“That sounds like a terrible thing to be put through. My sympathies.”
They shrugged, a fluid motion of the shoulders. “Because of what I did, Khimyan was expelled from the Tensorate and had to leave the city. So there was some justice, after all.”
“So they were successful, these Tensors? With their experiment?”
Rider nodded.
Mokoya’s mind chugged through this information, trawling for the dregs of logic that had to be contained within. So the rumors the Machinists heard had been right. But again, not wholly. If this was the work of bored, arrogant Tensors, and not instructions from the Protector—
Phoenix barked: a child sound, short and high. When Mokoya looked, she was darting away from a swipe of Bramble’s clawed wings, head bobbing playfully. The naga grumbled, and its tail flicked, scales and spikes iridescent in the dimness.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Mokoya said.
“Which one, Mokoya?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Have I not given you enough clues to answer it yourself?”
“I want to hear you say it.”
Rider folded their hands in the loose gray of their lap, the shape of their wrist bones pulling at Mokoya’s attention. “You and I seek the same thing, Mokoya. The naga that these Tensors created. It has come to Bataanar and nests nearby, somewhere in the desert.”
Mokoya looked briefly at Bramble, then back at Rider. “There is a second naga?”
“Yes.”
“Who summons it?”
Rider tilted their head, frowning. Mokoya got more direct: “Is this part of a Protectorate plan to destroy Bataanar?”
“Ah.” Understanding brightened Rider’s expression. “You are a Machinist. Of course—that would be your primary interest. Yes.” Their gaze briefly flicked toward the light puncturing the cavern. “This is no Protectorate plot, Mokoya. Whatever the naga’s purpose here, it has nothing to do with crushing the Machinist movement.”
Rider spoke with a conviction that would have been suspicious, if what they were saying didn’t make so much sense. In Mokoya’s head, the abnormalities of this saga were rearranging themselves into a new shape, like a tangram. A vast, unwieldy political conspiracy folded into a petty, personal drama: not a plot to destroy a city, but the journey of an abandoned creature seeking its creator. “Is the city in danger?”
“I do not suspect so, Mokoya. There is little benefit to be gained from harming it.”
A capsule of relief burst over Mokoya, and she relaxed into its cooling embrace. Out of everything, she could at least set aside her worry about the immediate fate of Bataanar, that citadel of stone and white clay protecting her brother.
“Come back with me to camp,” she said. “You need to meet my crew leader.” And my husband. “We have a lot to discuss.”
“Do the rest of your crew also not sleep?”
Mokoya chuckled: she had forgotten the time. “Come tomorrow morning, then, at first sunrise.”
“Or you could remain with me for the rest of the night.”
Mokoya blinked. Rider leaned forward, and the closeness of their body, the heat of it mingling with her own, told her she hadn’t misunderstood their meaning. “I find you attractive,” Rider said, “and from your responses, I think you feel the attraction mutual. Why not lie with me?”
She laughed. This wasn’t the first time she’d been so barefacedly propositioned, naturally. But she hadn’t expected this treatment out here, far from the fast-and-loose environs of red-lantern wine houses. And Rider had guessed right: Mokoya had been poorer at obscuring her base desires than she thought.
Inexplicably, she shook her head. Among Adi’s crew she had gained a reputation for spending each night in a city in a different bed. And Thennjay had always urged her to take on more lovers, not fewer. She couldn’t articulate why she was refusing something so freely given.
Rider sat back, reestablishing space between them. They seemed calm. “I apologize if I was too forward.”
“You weren’t. I just—” She shivered, trying to put aside thoughts of Rider’s cool skin next to hers. “You saw my vision, didn’t you?”
“I did, Mokoya.”
“And you still want to get in bed with that?”
Confusion worked through Rider’s face. Mokoya sighed and said, “Now’s not a good time.” She had no better explanation.
“I understand. Wait here, then.” Again, that pop in the air, that sideways shift through the Slack. Rider transported across the cavern, their lithe form kneeling to search through the bags tied to Bramble’s harness. Mokoya had begun to understand that the intricate patterns of their slackcraft were not manually created, but generated from the processes that underlay the mysterious Quarterlandish style of tensing.
Rider returned to her in a half crouch, one hand steadying themselves on Mokoya’s lap. With the other, they pressed a small, warm object into Mokoya’s hand.
It was a bronze dodecahedron, hollow in the center, each of its twelve faces taking the form of a zodiac animal. Mokoya turned it round, marveling at the artistry in the stylized figures, the bright eyes, the pointed teeth.
“It’s an anchor,” Rider said.
“What does that mean? What does it anchor?”
“I fold the Slack to travel, as you must have noticed.” Now Mokoya had a name for the process. “However, my control of the method is effective only at short distances. To travel to distant places, I must have an anchor in the place I wish to go. It ensures I do not materialize inside a wall, or outside a third-floor window.”
Touching the anchor’s shape in the Slack stirred up dormant memories in the slow pulp of Mokoya’s mind. Honeylemon summer days, tender fruit slices dipped in sugar and chili. Some sort of spell woven into the body of the anchor, almost like a signature. Gooseflesh and pleasure played across her arms, a blush of warmth spreading red.
A small smile tugged at Rider’s lips. “Are you certain you do not wish to stay?”
Mokoya sighed and tucked the anchor into a waist pouch. She would not give in to temptation.
Rider understood. “We will meet again soon, Mokoya.”
*
Mokoya managed to get halfway to camp before she changed her mind and turned around. She gave herself that much credit, at least.
Rider was curled up on their sleeping mat, loosely swathed in a gossamer layer of muslin, when she returned. They sat up, blinking heavy lids. “Mokoya?”
Mokoya stood silently by the bed, drinking in the long limbs with their slight musculature, the shape of their hips and breasts, the feast of strange characters that spread across their yoghurt complexion.
Still saying nothing, she unfastened the collar of her cloak and pointedly, deliberately, began to undress.