37. You Seem Troubled

Watching the Degala tribe transition seamlessly from a village to a fleet is fascinating. The houseboats settled into the muddy swamps are hastily repaired and reinforced to prepare for the flood, and pontoons are added to the beached ships. It’s an insane amount of work compared to the methods I’m familiar with, such as damming and raised construction, but the Degala tribe’s village isn’t meant to stay in one place—it’s made to move.

It would be difficult to scale up, I think. The friction between Elder Feena’s more traditionalist faction and Remi’s progressive leadership is probably a symptom of that difficulty. As the tribe grows, the time and energy needed to allow them to float the whole village becomes prohibitive. Eventually, it will be too much to sustain by hunting and gathering—a threshold they probably would have crossed already if not for the trade brought in by their merchant fleets.

Feena would rather convert those merchants into pirates and raiders, returning the tribe to an older way of doing things. Aside from the moral implications, it’s a stupid and shortsighted plan. The tribe is already too big for that, and their younger generations were raised in peace time. They may be capable sailors, but that doesn’t mean they’d make good pirates.

Besides that, the elder is forgetting—or ignoring—the rapid technological advancements currently happening in the empire. They can have the best sailors, the best ships, and even the best fighters, but none of that will matter if their raiding targets start meeting their fleets with heavy artillery. As far as I can tell, Fa’aun haven’t invented the cannon yet, but they’re not far off, and a tribe of seaside marauders would give them all the motivation they need.

To bring the issue back around to Talla’s conundrum, Feena’s promises are hollow and empty. Even assuming enough of her tribesmen were willing to sacrifice themselves to sink Shaa’s fleets, it would cripple the tribe. The privateers Feena promises would be worse than worthless, getting destroyed within a few years and leaving the Goa family accountable for their crimes.

I sigh and lean on the railing of Jira’s ship as I watch the tribe work. I could have explained all of that to Talla if Maggie had let me. Not that I don’t trust her to make the right decisions, but I want to help. But I remind myself, as the tribe readies their deep sea vessels for surrender to Shaa, that nobody is obligated to accept my help.

“You look troubled, Little Baddie,” Jira’s gravely voice interrupts my thoughts as she rests her arms on the railing next to me. “What causes your brows to knit so tightly?”

Ack! Was I frowning that hard? I try to smooth out my expression a bit—to prevent wrinkles if nothing else.

“Hard not to be,” I say. “We’re stuck in a quagmire of bad decisions and I can’t help but feel like we’re taking the wrong path.”

“They are rough waters, to be sure,” Jira agrees. “Yet I trust that the tribe will find our way through. We always do.”

“By just giving up?” I ask. “There are just so many ways that this can go wrong, and even in the best case scenario we’ll be crossing the ocean with Shaa’s ships right behind us.”

Jira glances down at me and hums thoughtfully. I’ve gotten used to how short I am compared to Fa’aun, but she’s particularly tall and built like a brick house, so it’s always a little intimidating to have her standing so close.

“If a ship’s hull is too rigid, it’s prone to break against the first big wave it hits,” she muses. “Yet if it’s too flexible, it collapses under its own weight. Vi is right when she says that our tribe cannot stand against Shaa’s forces. The decision to surrender is already made, but if you have thoughts, I will hear them.”

I shake my head wearily. “I don’t know. There’s not enough time, and I don’t understand enough about Shaa’s ambitions. Securing the Blessed Lands as a breadbasket for the empire is just one piece of the puzzle. An important piece, for sure, but I don’t know what the bigger picture is yet.”

Is Mira trying to make a play to become empress? How much of what she’s doing is just continuing down the path her mother set up, and how much is her own conception? I really thought there’d be more disarray after the death of their matriarch, especially with someone like that as heiress, but she’s been swift, decisive, and most frustrating of all, successful.

It makes me wonder if there’s someone else behind it. If Lady Sabaah Shaa Baanu was just another pawn for something bigger, then it wouldn’t matter that she’s been replaced by Mira. But who? And why? There’s just so much we still don’t know.

“You’re a clever girl, Allison,” Jira says with a kind smile. “Like my granddaughter. But you both make the same mistake—you try to see too much, to look too far ahead. Take care not to dive so deep that you can’t see the surface.”

“Is there something smaller that I’m missing?” I ask.

She shrugs. “I don’t know, but there might be. My little Remi has been so focused on the prosperity of our tribe that Elder Feena’s schemes slipped right past her.”

I blink. “You know about that?”

And here I was debating whether I should bring it up, or if that would be betraying Talla’s confidence.

“It’s a convenient thing, being old and eccentric,” Jira chuckles. “Feena thinks me a fool, but I haven’t remained as chieftain of this tribe by chance. I’ve known of her ambitions, and I expected she’d be plotting something well before your Lady Talla informed me.”

She did? I’m not exactly surprised, but I am a little hurt that she didn’t tell us about it. Then again, she’s been sort of avoiding us since the weird incident with Maggie’s new spell. We probably owe her an apology for that.

“I know it’s none of my business, but what are you planning to do about it?”

Jira doesn’t respond immediately, and I’m worried that I’ve overstepped by asking. Then she gently places a hand on my head and shakes it.

“Gwahbluh!” I sputter in surprise as she laughs at my reaction. “What was that for?!”

“Mm, it’s not quite the same without horns,” she sighs. “Do your people have an equivalent gesture?”

“To that?!” I squeak. Come to think of it, I have seen Fa’aun do that—usually to children. “Uh, probably ruffling someone’s hair?”

Before she can act on that, I put my hands on my head protectively and duck down.

