“They wanted to find immortality, down in the hot places where the uranium seeps in pitch. The heat of the hot lands never dwindles: an invisible fire burns in the caves below, and fills the rivers with light. Because the heat never dwindles, it must be immortal. And—ah, Cosgrad, this is hard.”
“Courage, Prince! Courage!”
“The Cancrioth said,” Tau-indi vomited up in a rush, “that the water coming out of the uranium mountains had a special charge, and if prepared and applied properly, that charge could induce cancer, which was a higher form of vitality: for does not cancer grow in living flesh, and displace that flesh? Is it not more energetic and prosperous?
“In cancer was the secret of the new energy which would never die. And they made rituals to grow horns on their flesh, and tumors that spilled from their orifices, and some of them even had horns of tumor that grew beneath their eyes so that they had stalks like snails.
“And they made drugs and compounds with the hot water, they played with rabies and disease, and all this drove them into frenzy, saying, a ut li-en, we grow in us, we must grow and fill up the whole world! And for a long time they came very close, they ran rampant across the face of the world, for they were very clever and very fierce. Until the mbo rose up and stopped them.”
Cosgrad had cracked his pencil again. His hands were trembling. “Ah,” he said, “goodness. How radical, how extreme. They altered their flesh? And the changes, were they inherited?”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Tau-indi insisted. “It’s bad for our trim, to bring this knowledge up into the community.”
“Just that one question, Tau, please—these changes induced by their special cancer, did they go into the germ line? Were the Cancrioth able to pass on their mutations?”
“I won’t speak of it!” Tau snapped.
Later they asked Farrier, trying to be sly, “Does Falcrest think of my people as . . . tumorous? Do they associate us with cancer and disease?”
“It is a prejudice some hold,” Farrier said, tying a ribbon around his latest effort at a proper calligraphic scroll. “Will you help me with this knot? In Falcrest the belief is that all the Oriati live in a sort of humid quilt of jungles and savannas, full of tsetse and malaria and stranger disease. Lions and tigers everywhere, and whales in the rivers. An ignorance I hope to correct.” He winked at Tau. “Why? Do you associate yourselves with cancer and disease?”
“No,” Tau said, shuddering, “we are proud, most of all, of turning away from that path; just as we remember slavery, and take pride in eradicating it. And if some of us went back to that path, I think the Mbo would have to rise up to stop them, or give up all claim of goodness forever.”
SO Cosgrad could be uncomfortable, at times.
But he also told Tau-indi all about Falcrest, and that was a weapon Tau-indi needed. They’d show Abdumasi, with all his money and his griots. They’d show Kindalana, with all her guests and her diligent studies. Tau-indi, too, could bring a great gift to Prince Hill!
On the griot days, the days Prince Hill gathered in the house of Abd to learn about the war, Tau unleashed their new weapon against Abdumasi. “Cosgrad Torrinde tells me,” they would say, following one of the griots, explaining why a battle had gone the way it had, “I have learned from Cosgrad to expect this, and that . . . no, it’s not like that, it’s like this, Cosgrad has told me.”
Soon the griots came to Tau-indi to learn from them.
The epic wanted the names of the enemy, First Fleet, Second Fleet, Third Fleet, frigate and torchship, mainsail and Burn. The comic wanted to mock Cosgrad’s manners. The gossip teased Tau-indi about Cosgrad’s exotic looks, about his strange spare body that he kept taut as bark rope. Is it true, the gossip would ask, that in Falcrest they worship youth, and that all the old are put to death at fifty?
Whenever Abdumasi said something hopeful about the course of the war, Tau was there with dreadful intimations of Falcrest’s secret strength. Whenever Kindalana tried to explain the policies of the Federal Princes, and the intra-Mbo squabbling that made everything about war complicated, Tau was there to explain how Falcrest would exploit these gaps.
Tau-indi reveled in the storm-cloud power they had obtained. They could put themselves at the center of the affair. They could tell everyone that things were even worse than they knew.
They could spoil the mood.
A principle of spite moved them. Bitterness had been visited upon them by Kindalana and Abdumasi, tangled together in secret, and now they would visit bitterness in return.
