Mirage (19 page)

“You are wise, sister,” Nathif said. “Our two pharos remind us of the duality of all things. Many of us wear a golden hoop in one ear, to symbolize the circle of life from birth to night. In the other ear, we wear a triangle with its point down, to symbolize the greater internal riches we can discover as our spirits and hearts grow.”

And then, in the distance, Aluna heard drums. An energetic rhythm that set the blood dancing in her veins.

“Ah, the cappo’ra warriors have begun their afternoon practice session,” Nathif said. “Brother Dashiyn told me you would be willing to kill all the fish in the sea in order to see them.”

“I said nothing like that!” Dash grumbled.

Aluna headed toward the drums. “Let’s go see if he was right.”

A
LUNA STUMBLED THROUGH
one bubble room after another. Stylized patterns in bright reds, yellows, and oranges decorated the spherical walls. Occasionally a deep blue or green caught her eye, but she spared no time to examine the art. She’d have time for gawking later, after the cappo’ra training session was over.

Dash and Nathif followed more slowly, laughing at her enthusiasm. She let them. She knew how focused she became when there was a new fighting style to be learned. Her brother Anadar had to suffer through her obsession for years, as she begged to be taught the next shark-style form, the final dolphin-style technique, the advanced knife attacks.

The Aviars had taught her so much about Above World fighting, but their techniques had been designed for warriors with wings. The Equians’ styles looked interesting but relied on height and a physical power that Aluna could never hope to attain. How had the Serpenti adapted to fight? With their long, sinuous tails, maybe they were the most like Kampii.

The Serpenti fighters moved and twisted in a great circle inside a bubble that seemed devoted to fighting. Weapons hung on the walls — thick spears, slender swords, fascinating circles of silver hung in pairs. She wanted to study them all. But right now, the drumbeat called to her like a mythical siren. She could not resist its voice.

The drummers bobbed and weaved in the circle along with the fighters. Their tall drums bore the same colors and decorative patterns as the walls. Only a dozen warriors stood in the circle — adult men and women, three older Serpenti, and a handful of children. All of them swayed and clapped to the music, as if they were dancing instead of fighting. Their tails came in shades of tan and brown. Desert colors. But now she started to see patterns emerge: diamonds and stripes and spots of black and gold. Each one was different.

Aluna walked up to the circle slowly, not wanting to interfere with whatever ritual was happening. One of the children saw her, a young boy of eight or ten, and waved her over. He slithered to the side to make room.

Inside the ring, two Serpenti weaved as they faced each other, their long snake tails curling behind them like coiled whips. They bobbed to the rhythm, taking their Human torsos lower and lower until their fingers and forearms could brush the ground. Aluna held her breath.

One of the drummers changed her rhythm, and suddenly the sparring match began. Aluna expected the Serpenti to rear up on their snake bodies, to try to wrestle and overpower each other. Instead, the first warrior — a woman in her twenties — planted both her palms on the ground and stood on her hands. Her tail, freed of its job of supporting her weight, swung around in a wide arc, just like one of Aluna’s talon weapons!

The woman’s opponent, a much older man with rippling arm muscles, leaned backward so far that his short hair touched the ground. His torso seemed as flexible as his snake body. The woman’s tail swung right over him. If he hadn’t moved, it would have smacked him in the side. The man dropped his hands to the ground, shifted his weight, and swung his tail in a low arc toward the woman’s arms, attempting to knock her off her handstand. She saw it coming. She hopped onto her snake body just as his tail reached her hands.

Aluna stood there, trying to understand the concepts — how they shifted and when; how they used the drums; how they relied on the strength in their arms, but even more on the flexibility of their backs and bodies.

Kampii warriors sometimes used their tails to smack fish and stun them, but they never used their tails as a weapon against an equal foe. Tails were too important, too easily ripped and torn by sharks and Deepfell. Serpenti tails were longer and heavier than Kampii tails, but similar in a lot of ways.

A bright light burned like the sun inside her.
Hope
. Even after she grew her tail, she might still be able to fight in the Above World. She might still be useful.

She wanted to yell with joy and cry with relief, but both would have to wait. Right now, she needed to watch the rest of the match, to memorize every move, every strategy. By the end, her body ached to leap into the ring, to dance and fight along with everyone else. But even as she despised courtesy in general, she respected warrior traditions. She didn’t belong in this ring. Not yet.

The match ended when the older man managed to wrap his snake body around the woman’s torso, pinning her arms to her sides. Aluna wouldn’t be able to perform that move with her Kampii tail, but she’d be more mobile. Anadar always said that every fighting technique could be improved by making it your own. By figuring out how to make it work best for you. And that’s exactly what she intended to do.

After six more matches, the last few involving the children, the group broke into pairs to practice techniques, and the cappo’ra master slid toward Aluna.

“Sister Aluna, you are welcome in our circle,” the man said. “I am Master Sefu.” He had skin as dark as her father’s and seemed almost as old. He kept his head slick, a style popular with many Kampii hunters, since it reduced drag in the water. Sefu’s body was thick with muscle, and he towered over her, yet his eyes were kind.

She gushed at him then. Words spilled out of her mouth in an endless stream. Her history, her love of learning new styles of fighting, her studies with the Aviars. And, before she could stop herself, she told Master Sefu, a man she’d just met, that she was growing a tail. It was a crucial part of her plea, the reason she wanted —
needed
— to learn this style.

