Seven Forsaken

Please note that the chapter below is an early draft. Names and world-building details subject to change.

Isa couldn’t understand the miracles his companions had worked on his body. The tattoo Nath had laid over the scar tissue was as clean as the work of any High Inkarnam. Isa had tested it immediately to make sure the metalmancer hadn’t done anything strange to his magic; everything seemed to be working as normal. After all, the parts of the tattoo Nath had patched weren’t the runes that enabled the animancy itself, merely the connective lines between them.

Even more impressive was the flesh under the tattoo. The seams were barely visible, the pain barely an occasional twinge. It was almost as if Isa hadn’t watched chunks of his flesh splatter the dock. He recognized that part of the overall feeling of unreality came from the surrounding forest. The blanket of moist air was heavy and dizzying. The baobab towers made him feel like he was drifting across the page of an old Inkarnam tome—and an illustrator had simply penciled his body back into existence, whole as it had ever been. But the otherworldly atmosphere couldn’t account for the physical reality of his body. 

“Part of my arm was gone,” he marveled, prodding his shoulder. “Not just the meat but the muscle.” There had been a moment when he had tried to draw his sabers, and his arm simply hadn’t responded. “How did you fix it?”

“Trade secret,” Lygdaz said, looking out into the mist. “One I assume you’d have learned if you’d hung around your Temple to become a High Inkarnam—though Wildermyn still do it better.”

“Well…” Isa rolled his newly reassembled shoulder. “Not gonna argue with that.”

Isa had done his best to avoid the Wildermyn since waking up, but Lygdaz hadn’t done much to menace or needle him. Perhaps because, outside the dark cabin, ze was under the suspicious eyes of the crewmen and other mercenaries. Isa might have thought—hoped, even—that he had imagined their talks of spirits, shadows, and cannibalism during his treatment. Maybe he had misremembered parts, but it didn’t matter. Because an immovable collection of facts remained: Isa’s flesh was back, he still couldn’t hear Aer, and Lygdaz still had that look in zir eyes as ze stared off into the baobab forest, paradoxically dead and hungry.

“You tested the tattoos,” a voice said, and Isa was relieved to find Nath joining them at the boat rail. Perhaps it was strange to be relieved that a prolific and unknowable killer like Nath was around. But Isa had judged the metalmancer to be the least—or second-least—likely person to kill him in the course of this job. “Wanna test those arms?”

“Test them?”

“Yeah,” Nath said. “Spar me.”

“I—what?” Was that a joke?

“Not with metalmancy at play,” Nath laughed. “God knows, I’m mean but not that mean.”

“I…”

“What’s the matter?” Nath smiled. “You’re spry, and ambidextrous, and pretty young yet. Tell me you’re not scared to fight an old man without his magic.”

“I’m not.” Isa didn’t sell it well, and Lygdaz scoffed. 

Nath didn’t seem to care. “Excellent. ‘Course, if we fight with live steel, I’ll wreck those pretty little fangs of yours.” He nodded to Isa’s sabers. “Give me a moment.” He left to rummage in the cabin.

“Spirits, you really are an idiot, aren’t you?” Lygdaz said pityingly.

“I’m not afraid of a regular non-magic sword fight,” Isa said.

“And you think Nath is just a regular non-magic swordsman?” The amusement in Lygdaz’s voice made Isa’s gut squirm.

Before Isa could think of a way to back out of the sparring, Nath emerged from the cabin with three wooden weapons. A Trestantian-style longsword and a pair of Sazuman-style climbing batons with their weird perpendicularly affixed pick handles.

“Made these from a busted oar so I could spar Damored,” he explained, “but she’s not that fun to spar. Somehow, everything ends in a bone-breaking tackle.” 

“Don’t break him, now,” Lygdaz said. “We just finished putting him back together.”

“I’ll be gentle. Catch!” Nath flung both climbing batons across the deck to Isa.

“Oh—” Isa raised his hands to catch the wooden weapons, but before they had reached him, Nath’s scorpion sword whipped from its sheath, flashing white in the sun. A crewman yelped as metal spikes struck the climbing batons mid-spin without slowing their trajectory.

“There,” Nath said as the weapons smacked into Isa’s palms and his fingers closed around them. “Sabers.”