“Torrinde’s like your pet!” Abdumasi said, completely impressed by Tau-indi’s offhand mastery of Falcresti ranks. “Does he follow you around? Can you get him to come swimming with us? Manata, we should start swimming again, all three of us! Summers used to be so good.”
Kindalana sniffed and lit a joint in the small fire. “Cosgrad swim? Not a chance. I hear he only bathes in private. Tau couldn’t convince him.”
“Oh,” Abdumasi said, disappointed. “What a waste! Have you seen him? He’s like one of those bulls whose muscles are too big for their skin! Tau, do you ever,” and he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial hush, “I know he’s quite a bit older, but do you ever, you know, get to peek?”
Tau caught Kindalana’s artfully disinterested exhalation. She had looked away as if she didn’t care.
Kindalana was jealous! Kindalana didn’t want Abdumasi to see Cosgrad Torrinde, or, perhaps, Kindalana wanted Torrinde all for herself. Wasn’t she Segu, after all, where men had only recently stopped being treated as chattel labor?
“He’s far too old for me,” Tau-indi said, trying to sound as airy as Kindalana looked. “Of course, I thought Mother might be interested in him. But she seems to have her eye on someone else. Don’t you think, Kinda?”
Abdumasi covered his mouth in shock. They never talked about the tension between Padrigan and Tahr.
Kindalana dropped her joint in the dirt and stamped it out. “I’ve been trying to get closer to Cairdine Farrier,” she said, “but he’s slippery. I know Cosgrad’s a naturalist and a botanist. He’s here to study fleshy things. But Farrier, what’s he want? Why’s he so careful about what he says and does? He talks like a big happy man, but catch him by surprise and he’s scared. . . .”
“I think Cosgrad’s trying to blackmail him!” Tau whispered. “I think Farrier stole Cosgrad’s love, and now Cosgrad, out of jealousy, is waiting to catch Farrier in some mistake or scandal . . . you know, secret sex or some such . . .”
Kindalana and Abdu pointedly did not look at each other.
Victory, Tau thought, victory. I have struck a blow.
They did not know at the time that Cosgrad Torrinde was on a mission from a woman named Renascent, a mission to prove his worth for a secret station. Even if Tau had known, they wouldn’t have understood.
How could a station be secret? How could you help anyone that way?
THE storm season of 911 passed on into the spring and then the summer of 912. For their next birthday Tau elected to celebrate on the frettes down south, a stepped land where tangled trees grew down the scooped-out edge of the Jomino Mesa and booming waterfalls rainbowed from the high basins down over the mouths of ancient limestone caves.
Tau-indi led the mule procession, riding alongside Cosgrad. The Prince Hill parents, Padrigan and Tahr and Abdi-obdi Abd, followed behind them with their children and groundskeeps and sentries, where Cairdine Farrier told foreign jokes and asked people about money. As Tau led the procession they felt like a gleaming star, like a Prince.
A river cheetah crossed their path twice, carrying her kittens to higher ground. Cosgrad leapt in delight. “You have cats! I thought cats were from the high north. In Falcrest all our cats are very small, and quite disobedient. I was sure they’d come down from the Wintercrests.”
Falcrest could hardly be allowed to take credit for cats. “Cats started living with people in Devi-naga Mbo, to eat the sea rats.”
&nb
sp; “That’s the story?”
“That’s one story. Another story is that house cats gathered in Mzilimake to make a plan as to how they would walk on two legs and use tools. But they were thirsty from the trip. So they lapped up the water from the sahel next to the jungle. But there were so many cats that they lapped up all the water and made the desert, which is why their tongues are so rough.”
Cosgrad laughed in delight. “But that doesn’t explain why they became domestic!”
“Of course it does: the desert was very hot, so the cats ran away into our houses, because we had shade.”
“Oh,” Cosgrad said. “And you’re sure your house cats didn’t come from the north?”
“We have hunting cats, tame leopards, monsoon tigers, sand cats, burrowing cats, river cats, flying cats that leap between trees, house cats, and cheetahs like her. Watch carefully, now, and you might see her run across the water, which they can do if they are very fast. . . .”
