Chapter 19: The Best of Intentions

From their hidden perch high in the trees, the Yura village looked very much like home. The grass they used to thatch their roofs was longer and wider, and from the few people Tarek saw peeking out into the flood, the men preferred to shave the sides of their heads and leave a crest up top, but otherwise the collection of stilt-raised wooden huts could have been the one Tarek was raised in if someone came in overnight and rearranged where everything was. Seeing just how normal the supposedly fearsome Yura were – and how miserable they all looked in this terrible flood – made Tarek question all the frightening raid stories his father Tenoch told him as a child.

“There he is again,” Tavi whispered.

The silver-haired elder they’d seen more than any other Yura stepped out of his house dressed in what looked like otter pelts. The rains had lessened over the last two days that Tarek and Tavi had hidden in the treetops near the Yura village, but it was still impossible to make out the old man’s face through the foliage and haze of rain. The elder was spry and vigorous despite having all the substance of a bundle of twigs. He pulled his tethered canoe in front of the doorway and stepped easily down into it. The water was no more than a hand’s breadth below his doorstep, and Tarek tried not to think about how the Catori would handle this flood once the water started invading their homes. They’re not your tribe anymore. You don’t owe them anything. Except Yaretzi. Please be well, Yar.

“He’s got to be the chief,” Tavi murmured. “He’s visited nearly every single house now.”

“Or he’s the healer,” Tarek countered.

“Does Mahela check on every house during the flood? You know she doesn’t.”

“Yes, but Mahela hates everyone. Also, who knows how the Yura do things?”

Tavi stifled a giggle. “Maybe he’s cooking everyone lunch.”

“Or checking the floorboards for squeaks.”

“Catching wet rats!” Tavi’s stomach gave a loud gurgle, and his mirth turned to displeasure as he clutched at his belly. “I’d eat a roasted rat right now and thank the person who gave it to me.”

“Here,” Tarek said, passing him the bag Xochil had left in the canoe for them. “Eat.”

Xochil had supplied them well, giving them a good two weeks’ worth of journey meal, a sturdy knife knapped out of stone, a coil of good rope, fine twine and bone hooks for fishing, a couple of flint stones, and three thick tallow candles all in a large bag of woven cloth. Tavi pulled out a handful of pemmican. “Yours is better,” he said sourly. “Xochil probably laced this with a slow-acting poison.”

“I can’t bring him any chief’s blood if I’m dead.”

“Maybe not, but if he could poison me and not you, I think he’d do it. He hates me.” Tavi sighed. “I just wanted to read his books.”

Tarek had no answer for that. As the brothers sat in dripping silence, he became aware Pahtl at the edges of his consciousness. The otter was somewhere not too far off to the south, though he had no true sense of the distance between them. His sense of the creature waxed and waned but never disappeared completely. He wasn’t sure whether Pahtl was following them or just wandering in the same general direction. He hoped the genial otter was finding enough to eat in the flood waters. He’d been truly exhausted when he left them, and it had been Tarek’s fault.

A flash of motion amongst the stilted huts caught his eye. “Looks like Long Face is heading out again,” Tarek said, pointing to another house. A man still in his early years was loading a fishing spear, a bow, and a handful of obsidian knives into his family canoe. His wife handed him a bundle wrapped in leaves, and a toddling child peeked out from behind her legs. “It’s only a few more handspans ‘til dark.”

“That makes six hunters out today,” Tavi said, still chewing on the pemmican. “They must not have very good food stores if they’re sending out so many this early in the season and this late in the day.”

“Zuma’s likely having our hunters do the same,” Tarek said. “If this is going to be a long flood, it will be short rations for everyone in just a couple of weeks.”

“Let them starve,” Tavi said bleakly. “They deserve it.”

Tarek nodded, trying to ignore the guilt that spasmed in his stomach. He focused back on the elderly Yura man, who had paddled back into the trees toward one of the more remote huts. “You still haven’t seen anyone else in the old man’s house?”

