MOKOYA COULD NOT SLEEP. She lay on the coarse fabric of her bedroll, the skin of her neck itching, strange prickles running up and down the lizard arm. The opening of the First Sutra rolled over and over in her head—the Slack is all, and all is the Slack—and it formed a barrier between her and sleep. Yet she knew if she stopped, if she gave her mind space to expand like a black sponge, she would see things she did not want to see.
She sat up, shivering. Her capture pearls were arrayed in a glowing line by the bed, colors like lanterns on the Double-Seventh Night. Mokoya knew their contents by sight. If she wanted, she could lose herself in fragments of better times: The riotous joy of Eien’s fifth birthday celebration. Games of eagle-and-chicken with Akeha as a child. Her wedding night, if she wanted to exhaust herself into slumber. She just had to reach out.
Her fingers trembled, and she pulled away.
Mokoya left the tent, stepping into the salmon-tinted sunrise. The second night-cycle was beginning: she’d lost three hours of sleep she wasn’t going to get anyway. The changing air spread a chill through her from the lungs outward. A variety of options lay open to her. She could go to Thennjay’s tent to wake him. She could practice sparring. She could run around the oasis, feet sinking into the unstable sands.
But Mokoya looked in the direction of the canyons and wondered what the naga and its human handler were doing with the new sunrise. Would they follow the patterns imposed by human society and continue to rest? Or would the naga bow to its instincts and hunt again?
Who were they, and what did they want?
Mokoya took several slow steps forward. There was stupidly reckless behavior, and then there was behavior so reckless it bordered on the suicidal. But she had decided. It was better than staying here and doing nothing. Nothing except driving herself into greater madness.
*
The cave mouth stood unchanged in the new sunlight. Mokoya stopped Phoenix a dozen yields from the rock face and dismounted with a frown.
A barrier shimmered in the air across the length of the rock, a light fuzz that became apparent only from certain angles. When Mokoya pressed her fingers into its boundary, the air sparked and threads of slackcraft tightened around her hand. She pulled back before it could draw blood.
In her mindeye the barrier stood as an intricate tapestry, fine ropes from each of the five natures braided into astounding, geometric patterns. Tessellations built upon tessellations in a palimpsest of slackcraft. Unpicking it would take time and skill—if it was even possible. Mokoya didn’t know where to start.
So she started with brute force.
She tore into the center of the pattern, where a rosette of connections spread out into a five-pointed star. She hoped to sever the threads of Slack-connections, or simply pull them loose.
In the physical world, the barrier writhed and crackled. A riot of colors flashed in the air, perfuming it with the tang of burning metal.
The barrier held. The interlocked threads showed no sign of weakness. When Mokoya released her grip in exhaustion, they sprang back whole and unaffected.
Then the Slack puckered, and the woven threads sublimed into nothing. They did not break or unravel: they simply vanished, like ice held over a flame. The barrier slid out of existence, freeing the air on either side of it.
A small pop, a strange deformation in the Slack, and a gray-clad figure stood in front of her.
“Tensor Sanao Mokoya,” they said, their eyes wide and unblinking.
Mokoya’s cudgel sprang to life. “You.” She struck, sending a bolt in their direction.
A green hexagon flashed in front of the stranger. “Wait,” they gasped.
The hexagon hadn’t deflected the bolt: it had absorbed the energy instead. Its pattern in the Slack had the same complexity as the bigger barrier, appearing and vanishing in an instant. Mokoya had never seen anyone call up slackcraft that intricate so quickly. The cudgel stayed ready in her hand. “Who are you?”
“I am called Rider,” they said. Mokoya hadn’t heard wrong, then: they used the archaic, gender-neutral “I” that had died out centuries ago.
“I don’t want your name. Who sent you?”
“No one sent me. I am here of my own accord.”
“You’re lying.”
They stepped back in fear and stumbled as the sandy ground turned traitor. They had long, thin limbs like a Quarterlander and seemed unsteady on their feet. “Please,” they said, “I have no quarrel with you, Tensor Sanao—”
“Did the Protectorate send you?”
Fear overwhelmed their expression. A pop, a deformation in the Slack: they were gone.
“Cheebye!” Mokoya ran forward to the space formerly occupied by Rider. Her lip curled. Perking up, Phoenix fell in behind her, excited for another hunt. “Stay,” Mokoya snapped. “Stay out here. And wait.”
She sprinted into the cave mouth, which drilled through rock in a broad tunnel. Ahead was the promise of light, and running water. The passageway echoed with the sound of an angry naga, and wind gusted over her in waves, increasing in frequency. Wing beats.
Mokoya ran faster.
She burst into the cavern before the naga could take flight. This hollow in the sandstone was huge, a hundred yields wide and half as high. Sunlight punched through on the left where water cascaded in a shimmering curtain, fringed by brilliant splotches of colors: bloodreeds, orange lilies, clumps of cattails.
On the right was the naga, wings spread to the roof of the cavern, bellowing as Rider tried to coax it into flight. Mokoya tensed through earth-nature, the same trick she’d employed earlier, pulling the beast down with gravity. It folded with a groan, joints collapsing under pressure.
“Please stop,” Rider begged. “Don’t hurt her—she has done nothing.”
Mokoya blinked, releasing her hold on earth-nature. The stranger’s plea held a note of something she hadn’t expected: protectiveness. Vulnerability and fear, too—the entreaty of someone afraid of losing something precious. She kept her grip firm on her cudgel, but she let them dismount, dropping to the soft sand of the cavern.
The naga hissed and backed away, putting more space between itself and Mokoya. Rider sang, a keening note, as they slid soothing hands over the creature’s neck and bearded head. The naga calmed, but its luminous eyes—pupils slitted through mint-green—remained fixed on Mokoya.
“Bramble remembers you from before,” Rider said. “It’s not a good memory. You traumatized her.”
“You’re not Protectorate,” Mokoya said.