Tinder Stricken (31 page)

“Making this your sixth language, are you?”
Esha asked.

“I believe I will. It doesn't seem that
anyone else on Tselaya Mountain has a distinction like that.”

“When you claim that you speak five
languages, do folk ever ask you to prove it? I'd like to see you
speak serpent for them. Or your squid language.”

That yanked a laugh from Atarangi, golden
and honest. “I'd like that a lot.”

They were gathering the pages into some
semblance of order when movement splashed in the pond. No
procession of serpents came out — just a round object floating in
the middle of the water, the shape and colour of a potato but
glinting like no root could. Rooftop flew out to it with claws
ready to snatch but he thought better of committing himself to an
unidentifiable object, and instead fluttered laboriously over the
thing while he kicked the floating, bobbing thing toward shore.
Atarangi bared her feet and waded out to pick it up.

The object was a glass-like ornament, a
glossy bubble of material light enough for Atarangi to turn on lax
fingertips. The bubble had a formed loop on its bottom — a fixing
point for the paper-thin facet of metal dangling underneath.

“Oh,” Esha blurted, “a metal sheet. They
write on those — Nimble showed me.”

Atarangi hummed curious, still handling the
whole assembly like a porcelain relic while she turned the
pockmarked metal to the light.

“Addressed to— Hold on.” She fished a green
sweetmeat from her cloak to chew on. “Addressed to the Human Triad.
Triad? I suppose myself and you two?”

“
Triads are like flocks, maybe,”
Rooftop said.

“Such seems reasonable.” Atarangi went on,
“These individuals have been granted exemption under ... I think
that's a numerical legal precident — At the recommendation of the
venturer Sureness of ... something Triad. A musical scale ...?”

“I'm not paying you enough to translate
this,” Esha muttered.

“I'm inclined to agree. Rooftop? Come here,
kin.” She knelt, turning the metal leaf to him. “What do you make
of this notation here? Is that music?”

He stared, and tipped his head, and flexed
his crests in considering waves.
“Looks like music.
Orange-spoken music.”
He creaked a string of notes that came
together in Esha's ears as
Azure
.

“Azure Triad. I hope they don't mind that
translation.” Atarangi went silent, her eyes raking along the rest
of the text. After a long moment, she said, “The Deepling Community
will consider collaboration with the Human Triad, pending security
evaluations. Sufficient service to the Community may be
rewarded.”

“With my khukuri's return?”

“Possibly. Or striking Clamshell's troubles
from their record. Maybe possibilities no human has ever laid eyes
on.” Atarangi looked up at Esha, a plainly honest look without her
mask obscuring it. “Keep your mind flowing like water, sister.”

Esha
did
need to stop fussing over
something she likely wasn't getting back. She looked at the needled
ground, and nodded.

The water rippled then, and serpent frills
broke the pond's surface. Sureness broke first, laying his black
eyes on Esha and Atarangi before rising fully. He came to the
pond's edge, followed close by Nimble. They represented Azure
Triad, it seemed; Sureness was some sort of guardian provider, and
Nimble was the triad's heart if not its common sense. That only
left the question, Esha realized, of who their third member
was.

She and Atarangi signed namaste to them. The
serpents responded with their own hallowed greeting, a vibrating of
fins plus a dip of their coiled bodies that was nearly like a
bow.

“
Query: those ones received the
message?”
Sureness asked.

“We did,” Atarangi said. “We would be
honoured by any accomodations your Community can make for us.”

Leaning onto her less sore leg, Esha
gathered her will to speak. “I'd like to ask a question, if I
may.”

“
Permission: granted,”
Sureness
tapped.

“What are these unusual circumstances you're
talking about? Is it the earthquakes ...? We've had a lot, these
past weeks — humans' buildings and roadways are damaged from it, so
I thought ...”

She didn't expect the reaction: Sureness's
fins all rising like hackling hair, before he turned to Nimble for
frenetic fin-signing and clicking and barbel braids. He turned back
slow, and stiffer.

“
Statement: those ones must pass security
evaluation before the information may be shared.”