“No. A woman came to his door and spoke with him while you were sleeping earlier, but if there’s anyone else in there, they’re either bedridden or a very deep sleeper.”

Tarek looked sharply at his little brother. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Tavi shrugged and shifted his seat on their wide branch. “I sort of forgot. I was trying to calculate the volume of water it takes to flood the entire Land.”

“You can do that?”

“I had to take a guess at some of the major variables, but if I think it through for another day or two, sure.”

Tarek shook his head. “If you say so. If people are consulting with him, he’s probably the chief. Agreed?”

“We haven’t seen anybody else that fits as well.”

“But we have to be sure. Are we sure?”

Tavi shook his head wordlessly.

“Well…” Tarek chewed his lip. “What if, when I sneak into his house, I call him ‘chief’ and see if he answers to it?”

“Which would require him to be awake,” Tavi said flatly. “Which, correct me if I’m wrong, we’re trying to avoid. You know, so nobody could yell out ‘raiders’ or some such thing. So that we don’t die.”

“He’s going to wake up when I stick him anyway,” Tarek said, nettled.

“It’s easy enough to put a hand over his mouth, but not if you’re trying to hear what he has to say.”

“Do you have any better ideas? You’re the smart one, aren’t you?”

Tavi rolled his eyes. “Raiding a chief’s house to steal his blood is a little out of my range of expertise.”

“Mine, too. So we’ll just have to fumble along with my bad ideas.”

Tavi chewed on the inside of his cheek as he always did when thinking deeply. “I should be the one to do it.”

“Absolutely not. This is my problem, and I have to fix it. I don’t want you mixed up with this business of taking people’s blood.”

“That’s stupid,” Tavi said bluntly. “You don’t want me collecting the blood because it’s icky and taboo, and you feel bad that you pulled me into this ridiculous situation. I don’t want you collecting the blood because it might drive you insane and make you attack everyone, including me.”

“Xochil said I could get used to it.”

“He also said he was going to make my genitals disappear. I’m not convinced of his sound judgment.”

Tarek knew Tavi was talking sense, but he shook his head. “Listen, little elder, I’m not sending you into a dangerous situation while I sit behind hiding! Anything could go wrong.”

“We’re going to have to go together,” Tavi said, using his most reasonable tone. He only did that when he thought Tarek was being foolish. “Once we get the blood we’ll have to paddle away as fast as we can, so I’ll have to be in the canoe already. If that’s so, then it might as well be me that gets out to collect the blood.”

“No,” said Tarek, feeling stubborn. “Twelve chiefs to find, twelve times to draw blood. I have to learn to handle this. I’m doing it.”

Tavi considered him in silence, his furrowed eyebrows dripping rain. “I’m going to be right there with you,” he finally said. “I won’t let this get out of hand.”

They huddled in their tree and talked through the bare sketch of their plan as they waited for night to fall. Tarek pushed for them to create a diversion to distract from their raid on the chief, perhaps by setting one of the Yura homes ablaze, but Tavi pointed out that not only would it be nearly impossible to start a fire during the flood, but also that the whole point was for everyone to be asleep. The diversion idea was soon discarded.

After a lull, Tavi asked, “Do we cross back over the river to get Zuma’s blood after this?”

“It’s only been a handful of days since we left,” Tarek said, shaking his head. “They’ll still be wary and upset. I think we head north next, hit each tribe in a circle, and come back to the Catori last. They’ll have moved on with life by then, and when we’re done it’ll be a short jump back to Xochil’s house.”

“Let’s make sure we have a canoe next time we cross the Ix, all right? Trusting a turtle to save us the second time seems unwise.”

The presumed chieftain of the Yura returned to his home as night fell, and eventually so did everyone else. The brothers whispered about where to cut the chief and what to use to sop up the blood. The hand or arm seemed most accessible and least likely to inflict permanent harm, and the man’s own bedclothes would make an easy way to carry his blood. Their tension grew and they fell silent as one by one the Yura homes fell dark.

