Chapter Fifteen: The New Route

 

Kyosti was inclined to forget the argument he’d had with Sanji when the morning came, and it seemed Sanji agreed; neither of them brought up either Rokolo or the Leopard Queen as they ate their meal of pickled eggs, steamed greens and root vegetables.

“I wonder what we’re supposed to do now,” Sanji muttered when they finished. “It’s snowing a bit outside...Can we stay here or do you want to go out?”

Kyosti could tell by her tone that she didn’t want to go out into the cold, and he felt no desire to interact with the Seers more than he had to. “Let’s stay up here,” he agreed.

He made sure his pack was close and settled into wait. How long would it take them to find a new Seer? If they knew the previous Seer was dead, why hadn’t they picked a new one already?

For just a moment, he allowed himself to consider what would happen if he gave the knife to the Seers. 

But that was impossible.

Sanji had wandered over to the window. “Why do they hang bones from their houses?” she asked. “In the northern mountains, hunters will hang up the glowworms they catch. Is it the same reason? Kenjian Seers don’t do this.”

Kyosti thought for a moment. He had heard of this Seer tradition before, but had never thought much about why. Among the Innis, leaving a body or bones exposed to the sun after death was the height of dishonor; it would have to be buried into the sea. Perhaps it was the same thing? Perhaps they were even bird bones. 

Instead of saying all that, he only replied, “I don’t know.”

The snow intensified. Kyosti moved, worrying, to the window, even though he couldn’t see it. Sanji joined him, her arm brushing his.

“It’s been an unusually cold winter,” he told her. “The snow is coming early. If this keeps up, we’ll have to go north before we head west again.”

He felt Sanji turn her body to look at him. “Why’s that? If we go west, we can swing around the southern edge of the Medlyn Sea.

Like he didn’t know that. That was the way he had come! “The new Seer and I won’t be able to take that passage soon,” he told her. “By the time we reach the southern passage, it’ll be completely covered in ice.”

She shivered. “Well, you grew up in that miserable place, right? You’ll know how to navigate it.”

“It’s not about knowing how to navigate it,” Kyosti said. He’d had to explain this many times to the Chith who complained that he was never sent south on patrols during the winter. “Perhaps you don’t know this about Innis, but once we leave the ice, we can never return. The Seers aren’t Innis anymore, but they once were, and even they keep this rule to some extent. Do you think they build their houses in trees for fun? No, they’re trying to avoid the ice and snow during the winter. Of course, there’s no hard or fast rule as to when it turns from ‘a fall of snow that’s fine to walk across’ to ‘ice that I can’t travel over,’ but I’d rather not risk angering the Leopard Queen. And so will that new Seer. They’ll want to go north, to Sorn Iorn, probably, and catch a boat across the Medlyn Sea to Tenash. That way we can come at Chithoobra from the north.”

Sanji pondered this in silence for several minutes. “It simply doesn’t make sense,” she muttered. “What’s so sacred about ice? Why can’t you walk over it once you’ve been sundered from the Innis?”

“Why is it a sin to kill a bird in Kenji?” Kyosti shot back.

She sputtered. “They’re the servants of Rokolo!”

“And ice is the servant of the Leopard Queen.”

“Excuse me?” Every word dripped with confusion. “It’s ice. Frozen water. Inanimate. It can’t talk.”

“Neither can birds!”

“They can so talk! They talk to each other! And the Windfeller Eagles can alter a human’s mind. You’re telling me that ice has some special power?”

He rolled his eyes. “Why is everyone so obsessed with ‘special powers’??? Why must ice have some kind of special power to be the servant of the Queen? It just is!”

“And who told you it was her servant anyway, hmmm? Some old book, or dead man, I’ll bet---”

“Why, you---!”

Someone loudly cleared their throat, and the two of them jumped and turned toward the sound. The person, probably a Seer, spoke with an unfamiliar voice. “I apologize for interrupting your...fascinating conversation, but the council wants me to take you to meet the new Seer.”

Kyosti took a deep breath in. Finally. “We’re ready,” he said as Sanji’s hand closed around his elbow.

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Photo by Christine Makhlouf on Unsplash