“
Suggestion:“
Nimble clicked, peering
around Sureness's fins,
“full disclosure cannot happen. But I
wish to show those ones my project.”

Sureness held his teeth tight.

“
Suggestion: it would impart a sense of
scale? Contextualized?”

Sureness flicked his smallest barbels.

“
Suggestion: only this one's ( )
lichen.”

“
Permitted,”
Sureness said.

With a garbled, excited clicking along the
lines of
one moment; I'll retrurn; wait until those ones lay
eyes on it
, Nimble dove back into the green pond depths. He
popped back up a moment later and came to Esha and Atarangi on
whip-quick slithering — holding out a dripping chunk of richly
blue-purple stone. It was plain greystone encrusted with growing
matter, some lichen or fungus in a colour dyemakers would sell
their shoes for.

“Great waves,” Atarangi breathed. Gradually,
like asking permission, she laid fingertips on the lichen-thing's
crusty edges.

“Proclamation: this one is assisting with
the lungta production,” Nimble chattered. “These root-growings will
be held in esteem by the physicians.”

A bone-chilling scrape came from Sureness's
mouth; Nimble wilted like cold-touched petals.

But still, Nimble had a growing rock to show
them, a rock he bent to let Rooftop inspect. With meek, steady
toothtaps, he even called an invitation to Clamshell, who alighted
in a pondside tree long enough to stare like a polearm blade.

Staring at the growing rock's violet
patterns, Esha couldn't begin to guess where this negotiation was
going to lead. All she hoped was that she wouldn't need to walk
there.

Two hours later, Sureness and Nimble
returned with a dimpled metal sheet for proof: the Human Triad was
permitted into their underground.

“
Imperative: these ones must descend
now,”
Sureness said.
These ones
rang oddly, a broader
sense more like
we
.
“The individuals poised to meet these
ones have many broader responsibilities.”

“That's fine,” Atarangi said.

Esha thought again of gilt nobles, but she
nodded.

Sureness and and Nimble began a procedure
then — although what it was, Esha couldn't begin to guess. They
slithered around the pond's edges, fish fins dragging like old
sacks, and they touched patches of earth with their barbels. They
clicked and gestured and used rock-related ideas that an
earthreading scholar might have understood. Rooftop followed them
through treetops, listening, watching every motion.

After intense discussion, Sureness and
Nimble stood opposite other, under pine trees' canopy. Their
concentration strung the air bright like flags: it called Esha and
Atarangi's attention even as they tried to load the wheeled pack,
as they packed their tarpaulins and belt-holstered tools and other
things not needed for diplomatic discussion. The two serpents bent
again. They stayed bent, staring, focused.

Tremors ran through the ground at Esha's
feet — unfamiliar ones, motions that reminded her of digging with
her own hands even while she braced on hands and knees against the
brown-needled ground.

“Esha,” Atarangi called, “it's our friends'
doing! Look!”

Atarangi must have traded her mind away
because she climbed back to her feet and, over the still-shaking
earth, she went toward the serpents. They now bent shoulder to
shoulder — bent downward where flat ground had just been.

As fast as her malformed feet and walking
pole could carry her, Esha went to the serpents, too. Sureness and
Nimble bent, fins quivering, into a tunnel that yawned where solid
ground used to be. The tremors grew stronger with every step closer
because they were
digging
somehow, mining without ever
putting shovel to earth.

The shaking stopped after a long moment.
Waving their neck fronds, Sureness and Nimble circled away to let
Atarangi peer inside.

“
Query: those ones can traverse such an
angle?”

“Esha, look! You too, Rooftop!”

He dropped onto her shoulder on spread wings
— which must have hurt, without her cloak to catch Rooftop's claws,
but Atarangi bubbled with too much enthusiasm to care.

Breathing an oath, Esha joined them both and
gazed down into the dark. It was a tunnel graded downward, curving
leftways — like their own spiral road carved into the middle of
Tselaya.

“I think we can manage that,” Atarangi told
the serpents. “This is incredible! How ...?!”

Sureness clicked a statement —
earth-shifting
, it sounded like.

“Statement:“, Nimble admonished him, “humans
are barely capable of earthshifting.”

