“No.”
Things were falling into place. The odd style of slackcraft, the unusual physique, the heavy accent: Rider was a Quarterlander. Of course they had a naga. Of course they rode on it. They belonged to people who crossed the Demons’ Ocean in ships of shell and bone that sluiced beneath the untamable waves. Riding such a beast would be easy as crossing a bridge, unremarkable as eating rice. And of course they couldn’t be a Tensor. There’d never been a Quarterlander admitted into the Tensorate Academy. That would cause such a stir that even washerfolk in Katau Kebang would be gossiping about it.
Mokoya let her shoulders drop, but she continued to hold her cudgel like a weapon. “What are you doing here?”
Rider was about to answer when the naga growled. Behind them, Phoenix had edged into the cavern, feathers alert and erect, mouth open to show teeth.
“I told you to stay outside,” Mokoya scolded.
Phoenix hooted mournfully.
“Is this her?” Rider asked. When Mokoya frowned they clarified: “Your daughter.”
Mokoya exhaled very slowly, her organs curdling into tallow.
Rider said, to her silence, “There are rumors of the accident that killed your daughter. They say that when she died, you grafted her pattern in the Slack onto a young raptor. Is this her? She’s very large. And the pattern she makes is interesting.”
Their tone was untainted by judgment or condescension. If anything, they sounded curious.
She swallowed. And then she said, “Yes.”
The memory shivered through her: the smell of blood, burnt flesh, oily smoke; an impression of pain that was happening to some other body in some other world; the Slack shining wide and lucid around her; the glow of knots and threads that was Eien beginning to disintegrate; the movement she made pulling it to the nearest incandescence, tying it in place, tying it firm, so it wouldn’t be lost—
Focus. Focus. Look at the falling water. Look at the light refracted, dancing over the ground. Breathe.
A delicate expression—not quite a smile, not quite a look of curiosity—had come over Rider. They appeared to have forgotten Mokoya was there. One pop through the Slack, and they appeared before Phoenix, who reared back in terror.
“Hush,” Mokoya said, hurrying forward, but Rider remained perfectly still, their palms held out to Phoenix. The raptor hesitated, then lowered her snout and sniffed their hands, then their arms, their face, their neck.
Rider’s face lit up with wonder. “She is lovely.” They stroked the soft, pebbled skin of her nose, the boundary where flesh ceded to feather.
Mokoya started to breathe normally again. When Rider turned once more to look at her, she said, “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“A question that cannot be answered simply. Come sit by me, Sanao Mokoya. We should talk.”
They smiled at her, and there was something oddly alluring in that. Something transient and precious, like the sun glowing across paving stones during the minute that it fell. Damned if Mokoya could put it into words that made more sense. Against her better judgment, she nodded.
*
“I was born in Katau Kebang, in Banturong, on the border of the Demons’ Ocean. My parents were merchants. But the doctors diagnosed an illness, a disease of the bones and joints. So my parents sold me to Quarterlanders, in hopes that my path to adulthood would be easier in the half gravity.”
The two of them sat cross-legged in the cavern, knee-to-knee, close enough that Mokoya could follow the easy rise and fall of Rider’s chest. They had a soft oval face of Kuanjin extraction, and the skin on their hands was translucent enough Mokoya could count the veins. But despite how sallow their face was, their eyes burned with a passion and intensity that snared the attention and refused to let it go.
“When I was twenty,” Rider said, “I took Bramble across the Demons’ Ocean. I wanted to find my family, the ones who had given me away. But I was told they had relocated from Banturong, and moved back to the capital city. So it was to the capital city that I traveled. Do you follow, Tensor Sanao?”
“Just call me Mokoya. Please.”
“Mokoya.” Rider sounded it in their mouth, as though testing out its fit. They smiled like it pleased them. “Mokoya.”
“So,” Mokoya said, “you went to Chengbee.”
“Yes. And in the capital I met a woman. Tan Khimyan.”
She frowned. “I know that name.”
“You should. She moved to Bataanar recently, as an advisor to Raja Choonghey. It was at his invitation. Mokoya.”
Yes—Akeha had mentioned her—that was why the name was familiar. “They’re friends?”
“Perhaps too shallow a description for their relationship, Mokoya. The two became close around Raja Ponchak’s death. When she was very ill, Ponchak went to the capital to seek treatment. That is how Khimyan and Choonghey met.”
A suspicious coincidence—or perhaps not a coincidence. She remembered Akeha referring to Tan Khimyan as an adversary. The adversary, even.
“Keep talking.”
As they had been speaking, Phoenix had started making curious overtures to the other beast in the cavern: creeping up, bumping her snout against Bramble’s shoulder, then scuttling away. The naga rumbled, equally curious and equally cautious.
Rider said, “It is necessary you know this, Mokoya. Khimyan and I were intimately involved. An arrangement that, in hindsight, was ill-advised on my part. But it allowed me to become privy to some of the things she did in secret.”
Mokoya raised an eyebrow, and Rider laughed, a sound like chimes on the wind. “Not of the sort you are imagining, Mokoya.”
“I’m sorry. Please continue.” She liked the way her name sounded in their mouth, the vowels round and gentle. She kept her hands pressed to her thighs, lest they betray her.
“Khimyan kept company with a group of Tensors who were conducting experiments on a clutch of captive young naga. They were inspired by what you achieved with Phoenix. They wanted to replicate it, surpass it even.”
A shiver passed through Mokoya, starting from the deep of her chest and spreading to her fingers and toes. “I’m glad my personal tragedy was so inspirational,” she said through her teeth.
Rider’s lips curved. Vindictiveness looked foreign on the soft lines of their face, yet the expression was also corrosively genuine. “I reported them to the Tensorate. It was the first thing I did when I escaped.”
“Escaped?”
They hesitated. “Khimyan . . . has ways of trapping people by her side. I left when she brought home another girl, another child who was unwell and would be entirely reliant upon her. I had realized that she would never change. She saw those around her as curiosities, not people.” They shifted their weight slightly, bumping their knees against Mokoya’s. “And I feared she might take Bramble for experiments. Mokoya.”