A man who bears authority over a woman is as a dog bearing authority over a man. Where Mother Moon is shunned, there can be only darkness and confusion.
-The Twenty-Nine Mysteries, Book 3
Island of Ka’Anui, Grand Archipelago
“There it is,” said Akona. “That has to be it. The small one.”
“What makes you so sure?” Styri asked, affixing her latest face bandage. “All these islands look the same.”
“It’s past midday.” Akona pointed to the sky. “There’s the sun—we’re still sailing west. Which means that must be Sailors’ Bane Rock, to the east of it.” She jabbed a finger on the map between them. “See?”
Styri shielded her eyes from the sun, staring out across the bright blue water. Akona indicated the jagged slab of barnacled stone jutting up out of the ocean. “Awfully small to be the bane of sailors...”
“Styri, it’s quite simple. Do you want me to explain it to you again?”
She scoffed. “Forget it! You don’t have to be rude about it. I’m not a fool...”
“I never said you—”
“Well, that’s how you’re talking to me!” Styri stormed off below deck in a huff.
“Go have your pouting fit,” Akona snapped at her. “Just be back to help me bring us ashore!” Her sister didn’t answer. She marveled again at the fact that Styri was her elder sister, in chronology if not in spirit.
They’d been bickering more than usual lately. Days at sea did that to them; it was true when they bought passage from Umreh to the Stone Continent, and it had been true on their initial trip from Myrenthos to Qarda. Something about being cooped up in close quarters with no soil, no plants, no animals except the occasional passing gull—something about the sea drove them steadily mad.
Unfortunately, this was the easier leg of their westward voyage. What lay beyond was the Great Unknown. Where it took them only days to sail from Dridon to the Grand Archipelago, it would be more than a moon, perhaps two, to traverse that unexplored abyss of ocean. But it was still the fastest way home now.
Assuming they survived.
“Styri, it’s time!” Akona called down to her. “We’re about to make landfall!” Styri crawled back up from the cramped quarters below the short staircase and joined her above deck.
They went about all the steps of bringing their boat ashore—rolling up the sails, steering it and pushing it along with the oars, and when they were close enough to shore, they both jumped out and secured the thick rope to the bow with expertly tied knots. The water was shoulder-deep for them; they waded ashore, pulling the boat behind them. It got harder on land.
“Pull, Styri!” said Akona.
“Does it look like I’m pushing?”
“Well, pull harder!”
Even a smaller sailboat such as theirs was no easy task to drag ashore with just the two of them. Akona felt her arm muscles straining, hot friction on the flesh of her palms from the rope; the heels of her sandals dug shallow ruts in the sand as she tried to find leverage.
Eventually, they managed to drag it partially out of the water so that they could tie it to a palm tree near the shoreline. More expert knots secured it to the tree and ensured it wouldn’t accidentally drift out to sea, even if the tide came further in. It was done.
“So, this is Ka’Anui,” said Styri. She picked a fat greenish-yellow fruit growing in bunches on a tree. “It’s good to be on land again.”
“Not for long,” Akona reminded her. “We’re only here to gather supplies for the Great Unknown. We need to load up on all the fresh food we can to help our provisions last longer. We still have plenty of salt, so if you can hunt some—Styri, spit that out!”
“What?” She chewed a mouthful of the soft yellow fruit that she’d peeled. “They had these in Qarda, remember? They’re safe.”
“You don’t know if this variety is poisonous!” Akona slapped the fruit out of her sister’s hand. “We’re halfway across the world from Qarda! Now you’re the one who’ll have to wait and test it. You know the rules.”
Styri rolled her eyes. “Fine. But when tomorrow comes and I’m not sick—”
Leaves rustled at the edge of the tropical trees. Akona motioned for them both to hide in a bush to see what was happening.
“...what happens when you still resist,” a man snarled in Stonish. Crack!
A different man cried out in pain. He staggered out of the trees, a tan-skinned man dressed in a loincloth—he was chased by a calmly marching Grackenwelsh soldier. Crack! It was the crack of a whip striking him on the back. The man shouted something in a language Akona didn’t understand, but it seemed obvious what it meant.
