Chapter Nine
Concerning the Barge People, or Bari
The moment that Skydašian soldiers swarmed into the library, I dashed away into the stacks, upending tables and chairs.
“Dagmar! Dagmar? Are you here?” I whispered harshly as I ran between the shelves. “Please, Dagmar!”
I heard commotion, yelling, sounds of earthenware breaking. I looked desperately for Dagmar. Then I felt a strong hand on my shoulder, but it was not hers.
Where the salon had been there were now some ten people whose hands were being tied behind their backs. I was quickly thrown among them, alongside Vidmantas and Ifeanyas, but I did not see Žydrė.
“. . . and a Loashti,” one of the soldiers was saying to his commander, a square man who stood out because he had a bigger hat and did not carry a gun.
“What is the meaning of this?” someone yelled.
My wrists were bound painfully behind me.
“Arrests,” answered the commander. “A lot of treachery going on in here.”
“You know as well as I do that it’s just talk,” said Vidmantas. I had expected him to be angry and blustery, but he sounded sad. Resigned. “You used to come to the salons, Gintaras.”
“Oh,” said the commander. “You really caught me there, Vidmantas. Guess I’ll let you go.”
We were dragged out of the library.
I seemed to be the only Loashti among the prisoners. Had these people all been arrested because of me? Had someone in the library recognized me as Zobiski and alerted the authorities? The soldiers did not tell us why any of this was happening, nor where we were going. We were simply kicked and jostled down the incline of Žalikwen, toward the sea—through those streets of brightly painted houses.
There were some fifteen soldiers surrounding the ten of us, and I slowly began to realize that out here, in bright daylight, Dagmar could not save me. There were limits to even her powers.
The people of Žalikwen watched us curiously as we were forced down toward the docks. Many of them seemed dismayed by what was happening, but that didn’t mean they were particularly interested in speaking out on our behalf. We were then brought through a cordon of soldiers and right up to the sea itself.
Žalikwen’s docks were so beautiful that I forgot my predicament for a moment. They were wooden squares, like any others, but each was painted a bright color, I suppose to easily delineate them. The dock in front of us was a sort of mauve, and moving from it to the east I saw docks in red-orange, bright green, deep blue, and more. These colors reflected off the waters, and far across the sea, I could just make out the opposite side’s rainbow of docks. Between the two shores, in the distance, floated a number of barges, which seemed to sport glittering, metallic filigrees. Many sat still, while others were pulled along by oars: they were low boats, without sails. One, with gold trim, was quite close. It was a stunning view.
Then the butt of a gun was slammed into the back of my legs, and I was forced painfully to my knees, as were the rest of the prisoners from the salon. The wood of the mauve dock was quite hard, and my knees radiated pain. I heard some of the others cry out, as I looked up across the sea, to the far shore. It felt like we were so close to my home. But instead, I was here, kneeling with prisoners as soldiers pointed their long guns at us.
“Are they going to kill us right here?” someone murmured.
I suspect many had been thinking it, but once it was articulated, I could feel a greater fear slide through us all and begin to bubble out. Those near me began to fidget, whimper, or breathe heavily.
“In the middle of the city?” exclaimed Vidmantas. I could not tell whether he didn’t believe it, or was hoping to speak its impossibility into being. “This has never happened before.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Ifeanyas muttered, “They’ve never set up checkpoints at the sea before, either.”
Vidmantas moaned assent. “They’ve never raided the salon before,” he sighed.
I stared at the mauve wood beneath me and began to mutter prayers. Moving from one god to the next. Anyone I thought could help me.
“We broke up your salon,” said Gintaras, the commander who’d arrested us, “because of you, Vidmantas. A lot of treasonous talk these days.” He frowned in a mockery of disappointment. “You must’ve known this would happen eventually.”
I blinked. They weren’t here for me? Not here to stamp out the Loashti that even Loasht didn’t want? I admit I felt an immediate, overwhelming, urge to tell them of Vidmantas’ comments about their king, the urge to throw him to them for my safety. I don’t feel guilty for thinking this; we often look to our own safety first. The test is what we actually do after that first thought.
I said nothing, of course. No halfway decent Zobiski is an informer. None of the other prisoners said anything either.
A crowd of Žalikwen’s citizens kept trying to look past the cordon of soldiers but were turned away. They would not see us if we were shot, but they would certainly hear it.
