My first instinct was to rage. To lash out and make the choice myself even if the decision wasn’t mine to make. Crush the pearl, kidnap Juniper, poison all the waterways so the fish choked on their life’s blood. Spare no thought for the damage I might cause or what divine fury I might invoke.
That instinct never fully went away, but I managed to crush it down into a needle prick that burned like an ember in my gut. It badly wanted to flare into a fully fledged forest fire, but now wasn’t the time. Not yet.
Juniper wanted to serve her people and prove her worth. Fine. I could understand the desperation to cling to the thing that defined your childhood.
But to throw away your mind, stuck in some unnatural state that you were powerless to escape? That was a horror I couldn’t abide. Not after I experienced a similar hell when I was frozen for weeks on end.
Especially when there was a fair chance it would all be for nothing. The whisper women wouldn’t be plotting a proxy war in the region if they thought sending the Water Frond Snake out would fix all the delta’s troubles. More likely Juniper’s fate was being treated as a stop gap. A way to buy time for plans to be put in place and to push the locals to accept an increased whisper women presence in their delta. It’d be harder for them to resist when we could say, ‘Your fighters and great guardian weren’t enough. Look how the fish still pore in. Now let us work.’
We also didn’t have the numbers to fight the horde, not in the delta, but that mattered less if the delta was abandoned. It was a trap that had outgrown its usefulness. Now, year by year, it was becoming a bigger liability as defenses were ground down and the horde’s threat increased as the Lady Blue committed more and more of her monsters to the fight. This sudden spike still didn’t entirely make sense, but that didn’t change the danger. Just like how abandoning the delta now didn’t make sense unless it was certain that it would be overrun. And if that was the concern then freezing the coast would be a better option then the Water Frond Snake. Damaging the grown defenses mattered less if they were going to be abandoned anyway.
There was something I was missing. The proxy war could explain away most of it, but becoming Chosen was hardly likely if we opened up a watery path to the goddess’s home through poor decision making. Stopping the fish had to come first and so far that seemed be secondary to setting the scene for the proxy war. Either the whisper women had some blessing like my patron’s hidden away or they were sure they could hold the river’s mouth before the delta against the horde—when that had never been true before.
Worse, the Swirling Waters tribe seemed to believe the delta was still a priority like I originally had. They were putting their lives on the line to protect it, not serve as a delay tactic only for their home to be abandoned. But if my speculation was correct, then that’s what they would be, just like the Water Frond Snake. Thinning the horde’s numbers so the whisper women could jockey for the goddess’s attention before swooping in to finish the fight.
I wouldn’t stand for it. The entire line of thought put a bad taste in my mouth. It was one thing to manipulate things to push a situation in your favor and another to treat an entire tribe as an acceptable loss. To use someone I knew and put her through a singular kind of torture.
Sure, there was a slim chance Juniper could recover her mind, but the entire thing made a mockery of what she was fighting for. Her home, her people. It put her in danger for no other reason but to appease the Swirling Waters tribe, which if my suspicions were correct, they didn’t actually want and then delay the horde. A frozen coast would also kill fish and hinder their fighting while giving everyone time to recover and build defenses without risking their Little Lady. But a frozen coast also meant the High Priestess stepping in which would likely invalidate the others’ efforts in the proxy war.
It was true that things couldn’t stay as they were with outdated tactics that the fish were overwhelming through sheer numbers, and I had little idea what the plan was for future years if the delta was abandoned. Just as it was true that I didn’t like the horror pearl bearer after pearl bearer were forced to endure in the name of protecting their home, especially when their sacrifice could threaten that home in turn. Surely after all these years the tribesfolk could have developed more strategies that resulted in them relying on the Water Frond Snake less, but it was still a staple of their defense.
The situation in the delta couldn’t continue as it always had. The Lady Blue was pressing in with her forces as if she knew the trap was about to break. Perhaps she did—her monsters had certainly battered the defenses here beyond any reasonable amount of strain. The tribesfolk were exhausted and driven into a corner. The whisper women were ready to turn the situation to their own benefit, though a divided front was more likely to splinter under the weight of the horde—and that was ignoring the evidence that the whisper women were also too stuck in their fighting habits to approach the Lady Blue’s current forces with clear eyes.
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Something would have to give. I wasn’t quite sure how abandoning the delta would work when it was full of pine trees and there seemed to be little thought put to how this would in the long term, but the rest of the pieces fit.
As it was I knew two things: I wasn’t about to let Juniper throw her life away for some daydream that wasn’t even close to the current situation and that Esie had thrown me into this quagmire of a situation. And if Kaylan knew the true nature of the Water Frond Snake, then she likely did as well. They were using Juniper. Oh, they might regret the cost, but they were doing it all the same.
