by Geoff Rodkey
The Flut were starting to look impatient. The elder addressed me and Guts again.
“What do we tell him?” I asked Millicent.
“Nothing. Just shrug your shoulders and look stupid.”
I did as I was told.
“Both of you,” she muttered, glaring at Guts.
He scowled and twitched, but offered a halfhearted shrug as he stared at the ground.
The elder looked annoyed. But when Millicent offered an explanation in her softest, most soothing voice, and added another deep bow on top of it, he grudgingly began a dialogue with her.
Kira tried to break in at first, but the hostile stares of all three Flut persuaded her to keep her mouth shut and let Millicent handle things.
The conversation went on for some time. The Flut elder kept asking questions, and Millicent kept answering them.
His tone occasionally turned sharp, but even when it did, she kept her voice calm and steady. At one point, she lowered it nearly to a whisper, and it quavered with emotion.
I couldn’t tell whether the emotion was real or just an act. But either way, it worked its magic on her audience. The Flut elder’s brow knitted with concern, and although the other two Flut stayed motionless and square-shouldered, the eyes of the younger one seemed to melt into puddles as he stared at Millicent.
At first, I felt a pang of jealousy. But as I thought about it some more, I started to wonder whether I shouldn’t try to warn the poor Flut warrior—who by now was looking positively moony as he listened to Millicent spin her tale—that she was nothing but trouble and he shouldn’t get his hopes up.
I was still thinking about it when Millicent turned to Kira and asked in an undertone, “How much money do you have?”
“About two hundred,” Kira replied.
“Gold or silver?”
“Neither. Shells.”
“Shells? That’s absurd!”
“Not to a Flut. They’re more valuable than silver. Should I get the bag out?”
“Not until we’ve set a price.”
Millicent went back to talking with the elder, and the tone of the conversation shifted—the back-and-forth got much faster, and Millicent’s sentences turned short and businesslike.
I wasn’t sure what they were haggling over, but I hoped it was food.
Finally, she sighed, gave a deep bow, and turned away from the Flut.
“Walk with me,” she told us. “Don’t look back.”
She started off in the direction we’d come from, and the three of us had to scurry to fall in line behind her.
Kira was aghast. “Are you mad?”
“I’m negotiating. Keep your voice down,” Millicent said, without turning her head or slowing down.
“We can’t walk away! We’re starving!”
“I’d rather starve than pay those prices,” Millicent declared.
We’d almost reached the far edge of the commons. “Please don’t walk away from food,” I begged her.
“Should have thought about that before you tossed away all our silver.”
“You were going to drown!”
“And now we’re going to starve if we don’t get the price down.”
Fortunately, just then we heard the elder’s voice, calling Millicent back. She returned, and within a minute, they’d come to some kind of agreement.
As Kira pulled out her sack of shells and counted out a handful to give to the Flut, Millicent explained the situation to me and Guts.
“They’re going to feed us,” she said, “then show us the best route across the valley and vouch for us with the other villages. We can buy the food we need along the way, and they’ll keep an eye out for the men from the boat.”
Almost as soon as the elder had his shells in hand, three tribeswomen appeared with a bowl of corn pancakes, a pitcher of goat’s milk, and—I almost passed out from happiness at the sight—a long skewer with two full racks of cooked mutton.
They spread the food out on a blanket next to the fire pit. Then the Flut retreated to the porch in front of the main hut, leaving us to dine by ourselves. Only Millicent’s warning that we should eat politely kept us from attacking the food like starving dogs. Even so, we tore through it with fierce speed.
The last of the mutton ribs had been spoken for and we were down to our final two pancakes before anyone stopped chewing long enough to talk.
“Is it true, what you said?” Kira asked Millicent.
Millicent didn’t answer.
“How much of what you told them—”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Millicent said sharply.
“But are the slavers—”
“Use that word in front of me, there’s going to be trouble,” Millicent warned her.
A tense silence followed. Millicent’s eyes stayed fixed on the mutton rib she was gnawing. Kira’s nostrils flared as she studied her own food.
Guts and I traded puzzled glances. I had no idea what the girls were talking about, but it seemed like a bad idea to ask.
Kira took a bite of mutton. Chewed it slowly. Swallowed. Then tried again.
“Why did you say—”
“I said what I said to get us what we needed,” Millicent snapped. “And so help me—if you so much as move your tongue to slander my father, I’ll cut it from your mouth.”
Kira looked too shocked to answer. Millicent tossed the rib bone into the fire pit and stood up, flicking her fingers clean.
“I’m going to see about getting a bath. Sick to death of being filthy.”
Millicent strode across the commons to speak with the Flut. We all watched as she bowed low to the Flut elder, sitting on a woven chair in front of his hut. He nodded and smiled, clearly won over by her.
“I don’t understand your friend,” Kira said.
“What did she say to them?” I asked.
“That Rovian soldiers are coming to invade the New Lands and make slaves of us all. And the four of us are on a mission to stop them.” Kira turned to look at me. “Is it true? Or was she lying?”
“I have no idea,” was all I could think to say.