“It’s time,” Tarek said some time past midnight. All they could hear was the hiss of rain on the canopy. Tarek shinnied down the trunk of the tree and slipped into the water as quietly as he could. It was up to his neck and insidiously cold. He pushed off toward the nearby tangle of flotsam where they’d hidden their canoe and pulled it free, discarding the draping branches and clumps of sticks that they’d used to disguise its shape. Once the canoe came free, he towed it with one hand back to the tree where Tavi waited and held the boat steady so his brother could slip in and take his seat. Then Tavi held tight to the tree’s trunk so that Tarek could climb aboard without tipping them over. Tarek sluiced the water out of his neglected braid, shook the drops from his hands, and took up his oar. Silently they pushed out into the blackness of the rain-pocked waters.

The steady ssshhhh of the flood rains masked their noise as they drifted between the houses that loomed out of the dark like specters. One of them came so close that Tarek had to push off from one of the house’s support posts to keep the canoe from banging against it. The post creaked alarmingly, but no sound came from the darkened house.

He’d done his best to orient them toward the supposed chief’s house, but after weaving through the maze of trees and houses in the utter blackness, Tarek felt lost. He leaned forward, gripping Tavi by the shoulder and then taking him gently by the hair to pull him closer. “Can you tell which way?” he murmured just loudly enough to be heard over the rain.

He felt Tavi’s head nod in the affirmative before it tilted toward him. “There’s still a light in there,” he said softly. “Look.”

Tavi’s head turned forward, and Tarek followed the angle of his brother’s gaze. There. He saw a red flicker for just a moment as the drowned tree trunks parted to reveal and then hide the light again. Tarek put his oar back in the water, pulling hard toward the tiny light. If he’s still awake in there we’ll have to wait even longer. Tarek felt the itch of fear between his shoulder blades. Any of these Yura would kill them without the slightest hesitation if they woke. Most of these houses would have bows with dry strings stored inside and more than one person capable of using them.

Then Tarek’s paddle thunked against something hard in the water. At first he thought it was a floating log, but then it thrashed away from the boat with a grumble that he felt in his chest and a hard knock against the canoe’s rear that could only be a powerful tail. Tarek’s heart sped. A caiman! From the strength of the blow to the canoe, it was a big one. Tarek and Tavi both froze with their oars poised over the water. Go away, beast! There’s nothing here, nothing at all! Tarek wished he could communicate with the animal without having to touch it. Reaching into the water just to attempt contact seemed like a good way to lose a hand.

It felt like an eternity that they floated there waiting for some splash or movement in the water that would warn them of an attack. It never came. Tarek unclenched a hairsbreadth at a time. He heard Tavi let out a shaky breath.

“Don’t hit caimans with your oar, Tarek,” he whispered.

“Thanks,” Tarek muttered.

They crept forward through the water, pausing breathlessly at every unexpected sound. Realistically, Tarek knew that the caiman had probably fled after the unexpected bump, but he couldn’t help but imagine it stalking them with dull animal malice.

Finally they drew close to the chief’s house, the faint glimmer of red peeking through the curtained doorway at only a certain angle. Tavi reached out and held onto the corner timbers where the floor and walls met, holding the canoe at an angle where the light flickering past the door would not reveal them. Tarek shimmied close to his brother in the canoe and whispered in his ear.

“I can’t just walk through the door if there’s light inside. I need to look through a window first.”

“What if they’re looking at the window?” Tavi whispered back.

“I’ll be slow and careful. Let’s look around.”

They hand-walked their canoe along the perimeter of the house, which was larger than Tarek and Tavi’s had been, but not by much. The floor timbers extended a hand’s width past the walls on all sides, providing a convenient ledge to hold onto as they maneuvered. On the rear face of the house they saw a small, shuttered opening. The same flickering red light shone through fitfully.

