Rounds 3 and 4 of the January Game

[dagas_isa]

"Everybody hates the swamp when it rains." Persei said that seeming out of nowhere.

That was true enough. Inori pushed aside the tangling grasses with the walking stick as she made her way through the ankle deep waters. Her toes squelched through the mud.

"Yet we go through it anyway," Persei said, "because the Gacha never go through here. If we go out in the opening, you'd see a Gacha kneeling house."
Inori closed her eyes. A mental map, lost long ago, became repaired in her head. The rows that had given birth to her had had swamps just a few miles to the east.

"The rain should stop soon, and the dry season will come." Inori edged along the base of a cypress, testing the ground with her good foot for stones and twisted roots embedded in the mud.

Persei nodded. "You know this place well, Gacha, like you've at least seen it before. I'd say, the rain will stop and the flowers bloom. But then you have to start worrying about the mosquitoes that spawn. So we have to be out by then. Also: the Gacha here don't hesitate to hunt."

The drip of fat raindrops falling from branches struck Inori's head. "How long of a walk do you think it is?"

"It's been a long time since we took this route. The Chimare clan took it for themselves years and years ago. But the signs are all there, like that bent bit of reed right there. That's the sign we all follow. So it's like they're..." Persei broke off. "Jin! Jin!" He shouted now.

Jin turned around, his hazel eyes focused on Persei.

"The main Zhoraik clan, they're heading toward the Chimare clan, right?"

Jin nodded. "With the Chodo no longer secure, they have to."



All the Noraiuin stared at Inori as Lai wrapped strips of cloth dampened with warm water around her hands.

She scowled. "Am I something to gaze upon?"

Kaitos returned the scowl back, and muttered something, 'stupid gacha' being the only words her ears heard. Persei spoke in rapid streams of language, too fast for her mind to translate. Jin remained silence.

Only Lai answered. "Just call us amazed that you still live. Do your hands hurt?"

"No."

Lai grimaced. "That's a bad sign. It means you might have been bitten by the cold."

"I'm sure I haven't. Only my leg hurts, and only because I'm not yet strong enough to quell it."

A sigh from the healer told Inori that Lai didn't care much for that answer. "My mentor in the healing arts told me of fools like you. Pain is the friend of the healing. When you block pain, you block recovery."

"I'm fine." Inori narrowed her eyes. "We should talk about when we move from this place."

"We can't move until springtime," Jin said from the middle of the cave. A fallen branch laid across his lap, while he whittled it. "There's not enough growing on any route or enough shelter to last us through the cold. In the spring, we rejoin the clan. If they return to last year's camp, you will be close enough to your tower."

"If?"

Jin turned away from her.

"The day I found you in the lake, that camp no longer was safe. They might choose a different migration route this year. Besides," he said, "by spring, we'll be able to take care of you while we travel."

Inori sealed away her bitter response. Once she could know her position, she would find Utame and leave her useless self and them behind.



"The noraiuin chief is demanding restitution, on behalf of his cousin's death." Beneath his spectacles, Kozan's eyelids drooped. Even Landra could tell that he had reached the last of his stamina.

"What does he want? Gem does him no good, nor most trade goods." Landra's mind raced for a solution. If she knew more of the noraiuin ways, she could advise him better.

Kozan shook his head, and adjusted his glasses. "No, nothing that simple. He wants Utame. Says that it's symbolic to his people."

"Oh."

She thought for a bit, her own disastrous reign running through her head.
"Let him have it." The conclusion surprised her as much it would him.

"Absolutely not." He crossed his arms over his chest. "He would not know how to run it."

"Exactly." Landra said, avoiding his gaze as she smiled into her hand. "The noraiuin chief is playing by his own rules because he refuses to learn yours. It's why he sent his cousin here when you made your bargain. And it's why he accepted a foreigner from you as his hostage He knows nothing about your culture."

Everything seemed more and more possible. "The chief said it had symbolic meaning. So he won't burn it."

"We don't know that."

"We take the chance. He won't burn it immediately. But the important thing is, even if he rules this place, he still doesn't know that tower, and he won't learn it quickly. We have that advantage."

He smiled that devastating grin at her. "Indeed we do. Shall we go, beautiful, and accept his surrender."

That again. Landra snorted. "You go. I need to be elsewhere. Trust me." She held the door open for him. "Also, take the stairs."

Kozan passed by her, brushing a hand on her cheek. "Of course."



The fact that Sekhen preferred a female hostage proved to be a problem.

Only two of those who accompanied him on his search were women themselves, and to be honest, Kozan would prefer to fight a leopard barehanded than to rile either of them. He skulked around the campsite, more a thwarted child than a nobleman. A thousand arguments told him to refuse the offer and turn back. Yet the last one, "What if they know Inori's whereabouts?" drove him on.

He approached them separately, Maki first.

"Would you—"

Kozan couldn't even continue a question before Maki shook her bullish head and turned away. "I won't be that kind of female hostage."

His sense of self-preservation prevailed, and Kozan chose not to ask what kind of female hostage she would be, and risk drawing her ill-tempered fists down on him out on this vulnerable plain.

Only Natalia remained. Kozan found her apart from the group, meditating through martial arts forms.