There were other nonuniformed Skydašians on this side of the soldiers: small groups of parents and children. They did not wear the customary robes, only faded shirts and trousers, and some with their hair tied up in kerchiefs. The soldiers were shooing them over to the next dock (red-orange), but not out into the city at large.
My throat went dry. I could not keep my breath. This wasn’t right. Kalyna and Dagmar were supposed to protect me. I was so close. (So close to what, I did not think about just then.) I began to cry. I felt Vidmantas’ eyes on me, watching me fail at strangling my sobs.
“Look,” he said, “at least let the Loashti go. He couldn’t very well speak treason against a country that’s not his, could he? Do you want to cause an incident while the Blossoming is still—?”
A soldier hit him. Hard, with the butt of their gun. I heard a dull thud, and Vidmantas let out an undignified wail. Not that I, sniffling as I was, faulted anyone for being undignified.
“Let the soldiers worry about ‘incidents,’” said Gintaras. “We’ll deal with the bureaucracy of arresting a Loashti national. If we have to.” He then pointed at me.
A soldier began riffling through the pouch at my waist. Why he needed to shove my head, hurt my neck, and punch my stomach to do this, I don’t know. Then I heard my papers rustling in his hands.
“Pink, sir!” he yelled into my ear.
Gintaras smiled. “Ah! No bureaucracy necessary then. This man isn’t Loashti, and he certainly isn’t from the Tetrarchia. Stateless.” He regarded me for a moment, then shrugged. “Let’s do our allies a favor. Shoot him.”
The soldier behind me stood, giving my head one more shove for good measure. I heard his gun lifted in his hands. Felt the cold steel against the base of my skull.
I just cried more. I did not want to die here. I did not want to haunt this foreign land and these boring soldiers. Spending twenty or thirty years as a rage-filled phantom watching wretched, stultifying Gintaras go about his empty life was a sickening thought.
“What, by the gods, do you think you’re doing?!” shouted someone nearby, punctuated by the sound and vibration of boots clacking onto the wooden dock.
I looked up and saw that the barge with gold trim that had been nearest to us was now docked. Up close, its “gold” was just wood covered in flaking gold paint. At the front of the barge, also painted gold, was carved the image of a sinuous god holding a barge in one hand and some sort of antennaed predatory fish in the other.
Standing just in front of that god, on the mauve dock, was a woman dressed like the families I had seen nearby: faded shirt and trousers, with a kerchief tying up her hair. But she also wore a bright red-and-gold sash across her chest, perhaps denoting authority. She certainly had a commanding presence, evidenced by all the soldiers looking up from us and their guns to see what she would do next.
She was also, it seemed to me, Kalyna Aljosanovna.
I felt a flutter of safety, of relief, at her appearance. I knew, intellectually, that Kalyna’s very presence was not enough to save me from a horde of armed soldiers, but I felt that my fate was now in her hands, not mine, whether I escaped or died.
“Ma’am,” said Gintaras. He looked at her for a moment and then corrected himself: “Captain. What we think we’re doing is our job. On land.”
“Maybe you are,” replied Kalyna. “But you’re on Bari docks, where Bari children play.” She pointed to the families on the nearby red-orange docks, in their faded clothes. The children looked back, little hands to their mouths and eyes suitably (exaggeratedly?) wide.
“Captain,” said Gintaras, “we are only saving you the space of one more prisoner to transport.”
“Meaning you plan to shoot a Loashti. With a gun.” She was speaking Skydašiavos in an accent I’d never heard before: the words positively loped and rolled out of her mouth.
“What do you care?”
“What do I . . . ?” Kalyna strode along the dock, up to the commander. “You are,” she began as though she was speaking to a child, “threatening a Loashti”—she slapped one hand against another, slowly emphasizing each word—“with a”—she mimed pulling a trigger—“gun.” Then she glared silently, waiting for him to catch her blindingly obvious meaning.
“Would you rather we cut his throat?” asked Gintaras.
“I would!” she cried.
My heart sank.
“You absolute block of wood,” she continued.
“Now see here, Captain,” growled Gintaras, “you Barge People get a lot of leniency, but this is—”
“You Yams get a lot of leniency,” she interrupted, grinning, “but I am hearing that you’d prefer to swim across the sea.”
