The Asazi’s eyes glimmer with smothered laughter. “Knowing I’m watching you won’t make you nervous?”
“Oh, it will,” Salo admits, “but if you’re with me, then I can watch you too. It’s the unknowns I dislike.”
The idea of traveling with the Asazi goes wrongly down Ilapara’s throat. “Are you sure you want her with us?” she says to Salo, then looks the Asazi over with suspicious eyes. “I mean, how much can you really trust her? She’s the queen’s Asazi, for Ama’s sake. An assassin to boot. Probably as devious as they come.”
This only seems to amuse the Asazi. “Quite the team you’ve assembled. A she-warrior and an outworlder. I must say they have proven rather capable, but I wonder what your chief and clanspeople would make of them.”
“Don’t forget the big cat,” Ilapara says, moving her weapon from one hand to the other. “And call me a she-warrior one more time, and I’ll make you eat this spear.”
“Wait, how do you know I’m an outworlder?” Tuk says.
Salo quickly intervenes. “I was given discretion to find my own traveling companions, Si Asazi. In fact, I was forced to do so. No one has any right to be upset about who I’ve chosen.”
“Of course,” the Asazi says. “I meant no offense.”
“That’s good to know. Now what will it be? I have nothing against you for doing your mystic’s bidding, even if it’s spying on me, but I’d rather you did your spying where I can keep an eye on you.”
“And if I refuse?”
Salo smiles without humor. “That is your prerogative, of course. But remember: I wield the Void now. I may lack experience with it, but eventually I’ll find ways of making your job very difficult. If you come with me, however, I’ll cooperate; then we can both do our jobs quickly and return home. What do you say?”
Schemes and machinations glitter behind the Asazi’s eyes as she considers the offer, but then she shrugs, like it all means nothing to her. “All right. I’ll come with you.” And then her voice sharpens. “So long as you remember that I’m not one of your guardians. I am an Asazi apprenticed—”
“Yes, yes, I know how this goes,” Salo says. “You’re an Asazi apprenticed to the queen, and you won’t stoop so low as to serve one such as me, and so on and so forth. Let’s pretend you’ve said all of that so we can get to patching our wounds.” Salo shoots a worried look toward the ship’s bow. “And looking for the sailors, who I think are hiding somewhere belowdecks.”
This makes the Asazi chuckle a little. “As you wish, Yerezi-kin.”
“Ah, a sense of humor,” Tuk says, listing his head appraisingly. “I suppose I can learn to like her.”
“You better watch yourself, Asazi,” Ilapara tells the young woman. “Because I’ll be watching you.”
The Asazi shrugs again. “I expect no less from a pilgrim’s guardian.”
That response annoys Ilapara, but she bites her tongue.
“Now that we’ve cleared that up,” Salo says with fake cheer, “allow me to formally introduce you to the team, Si Asazi.” He goes on to do exactly that, and then he says, “As for me, you can call me Salo. And you are Si Alinata, are you not? I remember you from my awakening. You were one of the queen’s honor guards.”
“The most riveting awakening I have ever attended,” she tells him. “Alinata is fine. You outrank me, after all.”
“Old habits,” Salo says. “All right, then. Welcome to the team, Alinata. Even though you’re a spy and you’re not really part of it. But welcome anyway.”
The Asazi’s presence will not be easy to tolerate, but Ilapara vows right then not to let it unsettle her.
But that doesn’t mean I should let my guard down, she tells herself. After all, if the queen’s intentions are pure, why would she send an assassin to spy on us?
36: Kelafelo
Namato—Umadiland
Akanwa is what she names the Faraswa girl. It means “she who was found” in Izumadi and is typically reserved for children abandoned when they are still too young to speak their own names.
Granted, the girl has seen six comets, so if she once had a name, it’s likely she knows it, but a slave takes whatever name their new master gives to them, and the girl knows to accept hers without question.
In the first weeks after Akanwa’s arrival, Kelafelo treats her as the Anchorite commanded. She makes sure the girl is fed and bathed. She sleeps next to her every night. She even grows to tolerate her quiet, lamblike presence and the way she’s always looking down at her fidgeting hands. She is outwardly gentle and kindly with the slave girl, but deep in her heart she allows no true affection to bloom, because no one will ever replace her daughter.
Urura was a spirited and curious soul, always running her hands over everything as if she could understand the world only if she touched it. Kelafelo even had to scold her on several occasions for attempting to touch the embers of a crackling fire. She was everything good in Kelafelo’s universe, the source of her joy, her purpose for living.
But Akanwa . . . the poor girl is almost a nonentity, quiet and unobtrusive to a fault, as if someone beat into her the compulsion to leave as little a footprint in the universe as possible. She plays no games, asks no questions, never speaks unless directly spoken to, and even then replies only with one-word answers.
She quietly shadows Kelafelo as she performs her chores, but not so close as to loom. When Kelafelo sits outside the hut with quills, gourds of ink, and sheaves of parchment, outlining her Axiom in carefully arranged ciphers, Akanwa lurks inconspicuously in the background. Kelafelo almost worries that the girl will trip and fall into some crevice in the fabric of space and disappear entirely.
Months after her arrival, on a rainy afternoon, Kelafelo finally glimpses the hint of a person buried somewhere inside the girl.
The Anchorite has left for the newly revived village of Namato to offer her healing services—as she used to do before the attack—and Kelafelo is seated by the table beneath the south-facing window, reading through one of the Anchorite’s volumes of sorcery. She lifts her gaze and notices the girl sitting cross-legged by the door, watching as fat raindrops burst on the compound’s barren earth.
Something in her crimson eyes catches Kelafelo’s attention, a certain yearning she’s never seen there before, as if the rain has taken the girl to some distant memory from a life she knows she’ll never see again. That look breaks Kelafelo’s heart.
“Do you want to go outside?” she says before she can think to leave things be.
The girl immediately withdraws into herself like a snail retreating into its shell, and whatever light Kelafelo saw dancing in her eyes snuffs itself out. Patent fear replaces it, like the girl thinks she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t have been. “No,” she says, shaking her head with force.
Kelafelo closes the book she was reading. “It’s all right if you do. I used to dance in the rain as a child myself. It can be a lot of fun.”
Akanwa’s gaze slides back outside, a hint of the yearning returning to her eyes.
That decides things for Kelafelo. She stands up from the table. “Come. I’ll go with you.”