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

(30) Sar: Arcas

Ruka comes to find us not long after Ande lapses into silence. Casin came with her: I feel her go by, an almost imperceptible presence in the darkness. Patrolling for us. Ruka too checks around before she settles on the rocks in front of me. "Are you up for talking?" she signs.

The pity on her face makes my heart plunge. I know what she's asking. I've been avoiding it, and it feels terrible to keep it from her, but I couldn't. Before we left for Roshaska, at least. I feel a lot less unstable now.

"Can we go somewhere private?" I sign.

"That was my next question."

"Out or down?"

Ande is watching me. She's always watching: I get the sense she can pluck details from even the smallest nuances of a conversation, and integrate them into what she knows about the ocean. She rarely asks questions. But it explains how she's adjusted to the ocean so fast regardless.

"I think down," answers Ruka after a pause.

I can't sit still much longer, so I push off and wait for the others to join me. Ruka's people move fast when they want to, but that's rarely their default, and I don't want to swim alone. Ande darts a glance at me, then takes up a position at my side. She keeps one hand on her dagger. Ruka remains silent all the way to the bottom of her comfortable depth. We're past the temperature line, as safe from divers as we're going to get. Also out of view of any shallow-water eavesdroppers.

I round on Ruka when she stops. "Are you worried about the Karu faction here?"

She groans. "You were paying attention."

"It wasn't hard to miss. Vibi interacts with a whole different segment of the fort than you do."

"I'm just being cautious."

I cross my arms. That's not an answer. Least of all when she just recommended deeper water over another seamount to find somewhere safe to talk. Deep water rules out Karu faster.

"Can we talk about that a different time?" signs Ruka. "Right now, we need to know everything we can about Arcas."

My flare of defiance dies. I sink to the rocks again. I want something stable under me if we're going to be talking about this. I've never told anyone what happened that night. What happened with Arcas.

"She let me go," I sign before my body fails me.

Ande goes rigid. Ruka's grimace borders on pain.

"I was supposed to be in the hall." Now that I've started, the words don't stop. I have to stay ahead of them now, or they'll crush me alive. "But there was a conflict in the second branch tunnels near the city rim, and I was the only one around who knew West Island Shalda. It wasn't official... she didn't know I had gone. She must have already laid the poison, or she would have stopped the plan. Or she didn't realize until too late that I wasn't with the others."

She can't have predicted the flare-up I went to take care of, and it wasn't staged. I know a genuine conflict when I see one. The Shalda in question just needed someone to listen to them anyway. "I came back to the palace after. But she'd... she'd already acted."

Ande wants to hug me. Or at least put a hand on my shoulder. I shrink back on instinct, and she retreats to a comfortable distance. There are horrible images lurking just beneath the surface of my mind. If I keep talking, I can stay ahead of them. At least for now.

"She jumped me." My stomach stabs with pain at the recollection, though the wound there has long since healed. "I hadn't eaten the poison, so she pinned me down and made me. I don't think she realized... realized she'd have to watch."