From the way they fought, she guessed the rules: the first to lose their feet would lose the match. No gouges, no strikes with fists or feet. The male wrestler huffed through his beard and moved with zigzag motions and fast arcs, all growl and gruff, while the woman favored straight, swift lines, and never lifted her feet from the dirt. They raised dust clouds as they slid, and left clean trenches and tracks the man stamped down. He grabbed for her once, twice, but she drew her hands away. Viv didn’t know why, and wished she did. She’d never been a fighter, she’d never liked physical combat, but she wanted to know what it felt like to be this woman from the inside.
The man surged forward once more, and this time his opponent did not evade. His hands clamped on her thick wrists and he pressed in hard and fast to knock her off-balance, and Viv, sad for this woman she barely knew, thought: this is it, she’s done.
But that smile, which had been a fixed expression before, turned real. Viv realized then why the woman had slipped from her rival’s earlier attempts to engage: they weren’t serious enough for her to use. She had him now. Her arms pressed into his grip and through, and her fingers clutched him, white-knuckled. Her weight and his sank through her trunk into the roots of her thick legs, into the knotted muscles of thigh and calf.
With a roar, she threw him, and as he arced through the air Viv thought, that’s it—but the man twisted, and landed on his feet with a drumbeat thud. There were no cheers. The silence deepened as he crouched low and circled her again, cautious.
In that tense pause Hong almost broke the ritual and stepped out to greet the man on the throne, but Viv grabbed his arm and stopped him in time. None of Djenn’s or Xiara’s party had knelt to the man with the jewels, or even acknowledged him. Djenn watched the match with religious fervor. Xiara stood rigid, white-lipped, her hands balled to fists. And a thin silver circlet hung on the throne-back as if left to bide awhile. The man keeping the throne warm did not seem like the kind of guy to skimp on finery. Hong turned a questioning gaze toward Viv. He didn’t get it yet, but at least he trusted her enough to keep quiet.
The wrestlers had clinched again, each clutching the meat of the other’s forearms. Their shoulders moved as a unit, and they fought the true battle with their feet. The woman pressed forward, dropped her hips low, and used her lower stance and the strength of her legs to drive the man back. He circle-stepped, pulled left, right—then, with a grunt, let his left guard collapse. The woman pushed up and in with that hand—but he must have been expecting that, and danced back, tugging her arm down.
The woman’s foot slipped, and Viv’s heart sank.
But it was not over.
The woman let out a high, piercing sound, almost a cry, almost a laugh, and spun. Her back bent like a sword, and in the firelight she was all lines and cords of muscle from her core through the ridges that flanked her spine. She came out of the spin still holding the other wrestler’s arms, wrists locked against themselves. His hooded eyes widened in shock, and his mouth opened in a silent O, but he had no time to save himself. He had shifted all his weight to one leg for that last maneuver, risking imbalance for victory and leaving himself without a root.
He fell like a mountain.
The woman drew a long, slow breath, and bent over him, and tugged on his cord armband. The knot undid with a single pull. She raised the cord high in the silence and let it fall.
Cheers burst from the crowd, from the jeweled man on the throne, from Djenn and their escort, from Xiara—the drums pounded again, and strings and flutes joined in. The victor offered the loser a hand up, which he accepted humbly, with a broad, tired grin and rueful shake of head. But before he could speak, before anyone else could set the agenda, Viv darted into the circle, dragging startled Hong behind her, and bowed, deeply, to the woman wrestler. “Ornchief, my congratulations.”
Hong almost rose from his bow in shock, but her hand on his shoulders held him down. Guards rushed forward, drawing weapons, Djenn sputtered, and, most importantly, the woman who was Ornchief brushed sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist, examined Viv and Hong, and asked, “Stranger, how did you know me?”
Viv straightened then, though the sudden pressure of spearpoints against her back suggested she was not supposed to do. But she wasn’t interested in the guards’ sense of propriety, or Hong’s, or sputtering Djenn’s, or even Xiara’s. Viv trusted her instincts, and her judgment of this woman, through the daughter she had raised. “Your crown rests on your throne. Your man with the jewels sits there to guard it. Your people look to you, and celebrate your victory.”