Cosgrad waved off a fly. His eyes never left the cheetah. Tau watched the hard muscles of his arm move in delightful ways. “Everything’s so complicated here,” he said. “So many kinds of cats, so many languages, so many crops, so many stories, so many”—he looked once at Tau-indi, with the same incredible fascination—“kinds of people.”
“It’s a very rich land, and very old. Everything has found a way to live together. There are difficulties, of course, but they sort themselves out. That’s the world.”
Cosgrad rubbed his mule behind the ears and made soft assuring noises. “It is the world. I never thought it could be so strange.” His voice was soft and fretful. “But it’s all so complicated . . . so very hard to fit into one theory of the origin and purpose of life. . . .”
They left their mules at a hitching-place and climbed the trail up onto the frettes. Water crashed down from the mesa above, forking waterfalls of mist and thunder, and they moved under the shade of the mangroves in a ring of angry birdsong as the tree life protested their trespass.
“Now, remember,” Tau-indi reminded their party, “it’s taboo today to gather under the shade of the same tree.”
Cairdine Farrier nudged one of his friends, a very bright young woman who worked as a barrister to handle the House Padrigan’s unfamiliarity with Lonjaro law, and murmured something. She grinned and nodded. Tau had the deep suspicion they were whispering about the Noble Privilege of Trim.
“Mangroves!” Cosgrad shouted, hurtling off into the brush, waving his arms. “Mangroves! How can there be mangroves here! We’re inland! Mangroves don’t grow here! It’s impossible!”
His voice trailed off into the greenery.
Everyone laughed at him. “He’s not wrong about the mangroves causing trouble, though,” Abdumasi said, “it’s actually hard to tell which tree is which. This is a tricky taboo.”
“We’ll have to split up and explore.” Tau liked that—with the group divided, Tau would get a larger share of attention from whoever accompanied them. “That will be my birthday project—the exploration of the frettes! Let’s meet up on the mesa-top when the sun gets red, and tell each other what we found.”
Tahr Bosoka and Abdi-obdi Abd went off one way, two mothers talking about the war. Abdi-obdi Abd had trade positions in Kutulbha, the Segu capital, but more and more of that port’s shipping was going over to military use. Padrigan followed them a little with his eyes on Tahr, until it became clear he was not invited along. Then he and Farrier took the housekeeps and groundskeeps and clerks to picnic in a frog-licker’s clearing not far off. You could get very high if you licked a frog, or even die: Tau-indi hoped that Padrigan wasn’t angry enough to lick the wrong frog.
“Let’s go find Cosgrad,” Tau-indi suggested.
The three of them tiptoed down spidered roots to stay out of the mud. Kinda and Abdu pushed each other back upright whenever they slipped. And a warm principle struck Tau-indi, something that lived in the sweaty warmth and the birdsong and the sound of their friends’ breath behind them.
They wanted to turn around and ask nakedly for everything to be forgiven. Everything since that fight with Kindalana at the lake, where they’d made themself out to be the best Prince, and far above childish things like comfort from a friend.
They were so happy here, exploring with their friends. This was what mattered, this togetherness—and it could never be allowed to pass.
“What’s Cosgrad after?” Abdumasi asked, as loud and braying as a donkey, puncturing the moment.
Kindalana, of course, had a good answer. “Mangroves need to grow on tidal plains, where water rises and falls. He’s confused how they can live here, too.”
“He can’t have missed the waterfalls, though. They would feed mangroves just as well as tides.”
“I think that mangroves need salts, too. So he must be confused, since the waterfalls are freshwater, right? That’s interesting.” Kindalana bit the web of her hand thoughtfully. “Cosgrad sees things I don’t, sometimes. He has a sharp eye.”
They found Cosgrad knee-deep in a murmuring stream, staring petrified at a branch. On that branch a tiny tongue-sized frog stared back at him, swelling up into an angry little bladder and saying robbot, robbot, robbot!
“Sst!” he hissed, when they got close. “Don’t move! The frog is dangerous!”
He looked a marvel. His long coffee-colored hair had gotten loose of its tie to run down his back, and the light through the mangrove canopy burnt his beard stubble in colors of bread and cinammon. His rolled-up canvas breeches, soaked through, clung to his thighs and loose-laid masculinity. The silk chemise left on him when he’d given up on his jacket had ridden up to bare a wedge of stomach muscle and a thin line of sun-toasted hair that all led the eye down. He stood there, tense and masterfully unmoving, his ridiculous vain body portioned out into ridges and packets of muscle by his ridiculous vain exercises, staring down a frog.
