Ariah (54 page)

“
What are you saying? You knew this was going to happen?” Laavi stared into the fire. “That’s absurd! I…Laavi, I would not have paired with you if I thought I would ever leave. I swear. Mercy, I wish…I wish there was a way to live two lives at once.”

“
I wish there were no slavers. I wish there was no winter, only spring. I wish you could live two lives, too.”

“
I’m sorry.”

Laavi tucked vis face back against my shoulder and sighed. “Me, too. I will carry you with me when you go. I’ll tell others things you have said.”

“
No one will listen. You’ll lose your reputation. I’ve never said anything worth repeating.”

Laavi smiled. “No,” ve said. “I guess you haven’t. I guess I’ll just tell myself things you’ve said. Ariah, I hope you remember things I’ve said. Will you?”

I held vim close, wrapped up tight against me, my face in vis hair. I held vim for a long time while the obstinate fire cracked and popped and would not die. “I have remembered things you said long before I ever met you. Yes, I will remember. I’ll remember every single word.”

CHAPTER 37

The Kivvni did not like me much, but they were short-handed, so they accepted me anyway. I was put to work as soon as I stepped into their camp. I learned to herd goats, which is not as easy as one would think. I milked yaks until my knuckles ached. Life with the Kivvni was different from with the Avolayla or the Allunga. The clan had around fifty people in it, the youngest of whom was around forty. They did not bother to give me a sibling name because there were only six or so others my age. There were a handful of pairs, but most were unpaired, and likely waiting until the clan dissolved for good before looking for a pair in earnest. There was more work than could get done, which led alternately to days of frenzied exertion followed by dull, meandering days where nothing seemed to happen.

I could see the Kivvni had been a flourishing, grand clan long ago. Some of their older yurt skins bore intricate, beautiful needlework. Some of the firestones were large and made of stone from the far northeast. I asked a Kivvni person about it once. We sat side-by-side milking an endless stream of yaks. Ve was a few years younger than me, and ve shrugged when I asked. “We’ve always been this way ever since I can remember. Bad luck. This clan is only bad luck, settler. We had good luck once, but all luck turns just like the seasons.”

The Kivvni moved camps frequently. The pasture in the south is thin, and it drives you to keep moving. It felt like we only had days between setting up our yurts and tearing them down again. The further south we went, the faster the herds ate what little pasture there was. The soil grew sandy and thin. The water did, indeed, turn brackish. Near the southern coasts, a finger of the Mother Desert slides along the far edge of the grasslands. I had thought that they would take me to the edge of the desert and no farther, but the Kivvni pressed on, farther and farther south, and they moved then with a sense of strange purpose. We walked with camp strapped to our thin yaks for several days, and then we hit a pirate outpost.

Buildings loomed large and stagnant. I had not been in a place with such steadfast permanence since I’d escaped the Ma-Halad barracks over seven years before. I thought it was a mistake; I thought we’d slink back into the dunes and try somewhere else. “There’s a town up ahead,” I said.

“
Yes, that’s Zaghir,” the person next to me said. “We have an arrangement with the settlers there.”

“
What? What do you mean you have an arrangement?”

“
We have an arrangement,” ve said, and then ve picked up vis pace and left me behind. That night, we set up our yurts just a few feet away from the gates of Zaghir. The next morning, the pirates manning the watchtowers let us in. The gates were set on cables and pulleys; shirtless pirates at the eastern watchtower pulled a rope, and the gates swung open like the jaws of some great vicious animal. The Kivvni sang no walking song when we marched through the gate. The silence was damning. Pirates milled around us, leaning on the walls of buildings. Some approached the Kivvni and laid out prices for yak butter, woven goods, and what few other things we had to offer. I watched the back and forth in what passed for Zaghir’s market with a sick fascination. Everything seemed wrong. The other Kivvni felt it, knew it, and ignored me.