COMING CLEAN
My stomach was full for the first time in days, and for the moment we seemed safe from Pembroke’s slavers. But now I had something new to worry about.
Why would Rovian soldiers invade the New Lands?
Rovia and Cartage were enemies, but not like the Moku and Okalu. They weren’t dead set on wiping each other out. They only fought occasionally, and the Barker War five years back had seemed to settle things between them, at least as far as the New Lands went. When it was over, Cartage controlled the mainland, and Rovia ruled the islands. And that was that.
Or so I thought.
And this business about making slaves of everyone—how could that be? Rovia wasn’t in the slave trade. The king had outlawed it. Roger Pembroke was a slaver, and a Rovian…but the only soldiers he had any control over were the hundred or so in the garrison on Sunrise, and that was just because according to Millicent, he paid their salaries.
Surely you couldn’t invade a whole continent with a hundred soldiers. You’d need thousands. And warships, too. Roger Pembroke didn’t have that kind of power.
Or did he?
I watched Millicent walk back to us from the elder’s hut.
“What’s this about Rovian soldiers invading the New Lands?” I asked her.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, shaking her head.
“How can it not matter?!”
“There’s a stream nearby,” she said, ignoring the question. “They’ll take us there if we want to wash up. Three shells a person, and they’ll wash our clothes. I recommend it—you look like a pack of animals, and you smell even worse.”
Two teenage Flut girls were approaching. One of them called out in Cartager, and Millicent turned to greet them.
“Fine,” I said. “But what about the soldiers—”
She talked over me, directing a comment to Kira in Cartager. Then she
and Kira began to follow the two Flut girls.
“Go with the boys when they show up,” Millicent said over her shoulder as she walked off. “And don’t waste time. We’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”
“What about the soldiers?!” I called out, exasperated.
She didn’t even turn around.
“Girlie ain’t changed a bit,” Guts muttered as he watched her go. “Still a pudda saca.”
“Don’t call her that.”
“Pudo la, ye billi glulo porsamora.”
“You sure you’re saying it right?”
“Shut up.”
A moment later, two boys a few years younger than us arrived
and led us to a secluded spot on the bank of a slow-moving stream. They motioned for us to give them our clothes. We stripped down, and they began to rinse the clothes as we plunked ourselves down in the stream.
The water was chilly, but I forced myself to stay in it until I’d scrubbed myself clean, especially my hair. Then I sat down on the riverbank, shivering and wet, and watched the boys beat our clothes against some rocks. It was late morning, the sun was hot, and pretty quickly I stopped shivering.
Guts sat down next to me. “Wot ye make of this soldier business?” he asked.
I just glared at him, my teeth clenched together. And not from the cold.
“Wot’s yer problem?” he asked.
“What’d you attack me for?” I yelled at him.
“Tryin’ to make me look stupid! Nosin’ in on her!” he yelled back.
The two kids stopped beating out our clothes and turned to watch us argue.
“I wasn’t!” I told him. “I don’t even like her!”
“Tell the other one!”
“I don’t!”
“Prove it!”
“Oh, come on!” I lowered my voice. “You know how I feel about Millicent. I don’t care about anybody else.”
He thought about that. “Promise?”
“I swear it.”
We were both quiet for a minute. The kids went back to beating out our clothes.
“Right then,” Guts said finally. “We’re square.”
“Aren’t you going to apologize?”
“Fer wot?”
“Beating me in the head!”
“Had it comin’! Shouldn’ta made me look stupid.”
“I was telling the truth! I told you not to name that hook!”
“Still.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
There was another minute of silence while I tried to tamp down my anger. I felt like the whole thing was his fault. But Millicent was still mad at me, and I didn’t know what to make of Kira. So if I wasn’t at least on good terms with Guts, I wouldn’t have anybody.
“Sorry I made you look stupid,” I said, trying not to sound resentful.
Guts nodded. “Sorry I beat yer head.”
That was a start, I guess.
“She says she’s marrying someone else,” I told him.
He shot bolt upright. “Who is he?! I’ll strangle ’im!”
“Not Kira! Millicent.”
“Oh.” He relaxed again. “How’d that happen?”
I told him what I knew about this Cyril fellow. Guts considered the situation as he used the side of his hook to scratch a bug bite on his arm.
“No worry. Get out o’ this mess, ye can go kill ’im.”
I sighed. “I’m not going to kill him.”
Guts shrugged. “Fine. I’ll kill ’im for ye.”
It was a ridiculous thing to say, but it made me feel good about Guts again.
WHEN THE BOYS returned our clothes, they were damp but clean. We put them on and walked back to the middle of the village. Kira and Millicent were waiting, looking clean-scrubbed and fresh. They’d both swapped their dirty clothes for Native cotton leggings and tunics, and Millicent’s still-wet hair was tucked behind her ears.
She was so pretty it hurt a little to look at her.
There was a long final conversation between Millicent and the village elder. At one point, he took out a stick and scratched a map in the dirt. The girls nodded their heads like they understood, but I couldn’t make any sense of what he’d drawn.
