Hogog hunched down, poking the cold embers with a stick. Kaye turned, following the footprints. Two people, unless they had erased some of the tracks but not all, though she thought that unlikely as there was no indication that they left in a hurry.

  Hogog spoke behind her, “Nothing to see here. Just a small fire. They cooked their food and left.”

  The trail led east into the wastes. Though they were far from the worst of the deserts, Kaye hadn’t stepped outside of Riin to look at its surroundings. Dry, cracked earth extended as far as she could see, spotted here and there by underbrush. No mountains were outlined against the sky. Just a few weeks had passed, a brief voyage through sea, and the world changed this much.

  “Kaye?”

  “We’ve come a long way, haven’t we?”

  Footsteps approached behind her. “We’ll find a way.”

  She nodded, continued staring at the ndscape for a moment, comparing it to the sights on the way to Korok’Kan. Not much longer now, she knew.

  “We should head back,” her uncle spoke.

  “We should.”

  Kaye turned, and they paced up the incline, reaching for their packs. They had set out with nothing more than their strung bows, arrows, a light meal and a waterskin each. Now they were coming back with snakes and some of the hopping rodents that were the snakes’ prey. Not much, but the snakes were heavy and would serve for a few meals. Hogog had left his bow behind in Kakinse, but fashioned himself a new one with the best wood that could be acquired on the docks of Riin.

  They continued until they reached the road and turned south. The caravan wasn’t even on the horizon, but the dust cloud they kicked up came into view shortly after. Kaye and Hogog were often on patrols together, and that always led to some hunting. Everyone in the caravan was expected to do their job, and theirs was to ensure the road was safe.

  When they eventually approached the caravan, Hogog held his hand out towards her.

  “Let me bring these to the butchers. Go do your thing.”

  Kaye handed over her pack and went around the caravan, looking for the cart that carried their things. The wagons were pulled by camels, but the carts were pulled by people, which was why Kaye and Hogog made sure to leave their belongings in the far-end of one while out on patrol, so they could reach for it without needing the cart to stop or hopping on top and make their lives harder.

  Her bow now unstrung, she pced it along with the quiver back into the cart and changed into her only other shirt — which wasn’t disgustingly sticking to her skin yet —, grabbed the nuuha neckce, the notebook and charcoal, and then left.

  The caravan was stopping, driving the wagons and carts to the side of the road. The worst of the day’s heat always came by midday, when they stopped to eat and feed the animals.

  One of the guards was unlocking the wagon when Kaye reached it. There was a key for the back and another for their shackles, but those were never removed. Instead, they were untied and allowed to walk in a circle, one at a time.

  While the guard was untying Uruoro, Kaye noticed Aien stepping up to her side.

  “I think you should know that I’ve been told to keep an eye on you.”

  “Because I talk to the sves?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not doing anything though, and I do my job, don’t I?”

  “You’re not, and you do, which is why I was only told to keep an eye on you. The boruodan is… prized.”

  Kaye didn’t have to ask to know that. Uruoro would not be sold to work in the jade mines, nor would he be pulling carts. No, Uruoro was entertainment. Would be, for whoever would buy him from Master Shoshin. And you seem unfazed by it, Aien.

  When the wagon was closed again Kaye approached. Uruoro was already looking around for her. Their eyes met, and he smiled his greetings.

  Kaye pulled the nuuha out with a hand. The guards didn’t allow Uruoro to work on it himself, so he had to teach her how to fix it with just words and gestures. Thankfully, he was good with words.

  She started walking in a circle around him. The gait necessary for the nuuha to speak was unnatural to her. It required that she stuck her neck forward, bent her back, and took slow steps that allowed the neckce to sway to the sides in long, calm arcs. The materials clicked against each other, producing tinkling and knocking sounds. A right arc sounded different from a left arc, and a heaving step sounded different from both. It still felt cking, but Uruoro had expined to her that it was followed by other instruments, all of which required movement, such as an anklet that sounded simir to a bell when stepped with.

  “Ah, it sounds almost good now. Thank you for this, Kaye Nanur.”

  Smiling, she stood up straight and approached him, gesturing with her notebook. Uruoro was a short man, only measuring up to her shoulders, and she was far from being the tallest person around.

  “I was wondering if I could draw you today,” she said.

  “Draw? I didn’t know you drew. My, of course you can.”

  “Don’t expect much,” she warned him, and gestured for the shadow of the wagon.

  Uruoro sat down, shackled hands resting between his thighs. Kaye opened the notebook, doing her best to ignore the bnk page between her notations on Kakinse and the few she’d managed back in Riin. Without thinking much about it, she set charcoal to paper and started scribbling.

  “What do you wish to hear about today?” Uruoro asked.

  “Yesterday you left off at crossing the sea.”

  “Ah, of course. My people did cross it, but that was before it was a sea. We can’t have been the only ones, I’m sure. We were fishers then more than we were hunters. Our home was ice and snow, made so by the one from the sea. He guided us to a new nd when the first began to die, a warmer nd.”

