A week in Riin wasn’t nearly enough to get them used to the climate. The city wasn’t dry, being so close to the sea, but the air was stuffy, dusty and somehow hotter than all of that. Their furrowed Nagra clothes were left hanging in the wall of the single room Kaye and Hogog shared and any job they found left them drenched in sweat in minutes.

  They had struggled in the first few days, but eventually jobs came, exhausting and low income though they were. There seemed to be no end to the “opportunities” in Riin’s port, and that was where they spent most of their time, working for whoever needed loading or unloading cargo, transporting it into the city or scraping grime and barnacle off of the vessel’s hulls.

  Kaye recognized plenty of faces in their daily job hunting, learned their names and words. That was the only thing that kept those blurry days remotely bearable: listening in, paying attention to what words repeated, what they pointed at when talking and how the pronunciation changed from speaker to speaker.

  Blurry was good, however. It made her lose sense of time, and she was too tired to think about anything for too long. That kept remembering at bay, kept feelings from overflowing. She welcomed the numbness.

  Kaye slumped down to the ground, her back against a wall that was remotely cold. It was her third time working for a man of few words called Rashin, but he was nice enough to let her sit by the shadow of his tarp after being done with the day’s work.

  “Did my uncle stop by?” Kaye asked in the trader’s nguage, an archaic form of morrish somewhat different from the one she learned in Kakinse, and none of the locals agreed on its name.

  “No, not today.”

  Nodding, she turned away from Rashin, towards the port below them, the people pacing to and from.

  Something about it unsettled her. It wasn’t too early, and they had started at the same time they did every day.

  It was a good moment before Kaye realized that it was the crowd. It was too sparse, too quiet.

  She left Rashin’s tent with a wave of goodbye and nothing but her payment for the day. Walking towards the port she gnced around, but didn’t find Hogog. It wasn’t uncommon for them to end up in different jobs, but she was worried now.

  Following the rger gatherings she could find, it didn’t take long for her to notice they were moving away from the port, into the city. Something had happened, and the longer she walked the noisier the city became.

  Numbness gone, Kaye went around the people, elbowing her way across when it was needed but trying to avoid the crowded main streets. A wall blocked her path when she took a wrong turn, and she climbed it without thinking twice, then looked for a higher pce. She found it on the roof of a nearby building, and that allowed her to traverse the city unperturbed while keeping herself easy to see.

  “Kaye!” She barely heard the voice, and had the impression it had been calling out to her for a while.

  Hogog broke out from the crowd, arms waving. “What are you doing there?”

  “What happened?!” she shouted back.

  He only answered when she slipped down to the ground.

  “There was announcement from… from the nobles, the leaders. A Headhunter army is coming this way.”

  “What? Why?”

  Hogog was nudging her forward before she could finish talking.

  “I didn’t understand all of it, something to do with the Headhunter cns, so people were going around calling others to hear, but they must’ve missed you. Hurry now, we have to grab our belongings.”

  They left the crowd behind them, running. Kaye had heard plenty about the Headhunters, even the foreign crews knew about them. Masked warriors who fought to the death for long enough to weed out the weak from their ranks, now turned into the most feared armies in the region.

  Saying nothing more on the way back, they went straight for the room they shared to start packing.

  “So do we just leave? Where do we go?” Kaye asked.

  “The sooner we leave the better.”

  “Where?”

  “We ask around, find out where they’re coming from and go the other way. Maybe we have a few days before they arrive but I don’t want to risk it.”

  A knot of frustration was forming in Kaye’s stomach. Just standing around in Riin was tiresome and she was still aching from all the weight-carrying.

  Kaye packed her clothes, what little coin she had and everything else in the same bag, strapped her quiver to her waist and picked her bow. It had been a long time since she st used it.

  She turned with a start when someone knocked on the door, loudly and repeatedly.

  “Kaye? Hogog? Are you there?” More knocking. “The Nagra?”

  Kaye recognized the voice. “Aien?”

  Hogog opened the door. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you two,” Aien gestured for them, adjusting the bandana in his forehead. He looked at the packs in their hands. “You’ve heard the news?” Without waiting for them to answer, he continued, “There are some caravans in the west gate, they want to leave today. You should come with me.”

  “A caravan sounds good,” Hogog said, “Do you know what is happening?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  Less than a minute ter they were out into the city again.

  “How did you find us?” Kaye asked.

  “You’re not exactly hard to find,” Aien said. “I knew you were in the city, because people keep talking about you and you stand out in a crowd.”

  “Are you from here?”

  “I’m not, but I’ve known people who were, so I understand them.”

  “Enough of that,” Hogog cut in, “What is happening?”

  Aien took a deep breath. “The cns never stop fighting around here, always raiding each other, and this region of Saldassa where we are is rich in jade, but now it seems like all the Headhunters—all of them—have allied with Sarak—that’s northeast of here.”

  “We run south then? What’s south of here?” Hogog asked.

  “North, before the war reaches us, that’s where the caravans are going. The Headhunters are three days away, that’s what the keshin said.”

  Kaye wished she understood the situation better, but Aien didn’t seem to have anything else to say. He went silent after that and they continued pacing through the city, Kaye and Hogog still panting.

  When they left through the east gate, Aien seemed to already know his way around. Two caravans were forming, one far more organized than the other, and Aien gestured for Kaye and Hogog to follow instead of waiting in line. North of the road was a camp where wagons and carts were being loaded.

  Aien approached some armed men and spoke the trader’s tongue. Kaye caught a name, Shoshin.

  “Who’s Shoshin?” she asked after Aien was done speaking with the others.