Then the elder presented Millicent with a thin strand of rope that one of his warriors had been busy knotting in dozens of places along its length.
At Millicent’s direction, we all bowed to the Flut. They returned the bows. Then the same warrior who’d taken us to the village led us out in the opposite direction.
“Wot’s with the rope?” Guts asked as we walked.
“It’s a message,” said Millicent. “To give to the other Flut villages. So they’ll let us pass through, and sell us food.”
Guts looked skeptical. “Can’t say all that with a piece o’ rope.”
“Yes, you can,” said Kira. “It’s how the Flut write. With knots on string.”
“Stupid,” said Guts.
“No,” Millicent told him. “Stupid is not writing at all.”
“Shut up, ye saca!” Guts snapped at her.
“I wasn’t talking about you,” said Millicent.
There was an awkward silence after that. When I glanced over at Guts, he was red-faced and twitching.
I felt sad for him. Until just then, it hadn’t occurred to me that he might not know how to write. But now that I thought about it, considering what little I knew about his past, it made sense.
The Flut warrior led us to a trailhead just outside the village. He left us there with a few final instructions in Cartager, and we set off down the trail, which led west along the bank of the stream where we’d bathed.
“So what about these soldiers?” I asked Millicent.
Once again, she didn’t answer.
“Is it true? Why on earth would Rovia invade the New Lands?”
She was walking in front of me, and I couldn’t see her face, but I heard her utter a short sigh.
“You’ve got to tell us what you know, Millicent,” I said.
“There’s some kind of plan afoot,” she said reluctantly. “I don’t know anything specific. But, yes. It’s going to happen.”
“Is your father involved?” I asked.
“How else would I know about it?”
“But how could he get the troops to—”
“That’s all I know,” she said sharply. “I’ve no idea how, or where, or when—just that they’re planning it.”
“If Rovians invade the New Lands, it will start a war with Cartage,” said Kira.
Millicent shrugged. “I suppose so.”
“Wot’s this mean for us?” asked Guts.
“It doesn’t change a thing,” said Millicent. “Still got to get that map translated. And we’ve still got to find the Fist.”
“What do you want with the Fist?” Kira asked her.
“Who says I want it?”
“If you don’t, why are you here?”
“Because I fancy the outdoors,” said Millicent.
I figured that would set Kira off, but she let it go. Something seemed to have changed between her and Millicent. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they liked each other. But between her bartering with the Flut and her new willingness to threaten Kira with violence of her own, Millicent seemed to have earned Kira’s respect.
I waited until we’d been walking for a while and were spread out along the trail before I fell in close to Millicent and quietly pressed her for more information.
“Tell me more about this invasion.”
“There’s nothing more to tell.”
“You’ve got to know more than that,” I insisted.
“Well, I don’t! And it doesn’t matter. We’ve still got to find this stupid tribe and figure out what that map says.” She looked back at me with narrowed eyes. “You haven’t forgotten any of it, have you?”
I felt a little pang of worry.
Dash dot feather cup two dash dot firebird…
“No! Course not!”
“Well, don’t. It’s the least you can do,” she said bitterly.
“You know, I really am—”
“Quit saying you’re sorry!”
“I wasn’t going to!”
I was, actually. I couldn’t help it. I still felt sorry.
Not that it was doing me any good with her.
THE VALLEY WAS ENORMOUS. We spent the whole rest of the day walking, and judging by the position of the mountains to the north, by sunset we hardly seemed to have made any progress at all. Partly that was because of the route we were taking. The Flut had told Millicent and Kira that the easiest way across the mountains was over a pass on the far western shoulder of the Gran, the tallest peak in the range.
The Gran looked almost as wide as it was tall, and it stood well to the west of where we’d started. So the route the Flut had sketched out sent us nearly as far west as north.
All of it was through farmland and pastures held by the Flut, who kept a close eye on their territory. Every few miles, we came upon another tall, slender lookout post. By the time we saw them, they were usually empty because their sentry had spotted us first and scrambled down to spread the news.
Within minutes, a hostile clutch of Flut warriors would approach us. They didn’t always speak Cartager, but they all recognized the knotted rope Millicent carried. After examining it, one of the warriors would escort us through his fields before sending us off in the direction of the next territory.
After the time we’d spent running from the slavers, the sentries were a comfort. As long as we stayed in Flut territory and minded our manners, we didn’t seem to have much to fear other than sunburn and sore feet.
In the late afternoon, we reached another village, twice as big but otherwise identical to the first one. We bought a day’s worth of food from them after an epic negotiation, during which Millicent made us pretend to walk away three times.
This time, we took the food with us. Half an hour before sunset, we came upon a lightly wooded stretch of high ground that some Flut shepherds must have used for camping themselves, because there was a pit already dug with the charred leftovers of multiple fires. We gathered some wood, then built a fire using the flints Kira had brought with her. After watching her pray to the sunset, we ate a quick dinner and fell asleep around the fire.
I woke up in the middle of the night to muffled sounds that at first I thought were coming from a wounded animal. I looked around the smoldering rim of the fire and saw just two bodies asleep on the ground.
