Chapter
Seventeen

On the second day traveling south, I seriously regret our decision to travel south. We’ve been walking straight into an ever-worsening storm, which is what made us choose land over sea. So despite the storms, we keep pushing south rather than heading straight for the western coast, all of us remembering too well how bad it had been weathering the brutal seas onboard Kazu’s ship.

Seven different times in two days, the wagons get trapped in the mud; Miari, Etaro, and Tsua have to work us out again. Three times in the same period, the massive ukaiahana’lona pulling the wagons injure themselves badly; Zonna has to heal them before we can keep going. Fallen tree limbs block our passage; Etaro and Tsua push them out of the way. The wards I keep up over the caravan are all that stop falling debris from crashing through the wagons’ roofs. Rai and Nairo are the only reason we have a fire at night because everything is too wet to kindle. Sanii and the andofume give us light when no torch will stay lit in the wind.

“Remind me that it’d be worse on the water.” Rai grits her teeth as the wagons bounce along the narrow, pitted road. It’s the long way, but it’s our only chance to avoid whoever’s spying through the garakyus.

“It would be worse on the water,” Etaro dutifully repeats. “Because at least here, what’s underneath the mud is solid and won’t try to eat us.”

“And because we can’t get to a katsujo while we’re sailing. Unless you’ve learned how to breathe underwater,” I add. The thickest veins of power obviously stretch far, but they’re not always reachable. There’s a chance on land that we can dig deep, reach it, and use it. That’s not an option in the ocean. We need to find one before we leave Ryogo.

But the way conditions continue to deteriorate is seriously worrying. Because of what this weather will mean for us on a ship and what it might mean about Varan. He could be getting closer.

When we stop for the night, Tessen and I find Soanashalo’a. “Is there any word from the southern coast?”

“About invading armies?” She shakes her head. “Khya, if I had heard anything like that, you would know. The only thing anyone has mentioned about the south is the storms.”

Tessen’s attention sharpens. “What about them?”

“Never have so many storms followed each other like this.” Soanashalo’a circles her hand, the motion like the tumbling of a wave. “One after the other after the other. This is unprecedented. It could be disastrous if it disrupts the planting season or washes fertile soil away from the farms. That is what has Ryogo worried—no one is eyeing the horizon for anything except clear skies.”

Osshi joined just in time to hear her answer. He clears his throat. “What do you think, Lo’a? Shouldn’t they know what’s coming?”

We already told you no! I purse my lips to keep my admonition in.

Despite how often I’ve done it in the past six moons, questioning orders is not usually allowed in Itagami. If he were one of us, I’d be tempted to drag him in front of the andofume and report him for insubordination. As it is, I’m tempted to drag him in front of the andofume and report him for undermining our mission. Instead, I wait to see how Soanashalo’a answers.

“Nothing is harder for humanity to rise above than fear. If you tell the Jindaini that everything Ryogo has feared for centuries is about to happen, he will likely blame you for bringing it down on their heads.” She pauses. “Or he will not believe a word you say, throw you in prison, and leave us all in danger.”

Osshi makes a frustrated noise, and I hide a smug smile. Soanashalo’a winces sympathetically. “I know you want to believe in the equity of the Jindaini and his councils, but you have only stood in their grace before. The hanaeuu we’la maninaio have known both faces of the Ryogan leaders. I promise you do not want to meet them while in disfavor.”

Osshi doesn’t respond, and I can’t read the expression on his face. He’s known her for years, though, nearly his whole life. Hopefully he’ll believe her when he clearly didn’t trust us.

“Have you found anything to help us locate a katsujo?” I ask.

Soanashalo’a tilts her head, neither yes nor no. “I need to do some more digging. I should have an answer for you before we pass Atokoredo.”

Tessen and I ask a few more questions about our path, and everyone else silently listens. Everyone else seems attentive, but the lines on Osshi’s face speak of uncertainty. I try to ignore him. There are more important questions at hand than Osshi’s loyalty.

As soon as we fill in the others, passing along everything we learned, I turn to Chio. “Why hasn’t Varan landed yet?”

“Don’t question our rare good luck,” Tessen mutters.

“I’m serious. It seemed like he was almost ready when we left three moons ago. Nothing’s happened.” I look south at the lightning flashing in the distance. “Even walking from Shiara, the trip shouldn’t have taken them more than a few weeks.”

“But we left first. All of us changed his plans,” Chio says. “I can’t guess what he’s been doing, but he has to worry the same about us—what we’re doing here, what we’ve found, what we’re doing to defend Ryogo.”

“So why didn’t he launch immediately and get here as fast as he could?” I ask. “He was the one who taught us that lesson. If your enemy is preparing, don’t let them.”

