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they
would certainly make her sleepy. Perhaps she could finish the voyage
unconscious. She quickly drank it all.
Zanja said to Silver, squatting beside him, "I want to ask you some
questions.
Would that be impolite?"
Silver laughed. "Your people must be stiffer than mine."
Zanja looked sorrow-struck, as though she had lost her tribe only yesterday.
And
in fact she had, thought Seth. But she could not bear the disorientation of
the
thought and turned her gaze to the black line of cliffs.
She heard Zanja say, "How long has your tribe lived in this harbor, the place
the Shaftali call 'Secret'?"
Seth's family had been in Basdown before history began, and it had not even
occurred to her to wonder how long that had been. Silver said, "The Essikret
used to live in Hanish Harbor, until the Shaftali waged war on us and drove
us
away."
Seth felt too dull to be shocked by this outrageous statement, but she looked
at
the two speakers in time to see Zanja sit sharply back on her heels. "But
G'deons have protected the border tribes for four hundred years!"
"It happened long ago."
"Before Mackapee? Before the Law of Shaftal?"
"Long ago," Silver said once again, "but we remember."
Zanja was silent. At last she said, "Because Grandmother Ocean remembers?
Because she was alive when it happened?"
Seth's stomach gave a vile twist, and she said desperately, "Don't talk about
her! Please!"
Zanja said in surprise, "Talking about water magic makes you sick? I'll be
more
careful."
Soon Seth dozed. She half awoke when Zanja and Silver discussed a long-ago
time
when the cliffs to the west of Secret Harbor had collapsed. Then she dreamed
that a cliff fell on her, but its rocks became water, and a monstrous wave
crushed her, and she drowned. When she awoke, night had fallen, Silver had
left,
no lanterns burned, and the ship's rocking seemed almost tolerable. No one
moved
across the starlit deck. Zanja stood leaning on the rail, though she must
have
been exhausted. She gazed northward, towards the mountains of her people.
Do you think I never felt responsible for someone's death?
Clement had said those words, when Seth thought she couldnÆt endure the
horror
of Zanja's sudden, icy death. But Seth had not understood then what Clement
meant by responsibility. Clement had sent her friends to die, even though she
knew those deaths served no good purpose. So she had lived most of her life,
until just a few months ago, when she finally made the fighting stop. Seth
understood now, for she had brought Damon with her, and he had been killed,
and
she continued to watch it happen, over and over, trying to undo it, to think
of
what she should have done to save him. Yet Damon continued to be dead. As
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Zanja
stood watch, looking towards the far-away mountains that were said to hold up
the sky, did she see her people dying, over and over? Did Clement see every
death also, each one unforgotten, each one a scouring wound across her poorly
armored heart? So the habits of war destroyed them, even when the war left
them
alive.
"No more deaths," Seth said. "Not even one." This was the determination that
drove Clement, that drove Zanja, that drove Emil, and that must drive them
all.
Not desire for justice, not yearning for understanding, nor any other passion.
Zanja's head did not turn, yet she said, in that uncanny way of fire bloods,
"If
we are to desire anything, then we must accept failure."
Seth sat up cautiously, her head spinning. But the ship's deck had ceased its
insane writhing and only moved gently. Seth lay her palms flat upon the
oil-impregnated wood. This ship was made from the bones of trees, and the
trees
were made from earth. Here they floated, at the mercy of the sea and sky, on
a
ship that was Shaftal.
For two interminable days the ship lingered by the hazardous coast, waiting
for
the proper wind, tide, and light with which to enter the hidden harbor. In
the
meantime, the sailors cast their nets, gutted the catch, and preserved the
fish
in salt. Once, they brought in a single fish big enough to feed everyone on
the
ship, destroying the net in the process. Its red flesh tasted like nut paste.
The Speaker of the Ashawala'i and the Speaker of the Essikret talked with
each
other for hours at a time. Seth joined the fish-gutting crew, and then a
sailor
showed her how to mend nets. Every time a net was used, it must once again be
mended, but Seth didn't mind: some tools, to be useful, must be fragile.
She drank a great deal of water, which tasted strongly of the oak casks. She
even ate solid food. Sometimes nausea returned, but she could dispel it again
by
reminding herself of the solidity of the ship. She told Zanja about Damon,
about
his death, and about her guilty grief. She wept while she talked, and Zanja
sat
beside her, holding her hand, saying none of the stupid things that people
usually say.
"I didn't save my people," Zanja said later. "I couldn't bear to do nothing,
but
knew I must. So I kept hesitating, torn between unendurable outcomes, until
my
time ran out."
Seth also tried to avoid saying any of the stupid things that people usually
say. "Two hundred years before the massacre, what could you have done?"
"My people remembered things through stories. I could have told Arel a story,
for him to tell the next Speaker, and so on for ten generations, until it
came
to me. The Speakers are always fire bloods, and they would recognize the
story's
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