“Hold us steady,” Tarek whispered. Then, using the cracks between the wall’s timbers as handholds, he levered himself upright and stepped up onto the house’s ledge as smoothly as he could. The canoe thunked against the closest stilt of the house, but it wasn’t loud. Tarek held his breath and listened. He hoped to hear snoring or sleep-breath, but the rain was too loud. He’d have to risk a look.

Tarek’s bare feet quested along the narrow ledge, testing each timber for creaks before trusting his weight to it. Soon he was gripping the window’s edge, lining his eye up with the narrow cracks between the wooden slats of the shutter meant to keep the rain out as it slanted against this side of the house. He moved slowly, letting the far side of the room come into view a bit at a time so that he could withdraw if he saw movement or a face.

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All he saw at first were glowing embers in the hearth, the obvious source of the light they had seen. What kind of fool leaves the fire unbanked when they sleep? he wondered. Then, as his eyes adjusted to the shadows around the fire and he saw more of the room, he found his answer. A thatch of white hair poked out of a heap of blankets no more than an arm’s length from the fire. An old fool that hates the cold of the floods. He’d seen a few of the most ancient elders of his own tribe do the same in years past, no matter that it wasn’t safe. He felt a pang of sympathy for the old man before shaking it away ruthlessly.

The rise and fall of the old man’s blankets was steady, and Tarek saw no one else in the dimness of the room. Feeling emboldened, he skirted around the sides of the house, whispering his intent to Tavi as he passed. He heard his brother pulling the canoe along the ledge toward the front door, following in his wake. When Tarek reached the door, he took a deep breath and darted through, moving the curtain as little as he could in passing.

He crouched by the door frame just inside, feeling terribly exposed in the failing light of the embers. He thought he could just hear the old man breathing underneath the rustling of the rain on the thatched roof. Screwing up his courage, Tarek crept forward on hands and knees, pulling the chert knife from his belt as he went.

He paused by the old man’s head to steady himself. I can do this. I have to do this. Yaretzi, I’m doing this. The old man was sleeping face-up, his nose just peeking out from the furred pelts he used as blankets.

“Chief,” he said in a low voice.

The old man snorted awake, his eyes fluttering open.

Moving with a surety he did not feel, Tarek clamped one hand hard over the blankets covering the old man’s mouth while his other held the blade’s point to the soft hollow between his victim’s eye and ear. The man jerked his head away from the pricking blade.

“Be silent and stay still,” Tarek hissed.

The old man’s white eyebrows knitted themselves together in a frown. “Mmmrphrbum,” he objected from under the corner of his blanket, thrashing to free his limbs.

He couldn’t let the man make too much noise. Suddenly Tarek remembered Xochil saying a touch of the hand, and in desperation he flipped the animal-skin blanket away from the elder’s face, clamping his hand back down over his sunken lips when he drew a breath to shout.

“Be quiet, please,” he pled. “I’m not going to hurt you if you’ll just stay still. I promise.”

Even as he said the words, he despaired inside. If someone woke me up with a knife in my face and promised not to hurt me, would I listen? The old man was going to struggle, and Tarek was going to have to kill him to keep him silent. It was inevitable.

But instead, the elder quieted under his hand. His eyebrows were still lowered over glaring eyes and his wiry body was tense under the blankets, but he made no noise. Tarek goggled at him, shocked, and tried to cover his surprise with words.

“Are you the chief of the Yura?”

The man stilled even further, his age-yellowed eyes glinting in the coals’ light. After a long pause, he nodded once.

Can I really believe him? Do I have any choice? Tarek shook his head to dispel his doubts. “I mean you no harm. I will be out of your house in thirty heartbeats and you’ll never see me again.”

Tarek took his knife hand away and pulled back the side of the blanket to expose the man’s arm. He started in surprise when he saw an obsidian dagger in the man’s fist, and he hastily dropped his own to pull the weapon from the man’s unresisting fingers. Tarek drew a shaky breath. He could have planted that in my ribs before I ever saw it.

He shifted his hand on the old man’s mouth so his lips were uncovered. “Why didn’t you stab me?”

