“Another pretty problem, Alekšu, and this one yours in particular. To need your predecessor, all the while wishing you could see the end of them.”
“Or your successor.” Pointed.
“Ai, we are bound too close by too many things.” Chogah snorted. “Listen. Deep in her heart, Anahli knows what Tokela is. Perhaps more than we can. And”—this with a soft sneer—“she’s listening to us right now, outside the tipo.”
“I WON’T say anything. I swear it.”
“If you do,” Chogah said, mixing up another cup of spicebark, “we’ll make sure you are unable to bring forth even the memories.” She held out the cup.
For a half breath Anahli wondered if she intended to carry out the threat here and now. Chogah kenned the suspicion. As if in challenge, she kept holding out the cup.
Eyes narrowing, Anahli crossed her arms.
“Ai, if both of you were any more stiff-necked, I could break you with a slap!” Palatan growled and, snatching the cup from Chogah, downed it in one gulp. “Take mine. I wouldn’t bother poisoning you! I’d rather drag you behind my horse!”
Ai, he was angry, no question. “I didn’t intend any—”
“Didn’t you? You didn’t walk away, kept listening. More fool me for closing my nose and ears, and for making open talk of such things. While Chogah bides thrice the fool for knowing you were there, yet going on—”
“By the time I knew she was there, it was too late—”
“Wait!” Anahli protested. “Are there are still shamanKin? Are—?”
Palatan’s fingers slapped against Anali’s lip, held firm. “Understand this, ehši. I will alter your memory if I must.”
“We might anyway,” Chogah grumbled.
Palatan shot her a foul glare, turned it upon Anahli, and only then took his fingers away.
“But…” Anahli saw his hand twitch again, changed what she had been about to say. “Yeka, what do I know?”
“And that is the question of thisSun’s rising.” Chogah, sarcastic.
“Until you do know, you cannot ask,” Palatan raised one finger, this time, pressed firm against Anahli’s mouth as she started to protest. “It’s not only what you might know. It’s also what that knowledge will do to Tokela.”
Any talk died in Anahli’s throat. Palatan nodded, his gaze hardened into malachite. Suddenly Anahli wondered why she’d never, until then, noticed the tiny blue-to-orange ombre of flames behind. “Anahli. Do you understand?”
Ai, she was afraid she did.
“Ask no further questions.” Those eyes softened, and Palatan dropped his chiding hand, turning away. He looked… ai, weary. Old, somehow.
“Chogah, leave me. I’ve decisions to make, and you make me tired even when I don’t. Aylaniś should be back shortly, and…” His nose wrinkled. “You, too, daughter. Go. We’ll speak later. After you wash; you reek of fish.”
DAWN CAME in, soft but inexorable, chasing dark to the corners of Sky’s realm. Munro’s drum had long since gone quiet, the old one retired to his hammock. Even Wind lay still, napping in dawn’s embrace as ša often did.
And like some avatar of Wind, Tokela also lay sleeping, swathed in the furs and Našobok’s blanket.
Našobok had stood at the flung-back flap of his hold stair, He’d watched the Moons set, first Brother then His siblings, each behind the trees, as Sky turned from indigo, to murky Smoke, then to coals as Sun rose. Let Wind waft over his bare skin. Taken Smoke from his treasured pipe.
And watched Tokela sleep.
Sprawled on the pallet below, Tokela muttered and cast one arm upwards, twitching and lost in some other place—no doubt more astride dark’s Mare than any sweet and steaming oških dreams. It shot a pang through Našobok so jagged, it was a wonder it didn’t draw blood.
Take me with you.
Amongst wyrhling and yakhling lay the favoured cache for undesirables: outliers often came from the forbidden. For as long as Našobok could remember, River had surged through his veins, driven him, and while what possessed him merely glimmered in comparison to what burned, hot and high, within Palatan, still Našobok’s blood flowed with an undertow for which he had given… everything.
Thankfully, the undertow threatening to swamp Tokela had been sated. For now, anyway.
Sometimes an Elemental just has to… fix to something. Be consumed by what is here, and present. Smoke, or sex, or Dance... like tinder to Fire’s touch. The flare and burn, then the ash.
Našobok had learned such things—first by accident then by practice, in myriad and intimate ways. He’d held Palatan during long, Spirit-ridden Moons passages, teased him back into thisnow with well-timed caresses. Had watched Lakisa change from indulgent, merry auntto time-raddled shade. Had held his sire down on a dark, storm-slick deck when Nechtoun, his Spirit lost in exposure and grief, had tried to do them both harm.
Either Tokela would ripen like to Palatan, throwback to Power most had no idea still existed—or, like Nechtoun, like Lakisa, Tokela’s Spirit would buckle beneath such promise and flee, leaving behind an emptiness no Power could fill. Until then would the dual edges remain: passion, expression, giving… withdrawal, hiding, panic.
Našobok had wondered; now he knew.
His heart kenned his own kind. He could not overtly wield Her Power, but he had learned to listen. To observe. To accept.
Beneath Take me with you lay another, deeper plea: Listen. Please. And accept what I, all too soon, will have to.
A light tap sounded upon the open hatch of his hold. Našobok started, spared a glance for Tokela and found him unmoved—no surprise there. Palatan too would sleep like the dead after such upheaval. With age and experience came self-possession; still, the Elementals were very Power-full.
Našobok wrapped in a blanket, and mounted the steep stair to find one of his wyrhmates waiting above.
“Kalisom,” Našobok smiled. “You’re back early. I expected to find Munro.”
“Ran out of gambling tender.” Kalisom gave a lift of his massive, bare shoulders and grinned. “And the playmate I chose was not so fair upon dawn as dark.”
With a chuckle, Našobok came on deck and folded shut the hold door behind.
“I left Munro to sleep. Wasn’t going to disturb you, either, but”—Kalisom jerked his ebon
