On Blue's waters

“We’ll try - but Krait, you’re risking your life just to tell me. I’m not sure I could get them to turn you loose again.”

I believe he shrugged; the Short Sun was nearly dead ahead then, and in the near darkness of Number One Freight Bay it was difficult to be sure. “There are only two needlers, and I’ve bent some needles in one.”

Evensong shook my shoulder. “You must tell me.”

“I won’t break my oath. My son confided it to me as he lay dying. If I were to betray him now, I would have to die, too, because I couldn’t live with myself.”

“Then say as much as you can.” She had never asked that before.

“About him? He was an inhumu. We called him Krait, and Seawrack and I called-”

“That is the woman who sings?”

“Yes, though she is not singing now.” I tried to collect my thoughts.

“It was a mere lie at first, Evensong. Something to tell people in Wichote and Pajarocu who wanted to know why Krait was with us. It remained a lie as long as there was no danger to Krait but me, and none to me but Krait. Once the lander took off everything changed, and Krait and I discovered that we merely supposed we had been lying.”

“Hold me.”

I was already, but I held her more tightly. “We were in the freight compartments. They had never been intended for passengers; but they could be pressurized, I suppose because the Crew might have to transport animals at times, and of course the inhumi had to keep us alive or we were of no value. They controlled the forward part of the lander, with three human slaves from Pajarocu who were supposed to be operating it. The slaves had slug guns, and the inhumus had needlers, some of them.”

I waited for her to ask me about Pajarocu, but she did not.

“Krait tried to divert the lander to the Whorl, but he couldn’t-it was already too late. He promised me that Sinew and I would not be drained. On Green they have thousands of human slaves whose blood they take only rarely, as long as the slaves can work and fight for them.”

Evensong trembled in my arms.

“Krait told me why they have to have it as he lay dying. He didn’t intend to give me power over them, you understand. I’m certain he wasn’t thinking of that in his final moments. He was thinking of the thing that linked him to me, and me to him-of the bond of blood between us.”

She said nothing.

“For a long, long time I didn’t realize what he had done either. If I’d understood the power of Krait’s secret while Sinew and I were on Green, things might have gone differently.”

“No cry,” Oreb urged me from my knee.

“I’m sorry, I can’t help it. Perhaps… Perhaps I did realize it. But Krait’s death was so recent then, and I felt that I’d be betraying him. Before I knew it, it was too late.” Under my breath I added, “I still feel I’m betraying him, in a way.”

Evensong murmured, “Tell me. You must tell me, my husband. My only ever lover. You must tell me tonight.”

“Once I watched some men who had a wicker figure of the wallowers they were hunting. Two walked inside it, while two others hid behind it. That’s the kind of thing the inhumi must have done before the Vanished People reached Green-reshaped themselves to look like the animals they hunted, disguised their odor by smearing themselves with the excrement of their prey, and uttered the same cries, moving as their prey did until they were close enough to strike.”

They were uttering our own human cries at that moment, or something like them, talking among themselves in the air, their voices faint, pitched high, and floating. I wondered whether they could hear me.

“If only we cared about each other sufficiently. If only all of us loved all the others enough, they would go back to that. We would still think them horrible creatures, and they would still be dangerous, as the crocodiles in this lower river water are. But they would be no worse.”

“That is the secret, what you said?”

“No. Of course not.”

They were circling above us, I knew, and sometimes they flew so low that I could actually feel the wind from their wings upon my face. I decided that they might well overhear anything we said, and I counseled myself to keep that in mind each time I spoke.

“You must tell me!” Evensong demanded.

“I must not-that is the truth, the fact of our situation. They know that I know; I’ve proved it to them. They also know that you don’t, that you know where the others are buried but do not know the secret they would die to protect. They have to kill me, or feel that they do, even though I’ve sworn never to reveal it.”

She started to protest and I silenced her with a kiss.

When we parted, I said, “They don’t have to kill you, not as things stand. In fact, if they killed you like that, without reason, I would consider myself free to speak out about them.” It was a lie, and may have been the last that I will ever tell, the final lie of so many thousands. I hope so.