Gintaras looked very much like he wanted to throw her down right next to me. I did not understand what stopped him.
“Don’t you worry, big man,” she continued, waving dismissively at him. “Officers don’t swim. Your poor soldiers will lug you across.”
Gintaras took a deep breath, pinched the bridge of his nose, and asked, “What is this all about, Captain?”
“Where do guns come from?” asked Kalyna.
“These were made in—”
“No, idiot, where do they come from? Where do the schematics and gunpowder come from?”
There was a long pause, as Gintaras clearly did not want to say the answer.
“Loasht,” said one of his soldiers, finally.
Kalyna snapped her fingers and pointed at that soldier, favoring him with her brilliant smile.
“At least one of you has some sense,” she said. “Don’t you know that the designs Loasht sends here, as well as their gunpowders, are enchanted?”
Gintaras laughed. “Ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous?” she echoed, bending forward, hands on her hips. “Why? Because you’re too dense to know it? Why else would they let us have such dangerous weapons?”
Kalyna walked closer to me as she spoke and then pushed at my head with the next few words, as though I was a thing, not a person. The same way the soldier who had been about to kill me had done.
“Because they know the guns won’t work against Loashti,” she finished.
“Skydašiai has fought Loasht in the past,” said Gintaras.
“When?” asked Kalyna. “And when did you start using guns? Loasht only started giving them to us a hundred years ago.”
“Selling them.”
“So they make a profit and prepare us for their invasion.”
Gintaras sucked his teeth loudly. “Galiag, Captain, has fought them more recently than that.”
“Galiag,” said Kalyna. She tapped her chin and made a show of walking slowly, thoughtfully. “Galiag. Galiag.” She repeated. “That’s a good point, Commander. Galiag is the one up north with the ziggurats and the hot winds, isn’t it?”
Gintaras smiled sourly and nodded.
“The hot winds,” mused Kalyna, “that fill the air constantly with debris, jamming guns and making them useless.” She spun to face him, with an eyebrow raised. “You thought I wouldn’t know that, Commander, because I live on the sea. But I also know that only our guns jam in Galiag, not the Loashti’s.”
Gintaras threw up his hands. “Then let’s test your theory and shoot him! We can sort this out right now.”
I heard a click behind me. It took all my strength to not cry out Kalyna’s name.
“And my beautiful deck will be blown to pieces!” she yelled. “Who knows what kind of blast will come about?”
Gintaras shook his head. “This is nonsense.”
“Is it?” murmured one of his soldiers.
“I certainly don’t know how these things work,” said another, the gun clacking in his hand as he motioned with it.
“You said they wouldn’t work on a Loashti,” growled Gintaras. “What’s this about a blast?”
Kalyna shrugged angrily. “There are a lot of ways a gun can not work. Is backfiring or exploding never heard of?”
“I was told in training,” one of the soldiers began to murmur to another, “that once—”
“He’s not even Loashti anymore!”
“And I’m sure the guns understand that. Fool.”
“Fine!” yelled Gintaras. “You’re wasting my time. Take these traitors aboard, and we’ll get them to the Goddess’ Guts and sorted out.”
“Aboard our barge?” Kalyna cried. “Oh no. No, no, no. Not with you waving those guns at him. I absolutely refuse.”
I looked harder at her and began to wonder if this person was even Kalyna. She had not spared me a glance and did not seem to be driving at all toward saving me. Did she perhaps have a double, or a twin?
Gintaras sighed. “Our guns will work on you, Captain, and I am tired of standing around here.” He pointed, and some of his soldiers aimed their long guns at her.
“But the—”
“If there are consequences, I will deal with them,” he said.
Kalyna (or whoever she was) grumbled as she turned toward the barge. She yelled something in a Skydašiavos patois that I couldn’t understand, and then the Barge People allowed the soldiers to herd us onboard.
The prisoners and I were shoved belowdecks, down a narrow staircase, with our hands still tied, all as the Yams shouted at us in that small, crowded space. One poor soul cried out as they were shoved down those stairs headfirst.
The underbelly of the barge somehow felt cavernous. It was full of freight, but also beds, hammocks, loose clothes and food, and entire families living their lives. Children ran about yelling, parents looked bored as they held those same children up to open portholes to relieve themselves, and no one batted an eye at the arrival of ten prisoners, nor the fifteen armed soldiers who were guarding us.