  “Master Shoshin is a merchant, a rich one, in need of guards. I have been working for him for a few days now.” Aien gestured around them. “All of this is his, we were supposed to leave two days from now.”

  “Good timing,” Hogog said. “Are we going to work as his guards?”

  “That’s the best I can do.”

  “That’s a lot, Aien, truly. You’re a good man.”

  “Thank you,” Kaye said.

  Aien turned to her, nodded. “That’s the best I can do.”

  Her mind didn’t want to rest even if the body begged for it, and when she found sleep it came in small increments. After waking up several times throughout the night, struggling against the heat and her frustration, Kaye had had enough and left their tent. Thankfully, the water they carried was only room temperature instead of warm, and that eased her a little.

  The camp was still. Only a score of people were up, mostly guards. They gnced her way as she walked around, but didn’t say anything.

  Kaye moved away from the rger gatherings of tents, as she’d rather not wake anyone up. In her aimless pacing, it didn’t take long until the first few rays of light showed in the horizon. The Headhunters would also be coming from that direction, as unwelcome as the sun, as long as she was concerned. She was already starting to sweat, already irritated. The thoughts and emotions she’d worked so hard to keep buried deep within were starting to resurface, brought forward by the break in her blurry days. She’d have to do something, eventually. Move somewhere, to some end. Her uncle would follow, and he too would move, would act. Kaye didn’t want to think about any of that, about why they where were they were. About her parents.

  She stopped, having found her way to the wagons and carts she’d seen yesterday. One of them caught her attention, the one in the middle, the only one with the extended roof pulled out to provide shelter from the sun despite morning only now approaching. It cked any decorations, and the sides and back were made of thick wooden bars which gave a view to the inside where two figures were sitting, tied to a mast in the center where their backs rested against.

  Kaye approached, looking. The one in the left had shiny bck skin, his head was completely bald. He slept with his face against his knees, hiding his features. Though sitting and tied up, Kaye could tell that he was a tall, bulky man of thick limbs and broad shoulders.

  The one in the right turned to her, and Kaye found herself staring into the eyes of a neanderthal. He had a protruding brow-ridge, a rge nose and a wide mouth. His hair was a disheveled mess of dirty brown, and his skin dry and sunburned. His limbs were short, stubby, and the torso was thick and barrel-shaped. He couldn’t really be a neanderthal, not technically, but something like that, an old cousin of the current humanity.

  Her surprise must have shown in her face, for a few heartbeats after holding her gaze he turned away, looking hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” the words poured out of Kaye without her needing to think. “I didn’t mean to.” She took a step closer, hunched down to a sitting position, hands resting against the wooden bars. “Can you understand me?”

  He answered, but she only comprehended some of the words. You. Tongue? Language?

  “What about this?” she asked in the Nagra tongue.

  “Ah, that is better.” His voice was not what she expected. It was deeply nasal, but unmistakably human.

  “I’m sorry about that. I’m from very far away. I have never seen… what is your name?”

  “I am called Uruoro. Man Of The Lake. What are you called, and what does it mean?”

  “Kaye Nanur… I don’t know what it means. The Nanur are my tribe, and we all share that name, but I am called Starborn or Starchild. How do you know the Nagra tongue?”

  “I don’t know who the Nagra people are, but if I am speaking it, then the tongue doesn’t belong to you. It is one of many, and kind people taught it to me. I do not know who they learned it from.”

  Kaye nodded. There were so many things she wanted to ask now, but didn’t know how to voice them. She settled for something simple.

  “Can I do something to help you?”

  “Do you have water, Kaye Nanur?”

  She reached for her waterskin and threw it between two bars.

  Uruoro took it, but drank in a far calmer way than she expected. Two mouthfuls, with an interval between each. Then, he held the waterskin to the side.

  “I know you are awake.”

  The other man reached with his long arm, and drank in the same way that Uruoro did, but kept the waterskin to himself.

  “You should give that back, Loho. It belongs to Kaye Nanur.”

  The other man — Loho — turned to stare at Kaye. He seemed much less friendly than Uruoro, staring at her with disgust in his dark, beady eyes. He spoke, and once again she only understood some of the words.

  Uruoro transted for her, “He says we have interrupted his slumber and that I have annoyed him long enough to not have the right to demand anything.”

  “It’s fine,” Kaye said. “I can just get another one.” She didn’t know their retionship, but didn’t want to start a fight between the two, especially if they were in there where she couldn’t intervene. “Can I speak to you again? Would that bother you?” Asking that, she stood up.

  “It would bother me,” Loho spoke in the trader’s tongue.

  Uruoro leaned forward with haste, trying to approach Kaye. His eyes widened. “Is that a nuuha?”

  “A what?”

  “The thing on your neck, it tinkled.”

  Kaye stared down. She still wore the neckce that Rogar had given her, and some of the pieces were showing against her neck, stopped from falling down by her shirt. She pulled it out to reveal all the pieces.

  “That is a nuuha. It is a tradition of my people.”

  “It was given to me. My vilge chief found it, and his son gifted it to me. What does it mean?”

  “It means ‘voice of the dead’. It is how we remember. Can you make it speak?”

  Kaye did so, taking a few steps to the side and back. The pieces tinkled against one another.

  Uruoro shook his head. “It is all wrong. The cord needs to be longer, and the way you walk is stopping it from truly speaking. I would fix it for you if I could,” he raised his shackled hands, “but I can teach you how, and the correct way of walking. You asked if we could speak again? Yes, Kaye Nanur, I would appreciate that.” Uruoro smiled. A rge, child-like grin.