Silluka fled past Hufi and the others of his patrol. They must have stayed long enough to be caught in the earthquake and now were helping to clean up.

“Did you pass?” Meaty Boy asked, and Silluka barely saw Hufi raise a hand to quiet him as she hobbled out the front doors of the elder’s building on her aching ankle. She didn’t dare turn to see Tall Girl’s pitying stare.

When she was outside, she turned left, and ran down the alley separating the elder’s building from other government buildings of the Huaca. Her ankle was already feeling better. It hadn’t been a strain, thank Tiya Qhalikay. Only enough to derail her chayu. She stopped at a little nook where the buildings didn’t line up, cramming herself into the tight space.

Only then did she let herself go, shaking with tears. The imagined faces of Hufi’s patrol stared at her, judging. She had almost been there! She’d felt the ampuka building within her. She could have been a citizen.

Silluka dashed the tears away. Stupid. And stupid of her to think it. She’d kept those thoughts away for almost eighteen years, refusing to let her mind go to the obvious answer. She would never be a citizen. Being a citizen required a person to be whole of body, or at least able to do a few chayus correctly.

Being a citizen didn’t require anything about smarts, or thinking, or planning. That wasn’t highly regarded in the Huaca. Citizens didn’t need smarts to do a chayu. Citizens didn’t need smarts to show the ampuka and connect with the gods. They just required practice, and muscle memory. Put every finger, every muscle in exactly the right place, and the ampuka would show.

She knew highly-regarded citizens who were dumber than a bag of acorns.

There were many more undesirables than citizens in the Huaca and surrounding it. The ones who were injured, or sick, or didn’t like to practice every day, or were too out of shape. The Huaca was strong, and dedicated, and stupid.

Silluka survived by her smarts, and she’d keep doing it. She sniffed and blinked away the rest of her regrets. She didn’t need Hufi, or that pretty tall girl, or Meaty Boy, or the elders with their noses in the air.

She just needed herself.

And she needed Ichu, because he was her brother, but that wasn’t going to last.

Sweet, dependable, hard-working Ichu. He still ran the farm their parents had left behind when they died, even though the land was turning to rock and the crops died more often than they produced.

Ichu didn’t need her, though. He’d been a citizen since he was fourteen, a year before she was born. He was the strongest bodycaster she knew, if not the fastest. He wouldn’t get left behind when the Huaca left for a new home.

But she would.

Silluka pounded the stone wall of the building she hid behind with her hand.

Ichu would make some desperate attempt to take her with him when they left. She knew he would. She’d argue with him until she ran out of breath, but he’d insist.

She hadn’t let herself think about it until now, but that was exactly what he’d do. If she had passed the test today, instead of failing like an…like an undesirable, she could have avoided a lot of arguments.

It didn’t take smarts to be Huaca, but it might help.

Silluka sat back against the wall looking up into the cloudy sky. She could just see the top of the wall of storms from here. It wasn’t raining right now, thankfully. Instead of pining for one of the storm warriors to come down and grant her wishes, what if she took matters into her own hands? The Citizens of the Huaca were persistent, but not that smart.

What if she had a citizen chit when she went back to Ichu? She’d been picking pockets since she was ten. The chits weren’t marked or individual. Citizens sometimes dueled with chayus and took them from each other. She could have tried to take one before now, and failed, but there was always that allure, hanging covered in the back of her mind. She could still take the test.

Not anymore. Silluka imagined the thin, old face of the elder from the test—Elder Quilqi had been her name. Dried up, dusty old crone. She’d stared Silluka down like she was nothing, demanded she do the most complicated chayu a non-citizen could test on!

Old people didn’t need citizen chits, and elders certainly didn’t. They’d been taking up space in the Huaca for years. Most didn’t even try to summon the ampuka. They were too old and shaky to get all the movements exactly right, which was why the patrols were given to the young, while the old sat back and governed. They’d already proven themselves.

Silluka would steal Elder Quilqi’s chit. The old bat probably wouldn’t even report it, too scared to say that an undesirable had stolen her citizenship.

Silluka straightened and smiled. This was too easy.

* * *

She hung around the elder’s building until the day grew dark, watching people go in and out. People entered to petition, complain, test, and more. Eventually one of the elders from her test came out.

Silluka stood up from her slouch against a wall.

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Elder Papaki came out a few minutes later. It was hard to see him in the fading light, but she could tell by the way he moved. The elder was unbowed with age, a model of good posture, but moved slower than younger Huaca. Elder Papaki had tried to help her. She watched him leave.

A few stars began to poke through the ever-present clouds as candles snuffed out in the back rooms of the building. The last stragglers were finishing up their work for the day and leaving. Still no Elder Quilqi. Did she sleep there?

Silluka was about to give up—about to follow the last elderly Huaca to leave, in hopes of getting anyone’s chit—when Quilqi’s tall silhouette appeared. Silluka could sense it was her. The last one out of the building, she was practically begging for Silluka to take her chit.

She slouched along the wall, keeping to the shadows, far enough back so Quilqi wouldn’t see her. There were still too many people out, here in the center of the Huaca. Most people lived closer to the edges of the town, and Silluka followed the old woman until no others were around, the houses turning into a hodgepodge of separate dwellings. Little light shone between them.

She started the movements of Quirra Hides His Nuts while she walked, moving from Dexterity stance. She was going to do the chayu right this time. It was harder to perform a chayu while moving, and Quirra Hides His Nuts certainly had too many hand movements for her to summon the ampuka, but every bit helped.

Elder Quilqi slowed at a corner, seeming to take in the sky and the few stars shining tonight. Like she was just waiting for Silluka to take her chit.

