34: Chained and Unchained

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It’s nearing morning on their second day of travel when they see the boat crossing in the distance, which leaves the pair with a difficult travel choice to make. Neither wants to hide out and fall asleep so close to the bridge, but attempting to race the sunrise passing it would be incredibly dangerous. The temptation is strong – once they’re past the crossing, their journey will be so much safer; it’ll just be a matter of putting as much distance as possible between them and the crossing, because once they’re far enough past it it won’t be practical for the Green Hills Hive to pursue them even if they’re seen. But they don’t know if the crossing is being monitored during the day, or if the hive is still sending scouts out, and if so, how early. To be caught by the sunrise within view of some scout or boatline monitor would be the worst possible situation; a foot race against those coming to kill Smon. And even with the head start granted by their pursuers having to cross the river, it’s a race they’d surely lose, especially since they’ve been walking for hours already.

“We need to forage and find somewhere to sleep anyway,” Smon points out, “before the sun is up. So we should retreat downriver a bit and do that. Then we can pass the boat early tomorrow night and get as much distance as possible from it before the sun comes up. How far before the river curves and we need to make a cart?”

“I’m… not sure. I know that the placement of the boat crossing is a compromise between proximity to the Green Hills Hive who maintain it, and being as close to the river bend as possible to minimise travel through the sleeplands. But I don’t know how big the distance between those two things is.”

“The bend is definitely out of sight of the crossing, though.”

“Oh, yes. We probably have a few more days of travel before we need to leave the river. We can build a cart safely out of their sight.”

“There are no… big… no solid-all-way-through, very tall bamboo,” Smon says, indicating some strange and vast spidery shape with her claws reaching up toward the sky. “The types of materials that my people make carts from. You don’t have it here, or at least I haven’t seen any.”

“And the bambo here is scraggly and untended,” Smon notes. “Probably not very strong.”

“Well, we’ll just have to do our best with what we can find.”

“Hey,” Tyk says after some time walking back downriver in silence, “Do you think any of your tools could break chain?”

“Quite probably. Why?”

“Tomorrow, in the dark, we could follow the boat line as far into the water as we can and break it. We can take the parts we broke off and sink them in a random part of the river. I bet it’d take a really long time to repair, and they might not even have spare chain and have to get it brought all the way up from the Southern end of the continent. It could make the boatline unusable for a long time.”

Smon hesitates a while before answering. Eventually, she says, “It could. But why?”

“So they can’t come after us on the boat!”

“They won’t. If we’re far enough away that they need to bring carts to chase us down, we’re too far away to be worth chasing; you know that, Tyk. They can just take the boat out almost to this shore on the remaining chain, and swim the rest of the way. All that breaking the line would do, apart from possibly alert them to our survival, is prevent trade across the river until it’s fixed, and put a large burden on the Green Hills Hive fixing it.”

“Which they deserve! They tried to kill you!”

“Some of them did. Most of them didn’t. And even if they had, they were trying to defend themselves from the threat posed by my people; I have no interest in proving them right. Do the Northern hives like Glittergem deserve their trade route being cut off? Do the Southern hives deserve not being able to trade with the Northern hives? I know that there are other crossings near other hives, but the existence of such an expensive river crossing proves that this one is the fastest and most convenient for a lot of traders; breaking it would put them in more danger and make their routes a lot longer. I know you’re upset, Tyk, but breaking the boat line won’t fix anything.”

“How are you not upset?!”

“I am. I’m incredibly upset. You just can’t tell because this stupid echo stone can’t add new tones to the words it has.” She gives a little laugh, or maybe it’s a sob; Tyk has trouble differentiating between some of Smon’s noises. “They killed Myn and Haidn. That will never be okay for me. But I can’t go around breaking things because I am upset, that is – not-honour, for our task. We want to live here safely next to your people. That means we cannot make danger and harm just because we want to.”

“I’m sorry about Myn and Haidn.”