“They might as well celebrate a wicked Chief’s defeat.” A guard brought her a cloth, and another guard a basin. She splashed water on her face, toweled off.
“Not to judge from how your daughter speaks of you. Or your camp.”
A raised eyebrow. “My camp speaks? Are you an oracle, stranger, to hear its voice?”
“No.” Viv had dealt with people like the Ornchief before, heavy with true authority, too sure to need arrogance. You didn’t find it often in the circles of anxious overachieving nerds where she tended to run, and less often among the rich—but when you did, you had to be ready. These people would not respect you if you yourself did not. “I have led clans, and built things. This camp was built well, by well-led people.”
“You have led clans?” Confusion—the Ornchief had Xiara’s lucid face, more square, no less expressive. Viv felt very conscious of how little she must resemble this woman’s image of a leader. “Will you join me in the ring? We will compare our leadership.”
“Not clans like this,” Viv said, a bit faster and more apologetically than she would have liked. Self-respect was not easy to maintain before the mass of this woman. “Clans of trade.”
“Trade,” the Chief echoed. Viv had a way of saying the word interesting that her friends always mocked; when she used that tone she didn’t always mean bullshit, but often. I think you’re wrong, but I’ll give you a chance to save yourself. Or dig yourself in deeper. “Are you a tradeswoman, then?”
“We are pilgrims,” Hong said. “We have left the family to walk the path of saints, and seek miracles.”
“They are monsters.” Djenn barreled into the conversation. Viv had hoped to keep this between her and the Chief, but Hong speaking had opened the floor. She’d have to talk tactics with him, so he stopped screwing hers up. (Admittedly, she had a lot to learn from him, insofar as the whole not-dying thing was concerned.) “They broke our guards, took the Princess hostage. They have bound her to their cause with sorcery.”
Which was such an absurd accusation Viv took a few heartbeats to realize the Chief was taking it seriously. Fortunately, Xiara chose this moment to shoulder ringside. “Chief. I am myself, and free. You know me from your own flesh. Viv and Brother Hong came to us from beyond the stars. I found them arguing with a companion, their pilot. This person, enraged, broke our guards, and would have killed me had Viv not stopped her. She fled through the Cloud, leaving Viv and Hong stranded here. They want shelter, fuel; they seek a pilot to take them offworld, and have agreed to let me serve them. I pledged them my protection, and will brook no harm to them within our hall.”
Viv had wondered when the pilot thing would come up—and how the Chief would take it when it did. She’d expected laughter, even scorn, though this woman did not seem the type to scorn her children. But she’d never thought the Chief might take Xiara seriously.
The Chief lowered her head and marched through the murmuring crowd. She climbed the three steps to her throne, which the jeweled man abandoned with a bow; the Chief raised her crown and settled it upon her head. As the metal touched her skin, her broad shoulders slumped, and the boundless strength of her stilled and settled as if to yoke. She sat. Duty gathered about her like a storm. “You have broken guards we cannot cheaply fix. You ask for fuel. You seek my daughter’s service. Yet for a tradeclan, you have offered little. What can you grant us? What trade can you offer, with a monk sworn to p
overty by your side?”
For once Hong did not leap to answer. If he really had taken a vow of poverty, negotiation probably wasn’t his strong suit—but then, Viv had no sense of relative value here. What did fuel cost, if these people thought in terms of costs at all and not in terms of gifts? For that matter, what was a fit trade for a Chief’s relative? For all Viv knew, that old dirty magazine of Zanj’s was worth half the broken junk on this planet. Offer too low and she’d insult the Chief, offer too high and she’d seem an idiot, unless there was some sort of passive-aggressive honor inversion nonsense at work here; no, we couldn’t possibly accept something so rich …
There were too many variables.
Starting with trade had been her mistake. She’d read once, maybe in Graeber, that rather than barter, precapital economies held certain sorts of goods more or less in common; you’d borrow a neighbor’s hammer, perhaps even without asking, and one day they’d come for something worth about a hammer; they wouldn’t, though, take your goat, since goats were a different sort of thing. Barter happened between groups without mutual trust—my village might barter with those dangerous foreigners, say. By offering trade she’d marked herself as a threat, closed herself to hospitality. But if she tried to take back her offer and throw herself on the Chief’s mercy now, she’d have to confess her ignorance, give up whatever bargaining position she now held, and look a fool in the process.