The scorpion sword had cut the picks from the batons, leaving behind a pair of nubs roughly the size of the guards on Isa’s sabers. Isa shifted his grip on the wood and tried not to remember how easily Nath’s sword had passed through human spines.

“Don’t look so worried, boy. No magic, remember?” Nath unslung the scorpion sword from his back and set it by the crate Ro’aan was using as a table to disassemble and clean one of his guns. Even in this choking humidity, the Zarkadian was fully armed and armored. “Watch this for me, would you, pal? And careful. It bites wanderin’ hands.”

“You just said you weren’t using magic,” Ro’aan said in his heavy Barrowland accent.

“On him.” Nath pointed the wooden longsword at Isa. “You, love, are still gettin’ on my nerves.”

“Lighten up and watch, Ro’aan,” Lygdaz said as Ro’aan scowled. “This’ll be entertaining.”

“How so?”

Isa was still getting used to the way Ro’aan spoke. His pronunciation itself wasn’t awful. He just had no sense of the natural flow of Hunter’s Pidgin, awkwardly emphasizing sounds or squishing them together in the wrong configurations. “They can kill each other if they want. Doesn’t make a difference to me.”

“I know, but the Inkarnam is about to get thrown around like a straw doll.”

“Well,” Ro’aan’s green eyes lit up. “That does sound fun.”

“Or you and I go a round?” Isa growled at the gunman. He imagined that, stripped of the weight of his armory, Ro’aan would be devastatingly fast and strong, but he was annoyed enough to take his chances.

Ro’aan just snorted in disdain. “Why waste time with blades when I have my guns and armor?”

“Says the guy who lost to three people with fifty guns in his corner?” Isa shot back. “I seem to remember kicking you down a muddy slope. Your armor didn’t protect you from that, did it?”

“No,” Ro’aan’s green eyes flashed, “But that barely bruised. You’re the idiot who needed pieces of his body sewn back on.”

“He’s a little defensive, isn’t he?” Isa muttered under his breath.

“Zarkadians can be that way,” Nath said. “Jumpy little fucks.”

“What was that?” Ro’aan snapped, and Isa was alarmed to find that his hand had gone to one of his pistols. “I don’t suffer insults!”

“Oh, try it if you must.” Nath could not have looked less interested. “I’ve yet to lose a draw to a gunner.”

“That so?”

Bang!

Isa started at the gunshot, but Nath didn’t move. A half heartbeat of shock and one of Nath’s braids hit the deck at Isa’s feet. The bullet must have passed within an inch of the metalmancer’s head. As Isa’s ears rang and startled crewmen looked around for the source of the noise, Nath smiled at Ro’aan.

“And I also know a bluff when I see one.”

“Wasn’t a bluff.” Ro’aan glared from behind the smoking barrel of his pistol. “It was a warning.”

“Hey! Hey!” Captain Xabres called from the foredeck. “Could you not be shooting guns down there? Please?”

“I’ll handle this, Captain.” Damo was storming up the stairs from below decks. “Boys!” She put herself between Nath and Ro’aan. “What did I say about the shooting? Not on my boat!”

“Oh, it’s your boat now?” Nath raised an eyebrow in amusement.

“I’m paying the fare, so yes, it’s my boat, and I say no fighting.” On her shoulder, Tapia chittered as if in agreement.

Ro’aan’s face had twisted with a darkness Isa hadn’t seen there before. “I didn’t come this far south to take orders from women.”

“Then, I guess you’ve come this far south to swim with crocs,” Damo said shortly. “I mean it, all of you. Play nice or take a swim.”

“Why does she care whether we fight?” Ro’aan muttered when Damo retreated to her cabin.

“Don’t know,” Isa said. “If we all stab each other, that’s more bounty for her.”

“I’d blow your head off before you got one of your dinky blades—”

“Ah, humor her,” Nath said with a wave of his hand. “She needs to play family every once in a while.”

“Play family?” Isa repeated.

“So that it inevitably falls apart and she can reassure herself that community is dead, loyalty is dead, and this is the way of the world. So she can take her own experience less personally.”

Her own experience… So, Nath knew about Damo’s ejection from her guild.

“Funny, right? Given how hard she tries to renounce Sazuma, all its customs, all its systems… In a way, she’s the most Sazuman person you’ll ever meet.”