The elder looked at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I’m old. Looks like I’ve grown tired of killing.” His voice was scratchy and worn. He sounded disconcertingly like Ryki, the Catori loremaster.

You’ve used up your luck. Time to be gone. He cut a palm-sized corner from the old man’s blanket. “This will only sting for a moment. I’m sorry.” He covered the old man’s mouth again and jabbed clumsily at his upturned palm. The elder grunted, his eyes squinting in pain.

“I’m sorry, truly. It’s only this,” Tarek whispered, putting the knife in his belt and wiping at the man’s shadowed palm with the strip of dried leather. It came away stained dark, and Tarek caught the smell of blood.

His head swam and his mouth watered. Strength, strength was right there, begging him to take it. Sweeter than honey, as seductive as a kiss, more filling than a feast meal around the fire… strength. The scrap of bloody leather was pressed to his nose and he didn’t know how it got there. Just one little taste…

No! He took his other hand from the elder’s mouth and used it to pry his clenched fist away from his face. His heart was knocking in his chest like a caged bird and sweat sprang from his brow despite the chill. I can control it. I have to control it. With shaking hands he tucked the blood-stained leather into his loincloth, though it felt like severing his own fingers.

Trembling and spent, he looked to the old man, who was watching him like one might a panther. He seemed confused but intent. His eyes were calculating. Tarek no longer doubted he was a chief. He held up his wounded hand by the wrist, a single thin trickle of blood shining black in the flickering light.

All thought fled, and Tarek pounced on him, one hand holding the bloody arm steady while his other pinned the elder by the throat. He licked desperately at the blood, trying to get it all in one sweep before latching onto the wound like a leech.

The man cried out weakly and battered at him with his free arm, but Tarek swiftly pinned it under his knee as he crouched beside him. Waves of shuddering pleasure coursed through him as he gulped down the blood. He caught flashes of the man’s thoughts, drank in confused bits of another past and felt the sour panic rising in another throat. It was glorious.

More. This pitiful trickle of life wasn’t enough. His teeth scraped at the wound, drawing fresh cries from the elder, and Tarek released his throat to grope for the blade at his waist. More. More. All of it.

And then the glory collapsed into horrible, piercing pain. Tarek gasped, dropping the bloody hand as he clutched at his own chest. He was dying. He felt his heart faltering, flailing… and then it stopped. He fell on his back, eyes wide and panicked as he spasmed and died.

Somehow, despite the fact that Tarek knew he was dead, he still drew breath, and he used it to sob in agony. He looked down at his clutching hands, expecting to find a knife protruding from his breastbone. There was none. What he saw instead was Tavi kneeling over the elder, pulling Tarek’s discarded stone knife from the center of the old man’s chest.

“What… what…” Tarek gasped.

Tavi crossed to him, eyes shadowed and pitiless in the dim light. “I told you I wouldn’t let this get out of hand.”

“You killed him,” Tarek whispered, tears leaking from his eyes. “I felt it. All of it.”

“Good,” Tavi said savagely, pulling him up into a sitting position. “Maybe remember that next time.” He wiped the knife clean on the dead man’s blankets. His hands were shaking. “You promised, you bastard.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I couldn’t care less about your sorries. You don’t collect the blood anymore.”

They heard a gasp from the far corner. A frail old woman was sitting in a shadowed corner that Tarek had mistaken for empty when he came in. She was more skeleton than woman, her hair matted and greasy in the way that Tarek had only seen in the elderly near death.

She pointed a palsied hand at them. “Murder!” she shrieked.

“Worm shit,” Tavi said.

A wet shuffle and slap in the doorway drew Tarek’s eye, and a croaking, vibrating roar filled the chamber. The ember light reflected off of pebbled black skin, and the smell of stale swamp invaded the room. Apparently, the huge caiman they’d bumped in the water had followed them after all, and the smell of blood had drawn it inside as surely as bait.