“We— We can't do
that
— move things
outside ourselves, that is. Have you ever heard of anyone shifting
earth, Esha?”

“Nothing that the arbiters could
confirm.”

“Yes, precisely. We—“ and Atarangi grasped
for words with the furrow of her brow, “we use lungta inside our
bodies. For strength in our arms and legs, or for maintaining vigor
for long periods of time. We only extend it to speak. Such as right
now.”

Silence from the serpents: they stared, fins
minutely shifting.

“
Query:“
Nimble asked,
“without
earthshifting, how are you capable of cultivation?”

“
Admonishment: we depart. Discuss this in
transit.”

Clamshell refused to join them; she sat
watching, hawkish, from the safety of a tree. That left Atarangi
with Rooftop on her shoulders, and Esha tottering on her fading
legs, to follow Sureness and Nimble down into their impossible
passage.

The rock floor was smooth as if thousands of
feet had polished it; the declining angle was pleasing to Esha's
toes that tried to be hooves, yet it strained her ankles and knees
until their pain burned away everything else. Esha sat on the
wheeled pack, chewing pain herbs; Atarangi pulled back against the
pack's wheels, refusing to accept an apology.

The serpents snaked on ahead, leading the
way downward. Daylight faded and spots wavered in Esha's vision —
some of which turned out to be pinpoint lights on the serpents,
tips of their fins and barbels that glowed like candles under paper
shades. Each flick of their fins was a bright-outlined signal in
the dark.

They came to dead ends, periodically.
Sureness and Nimble applied themselves and parted the earth, making
it pour aside and away as though invisible water washed through it.
More path revealed itself.

After one such earthshifting, they faced a
plane of glittering-still water. Nimble twisted his body to eye
Esha and Atarangi.

“
Query: humans prefer to breathe
air?”

Blinking, Atarangi opened and closed her
mouth. “Ah, yes. We can only breathe air. If a human tries to
breathe water, we ... we die very quickly. Phoenixes are the
same.”

Tapping his teeth, light and rapid like
fingernails on a tabletop, Nimble thought. He and Sureness
conversed with rapid flickering. Esha strained her lungta and
understood what she could: it was a cascade of words with
air
and
water
in them.

Sureness then clicked a interrogative:
“Can those ones breathe air that is extremely humid?”

“Yes,” Atarangi said as though hesitant to
commit to the word. “As long as it
is
air.”

“
I can't swim,”
Rooftop said,
possibly to himself.

Sureness chittered a sigh.
“Assurance: (
)-Eight District has dry spaces that should be suitable for those
ones. As for this passage ...”

With light-waving fins, he and Nimble kept
discussing.

Eventually, Nimble dove into the pitch
blackness. Moments later, a sensation ran through the stone floor;
it was too faint to call a tremor but still, it closed Esha's
throat with terror. The water gurgled away. They carried on.

After what felt like hours, Sureness and
Nimble earthshifted a wall face that didn't grind solid: it
shattered, collapsing into a pile of stone chunks that Sureness
swept to one side with his tail. They were in a cave — and,
hobbling in under her own power, Esha found a cave nothing like the
fusty hole she had expected.

No, the walls around her were as textured as
any temple's stones would be, marked with patterns Esha dimly
recognized as serpent writing. Coiling lines were interspersed with
holes large enough to lodge a young bamboo pole. Up the walls and
across the cavern ceiling, hazy glass bubbles hung suspended from
copper threads, full of a blue-tinted inner light. Esha was in a
place as deliberately made as any town full of buildings. Her hands
rose to her mouth, and her gaze followed the ceiling's grand lines
up and outward until she couldn't ignore the serpents gathering
near —
many
more, a wall of undulating pond colours.

The largest newcomer spoke a mash of
languages to Sureness, who flickered occasional response. These new
serpents looked like guards, said Esha's gut. Guards, or else
soldiers. They wore no armour and carried no polearms, but their
stiff bearing and steel tones said they were guards. Each one held
metal sheets in their neck barbels, sticking out like quill pens
tucked into a clerk's headwrap.