Silluka crept, from Dexterity stance to Dexterity stance, like a quirra cautiously approaching a suspicious new plant. Elder Quilqi still stood there, head back, looking up.

This was too easy.

Silluka slowly reached out, the fingers of her left hand brushing the pockets of Quilqi’s loose pants, then inside. The elder still didn’t move. Her fingers encountered a hexagonal shape and withdrew it.

She had it.

And then she didn’t.

Her face was against the wall, her fingers up in the air, and then she was free, blinking around. Where was Elder Quilqi?

“Seas dissolve, child, keep your shoulders back.” Fingers like iron weights pulled her shoulders back and down. “And straighten up. You’ll never get anywhere with that slouch.” The fingers grasped the sides of her head, squeezing and pulling upward, bringing Silluka almost to her toes.

“Just because quirra is hiding his nuts doesn’t mean he’s lazy about it. Dexterity stance!” a foot touched her ankle, pushing her foot forward slightly, positioning it upward just a touch.

“There. That’s better. Now, take these back and we can try again.” The hand spun her around until Silluka stared into Elder Quilqi’s face, the old woman’s sharp eyes roving over Silluka, fingers touching here, there, correcting posture, arms, stance, hips, and legs.

Silluka only realized the touches had stopped when fingers shook a bag in front of her nose.

“Come on now, girl. Take it and let’s start again.”

“I…what?” Silluka reached out to take the spoke purse—her spoke purse—from Elder Quilqi. The chit was nowhere to be seen.

“Good initiative, but poor form. You’re never going to connect with the ampuka that way. You could have just asked, you know. You almost had it this afternoon. I’ll turn my back and you can try again. Should I look at the stars harder this time?”

“I…you want me to pick your pocket again?” Silluka felt like she was sliding down a hole into darkness.

“Again? Windy skies! You hardly tried the first time.”

Information was sliding around in Silluka’s head. “Connect with the ampuka? I can’t do that.”

“And why not? Tiya Aymuray preserve us, child, it’s the basic principle of the chayus.”

“My stump…” She lifted her right arm in the air.

“What about it?” Elder Quilqi reached out, as if she couldn’t help herself, and pushed Silluka’s shoulder down. “Relax when you move. You’re putting more effort into it than a Jakua digging holes to find a stray chipmunk.”

“But I need to move every part of my body in exactly the right place to summon the ampuka. How can I do that without a hand?” That was not the question she thought she would be asking right now. Wasn’t Elder Quilqi going to call for a patrol or something?

“Your body.” The elder poked her in the chest with a bony finger. “Is a whole right hand part of your body?”

“I…hadn’t thought about it that—”

“I can see that. Hmpf. Chasms take us, now, try again.” Quilqi spun around. “Aren’t those stars interesting? My, is that a storm warrior flying around over there? By Tiye Khuyay, I do hope no one takes advantage of my stargazing to pick my pocket. Come on, girl.”

Silluka pushed her incredulity down deep into the back of her mind. What had she gotten herself into? She hesitantly planted back into Dexterity stance, helped along by Elder Quilqi rotating two fingers in the air for her to get on with it.

“Arms too,” the elder said. “Give me a good form Quirra Hides His Nuts.”

Silluka raised her arms, placing them where they would go for the beginning of the chayu. Hands—if she had two hands—would go here, looping around to form the catching paws, then out and in, snatching and back. She did the movement with both arms, as much as she had of them, trying to ignore the obvious—that she could never make it work.

Elder Quilqi dropped her pretense, eagle eyes roving over Silluka’s form. “Shoulders down, elbows in. Curl those fingers in.”

“But I don’t have—”

“Imagine, and focus, child. Use your intent. Coasts collide! What do they teach you these days?”

Silluka frowned, but dropped her shoulders and brought her elbows closer to her center. It would put her nonexistent right hand there if she did so.

A core of power brushed her center, just for an instant, as if a thread connected her through the ground, to the center of the island.

Silluka gasped, and trembled, and the thread of power dropped away.

“Good!” Elder Quilqi grabbed Silluka’s upper arms and shook them out, the tension flowing away like water. She stared into Silluka’s eyes for just a moment, as if looking for something. “I knew I was out here for a good reason. You failed much less that time.”

“But I still failed.”

Quilqi blew out her breath in a rude noise. “And will that stop you?”

“What about all the undesirables? People with infirmaries and disabilities can’t do chayus. They can’t connect with the ampuka. They’re not citizens—ow!”

The elder had poked her in the head with a pointy finger. “Lazy is its own challenge. You failed on your own merits, child. You can succeed on them too.”

Silluka was suddenly suspicious. Had Elder Quilqi waited for her? Made sure they would be alone by leaving so late?

No. That was stupid. But what she said was different than what the elder taught. And Silluka had felt that spark, just for a moment.

“Why has no one ever told me this before? Why does no one else in the Huaca think this way?” Silluka spread her arms wide. “Should I believe one elder when all the wisdom of the Huaca tells me you’re wrong? That I’m an undesirable?”

Elder Quilqi shrugged. “There is more to the world than this little village. More than this island. These villagers don’t know everything, and I think you have potential.” She stood straight, raising her chin. “Now, will you come with me, child? There are some people I think you should meet.”

Silluka blinked. The elder’s constant changes in the conversation were giving her whiplash. “Now? It’s almost full dark?”

“They don’t sleep much, and neither do I,” Quilqi said. “I don’t give many second chances, either. You’ve already had one today. You won’t get another.”

Silluka narrowed her eyes at the elder. She’d said these villagers, not the Huaca.

“I’ll come with you,” she said.