“I’m more worried about what happened to Ryzo and the rest of the squad after we left.” Etaro’s long face is pinched with regret.

I’ve thought about that more than a few times. Etaro’s pained expression makes me want to offer comfort. Even if it’s probably a lie. “I’m sure they’re fine.”

“I don’t know if that’s true this time.” Natani rubs the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed. “They may not have come with us, but Tyrroh told the truth to everyone he thought he could trust. Everyone who wouldn’t instantly turn him over to Varan. Or tell Varan where Tyrroh planned on escaping to.”

I’d known that, but everything that’s happened since then pushed it out of my head. “But they didn’t believe him. That’s why they didn’t come.”

“Don’t you think that might’ve changed after Tyrroh disappeared and Varan made it clear he really did plan to build a bridge to Ryogo?” Rai shakes her head. “You know Ryzo. He’s stubborn and slow to change, but he’s smart enough to see the truth. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ran with as many people as he could convince.”

“But to where?” I try not to picture Ryzo and the others running for their lives through the rain-flooded desert.

“Before we left, Denhitra was our only escape,” Natani adds, rubbing a hand over his round face. “Anyone who left Itagami after us would’ve headed there.”

“But they saw us leave on a ship. They had to know we weren’t in Denhitra.”

“Not Ryzo. The bobasu and the kaigo saw us leave on a ship,” Tessen corrects. “And there’s not much chance they told the clan.”

He’s right. Which means that if anyone fled Itagami, they’re almost certainly hiding with the Denhitrans. If they’re still alive.

My mind spins like a tornado, sucking in all the worries I’ve had since this started and spitting them out faster than I can stop. “What if Varan’s plans fail and our clan drowns in the crossing? Or if they succeed and land here and realize that everything Varan told them was a lie? That will destroy them. And we have no idea what they’ve told the clan about our disappearance. What if they’ve punished Ryzo and the others and—”

“No. Blood and rot, Khya, stop.” Rai shakes her head, her round face creased with worry.

I suck my lips between my teeth and bite down, but the thoughts are still spinning. Tessen puts his hand on my elbow, his touch steady.

“If any of those things do happen, and if we’re all alive at the end of this, then they’ll learn how to get over it in time,” Sanii says. “Don’t you remember? The wounds that don’t kill you may leave scars, but they will heal.”

“Will they?” Despite my new immortality, it’s hard to believe anything can truly be healed; most of the time it’s more like learning to live around the scars. Just because a wound isn’t bleeding doesn’t mean it’s gone. “Varan is still chasing vengeance for wounds no one else even remembers!”

“You ridiculous overachiever. Always expecting miracles.” I expected anger—Rai’s almost always quick to anger—but all I see in her face is resigned amusement. “I promise, whatever happens from here, you’ll walk away knowing you did every single thing it was physically possible for you to do.”

If I’m able to walk away from it at all. As soon as our next mission is complete, immortality won’t mean the same thing as it does now. Whatever weapon we create to kill the bobasu will work against me, too. Against anyone who has this magic running under their skin.

There aren’t too many situations I can imagine where I fail Yorri but survive Varan’s vengeance. Which maybe is a good thing. If I fail, I’ll likely lose a lot more than Yorri. I might lose everything. I wouldn’t want to live with that.

“It’s not like I don’t understand, Khya.” Tsua smiles reassuringly as she picks up a dagger and a whetstone. “But being impatient won’t make time move any faster.”

“I don’t—” I cut myself off and take a breath. “I’ll try.”

“Patience isn’t one of my son’s best characteristics, either.” Tsua smirks as she sharpens the blade. “Zonna always moved quicker than we expected.”

“He was even born early. By a full moon,” Chio adds with a soft laugh, looking to where their son is checking over the massive ukaiahana’lona as one of the small ahoali’lona rubs against his leg. “We were worried he wouldn’t be strong enough to survive.”

“He’s always surprised us.” Tsua flips the dagger, catches it to sharpen the other edge.

Their devotion to Zonna makes me wonder. “Why didn’t you have more children after you discovered he’d inherited the immortality?”

“Zonna was our third, not our first.” Chio’s lips thin, but that’s all I catch of his expression before he looks at the ground. “Our eldest daughter died before we left Ryogo. Our middle daughter died of old age on Shiara. Zonna is the only one with the same Kaijuko-cursed lifespan as us. There’s no way for anyone to know which children will inherit that.” He looks up and gestures to me. “Just look at you and Yorri. What made him immortal, and not you? Something in our blood, maybe, or something only the Kaisubeh control.”

