Listen to the Water | FULL SERIES | Wattys 2022 Shortlist | ✔

(19) Ande: Sar

My hand slides to my dagger of its own accord. The Kel resting in my lap is unconscious again, unless whatever paralyzing effect Taiki lifted from their breathing has just taken over. At least they're breathing again. Barely. I ease a hand under their head and slip free, drawing my dagger as I go. Taiki has already turned off his lights and jetted a ways out along the reef, probably getting a better handle on the voices. He jets back fast enough to make me startle.

"We're going," he signs.

After Taiki's near-refusal to save the Kel I've been holding, I don't suspect he's going to help carry them. Not that I'd let him. Not after that. Sheathing my dagger goes against every instinct in my body, but I need both hands. I pull the Ashianti Kel's arm up over my shoulder and ease them onto my back, wincing at the fact that I won't be able to do this without causing pain. Taiki didn't heal the stab wound all the way, I can already tell. He didn't spend anywhere near long enough on it, and I suspect he was running out of energy. I'll have to push that again later if I can, after he's rested.

The voices can't be far from where we first found this Kel's tracks in the silt. If our pursuers follow those, they'll be at the reef in under a hundred heartbeats. If they take the same turn Taiki and I did then, they'll be here in another hundred. I flare my fins and let the current push me as I swim. The Kel's limp form is a current-drag. They're a lot lighter than I was anticipating, at least. Almost weightless in the water. They'd sink if I let them, but not fast enough to hit the ground hard.

Taiki keeps his hand-lights off, but as we come down the other side of the reef, he lets his tail-stars come on again. I can tell he's impatient as he jets ahead and waits for me, over and over. My worries keep multiplying as he leads us towards deeper water. How deep can Ashianti Kels go? If the ones behind us are Ashianti, this clearly isn't the limit, but I haven't seen our pursuers. If Taiki has, he hasn't told me what he saw. I send Andalua a silent prayer not to let the ocean hurt the already injured Kel on my back as we sneak down the slope. Taiki vanishes ahead again. He's gone for a long time this time, so I just keep moving at my own pace until his stars appear again.

He sweeps up beside me, panting slightly. "I found somewhere safe."

He beckons me off to the side. In another hundred arm-spans, the coral-rock drops off abruptly. Taiki jets straight off over the chasm below, and waves a lit hand from somewhere another thirty arm-spans off. I take a deep breath, send another prayer to Andalua that nobody will see me in the open water, and launch off the edge.

There's coral-rock again on the other side. I coast in beside Taiki, confused at the near-identical surface we now hover over.

He points behind him. "It's another pinnacle. One that doesn't reach the surface anymore."

"How is this safe?"

He nods to the Kel I'm carrying, then the chasm we just swam over. "They couldn't cross that gap, with the way they were swimming. If anyone tracks them, they'll stop on the other side."

That's betting a lot on the mental calculations of Kels who probably come to finish the job this one's attacker started, but Taiki seems confident. He leads us around the pinnacle base: a long, slow curve that takes us out of sight out of our pursuers. We're not far enough from Rapal to be safe yet. There's no way the city's Shalda don't know about this second pinnacle, and what they know about, Arcas can tell them to search. But the pinnacle is larger than I gave it credit for. It takes until probably-midnight to circle it, by which point I feel much better about the chances of anyone stumbling across us here. I still forget sometimes that tracking down a Kel in the waters of the Shalda-sana is a game of cover-and-seek that plays out in three directions. We might not be safe, but we're probably safe enough to stop and rest.