  “How long ago was that?” Kaye asked while drawing the rough lines of Uruoro’s chin.

  “No one is able to answer that, and anyone who cims to have the answer is tricking you, if not themselves.”

  I probably have a better idea of it than you do. Young though she had been, Kaye had heard about her past world’s past. Uruoro could be talking about hundreds of thousands of years, and what he called the first nd likely wasn’t the first, but only as far back as had survived in the living memory of his dying people.

  He continued, “Such is the story of all peoples, I imagine. To live to the fullest in every nd they find, until there is not enough of it left, and then they set on looking for a new one. I often wonder about what went through their minds, when staring around. Have my people lived in this pce before? What did they name this soil, this pnt or that animal? What stories did they tell their children?”

  Kaye found herself staring at Uruoro, paying attention to how his mouth moved to form the words. They had sent her back to Korok’Kan, to the stone sbs and their unknown builders. Not simply unknown, but forgotten.

  Looking down, she continued working on the ears.

  “Do you know what happened with you? Why there are so few boruodan alive?”

  “Such is the story of all peoples.” Uruoro repeated. “All things must end, after all. A people can fish a ke until it is devoid of life, and a people can be in the ke, fished by each other or by something else. We lived and we loved, and we spread and seeded, until we were too far apart, then we slept and swooned.”

  “That… can’t be all there is to it.”

  “But it is, Kaye Nanur. Look at your people: how far they spread, how tall they can build. I am sure that my people saw the same in what they achieved, modest though it was, and thought to themselves that there could be no end to it, but didn’t we leave the first nd precisely because of that? Because there was an end in sight?”

  “But there was also a hope. The second nd.”

  “Such is the beauty of living.”

  Kaye stopped moving the charcoal. So few words, such a brief exchange, and she felt out of her depth. Every time they spoke, she couldn’t help but feel that Uruoro was carefully guiding the conversation.

  She raised her eyes to meet his. “And living implies its fleeting nature.”

  “Just so. Nature.”

  A few heartbeats passed, in which her awe gave room to fear. This man would die alone, away from his people, shackled, and Kaye would have more grieving to do.

  When her feelings tethered on despair, Kaye found her escape in the pages. She had drawn his face as best she could, taking up the whole page on the left, leaving the right one bnk so she could write about meeting him.

  Turning it around, she handed the notebook to him. Uruoro reached for it with great care, and his smile widened with each passing moment.

  “Surely you have embellished me.”

  Kaye found herself smiling. There was more she wanted to ask, about how Uruoro ended up where he was now, if he knew where he was going and what would be done to him, but knowing wouldn’t make it any better. There was nothing she could do for him, and reminding him of it would only worsen things. There in the wagon, tied, she was sure he did nothing but think about it.

  Though she was suddenly overwhelmed, Kaye managed to keep it all reined in for the rest of their conversation. Uruoro taught her the trader’s tongue, and Kaye told him about the Nagra, the White Death and the White Life; however, she avoided talking about all the unresolved things she left behind across the narrow sea. It was possible to walk north, west and south to go back to Rennel, but it would take much longer than by ship, and they were getting farther away from all the ports.

  “Kaye,” Aien’s voice cut in. “It is time.”

  Uruoro stood up first, and with a st smile walked to the back of the wagon. Kaye followed, but stayed a few paces behind, watching as the guard unlocked the wagon and Uruoro stepped inside.

  “Can’t you leave him untied? He’s already trapped in there,” Kaye did her best to address the guard in the nguage he understood.

  “These are dangerous,” was all the man said before setting about tying her friend to the mast again.

  Dangerous? Him?

  When Loho was released, he rambled about how long it took, speaking too fast for Kaye to follow. Uruoro retorted, and the st word stood out to her. Headhunter.

  “Wait, a Headhunter?” Aien spoke before Kaye could.

  “Why yes,” Uruoro said, “Loho here is a Headhunter.”

  Kaye stared at him as he exited the wagon. Aien, despite his words about her talking to the sves, followed Loho close behind.

  “I don’t believe it. A Headhunter? Ensved?”

  “Step away, boy,” Loho spoke, drawing out the st word in a warning that didn’t fit a shackled man.

  “I’m a man,” Aien corrected. “And him?” he asked, pointing to the wagon.

  Loho grinned. “The small man is just a small man.”

  “And a Headhunter only sheathes his sword after killing, or he dies holding it. How did you end up here?”

  “I gutted three others…”

  Their voices trailed off, and Kaye was left watching. Aien was arguing with him, irritated. Did he have history with the Headhunters? Did he care about them in some way? He was a swordsman, at least that she knew, and the Headhunters were said to be among the fiercest.

  Kaye turned to Uruoro, who had closed his eyes and was searching for sleep. She looked to Aien again. His white hair always stood out amidst the caravan.

  At least that she knew.