Ariah (49 page)

I took to singing to keep myself company. It had practical uses, too. The sound carries in the grasslands; there’s nothing to block it but a handful of trees here and there, and the songs, I’d found, tended to keep at bay the wildlife who might otherwise have been attracted by the smell of food. I am an artless singer: the mimicry means I’m technically competent, but the best I can hope for is an accurate reproduction of someone else’s art. I sang songs Sorcha had sung to me in his voice. I sang songs I’d overheard at the slave markets. I even sang the wordless, senseless melodies the satyrs in the City sang. It was the songs that brought the gold elves to me. I sang one evening in the winter, used to the solitude, while I built a campfire. I’d caught two perch in the river and looked forward to eating them. My qualms about eating the flesh of animals were long gone by then. I sang a Droma song overheard years before at the Rabathan slave markets. It was one about a river. It was cyclical, verses returning again and again to the river in the same summer afternoon year after year. I sang it thoughtlessly. Halfway through the third verse I felt the pull. It was unmistakable. It was a peripheral count.

I looked over my shoulder. Instinct propelled me to keep singing. Maybe it wasn’t instinct; maybe it was the gift, the connection. I’m not sure. In any case, I kept singing. The tall grass shifted. I heard the bleat of goats.

“
A Hradata walking song this far west?” A half-grown gold elf emerged from the grass. Ve was not quite as tall as me and whip thin. Ve was burnished a mahogany brown from the sun, with a kinky mane of yellow hair. Goats sauntered around vim, chewing at the grass, peering at me in haughty disinterest. The Droma child blinked at me and sucked in a lungful of air, eyes wide, nostrils flared, on the verge of panic.

I held out my hands, watching vim closely like one watches a wild animal. “It is just me here. There are no others. Just me.”

I took a very small, very slow step towards the child. I remembered the strangeness of Droma gender. I tried very hard to ignore all the signs of biological sex, to see the child as a person, as
voe
. If I was to encroach on their lands and ask for their help in survival, I felt the least I could do was get this one basic thing right. The words were easy, but the seeing was hard. It took a very long time before it was natural, and even then it was hard.

Ve stumbled back and fell over a goat. Ve scrambled upright and held vis walking stick up like a weapon. “Stay back, settler!”

I stayed back. “I left the settlers.”

“
You’re silver! You’re a settler!”

“
I am alone.”

“
I’m not for sale, settler!”

Fear poured off vim in waves. Ve was petrified, shaking, a heartbeat away from violence. I shaped vim. I did. I saw no way out but to do it, to manipulate this terrified child using magic ve did not understand. I shaped vim with a song, a Droma song, about birds.

Ve lowered vis stick and frowned. “That one wasn’t Hradata. Who are you? Where are you from? How do you know Droma?”

“
My name is Ariah. I’m from the west. I know Droma because I listened to ones who were sold.”

“
What are you doing here?”

“
Not much,” I said. “Surviving. I ran from the settlers.”

“
You’re just out here by yourself?”

“
Yes.”

The child chewed vis lip. “You need a clan, settler.”

“
I had one. The Qin took me away from them.”

Ve sighed. Ve plucked at vis hair and poked at the goats with vis stick. “You need a clan,” ve said again. Ve left; the grass swallowed vim and the goats back up, and I was alone again.

I caught more fish and made more improvements to my shelter. Three days later, on an unseasonably warm day, the Droma child returned again. I was naked and perched on a rock, washing out my one set of clothes. Once again, I’d been singing. I felt vis presence—it was a gentle tug, like a string wrapped around my wrist—and stood up. I looked around but saw nothing but grass. “Are you out there? Are you back?”

I frowned at my naked body and my wet clothes. I had nothing to cover myself with but the remnants of the sack I’d used to steal cheese some four months before, which I used as a paltry blanket at night. I wrapped it around my hips and stared at the grass. I felt the tug again, this time south of me. “Do you want some fish?” I called out.

The grass swayed. A dark-brown hand pushed a clump aside. The Droma child stepped out, followed by a person about my age. The little goatherd watched me with furrowed brows, but the one ve’d brought with vim regarded me with the hint of a smile. Ve had a knife strapped to vis belt. “A settler with no town,” the older one said.

“
My name is Ariah. I have no more love for the towns that you do. I’m unarmed.”

“
How is it you speak Droma so well?”

“
Magic,” I said.

“
Are you an echo, settler?”

The sackcloth threatened to fall to the ground and leave me wholly exposed. I wrestled it back in place. The Droma laughed at me, and I smiled in return. A little of the tension in the air cleared. “I don’t know what that is.”

The older Droma laughed. “You speak Droma, but you don’t know about echoes?” I shook my head. Ve came into my camp with the little goatherd trailing behind. Ve surveyed my camp, and ran a hand along the thatchwork roof of my shelter. “Where did you learn to do this?”

“
Experimentation,” I said.

Ve took my wrist and turned my hand palm up. “You have a weaver’s hands. Have you worked a loom?”

I laughed. Ve gave me a curious look. “I worked wool factories in the towns.”

“
Not the same,” ve said.

“
Not at all.”

Ve dropped my hand. Ve studied my face, and I studied vim. Ve was full-lipped, with a wide, flat nose. Vis eyes were large and almond-shaped, Semadran-shaped, but the pupils were ringed with a ruddy gold instead of violet. Ve was small, about an inch or so shorter than me, and thinner, too, despite the fact that I’d turned to skin and bone in the months since I’d been taken from Rabatha. Vis hair was identical to the goatherd’s: a thick, kinky spray of yellow hair in all directions. Ve smiled. “Say something in your settler tongue, and I’ll show you an echo.”