The prisoner who’d tumbled down the stairs was dragged to her feet and told to walk, even as she asked if her leg was broken. I felt guilty for being too scared to speak up for her, and I doubt I was the only one. Forcing her to get up and walk was doubly cruel, because we were led only a few feet over before the Yams threw us down to the wooden floor. We were made to sit up, in that we were kicked and prodded until we did so.
The soldiers took their seats on nearby crates and, with shocking speed, transitioned from actively cruel to impossibly bored. Because our hands were tied, their long guns were set against the crates as well—it seemed the Yams were tired of carrying the heavy things. Gintaras paced back and forth, irritated. In front of us, we saw the families and life of the Bari, while behind us and the staircase was a sea of boxes and sacks and hanging nets stretching off into the dark. There didn’t even seem to be portholes back there.
We traveled along the Skydaš Sea for some time. None of the prisoners spoke, but the Bari became quite talkative. More than once, groups of children would approach with seemingly endless questions in that Bari patois, which the bewildered soldiers hardly understood. The adults too would sometimes show curiosity, although never about us. The soldiers were constantly getting up, craning their necks to hear Bari who were approaching them, or pressing their hands to their foreheads as they tried to quiet five or six children.
Once, Ifeanyas made the mistake of smiling at a Bari child. He was kicked over by a seated guard, who did so without breaking the stride of her conversation with a companion. It was almost impressive.
“Why can’t we have our own blasted boats here?” she griped. “We have warships out on the real ocean.”
“Not to mention the Goddess’ Guts,” added another Yam.
I looked questioningly at Vidmantas. He shook his head and sighed.
“Winds here aren’t strong enough for sails,” said a third.
“But,” began the one who’d kicked Ifeanyas, “can’t we just—”
“Make our own rowboats?” A laugh. “Are you new? A southern provincial?”
“. . . Maybe.”
“Every time we try, our rowers defect to the Barge People. Then the deserters are protected from punishment, because, according to some ancient contract, they’ve now become Barge People.”
“The Barge People control the Skydaš Sea,” someone groused. “Always have. A nation within a nation within a nation. You’ll get used to it.”
“Maybe I should join them,” muttered another Yam.
A few soldiers then jostled each other playfully. The Bari children giggled. I felt lost.
“When it hits,” someone hissed in my ear, “run upstairs.”
I began to turn my head.
“Don’t look,” hissed the voice.
I did anyway.
Dagmar, crouched between the crates behind us, with a hood covering her blonde hair, winked at me. A soldier pointed at us and stood up, about to yell. I felt my bonds being cut.
Before I could think, the entire boat lurched as though it had, well, hit something. The other prisoners were caught off guard, but since we were all sitting on the floor, the worst anyone did was roll over a little. The long, iron-like fingers of Dagmar Sorga gripped my shoulder, keeping me up.
The soldiers, on the other hand, all fell over. Tumbling off their feet or their crates, some going head over heels, like the man who’d seen Dagmar. At least one Yam had his leg crushed by the crate he’d been sitting on. The Bari barely stumbled. Dagmar found all of this very funny.
Dagmar did not need to tell me twice. I bolted up and ran for the stairs. A soldier began to yell, and from the sound of it, I believe Dagmar kicked him. I heard many sets of footsteps coming up behind me and hoped they belonged to Dagmar and the other prisoners. But I did not turn to look.
I burst up onto the deck, back into the sunlight, and beheld a surprisingly quiet scene. Up here, the Bari stood, or sat, doing nothing as their barge pressed up against another, which had silver paint. The rowers’ arms were crossed. No one seemed angry about the collision: instead, some on our barge were chatting amiably with those on the other.
Kalyna, also, was on the other boat. Her hair was free, and she was waving furiously to me to follow her.
I ran to the edge of the barge and looked down at the space between the two. Bright blue water flickered there, but there were darker depths beneath. I thought I could probably jump that far, but the barges were rocking, and the gap kept changing its width.
“Go on, Smart Boy!”
The shouting from below began to get louder and closer.
Vidmantas, Ifeanyas, and a few others appeared in my periphery, following close behind us. Dagmar had already cut Vidmantas’ bonds, and he cried out before taking a long running jump from one barge to the next. He made it, hitting the deck hard and rolling. Kalyna looked down at him and sucked her teeth, then glared across the water at Dagmar, who shrugged.
