matter.

  16 – Trial & Trust

  “I weary of fish,” Aylaniś tossed a tidbit to Arrow—who plainly was not tired of said meat—and stood up with a stretch. “Your mother, Madoc, has given me leave to hunt; I was hoping you’d do the honour of accompanying us? It smells of a light Rain, perfect for the stalk.”

  Us. Anahli grinned as her mother looked her way with a slight nod. Anahli had fully expected to be packed off to the oških dens after midSun meal. Particularly since her sire—mending a riding pad—nevertheless had been watching her since they’d woken.

  “I’ll stay, finish this,” he said, his gaze still considering Anahli even as his fingers worked, nimble and skilled.

  Madoc sat upright from the game of toss-bones they were playing, puffing his chest like a rainbow cock.

  Kuli, meanwhile, leapt up and scooted about the tipo thrice. “A hunt! A hunt!”

  Madoc’s face was a plain giveaway, realising that “us” included Kuli.

  “We will go after wabadeh,” Aylaniś told him, “so you’ll need your strongest bow.”

  Doubt fully landed, then, and Anahli could all but see Madoc’s thoughts skittering.

  “Aunt, I mean no… uhn… disrespect. But even the best hunters find wabadeh, uhn, difficult. They don’t easily give themselves in any hunt. The old storyKeepers say they’re angry, that they enjoy humbling two-leggeds who like to think themselves best.”

  Anahli smirked, knowing what her dam’s response would be.

  “All the better! Let the canniest win, two- or four-legged!”

  A SOFT rain indeed began to fall as the quartet of hunters approached a hillock overlooking a proportional rarity in thisLand: open meadow. Creeping silent to the crest at her dam’s request, Anahli peeked over to find a damp progress of dusky copper and fawn. Five young wabadeh grazed below—bucks, most having shed their antlers already. A smallish one had a broken half antler still attached.

  Aylaniś crawled up to crouch on the wet ground beside her dam. The trees were shielding them, somewhat, but their braids were fuzzed with damp.

  Daughter, draw with me. Aylaniś spoke hunting-talk one-handed, with the other holding her double-curved bow and three arrows. Her eyes never left the grazing wabadeh as she told the two ahlóssa behind them, Madoc, flank my draw. Kuli, go Sunwise. Don’t rise until I do.

  Kuli set off, keeping low. Anahli crouched next to Aylaniś, who tossed her a quick grin. Just behind them, Madoc hefted his own longer bow.

  A snap froze them all in place. Kuli gasped. Anahli turned to see him looking down at the dried branch beneath one extended hand, both hidden by tall grass.

  The wabadeh flagged their tails, whirled and fled.

  “Rot you for a senseless, heavy-footed Spawn!” Madoc stomped over and whacked Kuli across the back of the head.

  Kuli
gave a snarl and, quick as thought, gained his feet to kick Madoc in the shin. Hard.

  Anahli lunged forwards at the first signs of altercation. She yanked Kuli aside by his ahlóssa braid, growled at Madoc when he started forwards, and turned to her dam.

  Aylaniś wasn’t there. Instead she ran along the ridge, sighting down a nocked arrow. The herd had nearly made the trees; she loosed, nocked another, loosed—all in the time it took for two breaths.

  One of the wabadeh stumbled, went down, and Kuli let out a triumphant cry. It truncated into a yip as the wabadeh rolled, staggered up, fell, then leapt up again and floundered into the trees.

  Aylaniś cursed a string of mixed horseClans and Rivertalk.

  “Aunt—”

  “Aška—”

  “Quiet!” Anahli snapped at the two ahlóssa, starting after Aylaniś, who’d already leapt down the hillock. “We have to track the buck! Follow!”

  Madoc hesitated, then sprang after. Kuli already was at Anahli’s heels.

  Over the plain Madoc was nearly left behind, but in Forest’s depths he caught up. He obviously knew the terrain like the weight of his ahlóssa braid, and as he drew even with Anahli, she smiled sideways at him.

  Aylaniś, a stride ahead, also saw. She echoed Anahli’s smile and nodded Madoc ahead. “Track him, then.”

