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.
“Cheebye,” she whispered. “Cheebye.”
Her nerves were trying to suffocate her. This was pathetic. She was Sanao Mokoya. Daughter of the Protector, ex-prophet, former instigator of rebellion in the heart of the capital. She had passed through hellfire and survived. What was all her training for, all those years of honing her discipline, if the smallest, stupidest things—like a quarrel with her brother, for example—could bring her to ruin?
Still kneeling, she kept her eyes shut and moved her lips through a calming recitation. A last-resort tactic. The words she muttered were so familiar to her, they had been bleached of all meaning.
Remember you, bright seeker of knowledge, the First Sutra, the Sutra of Five Natures.
The Slack is all, and all is the Slack.
It knows no beginning and no end, no time and no space.
All that is, exists through the grace of the Slack. All that moves, moves through the grace of the Slack.
The firmament is divided into the five natures of the Slack, and in them is written all the ways of things and the natural world.
First is the nature of earth. Know it through the weight of mountains and stone, the nature of things when they are at rest.
Second is the nature of water. Know it through the strength of storms and rivers, the nature of things that are in motion.
Third is the nature of fire. Know it through the rising of air and the melt of winter ice, the nature of things that gives them their temperature.
Fourth is the nature of forests. Know it through the beat of your heart and the warmth of your blood, the nature of things that grow and live.
Fifth is the nature of metal. Know it through the speed of lightning and the pull of iron, the nature of things that spark and attract.
Know the ways of the five natures, and you will know the ways of the world. For the lines and knots of the Slack are the lines and knots of the world, and all that is shaped is shaped through the twining of the red threads of fortune.
It was a long spiel. So long that by the time her attention had slogged all the way to its odious end, her lungs had stopped trying to collapse upon themselves. Her head still hurt, lines of stress running from the crown to the joints of neck and shoulder, but her legs held when she stood.
Phoenix came and pressed her massive snout against Mokoya, whining in distress. “Shh,” Mokoya said, palms gentle against the pebbled skin of the creature’s nose. “Everything will be okay. I’m here. Nothing can hurt you.”
The raptor pack circled them. They were almost as tall as Mokoya when dismounted. Unlike her, they seemed to be largely unaffected by the naga’s passage.
Mokoya marked the spot where the beast had disappeared. She could spin this into a triumph. No more hunting, no more groping through unsympathetic desert searching for signs. She had found the naga’s nest. And the best part of it: defying the reports they’d heard, the naga was average for its kind. They’d hunted bigger; they’d certainly captured bigger. This wasn’t the otherworldly monstrosity Mokoya had been fearing. Adi’s crew could definitely handle this one without problems.
Mokoya raised her left wrist to deliver the good news, then remembered what she’d done to the transmitter. Cheebye.
Wait. No. There was still the talker. How could she have forgotten?
Phoenix lowered herself to the sand at Mokoya’s command. She reached into the saddlebag and rooted around until she collided with the talker’s small round mass, the bronze hard and warm against her palm. Tensing through metal-nature infused the object with life-giving electricity. Its geometric lines lit up, plates separating into a loose sphere. Slackcraft. Mokoya turned the plates until they formed the configuration twinned with Adi’s talker.