“Go!” yelled Dagmar.
I still dithered a bit at the edge, staring down at the water and trying to drum up the courage. It wasn’t until I looked back and saw Gintaras’ hat appear at the staircase that I finally jumped.
I sailed. I felt shockingly unmoored from the world. But I did not jump far enough. I began to realize (slowly, or so it felt) that I would not make the deck of the other barge.
I began to flail wildly for the edge. I managed to get a hand onto the lip of the barge but felt my own weight wrench down against my hand and shoulder. There was no way I’d be able to pull myself up.
Dagmar’s boots landed next to my hand as I felt my grip failing, and she caught my wrist. She strained a bit but seemed to have no doubt she could lift me bodily to the deck. My arm ached, but up I went.
For a brief moment, I saw what must have attracted Kalyna to a Dagmar Sorga. The strength and confidence as she saved me, and the feeling that I was in good hands, was intoxicating.
We both fell to the deck. Kalyna yelled something, and the barge began to move. The Bari had all begun shouting as soon as Gintaras appeared on deck, acting as though they were angry and surprised at the collision between their barges.
Ifeanyas was just barely ahead of the soldiers, his arms still tied behind him. Face stern, he made a mad dash and leapt with no hesitation. His small body twisted through the air, the composure left his face for what seemed to be wide-eyed fear, his arms pulled up against their bonds as his legs wound in the air, almost as though he was running.
Incredibly, Ifeanyas made it to our barge, but without free hands to break or steer his fall. Dagmar moved to cushion him, and the two went down, rolling across the deck.
I then saw more of our fellow prisoners standing at the edge of the other barge, watching us leave, full of yearning, sadness, and anger. They had not been fast or foolhardy enough to make the leap while bound, as Ifeanyas had.
(Later, I learned some of their names from Vidmantas, and I still carry them in my memory, as I do the looks on their faces as they saw escape slip away. Repeating them all here would feel like a limp paean to my own guilt, but they are recorded in my Commonplace Book.)
Gintaras and his soldiers were now fully on deck and pointing at us, screaming. The Bari on the oars shook their head, giving some reason or another for why they couldn’t pursue.
Gintaras growled and grabbed a long gun from one his men, pointing it at me. Other soldiers began to follow his lead, albeit more hesitantly. I began the movement of throwing myself to the deck but felt as though I was doing so in a swamp. I could never avoid his shot.
There was a crack, a burst of flame, and a puff of smoke. Then an aureole of blood.
Gintaras dropped the gun and fell to the deck. Half of his head was gone.
“Don’t shoot at a Loashti, idiots!” cried Kalyna at the top of her lungs.
The other soldiers, who had been aiming for me, stopped and stared down at their commanding officer’s corpse. They stood around him, glancing at us, then back at him, as we floated out of their range.
Kalyna crossed the deck of the barge toward Dagmar and me, laughing.
“Did you mean to blow his head apart?” she asked.
“I just stuffed some things in the barrels while they were distracted by the Bari,” replied Dagmar. “Had no idea what exactly would happen.”
“So,” I gulped, “all that about the guns not working on a Loashti . . .”
“Nonsense, of course,” said Kalyna. “Didn’t you know that?”
“I feel like I don’t know anything anymore,” I sighed. “Are you a . . . Bari captain?”
Kalyna snorted. “I just borrowed the sash from a friend. Don’t be daft.”
Our boat moved through the water toward the North Shore, powered by rowers who seemed entirely unbothered by their recent brush with angry soldiers. Dagmar began pacing around Kalyna and me, doing stretches of some kind.
Vidmantas approached us, with Ifeanyas just behind him. The taller man was trying to force a smile, and failing, while the smaller one winced with every movement.
“Thank you,” said Vidmantas.
Kalyna looked at him evenly. No smile, no frown.
“What were you arrested for?” she asked.
“Having bad ideas,” Vidmantas replied.
“I don’t see why,” muttered Ifeanyas, rubbing his bruised hip. “We always had bad ideas before.”
“I haven’t a clue what changed,” added Vidmantas, “but I suppose we are outlawed.”
Kalyna looked thoughtful.
