Not the delta, of course. The lake was still there, mud-brown water bunched by the breeze, ringed in the distance by that wall of rushes. Winebeaks darted in and out of the reeds. Half a dozen tufted ducks bobbed on the wavelets a few paces distant. The raft beneath my feet was solid enough, and the hut from which I’d just emerged. There was one just like it tethered to either side, and our own boat tied off just beyond. All that was as I remembered. The rest of the village of the Vuo Ton, however, the barges and boats, the scores of floating homes, the dugout canoes—all of it had vanished.
For a few heartbeats, all I could do was stare. My mind, still groggy from exhaustion, from an evening smoking and drinking, struggled to yoke my fragmented memories to the scene before me. As I stood gaping, Kossal stepped from the door of the next hut down, glanced at the vacant expanse, scowled, spat into the water, and then, before I could frame an appropriate question, disappeared back into his hut. A few moments later he emerged again, this time with Ela. The priestess had shed her soaking clothes for a light blanket draped over one shoulder, tied around her waist. She looked as bleary as I felt, spent a few moments rubbing her eyes and knuckling her back before she noticed her surroundings. Then she started laughing.
“I thought that quey tasted strange.”
Kossal shook his head. “I didn’t drink the quey.”
She wagged a finger at him. “But you drank the water.”
“Drugged,” I said stupidly. “They drugged us.”
“For which I, at least, am grateful,” Ela said, shrugging. “I appreciate a good, dreamless sleep after a day fighting crocodiles and a night of dancing.”
“Where did they go?”
“Somewhere else.”
I turned to find Chua standing in front of her own hut, fully dressed, fishing spear in hand, studying the empty lake.
“There were a hundred buildings here at midnight,” Kossal said.
The fisher shook her head. “A hundred boats. I told you the Vuo Ton do not stay in the same place.”
“You knew where to find them,” I pointed out. “We came directly here.”
“No,” Chua said. “I knew where to look. We passed half a dozen other moorings, empty moorings, before finding this place, and we only found it because they allowed us to.”
“But they did allow it. We passed the test. They welcomed us.”
“I certainly felt welcomed,” Ela added with a wink, “by a lovely couple whose names now escape me.”
“The Vuo Ton move,” Chua said, “when they need to move. When the village is threatened.”
“Where’s the threat?” I asked, gesturing to the wide, empty lake.
The door to the hut behind me rustled, and a moment later Ruc stepped out, shirtless, his good hand balled into a fist. “The threat,” he said grimly, “is fucking late.”
Ela raised her eyebrows. “How mysterious.”
I struggled for a couple heartbeats to make sense of the strange proclamation. Then it all fell into place.
“You planned an attack,” I said, studying his face.
He nodded wearily. “If they were responsible for the slaughter on the transport, this was the only chance.”
Ela cocked her head to the side. “I’m a little unclear on the details. Were we supposed to massacre everyone last night? Because if that was the plan, I would have done less dancing and had less sex.”
“No,” Ruc said. “We were just the dogs. The hunters are behind us, following our baying.”
“I’ll admit that I enjoyed myself,” Ela said, frowning, “but it seems uncharitable to use the word baying.…”
“The chum,” I realized. “Yesterday. The barrels you dumped overboard. That wasn’t a sacrifice.”
“Blood brings qirna,” he said. “Qirna bring delta hawks. The birds have a wingspan of eight feet. With a long lens, you can see them circling from miles away, high above the rushes.”
“Your men have been following us,” I said.
He nodded. “The Greenshirts and the legions both. They have orders to ring the village and attack at dawn.”
Chua spat in the water. “I told you already—no one finds the Vuo Ton if they do not want to be found.”
“I expected a settlement,” Ruc said. “Not a batch of boats tethered together.” He scanned the waving rushes, searching for some break. “How far away are they?”
“Miles,” Chua replied.
“Can you track them?”
She fixed him with a flat stare.
“Why all the feasting?” Kossal asked. He was picking at something caught in his teeth, squinting speculatively into the waxen sky. “Why let us in at all, if they knew about the trap?”
“The blood rush we plucked in the delta,” Chua said.
Kossal frowned. “Sticking a bit of the local plant life in the front of a boat seems like a pretty meager excuse for planning an ambush.”
“The Vuo Ton were never in any danger,” the woman replied. She turned to Ruc. “You will have told your men to stay well back, to let us make contact before closing in.”
He grimaced, nodded.
“So … what?” I said. “They just wanted to get to know us?”
Chua shrugged. “The Vuo Ton trust in the providence of the Given Land. It is not often a boat from Dombang finds its way here. Those that the Three let pass are not to be ignored.”
“We found them,” Ruc said, “because you knew where to look. Not because the delta brought us here. Not because the Three were secretly leading the way.”
“Even after what you’ve seen,” the fisher said, “you still do not believe.”
“What have I seen?” Ruc demanded, turning to face her. “A trick village built out of boats. Two of my men killed, one by a croc, one by a snake.” He gestured to the rushes. “No gods. No golden-eyed women leaping out of the water.”
“You have seen the Vuo Ton,” Chua replied. “Do you still believe they killed the men on your transport?”
Ruc stared at the swaying reeds as though they were a script he could almost but not quite decipher. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally.
“Sometimes it’s better,” Ela suggested, “to kill everyone first and leave the details for later.”
“My orders weren’t to kill everyone,” Ruc said, shaking his head. “Not if they didn’t fight back. I just wanted the leaders, the warriors, whoever was responsible for the attack on the transport.”
“And how many men,” Kossal asked, “did you think it would take to subdue the leaders, the warriors?”
Ruc grimaced. “Two hundred. I would have brought more, but I didn’t want to weaken the force remaining in Dombang.”
“Two hundred,” Kossal said, “against thousands of Vuo Ton.”
“It was a gamble,” Ruc admitted. “I figured half the population would be children or men and women too old to fight. I knew they’d see the boats before the final attack, but figured that still gave us an element of surprise. We have the superior weapons—flatbows, the rest of it.”
Chua shook her head. “I could have told you this was wrong.”
“I didn’t trust you not to warn them.”
The morning was still. The sun, ruddy and reluctant, had risen a handsbreadth above the eastern rushes. I pointed to it.
“You said your men had orders to attack at dawn. So where are they?”