“How do you mean?” Isa had thought that Sazumans were supposed to be caring and largely non-violent; if not for a few soft spots, Damo was the opposite.

“The truest and strongest Sazuman unit is a coalition of sisters holding hands,” Nath said. “Damo fit well there—or her heart did anyway.” 

“Then why did she leave?” Ro’aan said in confusion.

“Not sure,” Nath said. “You’ll have to get her hands on you to find out.”

Isa remembered Damo’s Touch pulling him from death’s grip—painfully, like hooks in a fish hauling it upward to the light.

“Why should I care about any of this?” Ro’aan said.

“I dunno,” Nath said with a smile. “Why’d you ask?”

Ro’aan didn’t answer.

“You know, she’s not gonna sleep with you while you keep bein’ standoffish and insecure. No tactomancer wants that garbage in her system, even one with a stomach as strong as Damoredreya’s.”

Ro’aan’s horizontal godmarks had gone a strange color. “I’m not insecure!”

“Sure, darlin’. Nothin’ says self-confidence like a steel codpiece and a hundred guns.”

“And I don’t—I mean, what makes you think I want to…” Ro’aan spluttered and shifted tactics. “Just because you’re trying to fuck her—”

Nath burst out laughing. “God Ascended, you’ve got me wrong, Zarkadian!” 

“Do I?”

“I’ve long since sworn off younger partners. And damaged goods, for that matter. No offense, Inkarnam.”

“None taken… I think?” Isa said.

“I’m just sayin’ that if damage happens to be your thing,”—Nath flicked his eyes in the direction of Damo’s cabin—“you’ll play her game. Let her have her little gang of pseudo-sisters.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ro’aan snapped a piece of his rifle into place. “If you two were my sisters, I’d have to kill you.”

“Ah, ‘course you would, exile. How’s that been goin’ for you?”

Isa had no idea what Nath was referencing, but Ro’aan’s green eyes went so cold they nearly created a break in the smothering heat.

“That’s what I thought. Anyway,”—Nath turned back to Isa—“What do you say, li’l sister? Ready to spar?”

Isa took a deep breath, unwilling to admit that the prospect of facing Nath’s wooden sword was more terrifying to him than all Ro’aan’s guns. “Yes.”

“Ah,” Nath’s smile was fond and pitying. “That’s the spirit!”

Isa assumed his starting stance, makeshift practice sabers before him.

But instead of engaging, Nath paused, looking at something over Isa’s shoulder. “The hell is that?”

Isa tilted his head and bit back a laugh. “That’s your opening move? The ‘look over there’ trick?” The last time Isa had fallen for that, he had been five, and Nazaru had put a lizard down the back of his shirt.

“No, I mean it.” Nath lowered the longsword, looking genuinely disconcerted. “Inkarnam, Wildermyn… What in all the Godforsaken lands is that thing?”

It wasn’t until Lygdaz said, “How should I know?” that Isa realized it wasn’t a stupid trick.

When he turned, he found a strange creature gripping the boat rail with black claws. “It’s… a bird?” 

“Obviously,” Lygdaz said impatiently, “just not one found anywhere in the Wilds we know.”

The creature was the size of a small hawk, with a curving black beak and feathers so vibrantly green they would have put Farmer Kandar’s grape vines to shame. Once the bird had everyone’s attention, that strange beak opened, and it spoke. Not in Azenkari or Hunter’s Pidgin, but the words were unmistakably human. Nath started violently at the sound and took a step back. Knocking its beak rhythmically on the boat rail, the bird repeated itself. And this time, Isa recognized the words as far southern Wilder-dialect, albeit with a heavy accent.

“Are you a good boy?”

At this point, Nath had drawn behind Isa.

“What’s your damage?” Isa asked, vaguely amused. “It’s just a bird.”

“That ain’t a bird. That… I don’t like that at all. That’s some kinda demon.”

“You’re talking to a guy who turns into a snake.”

“Do you talk in a human voice when you’re a snake? Fuck, no. Somethin’… somethin’s not right about that.”

“Are you a good boy?” The bird repeated, seemingly impatient. “Are you a good, good boy?”

“I can shoot it.” Ro’aan drew a pistol from his belt with an unnecessary spin. “Stand back.”