“Don’t though!”

“I’ll refrain for now,” she replies with a sly grin. “How many times must I repeat myself, Maev? Is it because you have many minds that every lesson must be repeated, or are you simply stubborn by nature?”

“What do you mean?”

She sighs and shakes her head. “What I told Violet was not rhetoric, Allie. The other elders may think you are a guest, but you are always welcome in this tribe. You are one of us—family. How could our fate be none of your business?”

I blink. She’s said it before, but it’s never really sunk in. “But why?”

We really haven’t done anything to earn that kind of favor, and I didn’t think she was that close with Lady Maari.

“Because I am the chieftain, and I say it is so,” she declares. “I need not justify myself to you or any other. As for Elder Feena, Talla has suggested that I force her to challenge my authority directly before we depart.”

That’s one of the worst case scenarios! Feena’s bound to have expected an outcome like this to be possible, and she’s likely got enough followers to cause trouble. Splitting the tribe now could lead to utter disaster!

“You’re not worried that might weaken tribal unity at a critical moment?” I hedge.

She scoffs. “You can just say you think it’s a bad idea.”

I wince. Yeah, Jira’s not a fan of equivocation. “I was just trying to be polite.”

“Feena’s plotting has already created a rift,” Jira explains. “It’s just hidden beneath the murk. If Remi is to have any chance of navigating the waters ahead, I must clear them for her.”

“You have a plan?” I ask.

She turns to me and smiles. “I do, and I would ask your help to enact it, Maev. All of you.”

I blink, then stand up straight to give her my full attention. “We’re listening.”

* * *

Finding Talla isn’t difficult. She hasn’t been completely avoiding us or anything, just keeping a bit of distance. I’ve respected that so far, but the storm is letting up and we’re running out of time before Jira sets sail and I want to make sure she’s okay.

When she answers the door to her quarters, she’s neither surprised nor unhappy to see us—a good start.

“Oh, hey Maev!” she greets us cheerfully. “Good timing, why don’t you come inside?”

Talla’s room is bigger and better furnished than ours, but it’s still a relatively small guest room compared to anything in the sprawling estate of her family home.

“Good timing?” I ask, taking a seat on one of the plush floor cushions around her table.

“Yep!” she confirms. “I’ve been reviewing everything I’ve read about blessings and curses, to see how it might apply to some of Maggie’s ideas, and I think I’ve made a bit of a breakthrough.”

Talla’s skills let her memorize books just by glancing through the pages once, and before she became a ranger she spent a lot of time as both a student and professor of the biggest university in the nation. So when she says everything she’s read, that’s almost as good as saying everything there is to read.

“That’s exciting!” I reply. “And I’m sure Maggie will want to hear all about it, but I was hoping to talk to you first.”

“Of course,” Talla agrees, taking a seat across from me. “What can I do for you, Allie?”

This is not quite what I was expecting. It’s not like Talla’s been cold or anything, but this is the first time since the incident that we’ve actually sat down to chat like this.

“Well, uh, are you okay?” I ask. “I was a little worried about you after what happened last time, and you’ve been a bit distant since then.”

She blinks. “Oh! No, I’m fine—I’ve just been focused on my research. Did you think I was avoiding you?”

“Kinda, yeah,” I admit.

“Sorry about that,” she says. “I can get pretty caught up in my work sometimes.”

I purse my lips. “So you’re not upset or anything?”

“Not at all! It was rough for a day or two, but I’ve handled magical strain before.”

It feels kinda like there’s more she’s not saying, but I don’t want to press now.

“Alright then,” I reply. “Then I guess you can tell us about your findings.”

“Yeah!” Maggie pipes up excitedly. “Out with the goods!”

“Well,” Talla begins, “you know how blessings can grant temporary skills?”

I nod. Though I haven’t followed Maggie and Vi’s explorations of this world’s magic super closely, I’ve managed to pick up that much at least.

“According to a very old text that wasn’t too popular at the time, those temporary skills are similar to spells,” she explains. “Specifically, in the way that they imprint themselves onto one’s interface. That is to say that being granted a temporary skill and learning a spell are effectively the same process.”

For a moment, I can feel my eyes glossing over at the technical details and implications, but then I lean forward eagerly.

“That would mean that temporary skills aren’t actually temporary,” I note. “Just your access to them. So Engie’s carving the framework into our souls, then just covering it up when it’s inconvenient?”

“Hello Maggie,” Talla giggles. “It’s probably much more complicated than that, but this particular scholar seems to think so. His findings were mostly ignored by scholars at the time, though.”

“Huh? Why the fuck would they do that?” I ask. “That’s huge!”

“Well, two reasons,” she says. “One is that church doctrine at the time stated that the divine interface was immutable. Only the Goddess can alter her work, it was said. That’s been largely disproven these days, though there are a few orthodox hardliners that still believe it.”

“Ugh, of course it’s religious doctrine,” I groan. “And the other reason?”

“The author,” she sighs. “I don’t even remember where I found the book—my skill doesn’t help with that part—but back then only the church was allowed to practice magic. The treatise was written independently by an uncredited mage and recounted in the book by one Lady Arisha—no family or clan name given—as a strange and esoteric theory posited to her by a man in her employ.”

Yeah, I should have seen that one coming.

“Well that’s some bullshit,” I grumble. “So what does that mean for us?”

“At the very least,” she muses, “it suggests that with the right methods, temporary skills and spells could be recovered without the original blessing that granted them. But I think that it might also be a step closer to creating entirely new ‘modules’ from scratch.”

Oh hell yes! Now she’s speaking my language.