I wasn’t sure I could forgive that. It certainly didn’t seem in line with the Lady of Calm Waters supposed ideal of protecting the people in the goddess’s territory.
I didn’t have the authority to do what needed to be done. As a Sapling my ideas were scoffed at. I might have notoriety among the whisper women but I didn’t have respect. The tribesfolk were the same. They might step carefully around me due to my black lips, but they’d act on their traditions before my words.
I couldn’t stop the infighting on the horizon or the implosion of the delta. I couldn’t win on this playing field. Perhaps that was fine. That just meant I needed to change the playing field to suit me. Focus on the things I could do.
And that started with confirming my suspicions before shoving Juniper face first into the truth of the situation so she couldn’t sacrifice herself in blissful ignorance.
I rounded on Kaylan. “Does Esie know?”
The look on my face caused her to shift back half a step, but she didn’t answer. My fingers dug into the palms of my hands as I clenched them in tight fists. I had fleeting thought of slugging her in the face, but I had enough presence of mind to know that’d accomplish nothing but letting the rage win.
“Does. Esie. Know?”
Kaylan sighed, long and low. “She can’t always be the sacrifice either. You saw Lithunia at that meeting. Esie did what she could, but only the Beloved and the goddess can command the High Priestess and apparently none of them were in a benevolent mood.”
That knocked some of the fight out of me. Perhaps if the Tribe Master hadn’t asked for Juniper we would have a frozen coast now, but just like Esie couldn’t order around the High Priestess, Tribe Master Toniva could hardly petition for her help without showing that her tribe were doing everything they could to handle the situation. And the frozen coast wasn’t Lithunia’s blessing; that took an extra boost of power from the goddess.
It was a poor gambler who bet on benevolence from Her.
“Juniper can’t do this.” I knew the smart thing would be to stop talking but the words kept coming. “Not when it won’t amount to anything. Not when the delta will be abandoned.”
Kaylan tilted her head to the side as she considered me. “Figured that out already? We won’t have much choice if the horde keeps pouring in like it is. The delta’s defenses were already strained before they surged this year.”
I looked pointedly at the bloated pines all around us. “What about the pine trees? I’m sure they get damaged in the fighting, so it’s surprising the goddess tolerates that, but I doubt She’ll accept us leaving them to rot.”
Kaylan shook her head. “These are false pines. You might be able to sense their shadows, but no one has been able to pry open their shadow paths in living memory. My understanding is that the goddess considers them contaminated by the Devouring Blue and no longer worthy of Her protection.”
I had wondered we had traveled through the shadow of a summoning branch like my old tribe had for funerals and such to reach the delta. Juniper and I weren’t quite skilled enough to find its shadow from the Seedling Palace so Kaylan and Ingrasia had brought us through. I had also thought it was odd that Esie hadn’t been one of the ones who brought us through the shadow paths, but it was true that even in the Seedling Palace she seemed to avoid shadow walking when she didn’t have to use it.
I reached for the shadow of the closest pine. The shadow stretched over the Water Frond Snake’s side and when I tried to press into it all I felt was the hard bone of the snake. No matter how I visualized the shadow from a tent flap to a pool of water it remained just as solid as the surface it covered. It was disorientating after years of being able to slip into the shadow paths, especially when I could still sense the shadows.
“Not breaking history this time it seems.” Kaylan raised an appeasing hand as I turned to snap at her. “Everything is already in motion. Talk to Juniper. Tell her what you know if you think it will help, but let me ask you this: if you knew your home and the people you loved were about to be overrun, would you run away to save yourself? Or would you do everything you could to defend them even if others told you it was futile?”
I glowered at her. She already knew the answer.
She nodded. “Right. Some things are more important than safety.”
We walked back to Bramble Watch in silence. We had to stop twice so we didn’t interrupt the tribesfolk fighting off the fish, but otherwise the trip was uneventful. I spent the time trying to figure out the missing piece to my information and what I could do now that Juniper was on the verge of a terrible decision I likely couldn’t talk her out of. If I could somehow make all the fish disappear then there wouldn’t be any need for her to give her mind to the Water Frond Snake or for the delta to be abandoned just yet, but I didn’t have any leads on how to do that except for making a wish, and that could lead to getting everyone killed anyway if it made the goddess mad enough. My other ideas of using the Lady Blue’s tactics against herself and such could also have some effect, but I doubted I could make much of a dent before the three days of rituals were over.
But I had to try to something. Anything, so I wouldn’t lose the one person who followed me to the Hundred Eyes sect. I had three days to figure out what that was and I was determined not to waste them.