“
Say something?”

“
Yes.”

“
In Semadran or Qin?”

“
It doesn’t matter.”

One hand kept the sackcloth in place. I held out the other. “My name is Ariah,” I said in Lothic.

The Droma pointed at my hand. “You want me to do something with your hand, Ariah?” Ve spoke, and it sounded Lothic to my ears, but something was off. I watched vim closely when ve spoke, and it was like the words I heard and the words ve said did not quite match up. I am no lip reader, but the movements of vis mouth seemed disconnected from the words that came out of it.

“
Do you know what language this is?” I asked.

Ve smirked. “That depends on who you ask.”

“
I’m asking you.”

“
I speak to you in Droma,” ve said. “Whatever you hear it as, that I can’t say. You speak, I hear Droma. I speak, you hear what-have-you. This is the echo, see?”

The only way I can describe it was as an auditory mirror. The way red elves can use magic to alter what a person sees, gold elves can do it with what a person hears. It seems to me to be rooted in the same process, built on connections, built on something like a charm. I am no magicologist. All I can say is it is a powerful thing, that it gets the Droma hunted and captured by Qin and pirates alike, and that it is incredibly disorienting. I never got used to it, the mismatch between what I heard and what I saw. I never really had to since I spoke Droma. I switched to Vahnan and spoke again. “This is magic?”

Ve nodded. “Magic, yes,” and this time it sounded Vahnan. “If you are not an echo, how do you speak Droma?”

“
I learned it. From slaves’ songs. I learned it with a different kind of magic,” I said. I’d switched to Droma to say it, and I caught vim staring at my mouth, looking for the telltale echo’s disconnect between what I said and what I spoke.

Ve raised vis eyebrows. “Strange.” Ve gestured at my campsite. “How long have you been here?”

“
A week.”

“
Where were you before?”

I pointed west. “Down the river.”

“
You have no livestock. You have no weapons. You have no clan. And you wander?”

I took a chance. “I would rather wander with a clan.”

“
Kisi says you have one in the west.”

I looked away, out at the swaying grass. It was a simple statement, simple like a knife is simple, and it cut me deep. “I do,” I said softly. “I do, but I have no way back to them.”

The older Droma looked at me closely.
I felt vis curiosity, vis fascination.
I felt the way the thought took slow, improbable formation in vis mind. “You were taken. I have siblings who were taken. Lost to us.”

“
I…yes.”

The Droma were silent for some time. The little goatherd shifted nervously from foot to foot, but the other stood very straight, arms crossed, lost in thought. “Kisi says you sang a Hradata song.”

“
I didn’t know it was Hradata. Is Hradata a clan?” The Droma nodded. “Not your clan?”

“
Not our clan, no, but we know them. The Hradata paths take them close to the edge, and they’ve had many taken. Like us. But they won’t change their paths like we have. How did you learn the songs?”

“
They sing them. The ones taken sing them when they are sold off. They sing to each other, and I listened.”

“
Listened,” ve said, “and understood.”

“
Yes.”

“
Sing me one of your stolen songs.”

I blinked at vim. Ve waved at me to get on with it. I picked one of my favorites, something like a love song. As I sang it, both the Droma stared at me, wide-eyed. When I finished, the older Droma swallowed, fighting back emotion. I stared down at my feet to give vim some privacy. “That is…that is a thing Halaavi said,” ve said in a quiet, hollow voice.

“
It is, yes.”

“
I am Halaavi.” I looked up and found vim crying. Tears glistened in the sunlight. Ve cried stoically, regally, and with no shame. “There’s only one I said that to. And ve was taken, and now I know. Ve was sold.”

“
I’m sorry.”

“
The grass grows on,” ve said. Ve sighed. The little goatherd took vis hand, and Halaavi relaxed a little, grew more substantial. Halaavi laughed. “The grass grows,” ve said, “and sometimes it changes colors. You need a clan, Ariah. I will advocate to the Avolayla for you.”

CHAPTER 34

Halaavi and Kisi led me to the Avolayla’s camp. It was about two and a half miles from where I’d settled by the river. Halaavi asked me questions about the Empire while we walked. Ve asked me what the slave markets were like. Ve said ve’d been near Ma-Halad before. The permanence of the settlement bothered vim. Ve said it was unnatural and arrogant to demand one stretch of land to support you forever.

“
Well, the Empire may settle,” I said, “but it keeps growing. It keeps making that demand of new places.”

“
Greed,” Halaavi said.

“
Among other things, yes.”

The Avolayla’s camp sat on carefully cultivated plains south of the river. The grasses in the living area had been laid down flat. The Droma use boards knotted with rope for this; they step the grass stalks down, coax them flat. You can identify a clan by the pattern of its floorwork: the Avolayla draw the Moon and the Pet overlapping on their grass floors. Around thirty yurts of different sizes sat on the floorwork, the walls of each covered in embroidered skins, and the roofs masterfully thatched. In the center of the camp was a covered canopy protecting the fire pits and stoves, and a longer, larger yurt that served as a meeting place. Stray goats, antelope, and yaks roamed through the camp at will. Chickens clustered in a small pen beside the cooking tent. Children ran in loose packs between the yurts. The air was rich with the smell of smoke, dung, boiling tea, and fresh milk.