Rough, cheerful asides carried across the water upon the breeze. Damp and brisk, it made Anahli glad for the blanket over her shoulders. The elder had insisted she keep it; he’d several more and the gift would do him honour. That memory, and the crew clambering like birds upon the spars whilst swapping cheerful insults, returned the smile that had fled.
Ilhukaia was the ship’s name. Commingling-talk for “Surrender”. Her smile faded again. What had the ship’s master ever given up, after all? Ilhukaia was nothing akin to any surrender. More like escape. Insurgence. Defiance, winged and afloat.
Her fingers clenched upon the gifted blanket.
“What are you doing up here?”
Madoc’s sudden appearance echoed Anahli’s own inner question.
You heard the whistle, a snide, inward Anahli informed her. You want to see him, too.
N’da, I really don’t, she retorted.
“Anahli. They’re looking for you, you know.” Madoc might have grown taller, but his voice was still ahlóssa—particularly when it tilted upward into whinging. “Even the Spawn.”
Anahli had four younger siblings. She knew exactly what tone to take with a whinge. Propping one buttock against Overlook’s driftwood railing, she crossed her arms and raised one eyebrow. “Do you even know what Spawn really means?”
Madoc rolled his eyes.
“It’s not a nice term, where I come from. It suggests that someone is a thing, an ‘it’. Not wholly of People. That one was Shaped, made Other.”
Madoc looked uncomfortable.
“Like things in the forbidden places—”
“All right, all right!” Madoc’s cheeks had paled beneath his faded Marks. “I won’t. But he’s so—”
“Annoying? Like you’re annoying me, now, ahlóssa?”
A flush, this time. He was going to be quite a looker, when he grew up and stopped with this pretend-stone-face nonsense. Though, considering his parents…
“I’m here same as you. As these others”—Anahli gestured along Overlook where, indeed, people were gathering—“looking at the new arrivals.”
“I’ve no interest in outcasts.” Madoc’s sniff returned him straightaway into self-righteousness. “I’m looking for Tokela.”
They refuse to say the name we gave him. Another memory/reminder surfaced in Chogah’s voice. His dam came to us—it was her right, to come to her own grandmother’s People and ask for the Naming—but still those hidebound dawnLanders consider that forbidden, too!
Anahli let out a soft growl. She was going to smother, here.
And likely it was just what her dam had in mind.
Madoc peered at her—not tall enough to meet her gaze, though he was trying—then glanced down the walkway as if Tokela might be stowed away somewhere and she’d a hand in it.
“That’s him!” The hissed accusation intruded into Anahli’s reverie. Sliding her gaze sideways, she saw others crowding the best of the lookout perches. “There, in the canoe! He was own brother to Mound-chieftain, that one!”
“Was?”
“He’s Riverwalker. Wyrhling.”
Several mutters, one sounding above the rest, “Brother no more, then.”
The small group, from their Marks and garb, came of neighbouring Forestlodge.
“Old Nechtoun himself had to publicly disown his own second-born: outlier, clanless and”—down to a whisper—“River-claimed!”
Despite scorn, Madoc’s gaze went wide and fixed over the railing, towards Ilhukaia.
A long, husky scrape of wood against gravel and sand accompanied the whisper, drawing Anahli’s own gaze. River reflected Sky in a mix of bright and overcast, hazing not only the larger vessels at anchor, but a bark-lined canoe rocking in the shallows, bearing two figures. It lurched further as the frontmost one laid his oar into the canoe’s keel and uncurled from the prow. A Riverwalker’s oiled-hide longcoat fluttered in Wind’s breath, with quilled and beaded crimson glinting across broad shoulders. A thick mane of sleek bistre had been tailed back to hang from collar to midcalf hem. Barelegged and barefoot, pale leggings and boots tucked into the crook of one powerful arm, the wyrhling disembarked. River-claimed, indeed, for She seemed loath to let go, pulling heavy against long-legged strides as Her own sloshed for shore.
Našobok shouted a wonderful and giddy melange of tongues: Wyrh-talk, some a’Naišwyrh, mostly a’Šaákfo. He was laughing.
The canoe set off again. Back to the boat, errand accomplished.
As Našobok reached shore, a black-haired figure ran up and literally smacked into him. Boots and leggings were dropped onto the strand as, still laughing, Našobok lifted Palatan up into a fierce embrace. Anahli’s eyebrows lifted; she had supposed any memories of Našobok’s forelock scraping Sky were ahlóssa fancies.
Obviously not. Though it had been that long since he’d graced them with his presence.
Nevertheless, Anahli’s mouth tucked into a small grin as Našobok swung Palatan around easily as if he were ahlóssa. The grin broadened as Palatan smacked Našobok in the back of the head, only to slightly falter as the hand lingered, softening into a caress as Našobok relented and let him down.
The busy-talkers a length away, however, were not amused. “That is—”
“Unseemly, it is, consorting so with outliers.”
More were gathering, also looking as if they’d tasted sour fruit. Anahli wondered if their tongues would wag so free if she didn’t have the blanket covering her head and arms. No question, with River in one’s nose it was difficult to tell by smell even if, here and there, a waft of charred fern and copperwood lingered. Different from her own Clan’s scent; dryer, touched with sage and needlecreeper oil.
“You don’t like the wyrhling, do you?” Madoc had left off gawking to peer at Anahli instead. His voice was soft, wondering.
She didn’t answer.
“Šaákfo!” A snort from the other end of Overlook. “Who can make sensible talk with those?”
“Not only a’Šaákfo, but Alekšu.” Spoken with a hint of scandal. “And who can make sensible talk with those?”
“That is Alekšu? He looks to