“No! Don’t!” Isa grabbed the Zarkadian’s wrist, forcing the gun down. “Look. It’s got something on its back.” The dark leather straps were nearly concealed by its feathers, but the bird was wearing some kind of harness. A parcel was rolled up between its wings, secured with twine.

“So?”

“So, it’s probably a messenger bird,” Isa said, shoving Ro’aan back, “and shooting it will blow through the message.” 

“Are you a pretty bird?” the creature asked.

“We should at least get the thing off its back.”

“Be my guest, Inkarnam,” Nath said. “I ain’t goin’ near that thing.”

“Alright…” Isa approached the bird as he might a snake in the milking room. If it came to it, he could probably catch the creature at the base of the skull like a snake… or could he? How did one find the base of a skull under that ruff of bright feathers? “Um…” he tried, “Could I see what’s on your back, friend?”

“Good boy?” The bird blinked scaly white lids over obsidian eyes.

“Yes. Sure.” Isa reached for the parcel on the bird’s back. “Could I just—Hey!” The bird lunged to bite his hand. And this, at least, Isa could handle. The bright bird was quick but not half as quick as a viper, and Isa snatched his hand out or range, unscathed. “Easy!”

The bird hissed rather like a viper when Isa moved forward again, its beak open in warning to reveal a weird black and pink nub of a tongue.

“Fuck you,” Isa said. “I’m just trying to take a load off your back, okay?”

The demon wove its head, cobra-like, for a moment, before hammering its beak on the wood again. Its neck feathers fanned out like the mane of a lion. “Good, good bird!”

“That’s fuckin’ a lie and you know it,” Nath muttered.

“Just step back, Inkarnam,” Ro’aan said impatiently. “I’ll put the shot through its head. It won’t even clip the stupid message.”

“No, no, no!” Captain Xabres came to the rail, and the bird cocked its head at him. “No shots through anything’s head, please!”

“Are you a good boy?” the bird asked Xabres and he jumped. “Are you a pretty bird?”

“Ostia! It speaks!”

The commotion finally drew Damo out of her cabin, and she uttered an “Oh!” of recognition. “It’s mango!”

“It’s what?” Isa said.

“Move. I’ve got this.” Damo lowered herself as she approached the bird, so she met him at eye level. Her voice softened. “Hey there, little friend. Remember me?”

“Are you a pretty, pretty bird?”

“You bet,” she said in broken Wilder dialect and produced one of the dried fruit treats she used to train Tapia. “You want?”

“Good boy!” The bird repeated and shuffled toward Damo, claws sliding on the burnished wood in his excitement.

“Yes, you are!” She gave him the fruit, which he clutched in opposable talons and munched happily. Satisfied with his treat, he fluffed out and turned around to let Damo untie the bundle from his back. 

The scroll wasn’t made of paper, which made sense; paper was a Daraxean invention that probably hadn’t made its way this far south. Instead, the roll was made of wooden slats, each painted with a single line of text.

“I think this a message from the queen of Lothmedi…” As Damo squinted at the text, the demon bird fluttered to her shoulder and nudged his beak into the golden cloud of her curls as though searching for more treats there. “Lygdaz, I may need your help with this.” 

“Lyg—ow,” she glared at the bird as it nipped her ear. “Your mama let you do that, you little shit? Lygdaz!” she repeated, and the Wildermyn slunk to her side. Ze only came up to her elbow and she had to lower the message for zir to see. “As far as I can tell, their language is kind of like a Wilder dialect. A little help?”

Lygdaz took the scroll from her and scanned it with a deepening furrow between zir brows. “If this is a Wilder dialect, it’s a very old one… archaic. The Inkarnam might have better luck deciphering it.”

“He might?” Damo said in surprise.

“If he remembers his lessons in children’s animancy. Inkarnai texts are all based in old—very old—dialects from the south.”

Isa wasn’t keen on collaborating with Lygdaz, but he approached to look over the Wildermyn’s shoulder. He had never seen a Wilder dialect written this way, with the characters running bottom to top instead of left to right.

“Well, the first line says…” Isa frowned down at the strangely ascending scrawl. “To Damored of Sazuma…”

“I’d gotten that far, thanks,” Lygdaz said. “The actual message?”

“Allowing? No… If,” Isa said.

“Right,” Lygdaz said. “If you are in a… what?”

“I read that as ‘on top of,’” Isa said. “If you are on top of a… usual… big… star… something… tree-hide?”