“What now?” the soldier snapped. “Are you still pretending not to understand me, you savage fool? What is this?” He held out the whip in front of the Archipelagian’s eyes, though the native didn’t dare turn around to face him. “What is it?” When he didn’t answer, he struck him again. Crack! “This is a whip!” He brandished it aggressively. “Whip! You understand now? Whip!”
“Whip!” the native repeated fearfully. “Whip!”
“That’s right! See? You can learn!” The soldier put his whip away, then pointed back into the jungle. “Now go. You need to be present for the ceremony—I think you could learn a thing or two from it. Go!” The brute herded him back into the jungle, disappearing behind the dense foliage.
The twins locked eyes. It wasn’t safe to speak their thoughts aloud, not yet, so they conveyed meaning with their secret language of looks.
Grackenwelsh, said Styri with a look of surprise.
Akona nodded her head once sternly to say, Not just Grackenwelsh—slavers.
Styri shrugged. What do we do?
Akona held up a slow finger. Proceed carefully.
Gather supplies?
Yes.
Akona shook her head bemusedly. How to test them?
We’ll test them on the boat. Gather triple just in case.
Hunt?
No. Skip it. We don’t have time to cook the meat here. Fire’s too dangerous on the boat. Let’s go!
The twins made their way into the jungle. There was no sign of Grackenwell or the indigenous people as they went. Akona scanned the dense trees, thinking back to their time in the temperate forests in northern Qarda—it helped them hide, but it also helped conceal the enemy. There’s no way the veracidins could have followed us this far west, she thought. Is there?
The terrain sloped upward. Sand and mud gave way to dry ground, rocks, and a steep hill. Akona examined fruits and nuts along the way, picking suitable ones and dumping each one into one of the several burlap bags they carried. The island was bountiful. She eyed each of her choices carefully for any signs of rot, infestation, growths, or other spoilage that the glademothers had trained her to detect. It was more difficult with unfamiliar plants, but she could still follow the basic guidelines. She tried to pick some fruits that were also unripe with the hope they’d ripen in transit.
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At one point, Styri held out a hand, hefting one of her bags bulging with fruits to say, We’ve gathered a lot. How much more?
More, Akona answered her. Long trip. We need it.
They pressed on, adhering to the same relative distance to the shoreline while avoiding the general direction of the two men they’d seen earlier. They forded a river; Akona heard a waterfall in the distance. Even still, either the island was too small, or Grackenwell’s forces were too great—they couldn’t evade them forever.
There was a great commotion nearby.
Akona held up a shushing finger. They stalked through the ferns to get a better look at a gathering in a huge clearing. It was littered with splintered wood and straw, leaves with burnt edges. Fires billowed black smoke into the tropical sky. She realized, in horror, that these were the remains of an Archipelagian village that had been razed by the invaders.
About a dozen Grackenwelsh soldiers were assembled, and twice as many natives. Some of the natives were in chains while others looked on from the periphery of the scene. They were differentiated by their necks—some bore the quindent, the five-pronged brand that marked them as slaves, while others didn’t. The brands looked fresh.
“...is not something you need fret about,” said one of the soldiers. Three of them had surrounded an Archipelagian man who may have been twenty years of age. He had a brand but no chains on him. “There are second chances for slaves in Grackenwell.” Two of the soldiers grabbed the native by either arm and held him in place. A fourth one walked up with a red-hot iron pulled straight from a nearby fire. “But there are no third chances. As bad as this is, know that it can get so much worse for you. Ready?”
A fifth soldier walked up behind the restrained man, tying a rag around his mouth that forced his teeth open. His eyes went wide and wild, brimming with sudden tears. He said something in his language around the rag. Said it louder.
“On the count of three.” The soldier drew his sword. The others held out their victim’s left arm, pulling it straight despite his body thrashing. “One... two...!” He swung his sword, and in an instant, the blade lopped off the Archipelagian’s left hand. He screamed through the rag. Gasps and sympathetic moans resounded through the indigenous audience. “Easy enough, lad! The worst is over now! I promise!”
