Listen to the Water | FULL SERIES | Wattys 2022 Shortlist | ✔

(8) Taiki: Underfarrow

If there are lights here, it means there are more people than just the ones who built the nest. I could have guessed that, really, with Ruka being so familiar here, but it's driven home as other Kels begin to pass us in the tunnels. Vibi greets all of them. They're Karu—all of them that I can see—but they come from more than ten different Karu peoples, and only two are burrowing. Which means they're here for something else.

Then there are the shellfish. By the time we're deep in the seamount, I've decided that some massive level of effort has gone into keeping the walls so covered in shellfish. They keep the water in the tunnels clean and moving, despite the bits of food I see caught on some of their shells. Someone has been feeding them. Some patches are smaller than the rest, too, like everything there was harvested, then re-seeded with baby shellfish and left to regrow. This isn't just water-cleaning. This is food production on an epic scale, completely self-contained, and managed expertly from the inside.

But the real giveaway is that all of the people we cross paths with are armed. Many Karu are naturally armed already. They're the most likely of all Kel peoples to have spines or stingers or poison, as well as natural defenses like tough scales or slimes. But this is more than that. Even the vividly striped, fan-finned Karu-Kel who pulls all his fins in to scoot past us—almost certainly venomous—has a dagger at his hip. Other Kels carry spears made from the spines of sea-goddess tails, or daggers of bone or glass, or pouches of darts that are almost certainly poisoned. All the weapons are pointy, which means they're meant for close combat, which means everyone here is ready to defend this place in a bitter, brutal fight.

That's not how Burrower Karu usually operate. They build their dens with back doors and escape hatches and hidden rooms where they can bunker down and hide, and so few other Kels know how to live in the stone that nobody who drives them out can really take over. The Burrowers just wait for the attackers to leave, then come back again. These people don't look ready to leave.

All of it points to this being some kind of stronghold held together by a collaboration of every Kel people on the surrounding islands. And if that wasn't enough, I'm back to the first thing that should have told me that: Ruka's here. She's here, and she knows her way around, and people seem to respect and respond to her. Given that Ruka was almost certainly a Glauclin spy embedded in the Sandsingers before she crossed spears with Makeba and left, that's another point in favor of this being a resistance.

Vibi stops at a tunnel-branch and whistles some kind of signal down it. A reply drifts back a moment later. Vibi beckons us into the branch, which turns out to be another self-contained network of tunnels. We soon emerge into a cave lit by the cool, blue glow of slime patches on the walls. The whole cave is almost spherical, so the middle of it swoops down like a bowl beneath the entrance we now hover in. Four Kels look up from the rocks below. There's one other Glauclin, one Saru shark, one red signal squid, and one Ashianti.

The Glauclin Kel leans back to peer past Vibi, an amused smile on his face. "Who's Ruka finding for us this time?"

"New friends." Vibi shifts aside to let us into view. Ande and I both move reluctantly, though her less so than me. She's peering intently at the Saru-Kel.

The Glauclin's forehead creases when he sees us. "She sent these two here? The Shalda pocket is right around the corner."

"They're with Sar."

The Kel leaps up, unleashing a stream of words in the same language Ruka used with Sar. The Saru-Kel beside him looks stunned. The squid Kel flops back in her seat with a breath of such intense relief, I almost feel it from here.

"Where are they?" asks the Ashianti Kel, speaking for the first time. He hasn't moved a finger, poised on the edge of his seat and gripping the rocks so tightly, his knuckles go pale.