“Tree-hide would translate to bark,” Lygdaz said.

“Oh, right…” Isa screwed up his memory, trying to recall the last time he had seen these words. It had always been a struggle to stay awake during Elder Thrask’s lessons. Osu, the lessons you didn’t think you’d need out in the real world… “If you are on top of a usual big star-something bark… basket?”

“Maybe bowl?” Lygdaz suggested.

“You two are just saying random words, right?” Damo said. “Because you might as well just be saying random words right now.” The bird had climbed halfway down her body now, its strange claws clutching the folds of her shirt as it nosed the pouch at her hip. “Okay, you clever little fuck, you found ’em.” She offered the creature her wrist, and it stepped on. “One more.” Digging into her pouch, she gave him another treat before looking back at Isa and Lygdaz. “Tell me you can do better than this?”

“It’s not easy, alright,” Isa sighed. “Words change meaning a lot over time and between cultures.” He tried again from the beginning: “If you are on top of a usual big star-something bark basket—or bowl—you must not try the way of blue… thickness? Thickery?”

“Thicket?” Lygdaz suggested. “And I think the descriptor is emerald, not blue.”

Isa and Lygdaz argued their way through the rest of the message over the next half hour while Tapia and the bird vied for position on Damo’s shoulder. Ultimately, they didn’t arrive at anything resembling a coherent translation. But they had squabbled so much over individual words that Isa was willing to call their nonsensical composition a success; at least, it was agreed-upon nonsense.

“Damored of Sazuma,” he read aloud:

“If you are on top of a usually big star-something bark basket, you must not fully try to go the way of emerald density. Your thing is too skyward. Return sweet mango fruits to my location, come down before arrival of trees, and wait for our under ones. The ones will see you having small bark basket and bring you the way of leftovers.

- Miorei, Queen’s Tongue, of Lothmedi.”

“Good job,” Nath said when Isa finished. “Have you two considered workin’ as translators?”

“Yes, how is this supposed to help us?” Ro’aan added sourly.

“Well, I can help you with part of it,” Damo sighed. “Miorei is the queen’s messenger, and she doesn’t want mango fruit. That’s what she calls the bird.”

“Mango?” Isa repeated.

“Yes. Sweet Mango.”

At the sound of its name, the green creature lifted its head and said, “Good boy?”

“Yes, good boy. So, let’s see…” Damo gave Sweet Mango her hand and held him aloft. “Um… fly?” He just cocked his head at her and fluffed his feathers. “Goodbye? Get goin’? Up?”

“Fly,” Isa tried in the old language. “Home?” That got the bird to tilt forward slightly, his feathers flattening and wings twitching. “Fly home!”

That did it. Sweet Mango spread his wings and took off in a rush of warm wind, soaring downriver ahead of the Ibis.

“Yay!” Damo lowered her arm. “Good bird!” At her feet, Tapia groused as if to say ‘Good riddance!’

“Alright, but beyond that,” Ro’aan said, “do we know anything else the queen’s messenger wanted us to do?”

“Well, we know she wants us to wait for… something,” Isa offered.

“Thank you. Very helpful.”

Ro’aan didn’t have the inflection for sarcasm, so Isa mockingly threw back, “You’re very welcome.”

“So,” Captain Xabres looked between the mercenaries for direction, “should we drop anchor and wait here?”

“No,” Damo said. “This whole stretch, we haven’t caught up to any Riverlanders. That means Nazaru Inkarnam is still ahead of us, and we are not losing this bounty to him.”

“Who’s Nazaru Inkarnam?” Ro’aan asked.

“Yes, Damored.” Lygdaz folded zir arms. “You didn’t say anything about competing bounty hunters.”

“On a job like this, of course there are competin’ bounty hunters,” Damo said impatiently. “I just wasn’t gonna mention it explicitly until we were a bit farther along.”

“Too far for us to consider turning back?” Lygdaz raised zir eyebrows.

“Well, if you do want to turn back, I think the time is now,” Isa said.

“What do you mean?” Ro’aan asked.

“Look.” Isa pointed beyond the bow. “We’ve reached the jungle.”

“But… we’re already in the jungle.”

Among the towering trees, Isa could see why a Barrowlander might be confused. “This is a baobab forest,” he clarified. “That’s a jungle.”