That was why the Chief’s eyes weighed her. That was why Xiara tensed with concern. If Viv screwed this up, small chance the Chief would let her go. So Xiara would never leave Orn, and Viv would be stuck here while the Empress retreated to her Citadel.
So, negotiate, Viv. You can’t offer the ship—you need that. And you don’t know what parts of the ship you can sell without breaking it. Hong’s bracelets? The robes that have already saved your life at least once, and which you’re sure you’ll need again? What could they want in this comfortable ruin?
Oh. “News,” she said. “I bring news, which Brother Hong can better tell than I—news of war in the stars, news of an assault on High Carcereal, of battles between Pride and ’faith, of vanishing beads in the Empress’s Rosary, and of the Bleed.” The Chief leaned forward; others, too. Xiara stared, wondering. The music dulled as musicians leaned in to listen and let their rhythm slip. There you go. That’s the hook baited. Now add a little of that old fear of missing out … “What we have seen weighs on us, and it is fearful to mention—but if you would hear of the stars, we will tell you what we know.”
“It is a fair trade,” the Chief admitted, and Viv tried to keep the saleswoman’s grin to herself. “Let there be feasting and wine, and tales of wonder.”
“One more thing,” Viv said before the party got going again.
The Chief extended her hand, flat, palm up, eyebrow raised: continue.
Viv pointed down to her own feet, still bare, much abused. “I could use a pair of boots.”
“That depends,” the Chief replied with a distinctly unbusinesslike grin, “on how well your partner here can wrestle.”
* * *
FEASTING, MERRIMENT, DRUMS, a whirl of dance and drink: trade concluded, Viv and Hong were strangers no more, but honored guests who in their future travels would bear tales of Ornclan hospitality, their music’s joy, their wrestlers’ strength, the thick full spice of their food, the vigor of their wine, the rhythm of their dance.
The Chief ordered a party of warriors forth to fetch their ship—to float it home with levipads or fly it if its engines would bear. Even with those warriors gone, the party remained dense, a mass of shapes, mostly but not altogether human—and the dance closed in. Viv felt its beat in her stomach; cupbearers brought her a gold-inlaid horn full of something strong and viney, and brought Hong a mug of dark flower tea.
The Chief raised her horn as well, and Viv matched her and drank. The wine sank a warm plumb line down her throat—her first draft since waking in High Carceral. This drink was her first act in days that wasn’t necessary. She let her second sip open on her palate, tasted river rocks and stonefruit, overtones of glass and velvet. Flavors haunted behind the stonefruit that she could not place save by analogy. This grape was dry beyond belief, if it was a grape at all. But it was wine, or close enough, and it tasted good. She would make this moment normal by sheer force of will if necessary.
Xiara stood at her side. “Come. Eat.”
And the bottom dropped out of Viv’s stomach. “Oh my god. You have food.”
Xiara, laughing, limped beside her to the feast table. “Of course. Do you not eat food?”
“Just watch me.” The smells alone, of spices fuller than cinnamon and sharper than turmeric, of almost-saffron, and of peppers, made her knees weak and the room swim. The Ornclan ate out of bowls with flatbread and knives, and in that moment Viv would not have cared if they’d eaten upside down from funnels. “On the ship, we’ve had, like, Hong has this nutrient paste stuff that I’m pretty sure is ninety percent mushroom, and water, and is this chicken?”
Xiara made a face at her eager expression, and she wondered what the translation gimmick had substituted in for chicken. “Birds at a feast? We would never so insult our guests. This is Emperor Snake. A great delicacy—they take ten warriors at least to hunt, but they’re delicious if you can eat them before they eat you. Djenn led the hunt himself.”
“And nobody died?”
