Chapter 2
Inkiri
By the time we arrived in Esaka, we were wet and cold to the bone.
Lissir had gone straight to make his report to Hove without so much as getting out of his wet clothes.
Hove himself then accompanied Lissir to speak to us in the anteroom of the baths, where we were in the process of removing our clothes and the notable quantity of mud and rainwater that saturated everything.
“Something happened while you were out there,” Hove began, careful to keep his distance while we were still undressing and splashing mud.
Vergis snorted. “Yeah, no shit.”
He spoke in English, and Hove looked at him with interest, but he was here as the visdena, not as someone new to the language and curious to speak it better.
I inclined my head to Hove. “Vergis shot two Koa Esher. A border patrol, we think.”
Hove nodded. “The koa has many skills.” He spoke politely and with much deference.
He’d never attempted to flatter Vergis for anything other than his skill as a koa and a fighter, and from what I could tell, Vergis liked him for it.
“I would ask if you were all right, but this sentenmen is very skilled.”
Vergis snorted again and continued in English. “Not part of this sentenmen.”
Hove nodded as if he’d caught all of Vergis’s words, then said, “There have been reports of a strange magic. All the koa in the area have felt it. What’s more, we have reports of tears appearing in the veil between here and Earth.
I’m still waiting on information from the other Raiken, but it reaches farther than Esaka.
Maybe it’s all over Lugarra. Vergis, did you feel it too?
Did it reach into Koa Esher territory as well? ”
Vergis dropped his Earth-made hoodie into a basket.
It would need to be laundered with the rest of our clothes, and it would get some of the younger Raikengana both excited and worried.
Excited for the strangeness of it and for being given the task of doing something for a koa, worried for much the same reasons.
“Yes, I felt something. I don’t know what, but it was… It felt big. It was a magic I’ve never felt before, a magic I don’t know. And I know a lot of different kinds of magic.”
Hove tensed. “That is worrying. There is no indication it was something the Koa Esher did, then?”
Vergis plopped down on one of the benches that lined the walls of the anteroom and began working on the laces of his shoes.
“No, it wasn’t them. Koa Esher are not powerful koa, not anymore.
What they do is very basic, and the application is formulaic rather than creative.
I have no proof, but I’ll cut off my horns if it was them. ”
Hove’s brow furrowed, and he picked another basket from the pile and handed it to Vergis for his shoes. “We’ll find out what happened.”
“Yes,” I said, although I was barely even thinking about the magic event. I could only think about that hollow place inside of me, that longing for the one I was meant to cherish. It was an utterly inexplicable sensation, and yet it felt completely reasonable, sensible even.
“I can stick around, maybe help you investigate.” Vergis eyed me. He was not a Raikenga, but one of his fathers was and would understand what it meant to sense a mate call. Maybe he had told Vergis, or maybe he suspected.
“I thank you,” Hove said, then he looked all of us over, filthy and cold as we were. “All of it can wait until tomorrow though. You completed a mission, and you are due rest before anything else.”
He left then, and it was just the echoes of water dripping, of Lissir sighing with joy when he got his filthy clothes off.
Fellisse clicked. “You didn’t tell him. Were you wrong? Was it just the cold creeping up your horns?”
Nokim looked up. “Or the ghosts out on the moors playing tricks on you?”
I shook my head. “No, neither.” I put a hand to my chest. “I feel it right here. My mate is on Earth. But like Hove said, we’re due a night of rest. Before I file to be allowed to follow my mate call, I wanted to talk with you as well.”
Lissir stretched. “What’s there to talk about? Vergis will take us, and we’re all going to meet this mate of yours who is on Earth.” His eyes widened. “Inkiri, is he on Earth, or is he from Earth? Like…Vergis?”
Vergis snorted again. “You think there’s scores of bagua like me over there? That’s fucking unlikely.” He combined the English word fucking with anai, the Lugarran for unlikely, making it a whole new word that was both Earth and Aer. I liked it.
Nokim made a little sound. “He might be a Raikenga there on a mission. Or a koa with a reason to travel to Earth. Or someone from the stories, you know? Someone who accidentally stumbled through the veils and got lost on Earth. Maybe you’re meant to bring him home, Inki?”
“Or he’s human,” Lissir said.
Fellisse nodded. “That seems more probable.”
I took the three baskets full of my wet things and put them on the shelves for the laundry. “It does.”
I smiled, and back then, I tried hiding it.
I remember thinking how it would all make sense, finally—my knack for learning English, my interest in Earth and things from Earth, and everything Vergis had told us about, from the proper use of “fuck” to how to properly eat those black cookies with the white filling in the middle.
Earth had always called to me, though I’d only realized it a few hours ago.
I stood there long enough that the others had gone ahead into the baths proper, all but Lissir.
He put a hand on my shoulder, bringing me back to the present. “Vergis will help you, you’ll see. He…cares about you.”
“I know that.” I tilted my head back, my eyes tracing the geometrical decorations all along the old ceiling. “I suspect just how much he cares.”
Lissir looked at the filthy heap of clothes in front of us. One of the laces from Vergis’s hoodie was dangling there, and he tucked it into the fabric so it wouldn’t get caught when they came to pick up the laundry.
“I don’t think he’ll be mean enough to abandon us. And besides, who can say your new mate won’t desire a pretty koa like Vergis? If he is human, he might like that Vergis is from Earth as well.”
That was a thought. I didn’t hate the idea—Vergis certainly was beautiful—but something about it felt wrong, like shoes that were a bit too tight for your claws to slip out all the way, or how your horns made your skull ache when you slept in a very cold or wet place.
All the same, it was something I’d have to keep in mind after I filed the paperwork to follow my mate call.
“We’ll talk it over tomorrow.”
Lissir nodded. “Yes. Come, let’s soak. I don’t like being muddy and wet at the same time.”
“Being muddy makes you wet.”
Lissir chuckled. “What is the English word? Hmm, stickler. Don’t be a stickler. I’m sure your mate will prefer you to be humorous.”
Lissir turned and walked toward the baths.
“But I am.”
I followed, but he was ignoring me. Not that his opinion mattered. What mattered was that I’d be able to impress my mate, with my humor and everything else I had to offer him.