“I hope sleep comes easier to you on board Ilhukaia.”
“It always does.” There was a buoyancy underlying Našobok’s voice that had been absent during their journey. Tokela understood. His own heart had lightened as River’s voice had strengthened within him. Despite misgivings of what could happen, he could hardly wait to ride Her again.
As to riding… “What shall we do with Lioness?”
“I thought of sending her to Inhya. She was born of horseClan, you remember. It would be a more certain future for a worthy travelling companion than just trading her here. And fair enough exchange for stealing you.”
“You stole nothing! They didn’t want me. And my body and heart are mine to give.”
“Ai, sharpen your horns.” Našobok turned a half smirk upon Tokela. “When I was oskih I too chafed at restrictions.” The expression widened. “But was very glad of the freedoms, at that.”
Good humour restored, Tokela reached up and traced his fingers along the thin fur on Našobok’s cheek and throat and back through the thick length of bistre hair beneath the blanket.
“Hunh! One dark of rest and the rutty oških returns.” Našobok inclined his head against Tokela’s for a heartbeat. “Do you… well. Sense anything? Except for sleeping—and you needed it—I’ve seen you watching out. Waiting. Listening?”
Tokela shrugged and didn’t take his head from Našobok’s shoulder. Instead he looked into Fire’s eyes, breathed lightly the smouldering leaf, felt two voices swirl in his head, mixing as surely as heat and Smoke.
Soothing. Not wakening.
“And what, then, do you hear?”
“Very little. Stars are covered, River is close. I sense nothing. Yet.”
“Yet.” Našobok nodded. “A’io.”
They will know what we’ve done. She will send others.
She. Spoken with such fearful regard by all of them, but particularly the one who had claimed but denied Tokela, who had spoken of “mending” him as if he were a pot that had somehow broken.
What is broken? Fire again, speaking with Palatan’s voice; as if he lingered with them, curled up beside Našobok. So many meanings, but what meaning for the likes of you? Damaged, but not past reason. Wrecked like a craft on a sandbar, disconnected—and that the worst of all, for you keep turning away from ones who could help you.
Help? More like danger for others, Tokela replied, swift as an arrow’s flight. Your… co-tenant touched me, and almost couldn’t retreat.
From hold of Stars, not you.
They are in me, somehow. Danger lies in the very smell of my blood.
And that blood drawn forth by shards of breakage; by shattering of what promise is yours: a promise that now bleeds unclean and pools fallow in your Spirit. This spoke deep beneath Tokela’s feet, speaking with a twinned aspect of both Earth and River. To deny that promise is to refuse what you truly are.
Refusal, a’io. And also pure survival. He had spent so much of his existence asking—disputing. Spent even a normal maturity, he realised, shoring up closer to Našobok, in staving off and sequestering any hint of Spirit into a small knot of denial.
It had saved him. Until it no longer had.
Back to the same tangled pathways, only this time Tokela could actually See where they might take him, where they had taken him.
I know that what I am has hurt others.
It has also saved others. Would you sit in judgement upon your own actions? Do you even have that right?
A gentle hand took his chin, tilted it up; he found himself peering into Našobok’s storm-hued eyes, heard others stirring, saw dawn breaking into the far windows of the hostel. All of it telling Tokela he’d been… gone.
“Hunh. I thought as much. Come back to me, Star Eyes… what is this, eh?” Našobok’s fingers stroked along the fine, soft fur on Tokela’s jaw. “You’re getting awfully well grown, I see; from late bloom to full fruit. Your grandsire would have said an animal Spirit was rising too strongly through you.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” Tokela matched Našobok’s sudden grin with his own, albeit a self-conscious one. “Did he say that to you, then?”
“Often. As to bad? N’da, not bad, but you know our birthing-tribe. They’d call it presumptive, more like, taking upon ourselves what Spirit rightfully belongs to our animal brothers and sisters. I also grew my face fur early—like a half-wild horsetalker, Grandsire always groused. I finally told him he’d married into horseClans, so he had seeded my animal Spirit.”
“Did it make him angry?” Their mutual grandsire’s temper was legendary; Tokela had never felt the edge of it himself.
“To the contrary. He always respected strength, even if it rose as precociousness.”
Tokela laughed.
“I rather like yours, too.”
“Mine?”
“Strength.” The grin widened. “Precociousness. And I definitely fancy the look of this.” Našobok fluffed at Tokela’s jaw once more; that and the tone of voice tingled heat into the pit of Tokela’s belly. “But back to present matters.” Našobok’s voice lowered once more into hunting-talk. “You were… away. This won’t serve you well on any craft. Do the tall ones lurk? Or the Spirits? I thought River’s voice would aid—”
“It wasn’t Chepiś. Nor any of the Elementals… well, not exactly,” Tokela amended, thinking of the Fire-filled voice.
Našobok’s brows were twisting, almost comically so. Plain as plain his thoughts: Grandmother’s toes, what now?
“It’s… Palatan. He wants me to go there, to him.”
The breath leaked from Našobok in a long, low whistle.
“I’m not… Oh, Wolf, I’m not sure I can.”
27 – Eyes of Stars
They broke their fast and, while Našobok was chatting up the hostel’s caretaker—something about a very big fish—Tokela slipped out to see to Lioness.
Simple. No voices, no hovering anything wanting… well, whatever. Only the soothing sound of animalKin breathing and sighing over breakfast with flat molars crunching cured grasses; only the smell of horsehide as Tokela brushed Lioness until she gleamed. Dawn slid through the barn, sending motes of dust dancing upwards into the roof timbers. The little mare lipped