The beast skittered forward faster than Tarek would have thought possible. Shocked into motion from his near-death stupor, Tarek pulled his feet away from the snapping jaws, swiping ineffectually with the elder’s stolen knife at the thing’s snout. He didn’t have nearly the reach to cut it. He scrambled to his feet and saw Tavi retreating to the far side near the hearth.

Somehow the woman ignored the beast. “Murder, murder!” she screamed. It appeared she hadn’t the strength to move.

Tarek thought he heard shouts over the sound of the rain. “Time to go,” he said.

“You first,” Tavi replied.

His brother was joking – or maybe not, given what he’d just seen – but it got Tarek thinking of the boasting tales Kotlan always told about wrestling caiman. Clamp their jaws shut and keep ‘em out of the water and there’s naught they can do to you. It was madness, of course… but the elder had quieted when he touched him. And Xochil’s hound Axies had needed only a touch to turn friendly. Once he was touching it, he could communicate, in a way.

So, churning with shame for having broken his promise, still addled with the body memory of the elder’s death, and half-crazed by the old woman’s shrieking, Tarek threw himself atop the caiman and latched on tight.

The beast went berserk. It crashed back and forth inside the wooden hut, rolling over and over on top of Tarek. He wrapped his arms around its neck and his legs around its middle and hung on for dear life, ignoring pokes, bruises, and scrapes as they thrashed about together. Friend! Friend! Friend!

It seemed caimans did not care about friends, for it thrashed all the harder, filling the night with its croaking roar. Tarek thought about putting his knife in it, but if he let go for even a moment, he’d be flung free and he knew he’d be in the monster’s jaws within a heartbeat.

He switched tactics. Bigger one coming, he sent at it, imagining a caiman the size of the Old Woman of the Water. Kill you. Eat you up. Scared!

That seemed to penetrate the water lizard’s mind, for it stopped rolling and spun about, confused. Whether by intent or ill luck, it now faced the screaming, sickly woman. The sight of prey must have chased the thought of other predators from its dim mind, for it started toward her. Tarek, still clinging to its back, wasted no time in plunging his stolen knife into the creature’s eye. It bellowed and charged out of the hut, tossing him aside and breaking the door frame as it went.

Tarek slumped to the floor in relief, but Tavi was there instantly, pulling him to his feet.

“We have to go,” his brother hissed.

Shouts could be heard clearly over the rain now. Tarek stumbled to the door but could see nothing beyond an arm’s length in the darkness. Fortunately, Tavi had tied up their canoe, and the caiman hadn’t swamped it in passing. Tarek clambered into it, barely avoiding tipping himself into the water in his loose-limbed haste.

Tavi slid in behind him and cut them free, pushing off into the midnight waters. Voices were growing behind them. As silently as possible, they dipped their oars into the water and pulled away into the cover of the trees.

They paddled in silence for a time, not caring which way they went, only needing to put distance between themselves and the Yura.

“That went about as poorly as it could have,” Tavi said finally.

“I know.”

Tavi beat his fist against the side of the canoe. “You promised, Tarek, you promised!” He sounded near tears. “I thought about putting that knife into you instead of him.”

Tarek gripped his oar until his fingers hurt. “Maybe you should have.”

“Shut your mouth. You don’t get to die. You live until you’re cured, you hear me? Or else what’s the point?” He sighed shakily. “I didn’t want to kill him. I’ve never…”

Tarek opened his mouth to apologize but then shut it again. Anything I say will only make it worse.

After another long silence, Tavi spoke again. “Did you at least get the blood?”

“I did.” Tarek withdrew the scrap from his loincloth and reached back toward Tavi until he took it. “You keep it. Put it in my old journey bag to keep it out of the water.”

Tavi rustled about in the dark, safely stowing the precious bit of leather that had cost them so much. “Are we even sure he was the chief?”

Tarek sighed, and grief put a hitch in it. “Oh yes. His name was Hopati. He’d been chief for forty years.”

“He told you all that?”

“No.” Tarek closed his eyes and lived it all again in his head. “I saw it. In his blood.”

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