When she was done, the Serpenti master smiled at her, nodded, and then spoke to someone behind her. “Healer Nathif, when will you allow your subject to begin training?”

Aluna closed her eyes. She hadn’t realized that Nathif was behind her. And if Nathif was there, so was Dash. They’d probably heard everything she’d just said. Aluna turned slowly, afraid to look at his face.

“I would probably earn myself a concussion if I tried to stop her,” Nathif said. “But make sure our bloodthirsty sister drinks as much water as possible. A girl cannot live on battle cries alone. And if she looks dizzy, make her refrain from at least one fight. If you need to tie her to a post, do it.”

“The post will not be necessary,” Master Sefu said. “Sister Aluna, when would you like to start?”

Aluna looked up — not at the master but at Dash. His face bore no expression. None at all. Not the happiness he showed when she awoke, not the seriousness when he said farewell to her in the desert. Just
nothing
. She should have told him about her tail during their trek through the desert. She’d had time. That he had found out like this . . .

“What are you waiting for?” Dash said blankly. His eyes were dark pinpricks, like a shark’s. Then he turned and walked away.

She felt a weight crushing her chest, squeezing her lungs and ribs and trying to snap her in two. Her eyes filled, but she managed to stop even a single tear from falling. She’d apologize for not telling him. She’d find some way to make him forgive her. She’d do whatever it took.

But now, in this moment, she needed to sweat. To move. To fight.

She turned to Master Sefu. “Now,” she said. “I’d like to start now.”

After she’d practiced herself sick with the Serpenti cappo’ra and scrubbed her skin clean in the sand bath beside the practice area, she went looking for Dash. She found him in the Healer’s Hall, sitting by the bizarre web of hammocks that held Tayan off the ground.

Aluna touched one of the many bolts anchoring the contraption to the rounded walls. “What is all of this?”

The silence after the question spread like a great chasm between her and Dash.
Please answer
, she thought at him.
Please
.

“Equians must not lie down for long, or their own body weight begins to crush their organs,” Dash said. “I was able to tell our hosts and help them construct a healing basket like the ones we use in the herd.”

Aluna studied Tayan’s sleeping face. Even in the lantern light, there seemed to be more color on her cheeks.

“She’s doing better,” she said.

“Yes. The infection is gone,” Dash said. “Nathif says she will live, although she may never recover her former strength.”

Aluna closed her eyes and let her forehead touch Tayan’s flank. She hadn’t realized how worried she’d been until just now. “Losing strength is going to really irritate her,” she said finally.

Dash chuckled softly. “You have no idea.”

“She’ll find a way to be just as dangerous,” Aluna said. “It might take her some time, but she’ll come up with something.”

“Just as you will, when you have your tail,” Dash said.

She turned to face him, her heart aching as if he’d stabbed it. She wanted him to be angry. She understood anger. She’d spent her whole life dealing with her father’s rage, learning how to throw it back at him. Dash’s quiet hurt confounded her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have told you.”

“You did not trust me,” Dash said.

She winced. “Of course I trust you. It wasn’t that. I didn’t want to burden anyone with it. Worrying is such a waste of energy. And Hoku and Calli, they expect me to be strong. If they knew that I’d be useless soon —”

“Useless?” Dash jumped to his feet, his dark face finally showing signs of color. “When you broke my arm, was I useless?”

“No, never!” she said.

His dark eyes sparked. “Out in the desert, I called you one of the bravest people I knew. But you are also one of the stupidest.”

She jerked back, stung.

“You think your strength is in your arms? Your legs? Your body?” He paced back and forth in the small room. “I grew up surrounded by Equians. All taller, all stronger, all faster, all better equipped to live in the desert. Did that make me useless?”

“No,” she said, softer. She never thought about his perspective. Tides’ teeth, how could she be so self-absorbed?

“You think your friends need you for your muscle, for the way you spin a spear? Would you love Hoku any less if he stopped playing with his tech?”

She thought of Hoku, of his freckled face and goofy grin, about his terrible swimming technique. There was nothing in the wide world that would make her love him less.

Dash stopped before her. He lifted his hands toward her shoulders, but dropped them to his sides without touching her. “Trust us. Honor us,” he said quietly. “Believe that we will pay you the respect you already pay us.”

He took a step closer. She forced herself to stare into the hot coals of his eyes.

“Regardless of your strengths or weaknesses,” he said softly, “you must believe that we love you.”

And then her face was in his hands. Tears streamed out of her eyes, and she heard herself sobbing and saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again. Dash’s arms wrapped around her, and she leaned into his shoulder.

“I don’t want to be weak,” she said. “I’m so scared of being weak.”

He held her close. “Everyone is weak sometimes. That is why everyone needs friends.”

D
ANTAI MET HOKU AND CALLI
at the horse enclosure, a fresh bandage on his foreleg. Hoku frowned. Dantai was supposed to be Shining Moon’s best chance of beating High Khan Onggur at the Thunder Trials. Going in wounded was going to seriously hurt his chances.

“Your leg!” Calli said. “How did it happen?”

Dantai limped up to the security pad on the enclosure’s gate. “One of Weaver Sokhor’s men,” he said quietly. “After time was called on the match.”