The other soldier, the one with the hot iron, pressed it against the victim’s bleeding stump of a wrist. He cried out again in pain, tears streaming down his face. He screamed a third time as the iron cooked his flesh, burned his veins shut. Cauterization, Akona remembered—but it was done more carefully in Myrenthos, and usually the wounded one was given something to dull the pain.
The soldier took the iron away. The native man panted, reeling from the exertion and the trauma, his eyes half-lit now. Then he passed out from the agony.
The grins on the soldiers’ faces reminded Akona of the veracidins. But where the Qardish spies delighted in extracting the truth from their targets by any means necessary, it seemed these Stonish brutes delighted in the violence itself. Their excitement appeared to fade when the deed was done.
“Take him to sleep it off, then,” said the soldier nonchalantly, sheathing his weapon. Two slaves carried the limp body of their brethren away from the clearing, each of them lifting from under his armpits. “And let this be a lesson to the rest of you! Run once—lose a hand. Run twice...” The soldier wagged his finger in a half-playful warning. “...you lose everything.”
Akona shot her sister a look. We have enough. Let’s go.
Are you sure?
It’s not worth it. Better to go hungry than risk worse.
All right.
They about-faced, going back the way they’d come. The jungle was so dense and full of so much vibrant life that Akona had a harder time than usual following her landmarks. There was the tree with the round brown fruits with hair on them. Past that, a pink flower with six petals, and then a flower that looked like a colorful hummingbird diving to drink from a flower.
They came to the edge of the same river they’d forded along the way. Akona found herself ruminating on the past, the ripple effect their one act in Qarda had had on the rest of the world. Had the death of one lone man really caused all of this? How much blood was on their hands by association? She was debating this with herself in her mind, and hiking up the hem of her Dridic dress to make the crossing, when suddenly a spear impaled the tree next to her head.
She and Styri jumped. “Where—?”
An Archipelagian man, this one in his thirties or forties, stood from his hiding place several paces down the riverbank, enshrouded in ferns and flowers. He wore a loincloth like all the rest. His eyes, however, were encircled with black paint of some kind. He had what looked like a ritualistic marking down the center of his lower lip—a split that had been sewn back together in three places with beaded strings, all of it lined with black and white paint.
“Stop!” Akona said in Myrenthian. She couldn’t help but use her native tongue in her moment of terror.
“Ah?” said the man. He furrowed his brow, stepping closer to them cautiously. He held a second spear behind his back.
“We don’t mean any harm,” Styri said in Stonish. “We were just leaving.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Slavers,” he snarled in Stonish. He lifted his spear.
“No, we’re from Myrenthos!” Akona assured him. “Myrenthos! Have you heard of it? It’s far away from here!”
“Then why have you come to Ka’Anui?” The man tightened his grip on the spear, but he lowered it. Akona could tell, from his facial and body language, that he was ready to kill; however, he also looked like the kind of person who could be persuaded not to, and he had good reason to be wary of someone speaking Stonish in his land.
“We sail west,” Akona replied. “To the Great Unknown. We’re trying to escape some bad men who want to capture us.”
He turned up his nose, eyeing them suspiciously. “Do you have honor?”
Akona exchanged a glance with her sister. “Honor?”
He furrowed his brow angrily again, clutching his spear with newfound ferocity. “Honor! Do you have it? Tell me!”
“Yes! Yes, we have honor. My sister and I both.”
Now he lowered his spear again, seemingly satisfied. “My name is Maliko,” he said. And he threw his spear at his feet. His shoulders relaxed, all the tension in his body seemingly relieved at once. Even his face softened. “Now I am safe.”
“Safe?”
He nodded, a strangely familiar gesture for someone who was so unfamiliar to her. “Yes. You have honor. I told you my name. Now you cannot kill me.” Her face must have betrayed her confusion, as he went on to explain it to her. “If you have honor, you can never kill someone whose name you know. To know someone’s name is to share a bond with them.” He made a sweeping gesture with both hands. “Tell me your names and you will know that you are safe, too.”
