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

(13) Sar: Diversion

I can't tell if it's intentional or unavoidable that Vibi stops us for night at a seamount where the Alliance has been and gone already. She and her closest Karu allies don't look nearly surprised enough as they survey the empty village in the miniscule lagoon. The Alliance pulled their usual game and dismantled one house as an intimidation tactic, unless a storm took it in the time since this place was abandoned. Nobody's moved in. I survey it surreptitiously for any signs that this was Andalua's doing, but the lagoon's reefs are mostly intact: a good sign. Well, not good, but at least it means nobody got eaten. At least not before they left their homes and fled.

Vibi and her entourage have gathered outside an undamaged den and are murmuring to one another. I'm not close enough to hear anything over the heartbeat wash of waves over the lagoon's reefs, and that's probably the point. I edge closer to El and Innis instead. Neither of them has ventured far from the coral wall we came in over, and they're also talking. In Samisa; they want the conversation to stay private, too. I never heard either of them using Rapal's official language anywhere in Underfarrow. Both of them look up as I join them. El's smile is strained.

«She's going to ask questions» says Innis, watching over my shoulder even as he makes room for me in the conversation. «Casin is from around here.»

He notably doesn't say that he is, too. Casin isn't with us; she stayed back to leave with the group headed for Rapal. But her people were absorbed into the Alliance against their will, and suffered several moons of functional imprisonment before the local Glauclin clan broke them out. Innis's clan. It cost both groups their traditional territory.

«Do you—» I start to sign, then catch myself and bite my tongue. It takes a long moment to drag up a memory of which languages Innis even knows. Sami-sign isn't one of them. I'm too used to Ruka and the other near-Rapal Glauclins.

Innis spares me the mental exercise. «Shalda-sign is fine» he says, with a smile even less easy than El's. They're both stressed. All three of us, really, but at least I'm not the one Vibi has spent this entire trip making veiled comments towards.

I switch languages. "Thank you."

«That's fine with you, right?» adds Innis, with a glance at El.

El nods. That makes at least three languages we all share, which is good enough for me. It's about as much as I can ever expect in Rapal, anyway.

"Are you doing okay?" I ask Innis.

His jaw tightens. He's never been good at hiding his expressions. I knew the answer was probably no, but this confirms it.

«I'll be fine» he says. «It's just... different.»

That's a very evasive way of saying every island we've passed thus far has been as wrecked as this one. The Alliance cleared out this whole stretch. Or if they didn't, these seamounts' former inhabitants left on their own before the conflict came for them. Innis knows all of these islands. His people were once friendly with most of their inhabitants. Now we don't know where any of them are. I don't have confirmation of my suspicions, but I think Vibi might be trying to wear Innis down.

Innis glances over my shoulder again, and his expression shadows. I jump closer to El. He beckons me subtly behind him, and I'd normally be embarrassed to take such an obvious escape route, but I can't deal with people sneaking up behind me anymore. I'm well out of the way by the time Vibi reaches us. She swims differently out here. It's almost lazy, with bigger tail-strokes lending her something almost like a swagger. I don't like it. But that might also be because she keeps approaching me from behind, and I really don't need that right now when I'm already trying to ignore the possibility of Rapal finding out I'm alive. I know the whole Alliance patrols the waters between the city and these islands, enough of a barricade to prevent that from happening, but still.