We bartered our goods, and one of the Kivvni bartered vimself. A young person, no older than fifty, who had already seen too much death and lived too hard a life, bartered with the pirates for a spot as crew on a ship. Apari was a dark soul, cynicism bred right to vis marrow. The clan breathed a callous sigh of relief when the deal was struck. Ve did not return to the yurts that night. “At least ve isn’t cargo,” someone said to me.

“
How is this any better? Ve’ll be separated from the land, from you, from the other clans.”

“
There are Droma in the ports and on the ships. I am not Yavinaha. Well, I am, and I’m not,” ve said. “I am Yavinaha here, but were I to join a ship I’d let that go. It wouldn’t make any sense out there on the water. I think sometimes the interior clans get confused. I think sometimes they think you’re not Droma if you’re not following Yavinaha. Apari is Droma. Apari will always be Droma. What that means out there on the water?” Ve shrugged. “Apari will find out.”

“
You trust them? The pirates? You trust them not to take Apari as a slave?”

“
They gave vim a neck tattoo. Neck for crew, wrist for cargo.” I frowned, unconvinced this meant anything at all. Ve let out a mocking laugh. “Settler Ariah, you are strange. You worry so much for Apari, but you’re the one seeking out the pirates. You wanted to go to the southern reaches? This is life in the southern reaches.”

Ve was right. I had asked to come here. I knew finding Sorcha and Shayat meant dealing with pirates on their terms and in their land. The Kivvni left, and when they did, they left without me. They gave me a yurt and two yaks, each with its own finely made, very old saddle. I struck up uneasy friendships with some of the pirates—all of them fleet agents, exiled here to this forgotten outpost for one reason or another. One of them slept with his captain’s tether. One of them sold out a fleet, only to be dumped in Zaghir by the fleet he’d sold them out to. They were a weathered bunch, but not particularly bitter. It was quiet in Zaghir, and safe, which counts for a lot for those in the life. It just wasn’t profitable there. Once you were in, there was no way out.

Most of the pirates stuck in Zaghir were Chalir. Some were half-Qin, half-Chalir, and a few were nahsiyya with blood so thoroughly mixed you could only make guesses as to parentage. All of them played djah, and I learned the patois by playing it with them. For hours and hours in the hot desert sun we played djah. At heart, they were gamblers, but we were all so poor that we had nothing to gamble with. We played for pebbles and buttons. I was wary at first, but I got to know them quickly. I wouldn’t say I trusted any of them, but there were a few who I liked, and who seemed to like me. One man, Fahmi, was a fleet agent for the Sayiff. He was Chalir by birth, but he’d long ago abandoned the book, and he sat before me in just a shirt and trousers. He’d been forced into factory work in Shangri before he was full-grown. He had worked with Semadrans there, and he made me for a shaper the second or third time we spoke. When we played djah together, he tried to recruit me. “There’s always a place on a ship for a shaper,” he said.

“
I don’t want a place on a ship,” I said.

“
Then why are you here? Zaghir is a piss pot. There’s nothing here but a bunch of vultures looking for recruits.”

And it seemed as good a time as any to ask about Sorcha. That’s what I was there for. “I’m looking for someone. He looks Semadran, but he has red hair. Green eyes. I know he came south, and he might have joined…”

Fahmi looked up from his cards. “Plays a violin? His Qin is shit?”

“
You know him?” My heart leapt into my throat.

Fahmi slapped down his cards and took the hand. I lost three buttons. “Sorcha. Yes, I know him. Runs with the, uh…” Fahmi leaned back and yelled to another pirate. “Hey! Hey, Maghrib, what fleet does the tink-mix with the fiddle run with?”

“
The Fiddler? Oh, he…” The other pirate snapped in triumph: “Nakash! Yeah, he sails with the tink fleet. Nakash. Is that the one he’s looking for? Fits the description.”

Fahmi shrugged. “Might be. Our silver Droma here says he’s looking for the Fiddler. Small world, eh?”

“
It’s Zaghir,” Maghrib said. “Everything here is small.”