“Vidmantas,” said Ifeanyas, “we should go to Žydrė’s community, shouldn’t we? I can’t think of anything better.”
Vidmantas let out a long, irritated breath. “I can’t either, but I don’t trust her people.”
“Do you trust her?” asked the smaller man.
“I . . . think so.”
Ifeanyas nodded and timidly tapped Kalyna’s shoulder, as though she had not been watching this whole conversation.
“The place we’re going,” he said, “is near the Loashti border. I hope it will be better than here, but we’ll have to get around the Tail first. Are you going that way?”
Kalyna said nothing.
“We are,” I replied.
Kalyna glared at me.
“What?” I cried. “I should pretend I’m not heading for the border? Who would believe that by now?!” I got louder than I intended to. “Loasht isn’t safe for me, but neither is Skydašiai, clearly!”
Kalyna sighed. “Let’s first cross the Sea”—she pointed vaguely northward—“and then get out of any cities. I don’t want these two squealing for leniency.”
Vidmantas straightened a bit at the accusation. “Madame,” he said, “I was on my way to prison for saying what the government doesn’t want to hear. I hope you know that I—”
“Would say exactly what they want to hear if they began cutting off parts of you.”
Vidmantas was quiet. Dagmar looked at him and Ifeanyas, and then at Kalyna. The sellsword seemed uncharacteristically thoughtful.
A stout Bari man with his brown hair tied up walked over to us and smiled. Kalyna removed the red-and-gold sash that delineated captaincy and returned it to him. He introduced himself as Liudvikas, and he, like every Bari I spoke to, was perfectly capable of speaking Skydašiavos that I could understand, when he wanted to.
“We had other ex-Loashti aboard recently, like you,” he told me. “They were promised a trip home, told it was all some misunderstanding. Then they were put in the Goddess’ Guts.” He pointed westward.
“And what is that?” I asked.
“A prison,” replied Vidmantas, “in the lower decks of a warship patrolling Skydašiai’s west coasts.”
“The Goddess of the Summer Sun,” added Ifeanyas. “That’s . . . that’s the name of the ship.” It was the most intently I’d seen him refuse to look at anyone while speaking.
“We,” continued Liudvikas, “must help the soldiers to a point. But we have decided to stop taking part in that deception.”
“That’s . . . well, that’s good of you,” said Ifeanyas.
“I didn’t say we’ll stop taking Loashti people to the Goddess’ Guts,” Liudvikas corrected. “Just that we won’t aid the soldiers in their lie that your people are on their way home. It’s not much of a difference, I know.” He paused for a moment, seemed to realize something, and quickly added, “We’re not taking you there, of course. You’re Kalyna’s friend!”
“And you can just tell the soldiers ‘no’ like that?” I asked.
Liudvikas smiled. “You know what they say—”
“‘Skydašiai loses its way without the Barge People,’” said Vidmantas.
Liudvikas harrumphed. “We say it dries up and blows away without the Bari.”
Vidmantas smiled accommodatingly. “That’s good too.”
The Bari did not take us to the city that mirrored Žalikwen, but instead a bit farther northwest, to a town called Osimwu, which had one small, neglected, and sadly unpainted dock. Supposedly, no one in Osimwu would know to look for us yet.
“We’ll make it complicated for them,” promised Liudvikas.
“That’s very kind of you,” I replied. “Won’t you get in trouble?”
“The noble families all know they need us to keep Skydašiai together. We were crossing this sea before the Tetrarchia existed, before the guilds, before even Skydašiai was unified.” He smiled. “We can’t outright defy the army all the time, but we should be able to explain this away as a big mistake.”
“And if not?”
He shrugged. “Then we’re in a lot of trouble.”
“You must really like Kalyna, to do this for her.”
He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I suppose I do, yes.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the silver painted wood crisscrossing the barge. “My parents ferried her family back and forth many times, when Kalyna and I were but children. One time, her father gave them . . . information that saved my life.”
“So,” said Dagmar, who had not spoken in hours, “you risk your lives and your people’s own . . .” She snapped her fingers, grasping for the term. “Their own . . .” She growled a word in Rotfelsenisch.
“Autonomy?” I offered.
“Yes, their autonomy,” replied Dagmar.
Liudvikas shrugged and nodded. “You could see it that way, yes.”