“A lot of us have died,” is all Smon says in response, and Tyk remembers the two who came down with Smon in her boat, heads dashed open by a loose support beam or bit of cargo or whatever that had been. Had she been closer to them, if they were sharing a boat? The plan certainly must have been for them to live together, to set things up together and grow food and find safety together, until they could coordinate with the other dropped boats. So they’d probably trained together, chosen each other.

With the boat line back out of sight and the sunrise on the horizon, they sink the farm and look for the best place to conceal themselves for the day. There’s no time to forage, and neither of them want to leave that kind of mark on the shoreline this close to the boat crossing; they can delay eating and feeding the farm and forage after sunset.

The pair of them scramble under the thickest grass in the deepest ditch they can find as far away from the river as they dare go, and do their best to get to sleep.

When Tyk wakes up, it’s still light outside, although the light is fading. And Smon is crying next to her.

Tyk isn’t sure what to do about this. Laughing and crying are two of Smon’s more puzzling expressions of emotion, and she does the former far more often than the latter, at least around Tyk. It occurs to Tyk that at the Redstone River Hive, when Smon spent most of her time alone, she could simply have been crying when there was no one to see – the fact that she’s doing it now, when Tyk is supposed to be asleep, and almost never does so where Tyk can see could suggest that. Should she pretend to stay asleep?

But Smon very suddenly braces herself and chokes down her sobs, settling her echo stone on her face, so she must have realised that Tyk is awake. Cautiously, Tyk asks, “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Smon says. She’s still lying down, concealed by the grass, but she’s got something in her claws. Tyk swivels and eye to get a look at it – it’s the tool that she used to defend herself against the Green Hills Hive.

Smart. It can kill at a distance; she’s probably got it in case she needs to get rid of any scouts that see them. But the instant Tyk thinks that, she realises that it has to be wrong – a scout not coming home from patrol would be an even bigger cause for alarm than a report of Smon and Tyk being alive, and the sky would be thick with scouts the very next morning. After Smon making her opinion about sabotaging the boat line clear, Tyk doesn’t think she’d kill anyone for that.

Besides, she’s holding it incorrectly. The shape of the tool has a clear handle shaped for Smon’s claw; after seeing her use it, Tyk is fairly certain she can see how it’s supposed to be handled. Smon is just sort of cradling it in both claws like something both filthy and dangerous.

“You’re not okay,” Tyk says.

“I killed two people the other day. I’ve never killed anyone before.” She starts crying again, making the echo stone’s words choppy and hesitant as the crying interferes with her ability to give it commands with her eye. “I killed them, and it’s even worse than it would normally be because they have truebrothers who are going to die now too, because of me.”

“It was self-defence,” Tyk points out. “They would have killed you if you hadn’t.”

“I should have let them.”

“What are you saying?! You’d rather die?!”

“One life versus four. An easy – ”

“Four attackers against one victim! They – ”

“They thought I was a danger; they – ”

“That’s their problem! They – ”

“They were just trying to defend their hive, Tyk! If it had been Redstone River, would you say it was a fair trade? Some threat coming to your hive, and two of your women being killed trying to prevent it?”

There’s a beat of silence.

Then Tyk says, “If it had been Redstone River, it would have been an internal matter, hivemate. One of Redstone River’s defending herself from two other attackers within the hive, and them attempting to kill a hivemate in some sneaky underhanded assassination would’ve marked them both for exile, so if you hadn’t defended yourself then the hive would’ve lost five people instead of four. But that isn’t what happened; what happened was that a foreign hive attacked one of ours and you defended yourself. As you should have. If Green Hills women didn’t want to die then they shouldn’t have tried to put their mandibles on one of ours.”

And that, for some reason, just makes Smon cry harder. Tyk freezes. Did calling Smon a member of her hive offend her? Probably, yes; Smon’s trying to gather her own hive together safely and Tyk went and said something stupid like –

But before she can apologise, Smon’s arms are around her and she’s pulling Tyk close and crying against her carapace, like the time she had when she’d just learned that she hadn’t brought some deadly disease to the men of the hive. She’d been happy and relieved then, so what under the clouds is this emotion?

Smon’s people, Tyk decides, are impossible to understand.

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