“It wasn’t worth the risk to try?” They so clearly love Zonna. Wouldn’t they want more people capable of sharing the centuries with them?

“How many times would you be able to watch someone you love die? Would you keep bringing children into the world knowing you’d outlive them?” Tsua shakes her head, grief in her eyes. “I did it twice, and I was convinced a third would kill me. Or make me wish I could die.”

I look down. I poked a wound, that much is obvious. I hadn’t known it was there, but it’s clear it hasn’t ever healed. Apologies feel necessary, because she’s right. Once would be too much to suffer something like that, and they risked it three times. What can I say, though? I can’t come up with anything.

Thankfully, Tessen changes the subject. “Do you think these storms are because of Varan’s work?”

The lightning on the horizon has gotten so frequent we can almost see by it, and the thunder has become a near-constant noise.

“As sure as we can be,” Chio says.

Tsua scrapes the blade across the stone again. “Which is to say, not at all sure.”

“What do we do if Varan gets here before we’re ready?” Natani asks.

“As much as we can with whatever we have at the time.” Chio looks at us with a smile on his thin lips. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my annoyingly long life, it’s that you can only do what you’re capable of doing.”

“I know that.” Everyone does. What else can anyone do?

Tsua looks up from the whetstone, amusement in her eyes. “No, you don’t. Not yet. I know it sounds like an obvious lesson, but it took me a very long time to learn it. You’ve only just begun, child.”

And, unless Varan kills me, or I’m forced to sacrifice myself to bring him down, I’ll have a lifespan as long as Tsua’s to learn.

I don’t know how to begin comprehending that length of time. Or what I might learn, what I might see or do or be by the end of it. I could have centuries. If we win this war, I could spend those centuries with Yorri and Sanii. And—I resolutely don’t look at Tessen—anyone else who might be willing to risk death to gain that sort of life.

Getting to this point has been a series of painful revelations. Since the night Tessen told me Yorri had died, the Miriseh have been unmasked, Ryogo has been revealed, and my loyalty, once so entrenched in Itagami, has shifted. Even in Ryogo, we’ve revealed a truth about the Kaisubeh the Ryogans have forgotten, broken into a prison these people don’t know exist, and are trying to stop an enemy from their past from rising up and crushing them.

It’s all too much.

We were raised to think we were alone in the world, that our isolated island was the world. Now there are lands I know exist but have never seen or heard of, people with languages I can’t understand, and I’m left questioning everything I once thought was undeniable.

The more I learn, too, the harder it is to believe I’ll ever have a chance to go home.

It’s even harder to believe Itagami will still feel like home when I do.

…

Tessen watches me with mild concern over the next three days, knowing in his usual impossible way that my mind is mired in uselessly distressing thoughts. However, he never makes me explain what has me tied me up in mental knots. Instead, he works with Soanashalo’a, Osshi, and Chio, plotting our route and helping us avoid as much danger as possible.

Twice, it’s unavoidable; to get closer to where we need to be, we must risk the main roads. The watched roads. The roads where the Ryogans have hidden garakyus. To be safe, Tessen scans for signs of magic before we use any stretch of road, and we head back into the forests again as soon as we can.

Since we discovered the garakyus watching the roads, we’ve had to assume the tyatsu know we’re traveling with the hanaeuu we’la maninaio caravan. What we don’t know is if the watchers know we’re with this particular caravan. And I also don’t know if the hanaeuu we’la maninaio’s protections and my own wards will be enough to keep us safe.

The storm hasn’t let up, but for the last two days it’s been a stable sort of awful. Day five of our southerly trek dawns without a dawn; the storm is so loud, dark, and strong that we never see a hint of sunlight break through the purple-black clouds. If not for the watch rotation and my internal sense of time, I’d never believe it was morning.

“I’m worried these winds will keep us on the main roads for too long.” Tessen peers out of the warded wagon window at the gale.

“I can check in with Lo’a,” Osshi offers. “I wanted to talk to her about a supply stop. There are some things we need at the next safe market.”

Market. The word doesn’t mean much at first, but then I remember the explanation—markets are how Ryogans get necessary things like food. Even after Osshi and the andofume explained, the concept is confusing. A whole city block or more of food, clothes, and whatever else, but none of it can be taken without pieces of different metals to trade in return, according to Osshi. And if you take something without giving those metal bits, you’ll be punished by the tyatsu. Even if all you took was food because you were starving.

I don’t understand it, so I shrug and tell Osshi, “Whatever you think we need.”

“I better go now.” His gaze jumps to the door. “We’ll be moving soon.”

“Be careful,” I remind him.