“I’m Akona,” she said. “This is my sister. Her name is Styri.”
“Ah!” Maliko hissed at her, waving a hand sharply. “Don’t speak it! Only she speaks it.” He looked at Styri, waiting expectantly.
“I’m...” Styri muttered. “My name is Styri.”
Maliko nodded. “Good. Now we are safe. But only from each other.” He retrieved his spear, but held it at his side. “I will not kill you, but you do not belong in this place.”
“We’re trying to leave,” Akona reminded him. “Our ship is docked. We are just gathering food—is that alright with you?”
Maliko made a jerking motion with his arms almost like a shrug. “Take for your need. I have no problem with you.”
Akona took the bag Styri was carrying, then dropped them all in front of her, opening them up to display their contents. “Are these all safe to eat?”
Maliko scratched his chin, his eyes darting among all the different fruits they’d picked. “This one, it tastes better if you cook it... This one needs to be ripe first. You eat it now, ahhh!” He pretended to throw up all over the ground, laughing with a broad grin at his own joke. “You can eat them all.”
“Good.” Akona gathered their bags again. “Thank you. Be safe out there. The slavers are just in that clearing.”
“I know. My village...” Maliko walked to retrieve his spear that had hit the tree behind the twins. “I have killed three slavers already. I will kill more before the day is done.” He smiled, brandishing a spear. “Too fast for them and their swords. I used to trade with a man from their land, so I know their speech, too.”
“You’re doing a good thing,” Akona told him. “Killing those who invade you...” She remembered the Myrenthian resistance against the invading Eloheed. “May the gods protect you.”
Maliko shook his head. “If only they never came here. They say this all started because a king in another land was killed.” Akona’s heart sank. “I say death to him who killed that king. He killed so many more.”
His words hit Akona like a punch to the gut. Guilt was a sour stone in the pit of her stomach. She opened her mouth to say something, but just then, Maliko’s chest spat blood. An arrowhead poked through it.
“Got him!” someone cheered in Stonish. “Got the half-lip!” Several others cheered and laughed.
Maliko fell to his knees, dropping one of his spears. With his free hand, he grasped at the arrow, trying to pull it out of his body. Blood trickled down his bare chest. His mouth suckled desperately at the air for a clean breath.
“Run,” said Akona. She left the bags where they were. She grabbed her sister by the wrist and spun around to the river—Grackenwelsh troops on horseback blocked their way.
“Oh, archer got the little savage after all!” said one of the soldiers. “Look at that. But I get the kill!” He drew his sword, a crisp shink sound. The horses splashed water as they galloped.
For the first time in her life, Akona felt truly frozen, utterly rooted to the ground where she stood. Everything was back on their boat—their supplies, what was left of their poisons, and even the length of the Qardish emperor’s beard, the proof of their own kill. The nameless soldier drew his sword through the Archipelagian and he was dead.
“And who might you two be?” he said, wiping the blood from his blade with a rag. “You look lost.”
“They’re very pretty,” another one added. “I claim the one with the bandage!”
“Forget it, you fool. Look at them! They’re worth even more in coin than they are in bed.”
“How old do you reckon they are?”
“Bleeding age. Old enough.”
“Styri, run,” she said in Myrenthian. “Go. I’ll distract them.” Her older sister was wide-eyed and even more petrified than she was, stunned speechless. She didn’t move a muscle.
“Myrenthian?” Maliko’s killer snickered. “By the Bogman, they’re worth double what I thought! You know what they say about Myrenthian girls... That settles it. They’ll be concubines for one of the generals—and he’ll pay us their weight in silver, I’m sure of it!”
The soldiers were laughing and beating their breastplates, punching each other in the shoulder. Several of them dismounted their horses and started marching for the twins. Akona drew on all her teaching, every last lesson the glademothers had taught her, but none of them could save her in this moment—none of them were worth trying as captives of Grackenwell.
All she could do was take her sister by the wrist and run.