Swallow. The name was wrong, and the pronouns were wrong, but Tan Khimyan was referring to Rider. Rider, who lay unconscious in a tent outside the city. Rider, who had the ability to draw unwarranted smiles out of Mokoya.
Tan Khimyan stood and began a circuit of her desk. “I brought you here to warn you of her duplicity. I can tell Swallow has wormed her way into your good graces. But you must not make the mistake of trusting her, as I did.”
Mokoya shifted weight between her feet, not sure what to do with her hands, which had begun to prickle as if insects writhed inside her fingers.
“You may not know her very well, but we were together for many years. I took her in, I sheltered her, and I protected her in the capital. For all that, she betrayed me. That’s the kind of person she is.”
“Betrayed you?”
“She was the one who reported our experiments. Did she not tell you?”
No, of course Rider had told her. Things slipped her mind so easily these days. Mokoya folded her arms to hide the fact that they were shaking. “I have only your word that she’s responsible.”
“Ah, Tensor. I wish I had proof to offer you! But the fortunes are not so kind. All I have is circumstantial evidence.”
Mokoya took the bait: “What evidence?”
“A few months ago, my chambers were broken into. All my notes about the experiment went missing. They are everything someone would need to control the naga. The guards saw no one come in or leave. And they’re quite thorough, my guards. Silbya would know if the compound was breached.” She looked seriously at Mokoya. “Now, can you think of anyone you know who has the ability to travel from place to place without being detected? Someone who can bend the Slack?”
Mokoya’s pulse accelerated. “Any thief with the right skills could have broken into your quarters undetected. Your so-called evidence means nothing.”
“But it’s Swallow. I’m sure of it. It could be no one else.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
All attempts at posturing had fled Tan Khimyan. What remained was iron-jawed determination and a refusal to look away from Mokoya, who found the fish-spear attention unnerving.
“Listen, Tensor,” Tan Khimyan said. “I know we have no reason to be friends. Certainly your brother, for all that we have clashed, would have set you against me.” With broad strides, she closed the gap between them, reaching for Mokoya. “But Bataanar is my home now. And I will not see it destroyed.”
Mokoya took a step back, away from the woman’s grasping hands. Colorful emotions burned through the arm hidden by her cloak.
“Look through her belongings. Find what she has stolen from me. That’ll be all the evidence you need.”
“I don’t understand. Why would they do this?”
“Swallow? She seeks revenge, Tensor. She would see me utterly destroyed. It was not enough for her to have me turned out of my life and my home. She will plague me into the grave.”
Mokoya thought of the night they’d spent together, recalling Rider’s strangeness and intensity, tempered by great curiosity and great warmth. She had believed in that warmth, had found comfort in it, had briefly relied upon it as a fount of human compassion. When she tried to picture them bearing the kind of grudge Tan Khimyan was accusing them of, her mind stumbled over the jagged incongruity.
The woman studied Mokoya’s reaction. At least she had stopped trying to touch Mokoya; she had realized it would end badly. “You still don’t believe me, of course. But you have known her only briefly. I suspect you’ll learn better.”
Mokoya thought, You can’t even use the right pronouns for them. You don’t even know their real name.
And then: How do I know that I know their real name?
She shivered. Was she sure she knew Rider better than this woman did? Would she be willing to bet Bataanar’s fate on it?
*
When Mokoya left Tan Khimyan’s residence, the distant, rational part of her mind said she needed to find Akeha and Thennjay. But her feet were already taking her down the narrow path back through Bataanar, back through the suffocating heat, back through the staring, distrustful crowds. All of it—the noise, the shoving, the smells of sweat and cooking—came in through a thick filter. They were sensations being picked up by someone else’s body, in which she was only a guest.
She dutifully put one foot in front of the other and kept breathing.
The tent city was prefaced by Bramble’s sloping form. The naga rested on the cooling sand with Phoenix tucked under one blue-and-yellow wing. The raptor jumped up in a flurry of delight when she saw Mokoya, but her excitement dampened as Mokoya stroked her nose. She knew something was wrong.
“Shh,” Mokoya said, as Phoenix pressed her massive head into her hands and whined.
Bramble growled and rustled her wings, watching Mokoya carefully. The naga was less skittish than she had been before—Phoenix’s presence seemed to calm her down. It was a pity. The two of them appeared to be getting along so well.
Rider was alive, awake, and crouched over something when Mokoya entered the tent. They jumped up, and a flash of emotion—shock or guilt, or both—crossed their face. “Mokoya.”
The tent looked like a typhoon had hit it. Someone had brought Mokoya’s belongings in from the desert and left them in haphazard clumps. Boxes and small bags lay around, and they all looked like they had been opened. A stack of journals sat on top of the box Mokoya had put them in. Anger tore through her gut. “Have you been looking through my things?”
That look of guilt again. “Yes. No.” Color flushed through Rider’s pale cheeks. “The crew brought your things in—there was a flash storm in the desert while you were in the city. We wanted to make sure nothing had water damage.”
If truth had a shape, her words fit its boundaries. A wash of petrichor had weighted the air outside, which she had mistaken for oasis smell. Heavy clashes of slackcraft could, and often would, disrupt weather patterns.
Still the sense of violation remained. “You read my journals?”
“I did not.” Their brows furrowed. “I would never do such a thing without your consent, Mokoya.”
One of the capture pearls sat by itself on top of an upturned crate. Mokoya frowned at it, and Rider noticed. “Mokoya,” they said placatingly, reaching for her arm. Their fingers froze an inch from her skin, as if they were afraid to make contact.
“You looked through that one,” she said.
“I—” Their shoulders cramped into an apologetic shape. “I was merely curious—I wanted to study the technique behind it. I did not know they contained your personal memories. I am sorry, Mokoya.”
Heavy browns and greens swirled in the belly of the capture pearl like swamp water. Mokoya knew which it was by sight. It contained her last argument with Thennjay, captured for posterity: the Grand Monastery in the grip of a heat wave, Phoenix showered by dying cherry blossoms, Mokoya tying her scattershot possessions to the raptor’s back.
“Stay? With a man who’s given up on our daughter?”
“Eien is dead, Nao. She’s gone. You have to accept that.”
“She’s gone, but we haven’t lost her.”