“That one’s not actually poisonous,” Kindala said. “You don’t have to be afraid.”
Abdumasi sucked in a huge not-laughing breath.
“Oh.” Cosgrad’s eyes narrowed warily. The frog ballooned into an outraged ball and said wart! wart! “You’re completely sure it’s safe?”
“Colored in stripes, kills all types . . .” Abdu began.
“Ah. Yes. Colored like sick, only a trick. It doesn’t rhyme in Aphalone, see, so I forget it. . . .”
Tau bit their cheek and wished that they could laugh at Cosgrad’s silliness. The problem was that Cosgrad was bound to them by trim. They had led their friends here to say, look, Cosgrad is mine, aren’t you envious? And now Cosgrad wasn’t being impressive at all, except, perhaps, to the lecherous eye.
“The leeches might give you more trouble, though,” Kindalana said.
Cosgrad looked down at his proud calves and made a noise of dismay. “What! What are those? Are they slugs? Oh! Oh no! They’re attached to me! They’re going inside me! My blood—they’re drinking my blood!”
Clearly Cosgrad Torrinde couldn’t be left to explore the mangrove forests on his own. “I’ll take him back to the picnic,” Tau said, grabbing Cosgrad’s arm to help him out of the muck. “Catch you two back there? Tell me what you find.”
Kindalana considered them with hooded eyes, suspicious or unsure.
“Sure,” she said. “Catch you back there.”
TAU-INDI set Cosgrad on track to the picnic clearing, told him that the leeches would fill up and drop off in a few minutes (he hopped around in panic), asked him to say hello to Padrigan, and then doubled back.
Kinda and Abdu knew Tau-indi loved the wet complexities of the mangrove forest but hated the slippery climb up to the caves behind the waterfalls. So they’d go inside those caves, wouldn’t they, to keep secrets from Tau? That was where they’d go.
They’d go to the caves and leave Tau-indi all alone.
Tau-indi trudged along thinking sullenly about days when the bonds between the three of them were roads to move warmth and comfort, not strings of bile and jeal
ousy. Somehow their friendship had been conquered. No more wandering days that tasted like raspberry and honey and sweet lake water, no more days acting like griots or daring captains, no, now they were all three like the dukes of Aurdwynn. Laying siege to each other.
They climbed upslope. The waterfall hammered their face with hot metallic drops. Sunlight sprayed through the roar. Behind the roaring curtain they found—oh, the jealous heart-needle feeling of it—Kindalana’s khanga hung on a rock by the mouth. Tau-indi swallowed the urge to pick it up and bring it to her.
Instead they sat by the mouth of the cave and listened to the voices inside. Eavesdropping? Never. They were just coming to be with their friends on their birthday, their birthday, and if they accidentally happened to overhear something, well, it was their friends’ fault for keeping secrets.
Voices came.
“Thank you,” Kindalana said, with plainly sexual relief. “Mm. Thank you. Ah, that’s better.”
“Good,” Abdu said, oddly gruff. There was a long silence.
“Too fast for you?” Kinda said lightly. “Did I come too soon?”
Abdu made an uncertain noise, and then, with some hurt, “I guess I thought we’d stopped.”
“I know. I know. It’s just . . .”
“You needed a distraction from your little crush?”
Tau-indi’s heart thumped. Was it about them? Did Kindalana have a crush on them?
“It’s not a crush,” Kindalana said crossly. “I don’t like him. He’s ridiculous. He just turns me on. You know how it is! There was that harbor authority woman who kept searching your cargos, and you hated her, but you just couldn’t stop asking me to play pay my special toll like I was her.”
Tau-indi didn’t want know these things nearly as much as they’d thought.
“It’s the clothes that get you.” Now it was Abdu’s turn to speak with practiced lightness. “He’s always so prudish. It makes you curious. You see him getting all sweaty in a silk shirt. You imagine peeling the leeches off his legs, higher and higher, and—oof! Okay, okay!”
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