Dekala does, too, if the tightening of her face is any indication. “Would you prefer I wed my soulbond?” she snaps, sharp and defensive. Orrin rocks back for a moment, looking stunned, and Ruti is taken aback as well. Dekala doesn’t budge. “Shall I find the man who is my perfect match?” she demands. “Perhaps he might know his place.”
It’s cruel of her to lash out at Orrin, who has always been annoyingly loyal, and Ruti speaks up despite herself, in his defense. “That’s not fair,” she says, and Dekala’s glare shifts to her. “He is only saying what your uncle will, and how can you respond to that?”
As if on cue, the wind whips around Ruti, yanking her curls back from her face and pulling at her torso as though to hurl her away, but she doesn’t budge, watching Dekala as she grits her teeth and only manages to intensify the biting breeze. Orrin mumbles something about firewood and lumbers off into the forest, and Ruti runs an absent hand through the coils of Kimya’s hair and refuses to flee.
It’s only once the wind settles that Dekala speaks, calm again. “I know,” she says, and her shoulders drop. “I know what my uncle will say.” She flicks her palm over to stare at the smoky brushstrokes of her unfinished mark. “I don’t need anyone else to tell me that.”
Ruti is still feeling belligerent. “And how do your people know that your sewa won’t tear down their houses and destroy their crops?” she challenges, and Dekala gives her a sharp glare.
It can’t conceal the troubled look beneath it, the understanding of the inevitable danger that Dekala will pose to her people, and Ruti finds herself struggling too, for an answer that she doesn’t have.
“If I can fight nature itself once,” Dekala says, and presses two fingers to her palm, “then I shall do it again.” Her eyes flick to Ruti’s cloak. “You collected two vials from the lake, did you not?”
Ruti has no idea how to seal Dekala’s sewa—if it would take only a vial, or something far more potent than even that. Sealing a mark is superficial, like erecting an invisible barrier and keeping it there forever. Sealing something innate to Dekala’s soul is out of her grasp.
But still, she thinks of it for most of the night as Kimya sleeps beside her. Dekala lies only a few feet away, and Ruti can see her chest rise and fall in irregular, sleepless breaths.
As they walk the next morning, a city seems to rise in front of them, bit by bit. It gets larger and larger as the forests begin to recede again, sprawling across the south of the peninsula and alive with sailors and merchants. They pawn the ring away at the first shop they find, returning with a bag of coin much larger than the one Ruti had gotten for it in the Merchants’ Circle.
With the coin they purchase sandals for Dekala and new, less worn clothing, and they have a meal of cheese and fruit like none they’ve had since they left Somanchi. Dekala buys a clove oil that protects sun-baked skin at sea and also spends a whole golden coin on an enormous piece of chocolate that she slips to Kimya, who kisses Dekala on her cheek in thanks.
Guder’s merchant city is built for the raging winds of the sea. The buildings are smaller than the ones of Somanchi, squat and immovable, and the horizon is wider than any Ruti’s seen. The people of Guder are varied and busy—they come in all shades of brown and Ruti even glimpses some merchants so pale that they are nearly white. They dress in Zidesh’s fine fabrics and Rurana’s gold finery and in strange styles with oddly shaped buttons and laced dresses. The languages they speak are just garbled noise to Ruti, but she knows the tenor of haggling and arguments, as familiar to her here as anywhere else. The shops teem with people inside and out, brushing past their party and paying them little notice.
In a city this large, no one pays them any attention. Dekala moves between the people with her hood down and no one recognizes her as the missing princess, and there is little discussion or gossip about anything but the weather and the sea. They negotiate with the captain of a small ship, unobtrusive and carrying only a few goods out to Niyaru. “I can’t guarantee that we’ll be stopping at Somanchi,” the captain says, accepting the coin that Dekala offers him. “But we will be close enough to the River Somanchi that you can find a ride there. Are you Zideshi?” He looks dubiously at their Ruranan robes and adornments.
“My sister’s soulbond is Zideshi,” Dekala says easily. “She has told us of Zidesh’s prosperity. We go to the capital city to learn a trade.”
“Hm.” The captain peers out into the water, where Ruranan border guards patrol the sea. “Rurana’s been doing well for itself, too. There are more ships out now than there have been since the civil war. And they look newer than any ships I’ve ever seen in the Southern Sea. They say that Prince Torhvin has been swimming in coin lately, and enough of it goes to the army to keep them happy.”
Dekala speaks for all of them, Ruti hanging back to escape any scrutiny. In Somanchi, she can insist that her gloved hands and ill manners are a product of Kaguruk. Here, there are too many ships’ captains who might have been there before. “Is the army in control, or is Prince Torhvin?”
“Prince Torhvin keeps a tight leash on the generals, I hear,” the captain says, leading them aboard his vessel. “Rurana loves their new prince. But I don’t need to tell you that, I’m sure.”
“Oh, hardly,” Dekala agrees, a dim rumble of thunder sounding above them. “We are all great admirers of Prince Torhvin.” Orrin looks displeased at that statement, which makes Ruti smile broadly.
The captain bobs his head, already distracted by new arrivals. “The trip will take four days,” he says. “I can offer you three small cabins until the River Somanchi. If you choose to stay on, it’ll be more coin.” He drifts off, leaving them to board the ship alone.
It takes only two hours on the ship before Ruti is vomiting off the side, dizzy and nauseated by the rocking of the boat. She’s never been on one before, and she hadn’t been prepared for the constant motion that has her stomach churning. Kimya climbs onto the rail to vomit alongside her. Even Dekala looks a little green.