Nodding, Osshi’s eyes jump to meet mine and then back to the door. Then he clears his throat. “Thank you.”

As soon as I lift the ward, he picks up his small pack and jumps out of the wagon. Drops of rain and bits of debris blow through even in the few seconds it takes for him to clear the doorway. I replace the protection as soon as he’s out. The caravan moves away from the camp moments later.

Throughout the day, the storm rages and swirls, battering and rocking the wagons. Trees shake and sway. We deal with stuck wagons, injured animals, and once, a box of supplies torn from where it had been strapped to a wagon. The weather is so bad we stop at what must be midday to let the ukaiahana’lona hauling the wagons rest and eat, pulling leaves from the trembling trees, but no one leaves the wagons unless they have something to fix.

By the time my stomach starts grumbling for something more sustaining than the dried meat and fruit we’ve been eating all day, the wagons stop and the wind quiets.

I release the ward on the door and jump down. We’re in a clearing, protected on one side by the flat, rocky side of a hill and on two others by trees growing so close together they practically form a solid wall, their branches intertwining overhead to give us a roof. The protection isn’t a perfect buffer, but it makes the chaos pouring out of the sky survivable.

People are climbing out of the other wagons and setting up fires. Across the small camp, Soanashalo’a is talking to one of the elders—Akia, I think his name is. He and the gray-haired woman the others call Hoku are the two who seem to be the real leaders of the family.

I head toward them and Soanashalo’a smiles when she spots me, ending her conversation with Akia after a few words and a touch to his shoulder.

It’s strange to see, but gestures like that are common for her people. Slowly, my squad and I have learned how to control our instinctive reactions to it. It helps that the hanaeuu we’la maninaio have been careful not to take the same liberties with us that they take with one another.

So when Soanashalo’a holds out her hand to me, I don’t hesitate taking it or letting her pull me closer to press a kiss to my cheek. I’m surprised by it—she’s never done that in front of her family before—but I don’t stop it from happening. It makes more sense when she looks over my shoulder and says to Tessen, “Do you even know what your face looks like when I do that? It is incredibly amusing.”

“If you’d been less of a help to us, I might take offense at that,” Tessen says behind me. I hadn’t even known he was following.

“You mean if Khya liked me less, you might take offense at that,” she counters.

I roll my eyes, suppressing a laugh. “It’s harder to offend Tessen than you’d think. I’ve tried many times over the years.”

“That is so unfortunately true,” he says with an aggrieved sigh.

“But I came over to ask you about Osshi, not Tessen,” I say while she laughs. “What did you two decide about the market?”

“Market? We should not need to visit one for several days.” She looks confused. “Is there something special you need?”

“No, but I—” I take a breath. “Osshi left this morning because he needed to talk to you.”

More confusion. “He never came. I have not seen him since last night.”

“But he—” My stomach drops. “Blood and rot.” I yell for Tsua.

“Osshi’s gone,” I say as soon as she appears, my hands clenched tight. “I don’t know if he got injured by the storm and left behind or if he ran off, but he never made it to Lo’a after he left us this morning.”

“This storm has been loud, but if he’d been hurt, I think one of us would’ve heard him calling for help,” Tessen says slowly. “Why run, though?”

“We were as close to Atokoredo as we were going to get today.” Tsua sounds both frustrated and resigned, as if she should’ve expected this.

Tessen peers northeast, toward the city. “If I’m remembering the maps right, the river that splits southeast leads directly to Jushoyen.”

“It does,” Soanashalo’a confirms. “Jushoyen became their central city because it sits at the junction of three major rivers. One flows into Jushoyen from Atokoredo. Passenger ships travel between the cities every day, so if Osshi was not arrested as soon as he stepped foot in Atokoredo, then he could be almost to Jushoyen by now.”

“They know he’s been traveling with a group,” I mutter. “Breaking off on his own might’ve given him a chance at sneaking through the cities. I don’t know if he could’ve come up with a better plan if he’d tried.”

The squad can tell something is wrong as soon as they see our faces, and from the mix of expressions, few of them are surprised when we fill them in.

“I kind of want to hunt him down and kill him.” Rai sighs. “But I also know I’d probably do the same thing if I was in his place.”

Murmurs of agreement and dissent rise from the others. I keep my mouth shut, honestly not sure which side of that divide I fall on.

“We need to change our path and push faster,” Chio says, his expression subdued. “If he’d left us before our trip to Mushokeiji, the Jindaini might not have believed his story, but now there’s enough proof for him to point to.”

“That had better not be true,” Tsua says. “If they do believe his stories…”

If they do, we’ll have to deal with even more trouble headed our way, and we already have more than enough.