*
Our group made a strange procession over the rafts and bridges of the floating village. The warriors from the canoes stalked at our back, bows drawn and fixed on our shoulders, while small children ducked and darted around us, stabbing at our legs with barbed fishing spears. There seemed to be no malice in the attacks; the lithe little bastards treated the whole thing like a game, laughing and pointing, racing back and forth, poking at one another almost as much as they did at us.
“I am considering giving this entire village to the god,” Kossal muttered, parrying the hundredth attack with an open hand.
“Why do you hate fun?” Ela asked. She danced and twirled her way over the bridges, knocking aside the spears, catching the stones hurled at her and throwing them back, poking kids in the nose, tugging on ears.
Ruc ignored the barbed spears entirely. Even when they drew blood, he didn’t glance down, and after a short time the children tired of him. He was studying the village with a look I recognized, sizing it up, planning for a fight.
For something built entirely of rushes, the town looked surprisingly comfortable. Each house had tall windows to let in the breeze and cleverly contrived blinds to block out the brightest sun. Wide awnings overhung the fronts of the rafts, shading clusters of mats woven from the rushes. We passed a wide hall—far larger than I would have suspected possible working only with reeds. The high windows were hung with stitched tapestries of feather—red and yellow, orange and blue—through which the late-day sunlight poured its warm light, drenching the floor with color.
The line of rafts where the cooking took place looked at first to be hewn of stone. As we drew closer, however, I realized it was clay baked over the surface of the reeds beneath. Dozens of clay bowls steamed above carefully banked fires, while skewered meat smoked above steaming palm leaves. The fires washed the southern half of the town in a haze of smoke that smelled of baked fish, and fire-peppers, and sweet reeds.
“Where are we going?” Ruc asked, turning to Chua.
“To meet the Scales of the gods.”
“Scales?” I asked, seizing the closest spear, blocking two others, then cracking it over the heads of my diminutive attackers. They shrieked with delight, retreated, began to regroup.
“Snakes, crocs, fish,” Kossal grumbled. “Aren’t there enough scales in this miserable cesspool?”
I glanced at the warriors behind us. If they took offense at Kossal’s words, I couldn’t see it. On the other hand, those bows were still bent, the tooth-tipped arrows still pointed directly at our backs.
“Wrong kind of scale,” Chua said, as we stepped from the houses into the open. “These Scales are the kind used for measuring.”
“What are we measuring?” I asked.
“You are not measuring anything. You will be measured. To see if you deserve a voice.”
“That is incredibly sensible,” Ela said. “The world would be a better place if everyone who wanted to talk had to pass a test first.”
Chua snorted. “If all the world took this test, the world would be a quieter place.” She nodded. “Here.”
We had emerged beside a wide pool of water. I glanced over my shoulder to get my bearings, then realized a moment later that the village of rush huts and rafts formed a rough circle at the center of the lake. Inside that circle was a pond a few dozen paces across, a small lake inside the lake, ringed by the huts and boats. It might have been a pleasant place for kids to swim and adults to bathe, a sort of watery town square protected from the rest of the delta. Protected from everything, that is, aside from the three crocodiles lounging inside it.
I didn’t see the creatures at first—none of us did.
It took me a moment to find the scaly tails parting the water, the eyes floating just above the surface. Each of the crocs looked at least ten feet long, all scale and tooth and claw.
Whenever a crocodile drifted into Dombang on the river’s current, a group of fishers—usually one or two dozen—would go after it with nets and spears. The hunt was part revenge—crocs killed fishers every year—and part practical city management. No one wanted to live and work within paces of a beast that could take off a leg in a single bite, that would rear up to seize its prey, drag it screaming into the water, then roll over and over until it drowned or bled out.
No one, that is, aside from the Vuo Ton.
“Here,” the Witness of the Vuo Ton said, “you will worship in the Scales of the gods.”
“Worship,” Ela replied, frowning, “can be such a dull enterprise. A lot of mumbling and mantras.”
“If a mantra helps you face the Scales,” the Witness said, smiling, “you are welcome to it.”
Dem Lun was staring, frozen, at the circling creatures. “Face them?” he managed, voice barely more than a charred whisper. “You mean fight them?”
“A less strenuous devotion would not be worth the name. Succeed, and you will earn your voices.”
Chua sucked in a deep breath, then let it out. “I will worship with them.”
I glanced over at her. “You didn’t even want to come back here, and now you’re ready to wrestle crocs?”
“If you die,” the fisher replied, “my coin dies with you.”
The Witness turned to consider Chua. After a moment he shook his head regretfully. “So this is why you have come back. I remember you, sister, from a time when you would not forsake your people for a handful of metal.”
“I left for Tem,” she said.
“And this coin?”
“The coin is so I don’t ever have to come back.” She tossed her spears onto the floating raft at her feet, pulled free the net coiled on her back, then spread it open with an expert toss. “Let’s get this over with.”
The Witness shook his head. “You earned your voice years ago.”
“Then I’ll earn it again.”
“You know this is not the way.”
“They’ll be slaughtered,” Chua said grimly.
The massive creatures circled the small lake as though they could sense the coming violence. I could feel my own eagerness, too, rising inside me. For more than a week I had been sneaking around the city, inciting civil war, following Ruc like a puppy, trying to fall in love. The days had been muddy, baffling. I couldn’t tell from one moment to the next if I was edging closer to my goal or drowning slowly without noticing it. It seemed a long time since I had placed myself in the hand of my god. I found myself aching for the focus, the clarity.
“We’ll be fine,” I heard myself say.
The Witness raised his brows, but before he could respond, Dem Lun began backing away. “No,” he murmured, eyes fixed on the crocodiles, then again, louder, as though a single word could hold the world at bay, “No.”