"I humbly ask—"

She whipped around. Her long braid swished in the wind. Her brown eyes narrowed. "Yeah, I know what you ask." She returned to her forms, stretching her arms over her head before punching at the air.

"Well?" The whole powerless feeling grew tiresome. He looked forward to returning to Utame where plenty of people would grovel to him.

Natalia stopped. She grabbed her necklace, a chain passing through two wooden rings. "I'll go. The Sadiri are after me, for Mier's disappearance."

He bowed. "Thank you greatly."

She shook her head. "Don't thank me. This is for my own end."

Kozan had no preference either way. As long as he could confirm the bargain he made. "Sekhen will come at sundown to finish everything. Be prepared by then."

Natalia nodded. "Sure thing."

She walked away from him, and though they had never been anything close to friends, he suddenly had to say something.

"Thank you for your help these past few months."

She grunted and continued.

"And, when the Sadiri come to search for you, I won't betray you."

Natalia stopped, turned around, and stared. "Thank you." She whispered. She bowed low in the Saidenese manner, and out of respect, Kozan matched the gesture. Then she turned and continued to walk away.

At sundown, with the exhange of hostages, or Kireh, as Sekhen called them, Kozan made no mention of their earlier encounter. Neither did Natalia.



The Saidenese could have the warmest, most pleasant clinics in the world, and yet with every passing moment that Dr. Retuzu spent behind the red door, Landra grew more and more nervous.

A mild winter flu never demanded this much attention, did it? She only needed a list of recommended herbs to take to an apothecary, not an extended diagnosis.

The red door opened, and the doctor walked out. The expression on her rounded middle-aged face echoed an expression very familiar to Landra and her previous life. Mothers in a University sisterhood had that same expression when their proteges stood at the edge of discovery, a touch smug, a touch anticipating, the bearer of knowledge that the protege did not know yet. It was an expression that Landra never wanted to see directed at her again.

"The good news is," Dr. Retuzu said in a soft voice, "you are perfectly healthy."

The doctor said healthy, but Landra still had the exhaustion and nausea burdening her. It was small comfort. "But—"

Dr. Retuzu offered a small cup of brown liquid. "Drink this, please."

Landra shifted in her seat on the examination table. Now Retuzu's demeanor echoed a Tercion's mother eerily. But, like an obedient initiate, Landra took the cup by both shaking hands, and drank. Even though it tasted as foul as any other herbal mixture, Landra swallowed.

Suddenly, she could hear so much more, the rhythmic beeping of clinic equipment, the ticking of the clock on the wall.

"Concentrate on living sounds."

Landra closed her eyes, turning all the medical sounds to a faint hum. She heard breathing, Dr. Retuzu's steady in-out, in-out, and Landra's own frantic breath. Underneath the sound of the breath though, was the comforting lub-dub of heartbeats. Her own pounded in her ear, as she searched desperately for the sound the doctor wished for her to hear. A second heartbeat, the doctor's followed.

And then a third.

It was faint as though buried, but steady and perfect in rhythm. She knew that third heartbeat was what Dr. Retuzu wanted her to hear.

Landra opened her eyes. She looked around for someone hidden, or someone who had just come in to visit the doctor. But no, it was just her and Dr. Retuzu.

"What was that?" Landra's dared not speak above a whisper.

Retuzu only smiled that smug maternal smile. "You are pregnant, Miss Porjava."




"If this were your last night in the world, what would you be doing with it?" Kage held her hand, as they sat on their favorite perch, staring at the glow of the Noraiuin lanterns far below them.

Inori twisted her face into a frown. "That's not a good question." She squeezed his hand.

"Still, please be answering." Kage looked distracted. He fidgeted, an unusual gesture for him, even with all his other peculiarities.

The answer glowed within her, the feelings she'd locked away long ago when she planned on becoming more than another slum rat. "I would choose to become your lover."

A red tinge filled his cheeks. "You would be doing that? Really?"

Inori shrugged. "When the question is hypothetical, the answer does not matter."

"Would you become my lover tonight?"

She considered. "I would like to, but I think in the end, I would choose otherwise."

Late autumn rains mixed with hail banged against the window, forcing her to step back.

"Why is that being?"

"Kage?" His manner troubled her as much as the questions he asked. "What's in your head?"

He turned to smile at her. "Nothing much is in my head now. You. I'm nearly human now, so I must be thinking of the future as a human."

"You're babbling."

Kage grabbed her shoulder and gave her a squeeze. "I am being nervous, that's all."

Her arm went across the small of her back. "It gets better. I've been a human for twenty-six years, I should know."

Kage sat on the bench facing the window and pulled her down next to him. "I have a feeling, tomorrow will change everything."

She refused to believe that. "You know why I will not become your lover? The concerns with Zomi, of course. We need to tread carefully around her. But also," Inori twined her fingers around the pale hairs at his neck. "we will see the day after tomorrow."

Kage fell silent, like he wanted to disagree, but didn't. Or like he wanted to agree, but could not.

"I am not so certain as you." He broke the silence, "but I am not letting you go tonight." He pulled her close enough that she could feel the newly minted beating of his heart. He was becoming human after all. Her arms encircled him.

They stayed entwined in the desperate hug that would become their downfall.