Xiara laughed. “Djenn is a fine hunter, though suspicious of outsiders. Here, try these—” She scooped something that looked like lentils into her bowl. Viv let the smells and her rumbling stomach guide her from tray to tray, pot to pot, and didn’t argue when Xiara added more to her bowl even though she ended up balancing three bowls altogether, two for her, one for Xiara, as they worked back through the crowd to the table and more wine.
“Tell me about your travels,” Xiara said.
“Tell me about this food.”
“Let us trade, then, since you hail from a tradeclan.”
After days of nutrient paste and water, Viv’s first bite of Emperor Snake with peppers and not-quite-cumin tasted so good that she felt embarrassed about eating it in public. Not too embarrassed to swallow, though. “I’ll have to talk while I eat.”
Another side-eyed expression, suddenly brighter. “Oh! You do not eat and speak at once, where you come from? How do you take meals with company?”
“Awkwardly,” Viv said, and reached for wine, only for Xiara to press some into her hand. The weird velvet mouthfeel blushed around the peppers, bit into the Emperor Snake, complemented the meaty flavor of the lentilesques and the buttery aftertaste of the green almost-broccoli sponge. “I’m pretty new at all this, to be honest,” she said, too conscious of Xiara leaning toward her, of the dance they were dancing sitting still. Their knees touched under the table. “We were in the Cloud for a long time. And then—there were stars.” Xiara’s eyes glittered as she leaned in. “I saw rainbows in a comet trail lit by a blue sun. I have words for that, at least. But the rest, I barely know where to start. We don’t have things like this where I come from.”
Xiara tore her meat with her teeth, and mopped sauce from her lip with the back of her hand, and sucked her skin clean. “Where’s that?”
“You won’t have heard of it.” She felt almost human again, and realized how inhuman she had felt before. “I’m still getting used to … space travel. It’s big and weird. If you come with us, maybe you’ll feel the same. Or maybe not. Hong seems to roll with the punches better than I do. He’s a good guy, even if he has awful taste in nutrient paste.”
“He does not seem to mind real food.” Nor did he—deep in conversation with old robed skalds, he scooped up lentilesques and greens with torn strips of bread. Viv reviewed the clearing, the dancing and the music, tracking, searching, and realized that she was looking for Zanj. Who was not here. Whom she had chased away.
Far, far above, wind whispered in the boughs.
She shouldn’t miss Zanj: she was murderous, vicious,
quite possibly evil. Of course, people had said the same things about Viv. But then Viv hadn’t actually tried to kill herself, or anyone else, at least not directly. They were safer with her gone, sure. Zanj was not a nice person. But out of all the wonders and dangers in this weird wide universe, Viv felt she got Zanj most—where she was coming from, from the inside. Which was weird. So you woke up in the far future, or wherever, and you felt simpatico with an ancient mythological tyrant who wanted to murder literally everything. What did that say about you?
Whatever it said, you were still looking for her in the party when you knew she was not there.
Xiara had filled her horn with more wine. “Here,” she said, pointing to a kind of stuffed tuber. “I loved these when I was a girl, and no clan on Orn makes them so well as ours. Try some.”
“Thank you,” she said, and ate.
Wine rubbed the details smooth after that and tinted them red-gold, and this meal, this conversation, this woman by her side, felt finally, physically real. But was it?
Everything Viv had once thought was real, everything she had risked her life to achieve, all the fortunes and the Earth that held them—what was all that, here? The past, whatever physics and Zanj and Hong might claim about time travel’s impossibilities? A simulation? Another timeline, another universe? If Viv’s past had happened at all, it had happened so long ago the names themselves had drifted beyond memory, all those people dead, their planet crumbled.
She remembered her home, and she remembered the battles she had fought, and she remembered Magda.
More wine? Oh yes. Thank you.
Xiara drank, too, and she shimmered with the joy of it. She told Viv about tending vines as a girl, about the centipedes you had to pick out of the grapes, how they’d scared her until she learned to chain them together—they’d grab each other’s bodies with their pincers so you could make ropes of them and run through the tall grass waving the ropes after you. Xiara told her about the first time she’d been allowed to taste the wine, and showed the curled-up face she’d made, and Viv told her about the time in grade school when her mother had insisted for some reason that she should taste merlot.
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