Aylaniś had a solution for his loss; offering up more. And wrinkled her nose at the mess.
She’d always been the tidy sort, Našobok considered around a smiling mouthful of the nut-sweet delicacy. In truth he’d been smiling since he’d whistled into the moist dawnLands air and heard the answer: I am here, lovemate. And would keep that smile as long as the three of them could tangle in their own tipo, with their own small Fire crafted just outside the doorflap, smouldering as happily as they were.
What can’t you get used to?” Palatan asked.
With a beringed middle finger Našobok reached out and traced, without touching, the newest Mark scarified and stained, ebon and white and golden, upon Palatan’s forehead. “This.”
That brow twisted, ever so slightly. “I’m not sure I’m used to it, either.”
“But a long time coming.”
Their eyes met. “It was.”
Silence, turgid with more things than could be easily counted. Comfortable, and not.
“But to this”—tossing back a stray lock of bistre that had come loose, Našobok offered their hearth a generous portion of his nutcake—“I would gladly be accustomed. Are you sure you won’t part with your recipe? Or at the very least, come and cook for me?”
“Not likely,” Aylaniś retorted. “I’ve seen that tiny den where you and your wyrhmates keep your cooking hearth.”
They’d set up camp in a favoured place: a small, quiet ravine well set back from the busy festivities within the great bowl. Of course, Inhya had offered the hospitality of her own dens despite knowing the answer: for People a’Šaákfo, caverns were for winter shelter. Summers were for wandering beneath Sky.
Even if, in dawnLands, the thick arms of standingKin only sometimes let Sky pass unhindered. Even now, the last of Sun’s light merely filtered through, turning their surroundings into the colour of Sea and storms. A clutch of twisted, persistent trees were rooted into the rock on either side of the ravine, set opposite each other yet with branches reaching across.
How very apropos, Našobok thought, peering up then tendering that fond look upon his companions.
He had been too long away.
“And you know perfectly well all she can cook is nutcake.” Palatan—beautiful, quietly dangerous, and lazy—had his own mouth stuffed with said delicacy.
Aylaniś gave him a mock scowl; Palatan smirked and reached for another piece. She smacked his hand and pointedly offered the basket to Našobok.
“Ai!” Našobok suddenly leaned back, dusted crumbs from his hands and accepted the drinking skin from Palatan, taking a hearty gulp. Tulapaiś, a ferment of šinc’teh and mare’s milk, drank smooth as Seawater poured over oiled planking, with a heady kick at the end; it was another thing not easily obtained even on a ship as wide travelled as his. “I wish I could have been there to see the old she-viper have her rudder twisted!”
This time, Aylaniś and Palatan exchanged glances. Našobok noted it, his mouth twisting in puzzlement as he chewed. “Don’t tell me you feel sorry for that one.”
“N’da!” It was almost angry. Palatan shrugged, repeated, quieter, “N’da. I have little enough sorrow in my heart for Chogah. She deserved what she got and more.”
“More, indeed. You should have killed her,” Aylaniś said, low. “You’ll have to, one Sun.”
“That Sun is not upon us, nor was it then.”
There was a flash in Aylaniś’s dark eyes, one Našobok wouldn’t have faced down for all the rutting followed by nutcake. “For the good of our Clan, for the tribes a’Šaákfo, you should have—”
“My chieftain.” Soft, but edged. Unyielding. “You know I will say no more to this.”
Našobok focused on the overarching branches. On this matter he sided with Aylaniś. Chogah had sown her poison deep into one she should have held as equal, had clutched the horns of Alekšu nigh to ruin; merely the beginnings of why she held a place close atop Našobok’s own “better dead” tally. More than she deserved, to be sent to Stars and Fire, and better still to scatter her ashes to Wind, a bargain to ensure her foul Spirit couldn’t whistle up further damage than she already had done.
Yet Palatan Saw things few could. Save, again, Chogah. Spit her over coals. Našobok had learned along a hard and circumspect path that Palatan was right more than wrong about such things.
It didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
“You will stay in our tipo through First Running?”
Našobok started, looked up to see Aylaniś, her eyes suspiciously bright, offering him the basket again. Ai, Palatan was made of sterner stuff. Našobok felt squishy just contemplating the possibility of Aylaniś all teary-eyed.
“Of course he will.” Palatan grabbed another nutcake and flashed the brilliant smile that could still weaken Našobok’s knees. “Where else?”
Where else? Not only the smile, but the talk teased at soft, misted memory; another lifetime surely. Curled up in a bedhollow at the heart of the caverns a’Šaákfo, feeling the heat radiate up from the caldera’s cavernous foundations, wrapped about his lovemates with bairns curled like pups to head and foot. For one who had set his face against currents of caste and Clan, who had gotten all too used to walking an outlier’s path and occupying a solitary hammock on a lone voyage, the tactile, close scent and sense of Clan had almost been enough to sink Našobok’s heart into Earth and Fire.
Almost.
Fire had tried to claim him, had scorched his heart long ago, but he was River’s—had always been River’s. And the only part of Her touching the plains and hills a’Šaákfo was a cold, fingerling of Her mighty flow. The only craft small enough to ride Her was a skin-and-sinew kaik Našobok had learned to make from iceLands folk. No soundings dark and deep, no fierce-salt Wind to fill hair and sails, no wide horizon to chase…
Life was not life when your heart was hacked into small, ragged pieces.
There had been comfort with his lovemates and in their places; the peace and intimacy of close Kin: caressing Palatan’s Dreamings from him, Aylaniś’s melange of softness and flint, reedy voices calling him “Uncle” and
