And yet. The stupidity of humankind knew no bounds. Calls north of Jixiang meant an escaped pet, scarred by chains and fear. Smuggled eggs, hunting trophies, bribes from Quarterlandish merchants: the wealthy and privileged had many means of sating their lust for conquering the unknown. Naga raised in full gravity grew up malformed and angry, racked by constant pain, intractable once they had broken their bonds. Adi said that killing these creatures was a mercy. Mokoya thought it should have been the owners who were strung up.
Then there was this case. The Gusai desert lay in the high north, on the edge of the Protectorate’s influence. There was nothing out here except hematite mines and a city to house the miners in: Bataanar. The naga they hunted hadn’t come from here. The trail of reported sightings, breathless and disjointed, pointed a straight line toward the capital city, Chengbee. Between Bataanar and Chengbee stood a thousand li of mountains and barren wilderness, two days’ travel for even the most determined flyer. And wild naga hunted in spirals, not straight lines. Straight lines were the precinct of creatures that knew their destination.
That was the first abnormality. The second was the naga’s size. From the mouths of frightened citizens came reports of a beast three, six, ten times larger than anything they’d ever seen. One exaggeration could be excused by hyperbole, three could be explained as a pattern induced by fear, but two dozen meant some form of truth was buried in them. So—the creature was big, even for a naga. That implied it wasn’t a wild capture, that something had been done to the beast.
The third abnormality wasn’t about the naga. It was Bataanar itself. An ordinary citizen might consider it a humble mining city of a few thousand workers, watched over by a dozen Protectorate Tensors and the raja, who was answerable to the Protector. A Machinist would know that Mokoya’s twin brother, Akeha, had turned the city into a base for the movement, a nerve center of the rebellion far from the Protectorate’s influence. And an ordinary Tensor might not know anything about the tremors of power that rumbled under the foundations of the city, but a well-placed one would know that Raja Ponchak, the first raja of the city, had passed two years ago. And while Ponchak had been a Machinist sympathizer, her husband, Choonghey—the new raja in her stead—was not. Bataanar was a recipe for disaster, on the cusp of boiling over.
The fourth abnormality was not, in fact, an abnormality, but merely a rumor. A rumor of Tensor experiments in the capital: whispers about a group who had taken animals and grafted knots of Slack-connections—like human souls—onto their physical existences. The details of these rumors sent uncomfortable shivers of familiarity through Mokoya. She felt somehow culpable.
Putting these four things together, one could only guess that the naga they hunted was one of these unfortunate experiments, sent by the Protectorate to destroy Bataanar and cripple the Machinist rebellion. The fact that the creature was skulking around and killing desert rodents for sustenance lent credence to the idea that someone was controlling it. It was waiting for something.
Abnormal circumstances, Mokoya reminded herself. Abnormal tactics. She was being perfectly rational. Adi would agree with her on this. Or maybe Adi wouldn’t. But Akeha would, her brother would, he would understand. Or Yongcheow. Or—
Mokoya exhaled shakily. Now was not the time. She had drifted from the present again. Pay attention. Focus on Phoenix, patient and rumbling under her. On the sand bluff the raptors had disappeared over. Focus on breathing.
Something was wrong. Her right arm hurt. An ache ran from the tip of her scale-sheathed fingers to the knitted edge of her shoulder, where the grafted skin yielded to scar tissue. Spun from lizardflesh, her arm called naga blood through the forest-nature of the Slack. Was the beast close by? Mokoya clenched her right hand. Tendons emerged in pebbled skin turned yellow by stress, but it didn’t help.
She raised the hand into view, splaying the fingers like a stretching cat. Tremors ran through them. “Cheebye,” she hissed at herself, as if she could swear herself into calmness.
Perhaps profanity was not the answer. Mokoya wet cracked lips and closed her eyes. Her mindeye expanded, the world turning into wrinkled cloth, each bump and fold representing an object. On top of that, like colored paper over a lantern, lay the Slack with its five natures.
There she was: Sanao Mokoya, a blaze of light spreading outward, a concentrated ball of connections to the Slack. Still human, despite everything. Under her was Phoenix, with her peculiar condition, unnatural brilliance garlanding her body. The raptor’s massive bulk warped the fabric of the Slack. Farther out, over the cliff edge, raced the pinpoints of the raptors, tiny ripples in the Slack, running toward her—
Wait. Why were they coming back?
Mokoya’s eyes flew open just as Phoenix barked in fear. She barely had time to seize the reins before her mount spun in the sand. “Phoenix—” she gasped.
The raptors burst over the bluff like a storm wave, chittering war cries.
A wall of air hit her from behind.
Moon and stars vanished. Phoenix reared, and Mokoya lost her grip. She fell. In the second between the lurch of her stomach and her back hitting the sand, there was a glimpse of sky, and this is what she saw: an eclipse of scaly white belly, wings stretched from end to end, red-veined skin webbed between spindly fingers.
Naga sun-chaser. Naga sun-eater.
Hitting ground knocked the wind out of Mokoya, but she had no time to register pain. The naga beat its wings, and sand leapt into her nose and mouth. The creature soared over the valley, long tail trailing after it.
Braying, Phoenix sprinted toward the canyon drop. The raptor pack followed.
“Phoenix!” Mokoya scrambled up, knees and ankles fighting the soft sand. Her reflexes struck; she tensed through water-nature and threw a force-barrier across the razor line of desert bluff. Nausea juddered through her as Phoenix bounced off the barrier, safe for now. Safe. The raptor pack formed a barking chorus along the edge.
As though a thick layer of glass stood between her and the world, Mokoya watched the shape of the naga descend into the canyon toward the caverns nestled within the far wall. Wings bigger than ships’ sails, barbed tail like a whip, horned and whiskered head bedecked with iridescent scales. Creatures of that size turned mythical from a distance. Nothing living should have the gall to compete with cliff and mountain.
The naga spiraled downward and was swallowed by shadow, vanishing into valley fold and cavern roof. Gasping, Mokoya released her hold on water-nature, and the barrier across the sand bluff dissolved into nothing.
She sank to her knees, forehead collapsing against the cool sands. Great Slack. Great Slack. She was lucky to be alive. She was lucky to—It should have killed her. Maybe it wasn’t hungry. It could have picked Phoenix off. It could have—
Her heart struggled to maintain its rhythm. How had she missed it? This shouldn’t have happened. Even as a juvenile, a naga’s bulk had enough pull to deform the Slack, stretching it like a sugar-spinner’s thread. She should have felt it coming. She hadn’t. She had been too distracted.