  The honour of that flushed his cheeks, but Madoc didn’t let it shift him; he surged forwards, eyes quick and nostrils twitching. Imperative, that they find the injured wabadeh quickly. Disrespectful, to leave one’s quarry to suffer overlong—and Rain could wash away the blood trail more swiftly.

  Anahli caught wind first, signalling to Madoc as he faltered, uncertain. The hot radiance led forwards, into a stand of tall evergreens. Then, against their ears, the crash through thick undergrowth of desperate and wounded prey.

  Madoc pumped his fist and shot off like a racing pony. Aylaniś exchanged a quick, pleased glance with Anahli and followed.

  They found the buck: the smallish one, lagging. Aylaniś allowed Madoc to deliver the death stroke with a well-aimed arrow.

  “It would have been better with a spear,” he lamented as they circumnavigated the thicket and reached the stand beside which the wabadeh had fallen.

  “Ahlóssa aren’t allowed to hunt with spears, only to fish off the platforms. Under supervision, mind!” Kuli piped up, albeit without his usual brilliance. Smarting, no doubt, from alerting the small herd.

  “Even did I have a spear, you’d likely step on it,” Madoc sneered.

  “I didn’t mean to! It was a mistake!”

  “It was a mistake, a’io.” Aylaniś was threading her strung bow over her back, convenient to hand but out of her way. She lightly cuffed first her son, then Madoc. “And it’s done. Learn from it, both of you.” When Madoc would have protested, Aylaniś’s brows drew together, stern. “You do our four-legged brother little honour by arguing over his death.”

  Madoc flushed—as well he should, Anahli thought. Kuli knelt—out of reach should the wabadeh give a last kick—and stroked a small, penitent hand along the mottled nap of dusky fur. Aylaniś too knelt, one knee on the head as she leaned across and touched the animal’s staring eye. No response. She gave a short, satisfied nod and closed her eyes, traced a sign upon the wabadeh’s bony forehead and muttered a quick reverence.

  Then she looked up, her lip twitching. “You owe your cousin a Sun’s worth of grace, Little Fox. His woodlore negated your error.”

  Madoc gave a haughty look down his nose at Kuli.

  Except Kuli didn’t seem abashed, flashing a broad smile. “That’s true. It’ll give us more time together nextSun! Perhaps two or three Suns, for such a silly blunder.”

  Anahli laughed; she couldn’t help it. The look on Madoc’s face!

  He scowled at her.

  “One will be more than enough, son,” Aylaniś chided. “Go fetch the horses. We’ll need help to pack our four-legged brother. Anahli, you and I’ll start to gut while Madoc keeps watch.”

  As Kuli obediently vanished into the green, Madoc nodded, pleased with the duty. “If a predator comes looking for an easy meal, we’ll know.”

  Companionable silence fell. Anahli bent to the carcass with her dam, began to work.

  Like earlier times, this. Comfortable. Even Rain’s patter upon rich foliage didn’t disturb the sense of normalcy and peace Anahli hitherto had found only on the wide, dry plain, her horse galloping between her thighs and her weapons at her back.

  Also like earlier times were her dam’s next words, all soft reproof and lesson.

  “Mind this, Madoc chieftain-son,” Aylaniś said, quiet, as she tossed a braided hempen rope across to Anahli, who caught it easily. “To reject what’s owed is not honourable. I know Kuli’s love seems a burden to you, but you must remember it is love.”

  Madoc frowned. “But he hangs on me, all the while. He won’t even let me breathe!”

  Anahli had to fight a smirk, started to mutter how Tokela might feel the same about Madoc.

  With a small shake of head that belied a tiny grin, Aylaniś touched Anahli’s hand. “It’s a hard lesson, little cousin,” Aylaniś told Madoc, “to set free what we love. Harder for males than fems, I think. We must let our loved ones leave us before their first breath, even.”

  Warmth pooled in Anahli’s belly—the words, and her dam’s smile, turning fond upon her.

  Madoc frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “I know.” Aylaniś tilted the smile to Madoc, but her eyes remained upon Anahli. Anahli nodded, and stood. Throwing the rope across a lower branch, she tied a gathering knot and began to haul at the rope, exposing the wabadeh’s pale belly. Aylaniś continued, “When a dam bears her young, she must reconcile herself to the letting go. It is a thing of Grandmother, bonds that must be severed, but never can be.”