The five mercenaries gathered with Captain Xabres on the foredeck, and all fell silent as they beheld the green at the end of the world.

“Those can’t be trees…?” Ro’aan said, squinting into the mist ahead, where the baobabs met a solid fortress of green. 

“Trees and vines,” Damo said. “Really somethin’ else, isn’t it?”

“Amazing!” Ro’aan marveled, and Isa grudgingly shared his awe. Because outside of Sweet Mango’s feathers—and perhaps Ro’aan’s own gemstone eyes—he had never seen a green so intense.

“It looks like a damn wall,” Nath said. “Like you couldn’t walk through it.”

“It does take some doin’,” Damo said. “You’ll wanna keep your sword sharp.”

“I’ve never seen forest half so dense!” Ro’aan said. “Have you?” The Zarkadian, from the farthest eastern edge of the map, turned to Nath from the farthest northern edge and Damored, from the farthest west. Both shook their heads.

As the oars carried the Waning Ibis onward, the jungle closed on the river like a great maw, green teeth curving inward in the form of trees Isa couldn’t name. The animal chatter that had echoed around them for days swelled to a chorus as dense as the greenery. As a hunter, conditioned to listen for animal cries and warning signals, Isa found himself overwhelmed by the sheer volume of sound. He didn’t envy the animals of this kingdom, trying to pick out the voices of friends and predators in the pandemonium.

“God Ascended…” Nath murmured, and Isa glanced to his side to find the other mercenaries reacting similarly to the change in atmosphere. Lygdaz, who had learned to hunt in the same Wilds as Isa, was rigid, eyes intent on the trees—as if ze had a hope of making anything out in the eerie combination of darkness and chaos between the trunks. Ro’aan’s hand was on one of his pistols.

“And we’re sure we don’t want to drop anchor?” Isa asked, hesitant to proceed further into the unknown.

“Positive,” Damo said. “We’ll want to reach Lothmedi before dark.”

This stretch of river was as wide as Krell’s Tisadne from which it descended, but it was tapering, picking up speed—as though even the mighty water was nervous in the chattering green, intent on fleeing to the ocean as fast as it could.

“Oars up!” Captain Xabres ordered, sensing the change beneath his vessel. “Let her ride!” The drumbeat below deck stopped, leaving only the chaotic chatter of animals as the current took over.

It had taken the Krellish a thousand years of trial and error to build a bridge across water this wide. Here, tree branches casually closed overhead, cutting off the light in a tunnel of green, casting dappled patterns across the deck. 

“Captain,” Isa said, crossing to the very front of the foredeck where Xabres watched the boat’s prow cut the water. “Are we going to clear all those branches?”

“I don’t know.” The captain looked troubled but also faintly excited. “Do we have any choice?”

The current was picking up beneath them. Rowing against it or dropping anchor here wouldn’t do much good. Ultimately, the tree branches were not the problem—the trees here were so tall—it was the vines hanging in loops in their way.

“Oars!” Xabres bellowed and had to repeat himself over the cacophony of the surrounding wilderness. “Oars, men! Oars!”

Wood slid on wood as the Ibis spread her wings for the last time. The captain hesitated on his next order. The vines drifted closer.

“Not going to backpaddle, Captain?” Isa asked. The vines would catch the mainmast. There was no question.

Captain Xabres’s eyes were fixed ahead. One withered hand caressed the Ibis’s rail. “This boat wasn’t made to take us backward, was she, Inkarnam?”

“I guess not, Captain.”

With a strange mixture of regret and glee, Xabres shouted, “Row, boys! Full speed!”

The Ibis met the vines in a terrible crunch of wood. The first several broke against the boat’s momentum, scattering leaves and splinters to the deck, but the next was as big around as a sapling. It caught the Ibis’s mast, cracking the wood and sending the great vessel into a dangerous tilt.

“Xabres!” Damo said as the rowers below deck cried out in surprise and those above caught themselves on the rail. “What are you doin’!”

Captain Xabres’s face was calm, his grip hard on the rail of the foredeck. “Moving us forward, Madam.”

“Well, you mind bein’ gentle about it?” Nath called from where he was hugging the boat rail. “Some of us can’t swim, and some’a us’ll sink regardless.” He jerked his head at Ro’aan.

