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

(30) Sar: Arcas

Watch me die.

It's stamped in my memory. She regretted it. The moment I was down, I saw it in her face, before I started to lose my breathing. After that, everything else blurred.

We weren't close, but we crossed paths. I was a negotiator, always out among the many Kel peoples who live in Ashianti territory. She ran emergency help to patrols. Always in contact with the Saru. She wanted an alliance with them to protect us when the ocean started changing, but the targets she picked were stronger than they were safe. Arcas wanted to overlook things the rest of the palace wasn't comfortable with. I think it could have worked if the Saru had been willing to release part of their territory back to the people they'd seized it from. But that option wasn't considered. By the time that Saru group joined the Alliance, they were too far for anyone to reach with a better offer.

Arcas didn't give up like the palace did. She stayed in contact with them.

We both watched the ocean's changes first-hand, at the very edge of our territory. We knew how bad things were getting. We knew that what we were doing wasn't enough. And we both cared. Arcas cares so much. It's a misconception people have about her. She wants to protect the Ashianti as much as I do.

The best defense is a strong offense, the Alliance would say.

Arcas and I understood each other. We both knew why we were in our roles. What we wanted to accomplish. Why we believed what we did. We believed in the same causes. I don't know if she realized she would have to kill me to take control of the Ashianti. Or maybe she tried to ignore it until she had to do it with her own hands.

"She panicked," I sign. It's getting hard to talk again.

Panicked and let me go. I was still aware enough to make a break for it, and by then, the guards were on their way. She didn't have time to come after me and change her mind.

"I made it... over the rim. And down to the silt-fields. That's where they found me."

I nod to Ande; her and Taiki are as good as a single unit in this context. I remember almost nothing from that night. Just the deep, crying relief of being able to breathe again.

"They came after you," signs Ande quietly. "Alliance Kels."

So Arcas still found the strength to kill me so long as someone else landed the final blow. It hurts more than it should.

"You escaped," I reply.

"I convinced Taiki that we should take you. We hid around the other side of that seamount north of Rapal. Taiki said the Alliance wouldn't believe you could make it there in your current state. I don't know if that's what happened, but they didn't find us. I guess that's where we were when you woke up."

I don't want to remember those exchanges either. I have some memories of them, but I'd rather relegate those to the haze that consumes the rest. I don't want to ask, either, what Taiki would have done had Ande not convinced him to shelter me. A deeper, more resigned part of me already knows.

I turn to Ruka instead. I have other things to think about here, and I'm ready to be done with my own story. "What was the last you heard from Denizel? What state is the city in?"

"His first update was how we suspected you were still alive." Ruka seems amenable to the change of topic. "That was shortly after the coup. There were roles Arcas couldn't take until you were confirmed dead, and there was no body. Denizel suspected Arcas knew something, because she kept looking. But she always tried to use the Alliance in her searches."

She must not have been thinking straight. If she was, she'd have known that would flag to anyone who knew her that something was amiss.

Ruka continues, "At the time, she was blaming the Karu north faction for the assassinations. And she hadn't ejected anyone from Rapal... just dropped hints that they would all have to fight if it came down to open conflict. There was natural attrition from that, but Denizel said a lot of people were easily convinced to stay. Arcas is relying on the narrative that if the ocean's state keeps deteriorating, there won't be any choice left but to fight. And that the Alliance Sami and Saru have been too long excluded from the city's openness."