“
Eh, speak for yourself,” Fahmi said. Ripples of laughter ran through the nearby djah players. Fahmi dealt me another hand. “There you go. Nakash. I tell you, the Nakash runner must like him. He’s not been in the life long, and he’s already an agent with a leash long enough that he can come trawling out this far looking for you.”

“
Everyone always likes Sorcha. You like him; I can tell.”

“
I do. You know, I do. Always brings me a crate of good rum when he comes by.”

“
How often does he come to Zaghir?”

Fahmi shrugged. “Oh, you never can tell. Demands of the fleet, you know? Or, I guess you wouldn’t know. Not yet, anyway. You run with Sorcha, and you’re bound to wind up in a fleet one way or another.” The thought sat heavy in me and not at all well. Fahmi laughed and played a card. “Oh, my silver nomad, the life is just a life. Look, you did low work back west, right?”

“
I did. Wool factory.”

“
Unless you’re cargo or prone to seasickness, you’ll get nothing that bad in the life.”

* * *

There was nothing to do but wait. I hoped Sorcha would turn up in Zaghir eventually, but I had no idea when. It could be days. It could be decades. It could be hours. There was no way to tell. There was no way to send word to him either: ship pirates came to Zaghir rarely, and when they passed through, they always went north. Zaghir was a stopping place to gather supplies for those striking out to take Droma nomads as cargo. When they found what they wanted, they made for Essala where the ships ported. All I could do was wait, and the waiting was terrible.

I dreamed his death at night thousands of different ways. A fall from the crow’s nest. Accidentally knocked over the railing of a ship. Purposefully knocked over the railing of a ship. Adrift in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. Knife wounds. Bad water. Garrote. Shipwreck. I woke in the mornings fatalistic and aimless. I woke late, always very late, and milked the yaks. The milk and butter and cheese I sold to the pirates. Fahmi or one of the others always managed to coax me into an endless game of djah by afternoon. Sometimes my mood improved, and sometimes it didn’t. At night, by the light of a fire in the firestone the Kivvni had given me, in a Droma yurt planted permanently just outside the pirate outpost, I wrote down every song I’d ever heard Halaavi sing. I fell asleep every night alone, in an empty bed, wondering about vim. I missed vim with a ferocity; I still do. But it was fresh in those days, and I could not help but think perhaps I’d given up what I had with vim for nothing. I could not ignore the chance that Sorcha might never come searching for me.

If Vathorem had been there, he would have scolded me for ruminating too much. I kept a journal. I wrote about Dirva and Nuri. I wrote about the guilt I felt for letting them both down as falo. I wrote about my parents, who surely thought me dead. Dirva probably thought me dead, too; any sensible person would have drawn that conclusion. I wrote unsendable letters to them that were nothing but long, mournful apologies. I’d fall asleep, wake late the next morning, and milk my yaks. The seasons turned and turned and turned again. The yaks grew shaggy and warm, and I spun yarn from the downy undercoat they’d shed in the heat of the spring and summer. I had no loom, so I turned to knitting instead, and to do that, I had to whittle needles from discarded pieces of wood I won playing djah. The pirates chided me for doing woman’s work. Fahmi sometimes came to my yurt for tea, which I brewed and poured for him. “Sorcha said you were his husband, which…” Fahmi touched his forehead and waved his hand away, palm towards me, a Chalir gesture of good faith and good fortune.

I am certain I blushed; I know I sat up very tall and glanced to where I’d hidden a knife within arm’s reach. I did not trust these partially Qin men to do anything good with that particular piece of knowledge. I had hoped Sorcha would’ve kept that to himself. I don’t know why I thought that he would.

“
He said husband, but I look around, and it looks more like you’re his wife. When he finds you, are you going to do the cooking and cleaning?”

“
He’s the better cook,” I said. It was a thing that would have eaten at me back in the Empire, but years with the Droma had worn away my masculine pride.