30: Frayed Trust

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As soon as the puller yells the warning, the lurch stops. The boat still wavers a little on the rapid river water, but doesn’t tip or wash away – it seems that the tethers are holding. For a moment, everyone just sort of stands there, confused.

“I made some friends,” Ayan announces into the bewildered silence, “who showed me how the boat works. And when I was under there earlier, I saw that some of the tethers and things weren’t linked up right, so I fixed them.”

The bewildered silence stretches further.

Then the puller dips mandibles and claws to Ayan and says, “Thank you, young Redstone River. You have saved this boat.”

“You honour me greatly for very little,” Ayan responds pleasantly. Everyone moves to get back to work, but Tyk keeps her eyes on Ayan, because she knows Ayan well enough to tell when her pleasantries are fake. Her posture isn’t the posture that she normally adopts for being praised by adults. It’s a posture that she normally levels at Tyk.

Ayan is going to war.

As the puller turns away, she continues, “Really, it was very little. Amazing that this boat has worked for generations, and all of the journey goods made it across with no problem, but right when our sky visitor who cannot breathe underwater is aboard, and right when we’re… just past the halfway point of the journey, it looks like – that’s when the simple mistake that would have tipped our boat occurs.”

“The people responsible for rigging the boat will definitely be disciplined, I assure you,” the puller says. “Smon, my deepest apologies for this.”

“It’s fine,” Smon says. The echo stone, as usual, doesn’t betray Smon’s mood, and her face is twisted into an expression that Tyk doesn’t recognise.

“And I must compliment your quick reactions,” Ayan continues, barely pretending politeness any more as the puller grows more visibly annoyed. “As soon as the boat moved, which I imagine could happen for any number of reasons on a river, you knew exactly what was going to happen. You warned everyone about us tipping straight away on basically no information! That’s amazing! Does this happen often?”

“No,” the puller says testily as she gets back to the chain. “We’re just well trained.”

“Amazing! And about half of the caravan contingent didn’t stumble either.” Ayan turns to them. “Were you all trained, too?”

“We just have good footing,” one of the women says awkwardly, to which one of the men in the sky responds, “That’s never been true, you’re clumsy as sand. You looked like you were braced for the lurch.”

“Anyway,” the puller says, “the danger’s passed, so let’s keep going.” The pullers once again get to work and the boat continues its significantly wobblier journey. Everyone braces against the rocking. Smon, tethered securely to the sky people farm beneath her, steadies herself on it with one claw while feeling about in her bag for something with the other.

“Keyan, go back to shore and tell everyone what’s going on, will you?” Ayan says, and Keyan takes to the sky, only to be blocked by one of the Green Hills men.

“Hold on,” the man says, “it’s a long journey back to the other shore for someone so small. I’ll go.”

“Strong and stable as your truesister,” Ayan observes, “who didn’t stumble at all when the boat nearly came free. But Keyan can do it. You were watching everyone when it lurched, right, Keyan?”

“Hold on, what are you saying?” the man asks.

“I think it’s quite clear what she’s saying,” one of the women, probably the man’s truesister, growls.

“Just stating facts,” Ayan says lightly. “Oh, we’ve stopped again. Is something else wrong?”

“I’ll check,” one of the women says, heading to the side, only to be blocked by another.

“Hang on,” the blocker says, “you didn’t stumble.”

“So?”

“So, it’s like you expected the boat to lurch. And now you want to go underneath and check the chains?”

“If you’re going to accuse me of something, Tessan, come out and say it!”

“Do I need to? Fine! You knew the boat was going to come undone, and you knew where it was going to happen! On the trip that’s carrying the outsider across, when every other trip has gone just fine! Explain that!”

“I don’t know anything! You’re paranoid!”

“Paranoid, am I? Why are you in this group? You barely come aboveground, and the hiveheart put you in this caravan and left several scouts at home! Just a big coincidence, is it?”

“Are you accusing the hiveheart of attempting assassination?”

“This would be the way to do it,” Ayan chips in, her voice still light and casual. “If you wanted to kill someone without alerting the rest of the hive, who might not agree. An accident is just an unfortunate accident, and a lot of your hive probably don’t even know that Smon’s people can’t breathe in water.”

