“Exactly,” said Bear, turning to grin at Xulai, his eyes crinkled into mere slits, his neck muscles bulging, his eyebrows rising up at the outer ends to lose themselves in his hair. Aside, perhaps, from Abasio, whom Xulai considered very handsome, and Xulai’s young friend Bartelmy, Bear was the handsomest man Xulai had ever seen, except when he laughed. Then he looked like a monster mask, all teeth, eyebrows, and looming muscle. Even at his quietest, there was always something a little uncertain about Bear.
Nonetheless Xulai returned Bear’s smile while receiving a glance from Abasio that said: They’re not lying, but there’s something weird going on.
Abasio lowered one eyelid. A half wink, one that promised conversation later.
Xulai thought, What do we call this kind of deceit? Not sleight of hand. Sleight of tongue, perhaps? Tortuosity. Blabification? They’re protecting me, but they don’t say why. They know I won’t question them. They taught me not to. One day, though . . . One day she and her guardians would tell one another the truth. Not now. Without these two, she would have had no family at all. Better to keep silent about one’s doubts at the moment. Legami durs kannak e’burs. Tiny roots break great stones. The two Tingawans were her great stones. She could not eat away at them with even the smallest roots of doubt. Not Precious Wind, slender as a willow, with silken almond skin and long black hair swimming with blue lights; not Great Bear, with his fierce eyes and curling mouth, his body apparently made entirely of blades and stone. Except for Bear’s gambling and Precious Wind’s emphasis upon self-discipline, she could find no fault with either.
In this room, her schoolroom, they had taught her the culture and language of Tingawa; how to play the ondang, the stringed instrument of Tingawa; how to sing the native songs and tell the native stories; how to make and read maps, mix medicines, set broken bones, help at childbirth. These subjects were taught to all women, though nothing prevented Tingawan women from studying anything else that interested them. Since Xulai was of the royal blood, though only remotely, she also learned many of the things men were taught: the history of the world—that is, the history of Tingawa, since other parts did not really matter; woodcraft; fighting with weapons and without; the stories of the Before Time when mankind brought doom upon itself by worshipping the Great Seducers, the evil gods, ease machines. She learned of the Big Kill. The ease machines had something to do with the Big Kill, but she had not been told what. They taught her warfare theory and battle strategy. And, of course, the princess had taught her many other things that, possibly, even Bear and Precious Wind did not know she knew, things that Xulai would “understand later.”
None of which had anything to do with the information they had given her just now. The only pertinent thing that had been said recently, by anyone, was that death changed things. Death had come, so it was inevitable that changes would occur very soon.
That night, when the duke, whom she had always called “Cousin,” as she had been told to do, unexpectedly came to wish her good night, he sat beside her on the bed, wiped his eyes with an already sodden handkerchief, and told her he was sending her away from Woldsgard Castle.
“Now that my wife is dead,” he said, clenching his teeth to keep from weeping, “now that my sweet princess is gone, we must make provision for your future, Xulai. Prince Lok-i-xan and I had planned that Great Bear and Precious Wind would take ship from Wellsport and escort you home to your kinsfolk in Tingawa. This continuing war with the Sea People makes that trip very dangerous . . .”
“Do you know the reason for the war, Cousin?”
He shook his head in confusion, his set speech interrupted by this. “Ah. Well, they want men to stop fishing, to stop sailing, to stop swimming in the sea—for all anyone knows, stop playing on the beaches as children. We have few translators, and those we have are uncertain about most of what the Sea People say or mean by what they say.”
“So we don’t know?”
“We really don’t, no.” He pocketed the sodden handkerchief and took up his speech once more. “At any rate, the overland route through the great forested mountains north of Kamfels, followed by sea travel between the islands that scatter the Blue-Ice Straits, is lengthy, arduous, often fatal. The great ice bears that were thought to be extinct have returned, far larger and fiercer than before.
“The far southern sea route, however, is still open. It requires a long journey east, then an even longer journey southward before one comes to a safe port. From there, one plays a kind of floating hopscotch from little island to little island. The so-called ‘new islands,’ those that have come up from the bottom of the sea since the Before Time, make such journeys shorter, though some are little more than exposed pours of cracked lava. I’m told one can sail across the southern end of the ocean to the western continents without leaving sight of land of one kind or another. We have decided, Precious Wind and I, to attempt that journey but to do it in stages, gradually and carefully. Luckily, there are good places to perch along the way, and you . . . will be safer away from here—”
“Because Prince Rancitor is still after