Kalyna was a few yards away, with one foot up on the lip of the barge, arms on the railing, watching the North Shore loom closer against the orange sunset sky.
“And you, Kalyna,” said Dagmar, walking over to her, “have risked the Bari’s entire way of life for Smart Boy here?” She smiled as she said it, sounding like she was in awe.
“Of course,” replied Kalyna.
A Bari man was making his way up the deck, handing out crusty brown bread and mugs of a thick red wine. I gladly took some for myself.
Dagmar took two mugs and leaned against the railing, handing one to Kalyna, who took it without looking back. Dagmar faced the horizon as well.
“You always act like everybody owes you their life,” she said.
“Because everybody does,” replied Kalyna, turning to Dagmar and raising her cup.
Dagmar laughed and clinked her mug against Kalyna’s. They both drank.
Osimwu was smaller, quieter, and hotter than Žalikwen, but otherwise quite similar. There were, however, no Yams at the dock. According to Kalyna, it was Dagmar who’d specifically insisted on Osimwu.
“Said she has a plan,” Kalyna told me.
I shuddered at the thought.
Naturally, we didn’t stay long. To show his trustworthiness, Vidmantas hocked his necklace of multicolored beads in order to buy us a bit more food for the road.
“It is, truly, the last thing I own,” he said.
As we left the city, I began to see the difference between North and South shores. In the south, the landscape had been predominately green; here, the most visible color was a golden yellow. Farther north still, I knew it would get hotter and drier, not becoming truly humid until my long-missed home of Yekunde (which was both golden and green).
When it got dark, we came across a clearing of dry, yellow grass alongside the Lanreas River, and Dagmar decided we would bed down there for the night. Kalyna mostly looked irritated at the two new people we had picked up.
“So, what exactly is this place you think is safe?” she asked them.
“It’s called the”—Vidmantas rolled his eyes—“Lanreas River Guild, although it is in no way recognized as a guild.”
“Fine,” she growled. “Where is it?”
“North of here, near the border, east of Kalvadoti. It’s on this side of the Lanreas River, but the Tail’s in the way.”
“And this Tail,” I began, “just so I’m clear, is The Thrashing, Bone-White Tail of Galiag?”
Ifeanyas nodded.
“It’s a gorge twisting down from Galiag, right on the northeast border,” said Vidmantas.
I was familiar with Galiag by reputation: a wind-blasted city of ziggurats that was sometimes Loashti and sometimes Skydašian.
“The Tail,” Vidmantas continued, “cuts down through the North Shore, crossing the river, and ending just below the city of Kalvadoti. The gorge’s sides aren’t that high, but all of Galiag’s horrid burning winds travel between those walls. The river goes through it, but we can’t.”
“Fine,” Kalyna repeated.
“So we have to cross the river,” said Vidmantas.
“No, we don’t.” Dagmar shook her head and smiled. “Just wait here. I have a plan.”
I shuddered at the thought. All through Osimwu, and before, Dagmar had said very little, speaking only to guide us toward her “plan,” and often regarding Kalyna with a sort of merry glint in her eye. I wondered whether she had found a new, more agreeable way to love Kalyna Aljosanovna.
I suppose, in a way, she had. The next morning, Dagmar Sorga was gone.
Kalyna refused to make a scene in front of our new companions. She simply shrugged and said, “I suppose her contract was up.”
“Part of her plan, perhaps?” murmured Ifeanyas.
“It isn’t,” said Kalyna.
“Contract?” I asked as Vidmantas and Ifeanyas began to gather up what little we had.
“Yes,” replied Kalyna. “The contract.” She then held up a sheet of paper.
I furrowed my brow, and she handed it to me.
“I suppose you’re mentioned in it too,” she said.
Kalyna stared at me as I unfolded the paper. For a fleeting moment, I saw her eyes widen, her jaw grind, and her nose crinkle in rage. Just as quickly, her face seemed to sag in defeat before returning to its normal state.
Scrawled in very clumsy Cöllüknit was the following:
Kalyna—I love you, but I cannot stand to be around you. Maybe I will like you more when I love you less.
Smart Boy—I took the rest of your silver and that should do. You’re all right.
Just wait in the clearing. Trust me.
Kalyna took it back, shoved it in her pack, and we set off. I wondered if anyone but Dagmar Sorga had ever left Kalyna Aljosanovna.