Thirteen
Fish don’t care about your feelings
The music had been veryloud. That explained why I’d lain awake staring at the ceiling for most of the night with Silli draped across my chest, listening to nothing. Of course there was nothing to listen to. The festival was over. I was home, but the memory of the music kept going. Very loud music. That was all.
I was on the beach with my fishing pole before first light.
Silli came with me, which he made clear was a sacrifice. He had expected breakfast first. I offered dried fish. He took it, looked at it, and set it down, clearly insulted.Fine. Picky little bugger.I broke off a piece of bait fish and gave him the eyes instead. He accepted those with great condescension, as though doing me a favor.
“That girl spoiled you,” I muttered. “If you think I’m going to feed you spiced fruit paste every day, you’ve another thing coming.”
He ignored me and ate his fish eyes.
The sun was still below the horizon, the water somewhere between night and morning. My feet were in the cool sand and my mug was warm in one hand and my rod in the other. My line was out but nothing was biting, yet. It was the hour before anything else begins, when the world is quiet and entirely itself.
I wasnotthinking about Maive.
I took a sip of the nutty, slightly sweet beverage and sighed. It was one of the better things about living near the village.
Notthinking about her hand at the back of my neck. The warmth of it. The smallness.
A fish tested the lure and swam on. I adjusted my grip.
Notthinking about the way she’d smelled, which was the sea and warm bread, which I found unreasonably irritating even now.
A wave came in cold over my feet.
Stop it, I thought.You are a retired mercenary standing on a beach. There is nothing to think about.
I focused on the water. Tried to, anyway.
Silli had scampered down to the tide line and was furiously digging in random places. Every few minutes I heard him working the edge of the surf. He caught things there I’d never been able to identify and probably didn’t want to. Occasionally he looked back up to verify I was still in the same place.I was. I wasn’t going anywhere.
The sky lightened. The water shifted from gray to low, beaten gold. A pair of the big blue biters I’d been cataloging were working about twenty meters out, their shadows just visible beneath the surface. I watched them and forced my thoughts to neutral things. Anything buther.
B2 whirred up to me. “There is an intruder alert from the?—”
“North,” I finished for it. “Shocking.”
Another Runam. I could hear the footsteps, now. This person had a cheerful rhythm, and I figured out who it was even before I could see him. I did not turn around.
“You’re up early,” Pasek said, coming to stand beside me.
“I live here,” I said.
“Beautiful morning.”
“Yes.”
He put his hands behind his back and looked out at the water with great satisfaction, as though he’d arranged all of it himself. I waited.
“Good festival last night,” he said.
“It was.”
“Thepindlokwas exceptional.”
“It was.” I thought about those inner pieces Braija had promised. They had fully delivered. That wasnotthe current topic.
