Ruka catches me one last time on the day Taiki and I are set to leave. Taiki is off somewhere else, probably finding food before we take off into the open water for the next who-knows-how-long. There will be small islands and atolls and seamounts for the first stretch of the journey, but Ruka has said those will get more and more scarce as we go along. I'm surprisingly okay with it. When I first arrived in the ocean, I would have freaked out at the mere thought of crossing such vast spans of water without a rock or island to orient me. But there will be Shalda-sana below us wherever we go, and with Taiki and the Sandsingers' navigation techniques, the ocean is slowly resolving into a map that I feel like I can actually learn and get around without losing my way.
Ruka checks surreptitiously over her shoulder, then beckons me off to the side. When we're far enough that someone would have to make an effort to eavesdrop, she turns to me. "Devir spotted Arcas near Sami-controlled islands again this morning. She was just leaving the island chain to return to the Sami-sana."
My mouth goes dry, one sensation that never gets less weird underwater. Arcas wants to take the Ashianti throne, a seed of anxiety that has never truly left me. If anything, it sprouts a little more every time I think about what might happen if the message I helped Keshko and Ruka send never arrives. And that was before Taiki and I planned to swim straight to Rapal. Rapal is where the Ashianti royals all live. If Arcas makes her move while we're there, we could end up in a war zone. I suspect that's what Ruka is here to warn me about, and she proves me right.
"Unless you ride the entire way to Rapal," she signs, "Arcas will beat you there. Ashianti are fast, and she will be able to ride currents through Saru ranges if she has allies there. If the message we sent survived, it should arrive before she does, but maybe only just."
"So be careful in the city?"
"Be careful in the city. If the message doesn't arrive, you might still be safe if a coup isn't planned yet. Or Arcas may attempt it and fail, though with the Alliance behind her and everything I know about her, she's dangerous. If you get any whiff of Alliance Kels in or around Rapal, leave. Dive if you can. Stay deep until you're far, far away. If Arcas takes control of the city, she might not have the power to chase out Shalda or anyone who doesn't support her, but you still won't be safe."
I swallow hard and nod.
Ruka runs both hands down her face. She's stressed—more stressed than she's letting on. I can feel it rolling off her in waves, and that unsteadies my confidence more than anything she's saying. "I feel uneasy asking this of you," she signs. "Because I don't know the danger when I can't be there myself. But if you get there and have reason to believe the message hasn't arrived, can you warn the Ashianti? Even a guard, or a regular city dweller. Their royals are good leaders, and the heir is especially beloved. The people will protect them at any cost."
I already know I'll have to hide all that from Taiki, and the thought of sneaking away from him—of us being separated in a foreign city—long enough for me to convey a warning like that make my stomach do flips. Still, this is about more than just me now. I nod again. "I'll try."
"Thank you."
What she isn't saying still shows on her face. If the message doesn't arrive before Arcas, we might be too late to bring it ourselves. Me delivering it personally is a last-ditch effort. Ruka is hoping it won't come to that, for more reasons than just the danger it would pose for me. Before I can sign anything else, her eyes skip over my shoulder with a half-smile that makes me turn to look. Taiki is waiting for me. My heart sinks again as his eyes linger suspiciously on Ruka, and when I join him, he pulls me away without a goodbye. I don't have an excuse to stop him. I've already given my parting blessings to the people I know or met here. It's time to leave.
The villagers' and Sandsingers' lights fade quickly into the water as we take off into it. Their absence brings a wave of loss crashing over me. This isn't like leaving my village and Taiki's tribe to come back to the Sandsingers. Then, there were people I knew at the other end of the journey, or at least familiar waters. This time is different. Taiki and I will be each other's only company for the next half-moon at least, and there's nobody waiting for us. The next time we arrive somewhere, it will be Rapal, a Sami city that welcomes its "guests" the way my people welcomed spiders in our houses: allowed to stay only if they remained peaceful and out of our way.
I'm still excited, in a way. But Ruka's warning and my own realizations about the political tangle we're headed into have changed this to a more urgent and less straightforward journey. And unlike the prophecy and the Singer and all my concerns about that, I can't share my worries with Taiki. That's almost the worst part. We've barely left, and I'm already hiding things from him. To save other people's lives.
