Soq saw the slaughter and did not flinch.
It was their fifth time visiting the orcamancer. Lots of bored Qaanaaqians came to see her, either at the Sports Platform or at the Arm Six sloopyard where her boat was docked. Most went once and found the real thing far less interesting than the mythic warrior they’d been imagining. Only the obsessed came back again and again, the people for whom hate or fear or love won out, the people for whom she meant something. Soq had looked from face to face on each visit and wondered: Why is this one here? Why this one? Do they want to destroy her? Do they want to beg her for the gift of her nanites, a teaspoonful of blood that could turn them into something as awesome as she is?
And why, Soq wondered, am I here?
Sometimes people asked the Killer Whale Woman things, and they were always ignored. Most often they stood as silent as Soq did.
Soq arrived in the middle of the bloodbath. They almost got trampled in the sudden swift exodus of people up the stairs. When Soq got to the bottom and climbed into the bleachers, they got there just in time to see the bear break a man’s neck. A woman turned to run, and the bear’s paw raked down her back, tearing it open, pulling her backward and onto the ground, and then it stooped to tear out her throat.
It took less than eight minutes for the polar bear to kill the last of the people who had come to hurt the orcamancer. It played for a short while with a severed limb and then turned to face its traveling companion.
And—was that fear Soq saw, in the orcamancer’s eyes? How could that be? Weren’t they bonded? How did this work? Which of the stories were true? Hadn’t they known each other all their lives, been raised as siblings; didn’t they feel each other’s pain? But perhaps in the chaos of so much bloodshed, the wild animal could not be controlled. It took a step closer to her.
For reasons Soq did not understand, they were not afraid of the polar bear. They knew they should have been. But they also knew that there was a very good chance that the bear was about to eat the orcamancer, unless someone distracted it, and no one else was around to do the distracting, and the bear was far away, so maybe Soq would have time to escape—
“Hey!” Soq called, standing up in the bleachers. Thinking too late to calculate the distance from there to the exit, gauge how fast the bear could run, whether they stood a chance of making it out, whether the heavy door could be bolted to keep the bear from charging through and eating Soq.
It stopped, turned its head to look in Soq’s direction. Sat back onto its hind legs. Cocked its head. The orcamancer gasped. The bear did not resist when the orcamancer put the cages back onto its head and hands.
The orcamancer took off her hat and bowed to Soq. Her hair fell in a heavy intricate coil behind her. She pressed the button for the elevator. Waited patiently. With her polar bear. Then she turned and said something. Soq’s jaw buzzed, translating from Inuktitut-English Pidgin:
“I am in your debt.”
The first words anyone had heard this woman say, and she had said them to Soq! Blood covered the animal, and the killer whale woman was shining with sweat, and Soq had never seen anything so beautiful. I should go down there, say hello, start up a conversation, become best friends. Help her escape. Something. But Soq could not move, could barely breathe. It took an incredible effort to call out, “You’re welcome!” in the last second before the elevator whisked them away.