“Metalmancer,” the captain said, “can you cut that vine for us?”

“‘Course, I can,” Nath said as the Ibis’s oars fought to stabilize her against the crashing rush of water. “But what about those vines?” He pointed to the thick, low-hanging vines further down the river. “What about the ones beyond those?”

“You’re right…” Captain Xabres looked physically pained now but nodded to himself. “Sorry, beautiful girl. It’s been a good ride. You were never comin’ out of this in one piece.”

“What did you say?” Nath asked from down on the main deck.

“Can you cut through the mast?”

“From the base?”

The captain grimaced. “Yes.”

“Does my sword look like a lumber saw to you?”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“Again, yes, I can,” Nath said in annoyance. “But it will take at least an hour. This idiot’s been itchin’ to shoot somethin’ all day.” He looked to Ro’aan. “Have him blast through the damn thing.”

“My ammo is limited,” Ro’aan protested. “Yours isn’t.”

“You got at least one round in each’a those guns?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then, your ammo ain’t limited. You got enough to take warnin’ shots at me, you got enough to do somethin’ useful and cut this boat down to size.”

“Oh!” Lygdaz exclaimed, realization lighting zir dead eyes with a rare flare of emotion.

“What?” Damo said. “You have a different idea?”

“No.” Lygdaz let out a chuckle. “I just realized what the first part of the message actually said. If you’re in a standard-sized northern vessel, do not attempt the jungle passage. Your boat is too tall.”

“Oh, really?” Damo rounded on zir. “You don’t fuckin’ say!”

“You’re the one who’d been in this jungle before, Sazuman,” Lygdaz pointed out. “You could have told us.”

“I’m not a boat person—or a tree person, for that matter. I wasn’t storin’ estimated measurements of everythin’ in my head.”

“Not a tree person?” Lygdaz repeated. “You grew up in a tree.”

“That’s different.”

“Ostia, spend me dry!” Xabres’s forehead thunked into the foredeck rail. “Do you folks do anything but fight?”

Lygdaz had opened zir mouth to shoot something back at Damored when ze paused and peered into the green beyond her. “Is that the same bird from before?”

Following Lygdaz’s gaze, Isa was grudgingly impressed that ze had managed to spot the flap of green wings among so many layers of green. Sweet mango wasn’t alone this time. A second bird followed in his wake, deep turquoise where Sweet Mango was green, and white on the front where Sweet Mango was yellow.

“Great,” Nath said, “and it brought its demon friend.”

“No, no,” Damo said, stepping between Nath and the birds as Sweet Mango lit on the rail and his blue companion came in for a landing. “Nath, this is—”

Bang! 

Isa snapped around to look at Ro’aan, thinking for a moment that the Zarkadian had taken a shot at the birds. But he hadn’t. All his guns were holstered. And the sound had been subtly different from a gunshot, more familiar. Animantic. The blue bird had transformed just as it cleared the boat rail—and a young woman knelt on the deck, black curls and turquoise cloak settling gracefully around her, echoing the feathers of her animal form.

“—Miorei,” Damo finished with an admonishing look at Nath, “master animancer and messenger to the queen of Lothmedi.”

Miorei was clearly some type of Wildermyn but unlike any found further north. All Wildermyn Isa knew withheld their gender from strangers, concealing their sexually dimorphic features under many layers of fabric. This one’s light dress clung snuggly above her hips and scarcely covered a pair of small brown breasts. Uncurling, she stood taller than the Wildermyn upriver, taller than Lygdaz, just reaching Isa’s chin. The shell-sized spots on her face were far too big to be called freckles, varied shapes slotting into each other to form a pattern like a net over her nose and eyes. Reticulated.

“You sent Sweet Mango back,” she said as the bird in question fluttered to her shoulder and cuddled in her curls. Her archaic dialect was easier to understand in person than it was in writing. “So, you got my message? Why didn’t you wait for the canoes like I told you?”

“Oh!” Isa could have slapped himself. If Lygdaz’s belated translation was right and big bark basket had referred to the Waning Ibis, then, “The small bark baskets were canoes!”

“The snake-shifter, I presume?” Miorei gave Isa a vaguely despairing glance before looking over the listing boat with its cracked mast. “So, Damored, this is the crew you bring the queen?” The sigh that followed needed no translation. “Spirits help us.”

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