“I haven’t traveled much since my parents died,” she admits. “My uncle has kept me like a precious gem, locked away in the palace. I didn’t remember it being this.…” She clutches the rail for a moment, taking deep breaths as the air whips around her. “I am ill suited for water,” she says at last.
Ruti groans and vomits off the side again. By nightfall she is less sick, and she manages to keep down the meal they eat in the galley. The ship is small, but there are a few other passengers aboard, most headed to Niyaru. One or two of them squint suspiciously at Dekala. “Your father’s face is on Zideshi coin,” Ruti mutters to her. “Think you look familiar to them?”
Dekala scoffs. “It’s a butchered version of him. Our metalsmiths are an embarrassment. Nothing like the women we met in the woods.” Still, they stay below deck for the duration of the next day, careful to avoid any more glances. Orrin prowls beneath the low ceiling and cramped little square of floor in Dekala’s cabin like a caged beast, impatient and irritable, and Kimya sleeps through most of the day and into the night. Ruti sits on Dekala’s bed, eyes closed, singing a song she’s finally managed to compose to wash away her seasickness.
“Can you really sing anything?” Dekala asks her, fascinated.
“Aside from the obvious,” Ruti says, “I don’t know. The spirits are fond enough that they favor me with this. I just … open my mouth, and the song comes to me.” She shrugs, self-conscious. “It was how I survived as a Markless in the slums. I don’t know if I’d be nearly as good at it if I’d grown up with a family and no need for it.”
“It’s a powerful skill,” Dekala says. Her eyes glow, and there is an interest in them that is almost envious. “Bonded don’t get to choose what they can do. Without training, most won’t even reach their full potential at what ability they do have. You can do everything they can and more.”
Ruti feels warmth in her cheeks, Dekala’s gaze setting her off-balance. It would be so easy now to ignore Orrin thundering up and down the passageway outside the room, to reach over to stroke Dekala’s hair and trace the curve of her jawline. It would be so easy to lean in close, waiting for a glimmer of interest in Dekala’s eyes, and see if she might forget Orrin for a moment.
Have you forgotten what this journey is about? Orrin’s taunt sounds in her mind, and Ruti jolts. They’ve spent over a week on a quest to bottle an offering to the spirits, and she’s been so caught up in getting to know Dekala that she’s altogether ignored the reason why they’re doing this. Dekala loves Orrin, cares deeply enough about him to travel across an entire kingdom to keep him, and what is Ruti doing? What is Ruti if not a Markless girl who is here because she is useful to Dekala?
Pesky, lingering feelings lurch in her chest, refusing to be denied. She’s spent too much time with Dekala, has allowed herself to fall in a little too deep, and now she’s paying the price. Dekala hasn’t invited any of this from her. Dekala has always been upfront about her relationship with Orrin. Ruti has gone soft for a woman with shining eyes and dark brown skin, for a rare smile and the countenance of a queen.
Spirits alive, she’s become a dreamer.
She shudders at her own thoughts. There’s a thump against the boat, enough that the ship shudders with her and she bumps shoulders with Dekala. “Was that your wind?”
Dekala shrugs, suddenly unhappy. “I don’t know. I have no control over it. Sometimes it feels as though I can’t walk five steps without ominous thunder sounding.” She lets out a little huff. “I did once know a man who claimed his sewa would make him float whenever he was angry. He’d make for a sight, flailing and raging and trapped in midair. So I suppose it could be worse.”
There’s a note in her voice that has Ruti shifting, a steadying hand on Kimya’s sleeping figure as she turns to look at Dekala. “You once knew a man.…”
It isn’t a question and it is, and Dekala says, “My father.” She stares out into the passageway. Orrin is still pacing, glancing into the room from time to time to give Dekala an adoring look and Ruti an ugly one. “My mother had sewa too, and they could wield the wind itself and harness it in ways beyond my imagination. They always said it was why my sewa was so strong. It is the Winged One blessing our bloodline.”
As if in response to that statement, the boat rocks again, the wind and the waves jolting it to one side. Ruti hears loud shouts above deck as the sailors correct for the wind, and she braces herself against the bulkhead. “Were you close to your parents?”
There’s a flicker of hesitation on Dekala’s face, an unwillingness to talk about them, but she says, “I was pampered and adored. They made sure I never lacked for anything.”
It isn’t an answer, and Ruti’s about to say so when the shouts above them stop abruptly. Ruti glances up at the overhead, suddenly no longer certain that Dekala’s wind is what has put the ship in turmoil. “I’m going to.…” She gestures at the door, and Dekala nods wordlessly.
Orrin is still in the passageway, but he’s also staring up, his big brow furrowed in confusion. Ruti elbows him as she walks past. “Stand guard over Dekala and Kimya,” she says. “I’m going up.”
“Don’t tell me what to do, Markless,” Orrin grunts, but he shuffles down the passageway, his shoulders bumping against the bulkhead as he retreats. Ruti creeps forward. There are passengers in a few other cabins, huddled inside and talking worriedly, and none of them seem to know what’s going on. Only the sailors on deck will.
Carefully, she eases the hatch open, taking the ladder up toward the deck. She hears an unfamiliar voice and stops, listening before she moves any higher up the ladder. “Our men will collect your cargo,” the voice says. “Are there passengers aboard?” There’s an accent to it like nothing Ruti’s heard before, and she creeps up the ladder, determined to see more.