  “Sometimes they are, though,” Anahli found herself saying, quiet. “Sometimes people willingly sever them.”

  Still, the amber eyes held to hers, soft but resolute. “Loved ones are always with us. Their Spirit never leaves, even if their bodies are far away or gone. It doesn’t mean they don’t love us, it only means something weighty has called their heart.”

  Something weighty. Perhaps like her sire taking Alekšu’s horns from Chogah. Or Našobok leaving his family for River.

  River, who made silent talk with Tokela with such fierceness.

  If River spoke to Našobok with the same fervour as She had Tokela… Anahli didn’t question how she kenned such a thing; the knowledge had sunk into her heart, undeniable. And if She possessed them so utterly, took their strength, filled their hearts…

  Perhaps that was love, too? And did anyone have the right to deny such things, to anyone?

  “Love should be enough to keep anyone at your side!” Madoc claimed stoutly.

  “Sometimes.” Aylaniś inspected her knife, then bent to the carcass. “Sometimes not. There are all kinds of love, and none of them are wrong… other than they may not be right for you.”

  Madoc kept frowning. Anahli bent once more to the buck, thoughts tumbling.

  “Madoc, when Kuli returns, we’ll need your strength to help hang this wabadeh,” Aylaniś deflected an ahlóssa frown with some mastery. “Between us we should be able to parcel and pack the carcass onto your horse.”

  “My horse?”

  “A’io. My mare is young, and would prefer a treble of our People on her back than a blooded carcass.”

  “My dam often says that horses a’Naišwyrh are only fit for draught. Of course my sire says horses a’Šaákfo are hot-hearted silly things not practical for work…” He trailed off, only then realising it might be construed as insult.

  Aylaniś laughed. “Well, I’m pleased to see Inhya keeps you riding as she can. Even a coarse draught pony. You’re of my tribe through your dam, and without our four-legged Kin we are nothing.”

  “Aška taught us to ride, both me and Tokela,” Madoc started, then subsided, his realisation obvious.
Likely he and Tokela wouldn’t be riding together anymore.

  “Your eyes are not watching outwards, but inwards,” Aylaniś chided, gentle, and as Madoc quickly minded his duty, she continued, “You’ll follow Tokela’s path soon enough, nephew. Never wish away what Suns you have. There’s little honour—or content—in resenting the way things must be. Paths differ, others will go ahead and trail behind, and we must wish their steps be fair and firm. Otherwise our heart grows small.”

  “A great heart,” Anahli abruptly sang, pulling on the carcass, “is coaxed, like a wild horse ša is coaxed, with open eyes and Spirit.”

  “And sweet, sweet talk,” Aylaniś joined in.

  Madoc wasn’t having it. “So I’m to just let Tokela push me away? Like he pushes everyone away except that one, and he’ll take Tokela away on his rotted old boat and—!” Madoc broke off, cheeks once again flushed dark.

  “You’ll not find me agreeing with you on Tokela’s chosen playmate, my nephew. Našobok is oathbrother to me and mine.”

  “But he’s Riverwalker! Outlier!”

  Again, Aylaniś answered Madoc; again, her eyes slid to Anahli’s. “I respect your tribal law, Madoc, but it’s not mine. And even a chieftain-son must respect that.”

  “But—”

  “Našobok’s heart is great with love. He will be kind to Tokela, and Tokela wants him. What else should matter?”

  “Tokela just likes to flout everything that matters!”

  “Perhaps he does,” Anahli found herself saying. “Perhaps he feels he’s little choice. Or,” she narrowed here eyes at Madoc, “perhaps you should ask yourself what you feel like, now, without him. I don’t know Tokela as well as you, but I think he feels alone about many things.”

  “He wants it that way!”

  Anahli shrugged, aware of her dam’s eyes upon her as she continued, “There are many ways to be alone, Madoc. Some make you content. Some just make you more isolated.”

  Madoc subsided, chewing at his lower lip.

  Aylaniś reached out with bloodied fingers and traced them, first on Anahli’s cheek then across her breast.