“Ignore her,” the puller who’d started the conversation with Smon says. “She’s a foreign child just trying to sow dissent and confusion. She’s the one who went under and messed with the rigging; she was probably trying to kill the outsider herself.”

“If Ayan wanted Smon dead,” Tyk cuts in, “she would’ve found a way to kill her before we ever even reached your hive.” (Tyk notices, with everyone’s attention on the on-board fighting, that Keyan has slipped away and is flying back towards the Redstone River Hive visitors and various watchers on the shore). “But this is your first real chance, isn’t it? Say, where did your traders go? I’ve been told that you had one set of traders at home when the wingsong stream went down. Where did they go?”

“They went with the other godlings,” one of the women says, sounding puzzled. (Tyk’s pretty sure she’s one of the ones who stumbled when the boat lurched.) “They headed off up North to Glittergem before you arrived.”

“See, yeah, that’s what Penni told me. But someone let it slip to my dad that they followed the river East. So what happened? Is someone wrong?”

“They went to Glittergem with the outsiders,” the puller snaps, irritated. “Your father is mistaken.”

“No, someone went East,” one of the men says. “I asked about pollen to diversify our silkvine farms and I was told that the Big Stone Hive upriver had some and it would soon be on its way. But how would they know we needed it, if traders weren’t sent? It was after the wingsong stream went down.”

“The hive must have sent a messenger to Big Stone,” the puller says. “Someone you don’t know. The traders were already gone. There’s no mystery here, just foreigners getting incomplete information.”

“Don’t worry,” Ayan says to the man who’d spoken up, “I’m sure you’ll be able to clear up any confusion soon. Just ask around when you get back to the hive later. After all, about half of us will be going back on this boat – now that the chains are secure and it’ll make it to the opposite shore, I suspect there’ll be some crisis that’ll mean sending half the caravan back and, oh, I bet the ones chosen to go back will coincidentally be the people who stumbled when the boat lurched, leaving our dear friend Smon exclusively in the care of those who knew the lurch was coming.”

Dead silence on the boat.

So this, Tyk realises, is why Ayan has brought this up here, even though she clearly knew of a conspiracy to kill Smon beforehand. It wasn’t just for the drama of a riverboat confrontation. Had she voiced these concerns at the hive, then not only did would she risk being simply ignored or putting the Redstone River caravan in danger by disrupting the hive, but she would’ve been dealing with a group who could simply ditch the plot she’d discovered and try something else, especially if, as she’d strongly hinted, the hiveheart was involved. The only safe move would’ve been for Smon to abandon the journey entirely and retreat back to the Redstone River Hive with them.

But out here, more than halfway across the river, she’s revealed the danger and sorted the trustworthy from the untrustworthy caravan members, simplifying all immediate problems and leaving Smon a trustworthy (or at least not immediately untrustworthy) escort to take her to the Glittergem Hive, far away from a hiveheart that can scrap the plan and try again. She must have known that there would be a large enough number of trustworthy escorts as soon as she realised the boat-capsizing plan – why would the hive go with something so convoluted and expensive in resources if they didn’t have to? If they had enough people on the side of the assassination plan to form the whole escort, they would simply have killed Smon on the opposite shore after the boat had left. This whole plan means that there must be enough of an escort genuinely ready to escort her to Glittergem Hive, and Ayan has revealed who is and, more importantly, who is not trustworthy when it comes to doing that.

And now she sits there, looking pleasant and innocent, staring up at the adults.

“Okay,” someone says, “I’m sure everyone had someone’s eyes on them during that lurch. So if we only send on people who clearly weren’t expecting it, we’re… probably fine.”

“Maybe,” someone else says. “But some of the men were in the air. It’s possible that they could’ve been involved and not told their truesisters specifically what was going to happen, for fear of this specific kind of thing. Which means – ”

“That’s just a risk we’ll have to take. The only reason they’d try this boat thing is if they knew they couldn’t pull off an assassination with too many eyes on the target. We don’t have enough people to be suspicious of everyone; we’re just going to have to send those who were clearly expecting the lurch back and let the hive deal with them.”

“You think the hiveheart are really going to – ?”

