By the worried look that visits Salo’s face, he must be thinking what Ilapara is thinking. “That answers why they were so excited about the gauntlet,” he says. “They’ll be able to make more weapons just like it.”
“I’m counting on it,” Tuk says, evidently oblivious to their concern.
Ilapara scowls at him. “But why would you do such a thing, Tuk? Can you imagine the threat they could pose if all their warriors got their hands on one?”
Tuk huffs like that’s a ridiculous idea. “They won’t pose a threat to anyone who doesn’t threaten them. All they want is to live their lives without anyone coming here to bother them.”
“But what if they decide to go beyond that? With that kind of weapon, why wouldn’t they?”
“Sorry, Tuk,” Salo says, “but I’m going to have to agree with Ilapara. The weapon you’ve given these people could cause much suffering. They don’t call these the Redlands for nothing. An imbalance of power often leads to bloodshed.”
“I’m an outsider, I know,” Tuk says. “But hear me out, all right? What if I told you that the only reason these people continue to exist as they are is that they’ve always paid tribute to the KiYonte kings for protection? And yet they still lose people regularly to Umadi raids. This village is especially vulnerable since it’s practically in Umadiland. But that won’t have to be the case anymore. With what I’ve given them, they can fight back.”
Ilapara softens her expression, moved by his sincerity, but she still shakes her head. “Let’s hope it stays at self-defense. I shudder to think what would happen otherwise.”
“Ama forbid the warlords ever learn to make gauntlets of their own,” Salo adds.
“It won’t come to that,” Tuk says. “You’d need some extremely sophisticated machines to cast the type of charms we’re talking about, and you won’t find them in the Redlands. Also, the Tuanu don’t sell their charmed artifacts to outsiders. I wouldn’t have bartered my gauntlet otherwise.”
The ferrywoman comes up to the main deck with her other two sons, but instead of pulling some ropes or hoisting the wing structures like Ilapara expects them to, they all sit on the benches behind the arrayed musical instruments. The ferrywoman picks up the mbira, the oldest of her sons sits behind the drum set, and the other two pick up lyres of different sizes.
Ilapara trades baffled glances with Salo, Tuksaad just grins like he knows what’s coming, and at the bow, the Tuanu sailors begin to play.
First, the ferrywoman delivers a dramatic opener with her mbira; then her sons join in with percussion and strings. Instantly the most rousing music Ilapara has ever heard, and when the ferrywoman graces it with her powerful voice, she can’t help but laugh in delight at the sheer brilliance of it all. The music enraptures her so thoroughly she almost misses the moment everything starts coming to life around them.
The mysterious machines belowdecks begin to rumble. The ribbed winglike structures unfurl, stretching outward and upward as if to meet the suns. Ilapara realizes that a spirit must have impregnated the vessel, though she can’t tell where it could have come from.
Then the vessel steals into motion so gracefully there’s not even a tremor on the deck. The diaphanous wings flutter slightly with signs of life. Thin wisps of white-red light droop from the wing tips like delicate threads, swaying in the wind as the waterbird begins to sail away from the shore. Ilapara gapes, astonished, because she has never seen a spirit manifest in such a manner.
“I bet the view’s splendid from back there,” Tuk says, pointing astern, so the three of them venture there to watch the village’s triangular huts drift off into the distance. The skies are stained gold as the suns dip behind the woodlands in the west. A small crowd of Tuanu is standing by the docks to see them off; Salo waves at them and is visibly pleased when many wave back.
“It’s like we’re flying,” Ilapara says, failing to decide whether she should be elated or terrified. “By Ama, how fast can this thing go?”
“Probably half as fast as a moon-blessed warmount at a gallop,” Tuk says. “Except it never has to stop. We should reach the northernmost shores in less than two days.”
“But how is this happening?” Salo says, looking utterly perplexed. “Spirits expend themselves quickly unless hosted in a mind stone with a plentiful reserve of power to keep them going. I can feel the spirit moving the ship, but where’s the power coming from?”
“It might have something to do with the music,” Tuk suggests. “Maybe it conjures the spirit?”
Salo looks back at the ferrywoman and her sons. “The music is definitely how they’re controlling the spirit. I’m just not sure why it doesn’t expend itself with no obvious power source.”
“My knowledge of spirits is rather limited,” Tuk admits, “but speaking of which, I was told the Lightning Bird will make an appearance at some point during the journey. If you don’t want to commune with it, they said you can just ignore it . . . although that would be quite the wasted opportunity, wouldn’t it?”
“We’ll see,” Salo says with a distant look.
Ilapara is getting the hang of reading Tuk’s eyes; the guy is trying not to push, but he really wants Salo to commune with the spirit.
“Tuksaad,” she says to him, leaning against the gunwale and turning to face him. “Maybe you can answer my question now?”
“What question?”
“About how you know so much about this place.”
Looking out at the receding village, Tuk smiles. “Diligent study, I guess. Before I crossed the Jalama, I read every book I could find on the so-called Red Wilds. There aren’t many, but I was lucky to come across a few well-informed journals written by previous explorers.”
“And the languages?” Ilapara asks. “Did you learn those from journals too?”
“Hardly. I bought a language skill nexus in Ima Jalama and spent a few days staring at it. You could say I got the languages hypnotized into me. Painstakingly so.”
“A skill nexus?” Salo says, echoing her thoughts.
“An artifact of hypnotic Blood craft,” Tuk explains. “It can teach you certain skills, provided you’re smart enough to avoid getting trapped by its magic. Well, at least that’s what the Dulama merchant told me when I bought it from him. A part of me thought it was a hoax, but I was desperate.” Tuk shrugs, smiling. “Turns out he was right. Now I speak most of the continent’s languages.”
“So that’s what it’s called?” Salo says. “A skill nexus.”
“You’ve used one before?” Tuk asks, his forehead crinkled.
“Actually, I have one. It’s how I learned ciphers. A carving of a grove.”
“Mine was a tapestry,” Tuk says, which makes Ilapara’s ears prick.
Her maternal uncle, who trained her in the art of combat, used to tell her he acquired his skills from a magical cloth. Could this be what he meant? A skill nexus?
“You won’t find that kind of thing in the Enclave, you know,” Tuk says. “They can’t make them. They’ve gone so high level with their magic they’ve forgotten the first principles that make it possible. Educated fools, if you ask me.”