I've got more to unpack about that feeling, but I push it away for now. I need to focus on learning to navigate this part of the island chain. I'll have half a moon for thinking as soon as we hit the open water anyway—and hopefully just as long before we encounter any Sami and I have to deal with the implications of Taiki and I's difference in opinion.
Taiki signals that we're approaching another rock face: the same seamount the Sandsingers sheltered around while they rested and planned for the upcoming raid. We circle it, gathering food as we go. I have a feeling we'll soon treasure these rock outcroppings. If there's one thing I've already learned about the Sami-sana from my time in the three-moon deep, it's that food scarcity out there makes the silt hill I once woke up on look like a village feast.
Taiki has already slipped into traveling mode. He swims at a more measured pace, with smaller movements that slow him down a little, but are probably much more efficient long-distance. I watch closely and try to find equivalents that fit my own fins. By the time we've circled the seamount, I think I'm getting it—just in time for us to launch back into the open water.
We island-hop across the roots of islands for the first two days. Taiki says we'll be catching a current some ways up the chain, saving ourselves the time we're losing by not heading straight out into the Sami-sana. It's midnight on the second night when I feel the current's direction start to change. The taste of the water shifts suddenly. The island's dominant water flow hits a pair of islands here, which send an eddy of it spinning. Taiki lets the water grab him, and I duck into his slipstream. The current sweeps us out to sea. The three-moon deep opens up before us with such vast emptiness, I can feel it without any need for my actual senses. Taiki and I dive, and the true journey begins.
The current at our backs carries us at a speed I'd forgotten I enjoyed attaining. Still working on my swimming technique, I find that flaring my fins and slowing my tail-beats maximizes the time the water spends pushing me relative to the time I spend pushing myself. Like Taiki's technique, it slows me a little, but dawn reveals how effective it is. Which is to say, dawn comes when dawn normally does, and I find myself shocked at the light over the far-distant surface. I'm sleep-tired, but my body feels only a pleasant kind of exertion; the satisfying kind, like when you've run or danced or played well, but haven't killed yourself in the process.
Taiki tips forwards into a slower, more gradual dive. We pull up below the depth his tribe normally shelters at. There's less to breathe down here, but that successfully makes me sleepy, and we raft together with my arm around his back and his head on my shoulder. It almost makes me laugh how far I've adjusted to his tribe's standards of closeness. Once awkward as a courtship offer from the Telu boys I couldn't care less about, it's nothing less than comfortable now. Which is good, because we'll be doing this for a while.
We've made this trip before, but it still manages to catch me off-guard how fast the seamounts dwindle. By two days into the Sami-sana, they're fleeting as the largest seabirds my island knew, and they're as good as gone by three. It's here that I begin to notice Taiki sounding the water and looking concerned at the results.
"Is something wrong?" I sign when it becomes too obvious to ignore.
"Hahalua's children usually come this way. But I haven't seen any of them."
That's the ride we were expecting to catch. Without it, we could be swimming a moon into the Sami-sana under the power of our own tails, and Arcas will beat us to Rapal by half that time. I snatch the sickening surge of worry that rears its head in my stomach. Taiki flips around again and keeps swimming.
"We're not going to search?" I sign. If there's one major advantage to me swimming head-first and him jetting backwards, it's that we can easily travel face-to-face to talk.
He shakes his head. "There's a seamount they always gather at about ten days out. If we don't find one before then, we'll just stop there."
We don't find one of Hahahlua's children over the following days. What residual unfitness I still had dissipates under the influence of days of swimming, and though it takes constant effort not to think about the Ashianti, I begin to genuinely enjoy our travel. It's several more days before I realize we've passed the last seamount I would recognize—and just like that, my last known landmark falls away behind us. Taiki begins to swim closer to the surface to keep an eye on the sun and moon. Ruka told me most Kels in the Sami-sana use the sky for navigation, as well as currents, wave patterns, and wind. Even seabirds, which she said the Sami watch from under the waves. It makes sense, though it still surprises me a little to see Taiki is using Sami navigation techniques. I wonder where he learned them from.