“Not the hiveheart. The hive. The hiveheart are clearly lying to us about a lot of very important things if they’re trying to assassinate visitors under our shells; we – ”

“Listen to yourselves!” one of the men snaps. “A chain slipped, a foreign kid starts spinning tales, and you’re all talking about, what, overthrowing the hiveheart? We have no reason to think that anything – ”

“Your claws were on the chains disconnecting the anchor when this all happened, Kelan! Don’t pretend you’re innocent!”

“Are you accusing my truebrother? Who’s only ever put everything he has into this hive?”

“I’m not accusing anyone! I’m saying, we send who we know we can trust ahead, and sort the rest out at home!”

“Oh, you’re not accusing anyone? A second ago, you were talking about revolution against our very hive, so – ”

“The hiveheart isn’t the hive – ”

“Enough!” bellows the puller who’d first warned of the problem, and everyone goes silent. “You’re all arguing over nothing. Did it occur to any of you that the hiveheart might have good reasons for the decisions it makes? That perhaps the reason you don’t know everything that’s going on is because you don’t need to, because it would be dangerous to cause hivewide panic? Do you understand who you’re protecting? That,” she says, flicking her horns in Smon’s direction, “is an enemy soldier. A soldier who came from the very sky, with tools and magic that we do not understand and cannot defend against, to destroy our hives and replace them with their own.”

“That’s a lie!” Smon snaps.

“Oh, is it? So what’s this Rayjo Tau thing about then? They came here, landed in our communities, and took down the wingsong stream so that we couldn’t communicate. Now they’re trying to gather to build their own tower that can control the wingsong stream for themselves!”

“That’s not – ”

“No? That’s what Rayjo Tau does, isn’t it? Your fellow soldiers made the mistake of explaining it to the hiveheart. The first thing you do when you come here is take our communication away and establish your own; well, we’re not going to wait around to see step two.” She steps toward Smon.

“Back away,” Smon says, and Tyk puts herself between the two of them, horns and mandibles ready for battle.

“Step aside, little girl,” the puller says. “This is for your own good.”

“No! Leave her alone!”

Other people are moving to intervene – whether to help or hinder, Tyk isn’t sure – but before they can, the puller’s truebrother drops from the sky, right for Tyk’s eyes, and while Tyk’s dodging him the puller dodges her, and Tyk tosses the man off just in time to see the puller leap for Smon.

Smon raises one claw, holding out an object like she’s offering it to the puller. It’s small and smooth, something that Tyk has seen Smon put in her carry bag a dozen times, but never seen her use. Her claw twitches around the object and with a loud crack, both Smon and the puller flinch away from each other slightly. Whatever happened distracts the puller, who lands wide with a shriek of pain, and Tyk spots the tiny metal rod now jammed into the middle of the puller’s face. The puller rounds on Smon again, opens her mandibles for the kill…

And there’s another, much louder crack. And what happens this time… well. What happens this time is the exact opposite of a cave-in.

Like water rushing suddenly into a poorly secured tunnel too close to the river, blood and fragments of flesh and chitin spray out of the puller’s face in a brief but forceful torrent, showering Smon, Tyk, and several other people nearby in gore. The puller, with little left of her face but exoskeleton, drops to the floor of the boat, dead.

“I did warn her to back away,” Smon says. The echo stone, as always, speaks calmly, its tone disconnected from the situation. Tyk thinks that she might be the only one close enough to see just how much Smon is shaking.

“Murderer!” someone screeches.

“It was self defense!” someone else yells back.

And then the boat erupts in fighting.

Someone goes for Smon and Tyk, thankful for once that she’s so big for her age, locks horns to hold her back. A man tries to drop on her from the sky, only for another man to drop on him, going for his wings. It quickly becomes impossible to tell who’s a threat and who’s an ally, and Tyk just does her best to keep everyone away from Smon, unsure whether she’s protecting Smon from attackers or the attackers from the device in Smon’s claw.

But it turns out not to matter, because the real threat isn’t to Smon directly at all. One of the women comes up from the water at the edge of the boat, leaps aboard behind Tyk and, instead of going for the dangerous sky person, targets the collection of boxes she’s lashed to. She throws her full weight against the farm and, before anyone can stop her, pitches it over the side.

And amidst the chaos, the big heavy farm and the somewhat startled sky person attached to it drop down into the rushing waters of the river like a stone.

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