And so, naturally, I begin to quiz him on it. He reiterates a lot of what Ruka said, but then builds on it with what I imagine are his own observations. I absorb them eagerly. I don't work up the courage to ask him where he learned them, but the question soon starts to answer itself. If there's one thing the ocean proves to me by the sixth day, it's that even Taiki's Shalda-navigation techniques are as good as useless out here.
Rashi be blessed and Andalua be prayed to, the Sami-sana is empty.
The feeling really starts to set in on the eighth day. We haven't seen a seamount in two and a half, and Taiki's read on the currents and waves says we won't see another for at least two days more. Now he shifts navigation patterns again. He sings into the water to check for danger before the two of us venture up towards the surface. When we get within reach of the sun, I have to catch my breath.
This is the ocean I first swam through when I woke up as a Kel and struck out to find my people. The ocean that struck me speechless with its sheer size and depth. The ocean that made me feel like I was shrinking: like I was as insignificant in this underwater world as a shrimp or a single silver fish or a lone piece of flotsam. Sunlight lances down into the water like the trunks of trees, making shifting burst patterns below us, obscuring the unfathomable depths beneath. The waves are a different pattern above, bright and web-like and sparkling.
And between the two is the ocean. Days and days of empty ocean, blue in the daytime and clear black at night, slightly clouded, but so devoid of floaties that I have to re-learn how to read the currents by the feel of the water on my tail. There are no fish. I haven't seen a living creature larger than my fingernail since we left the last seamount, and a seabird's shadow over the surface makes me jump. Taiki tracks its direction intently. Then he sings again, and we squint against the light and venture right up to the surface. He does a quick read of the wind. I nab a piece of floating seaweed to nibble on, and we both dive back beneath the wave line.
We only return to the Shalda-sana to sleep now. I expect to feel exposed swimming through Sami territory, but the vastness of the Sami-sana quickly erases that feeling. Taiki and I now pick flotsam and strange, foam-buoyed barnacles off the surface at night to keep ourselves fed. With that utter absence of ocean life as a measuring string, I find it difficult to imagine a wandering shark, Sami-Kel, or Saru-Kel even coming within sight of us by more than sheer coincidence.
In the absence of other living things, the ocean itself begins to feel alive. It breathes in waves and currents, always flowing, shifting, moving, changing. I start to wonder what it must be like for the Sami to live and have their ancestry all out here. Do they tell more stories to fill the nothingness as they travel? Do they feel time differently, when even something as simple as finding food—let alone getting anywhere—takes so much of it? What songs do they use? I now understand the power of the Ashianti's Nekta-singing. If they can find and use Nekta out here, they have an edge over other open-water Kels that I'm sure few of their enemies can replicate.
I'm deep in the near-trance I've fallen into during travel when Taiki waves for my attention, pointing ahead. His smile splits his face. "We're here!"
There's a seamount ahead of us. Finally. We both fall on it with single-minded purpose, scouring its rocks for fish and shellfish and anything else edible that we haven't tasted in days. I eat almost fast enough to make myself sick. I've only just stopped foraging when something goes by in the water. My heart skips several beats. Taiki catches me by the hand and drags me out into the open. A second shadow jerks my gaze downwards. This time, I gasp.
I've ridden one of Hahalua's children before, but that was in the semi-darkness without any chance to glimpse just how big they really were. That experience did nothing to prepare me for this true view. Or maybe these are bigger than the ones we rode closer to the islands. Each ray has a wingspan that could span Telu's central gathering space. Those wings beat with the easy grace of a seabird that never lands, scarcely moving, though their currents roil the water and suck me into eddies so strong, I can't resist the urge to hug my tail and spin a backwards somersault. Taiki laughs. Then we both dive, so attuned to each other's movements that we don't need a signal. We catch the next ray together. I latch onto the top of its mouth beside Taiki, and we duck our heads as the acceleration sends water pounding over us, flattening our tails to the ray's back.
The ray is one of a whole swarm, gathering around a seamount that's hardly a nub of rock in such a vast ocean. Ours circles it several times, then turns with the current and speeds up. In another moment, the rock is gone. We're sweeping along towards Ashianti territory many times faster than Taiki and I were swimming on our own. I can't fight the grin that steals across my face. I'm sure my arms will regret this half a day from now, but between the relief of speed and the fun of the ride, right now I'm too happy to care.