Chapter 35 - Poalu

Natquik was at Miyo's hut the next morning. He woke her, in fact, shaking her shoulder to pull her from sleep. Drowsy, she sat up, and wondered why he didn't announce himself at the door like he had always done before.

But it was all forgotten as memories of the past night floated back to her. She was still wearing the blue woolen robes that he had dried for her before helping her into bed, her hair disheveled as she hiked the blanket higher up her shoulders. Her feet, lacking boots, had been warm under the blanket but now began to blanch at the exposure, forcing her to tuck them under her legs. Natquik, however, either didn't notice her unkempt appearance or didn't comment on it as he handed her a porcelain rice dish filled with congee.

"What's this?" she asked as he forced a spoon into her other hand, then seated himself on the cot beside her with his own bowl of rice porridge.

"Well, you nuns seem to call it food." He wrinkled his nose, shooting her a grin. "I guess I could call it edible. Needs a little more meat, though."

"But where did you get it…?"

"Being part of the Chief's Household has its benefits. Like access to porcelain, rice, and spoons." He took a bite and grimaced. "Hope you don't mind if it's not all that good. I tried to remember how you made it."

Other than being overcooked and a little on the thin side, it tasted like congee. Yet after nearly a week of Water Tribe food, her stomach welcomed it like the sweetest honey. Relishing its texture as well as its flavor, she smiled at him warmly. "Thank you."

They ate in silence at first, only the sounds of their spoons against the bowls between them. Miyo took the opportunity to study him askance, and saw how worn Natquik looked. There were dark circles under his eyes, which were red with fatigue and shadowed under his drawn brow. Though it didn't make him any less handsome, it definitely made him look exhausted, and she nudged him with an elbow as she finished her bowl.

"Did you sleep at all last night?"

Absently he looked up at her, then gave her a wry grin. "I sleep every chance I get, because you haunt my dreams." She stared at him flatly, which made him laugh. "No, I didn't sleep much last night. Why?"

"You look tired." Miyo took his bowl from him, half the meal untouched, and set it on the ground by the bed. "What kept you up?"

"All this work Inuma has me doing." As if reminded, he dug under his coat to produce his knife and a disc of yellowed bone about as wide as his palm. Tucking the knife between his thumb and forefinger, he started scraping at its surface. "I'm shoving about three months' worth of preparations into one week."

"Too bad you don't have servants yet to do this for you." She was teasing but he didn't look amused, his eyes on the bone carving.

"Yeah." Again, they fell into silence.

"You don't have to stay here," Miyo said after the quiet went on for too long. "I'm fine now; you don't have to watch over me. Go and get some real work done." Natquik glanced up at that, rubbing at his jaw with the back of a fur-cuffed wrist.

"What happened with Urumkai yesterday?" he said suddenly, and her back went rigid. Quickly she shook her head, folding her hands between her crossed legs.

"Nothing happened."

"You're a horrible liar."

"We just talked."

"Did he hurt you?"

"I told you, we just talked."

Natquik gave a sound of frustration and dug viciously into the bone with the tip of his knife, tiny chips flying away underneath it. She winced at his obvious irritation, but didn't crack. There wasn't any reason for him to know about the exchange because there wasn't any reason it should involve him. Still, lying to him now felt like betrayal, and even more so because he knew she was lying. Miyo shoved the guilt to the same place she'd been storing all of the rest of her unhappiness.

"I spoke to Imnek yesterday," Natquik said after a moment, regaining his usual easy-going manner as he tried to shave away the damaged bone. "Hikoshu was right; there was a scroll in the library. And they found it." Then he recounted to her everything about the library, including Imnek's suspicions. It seemed, however, the most important detail was missing—how to stop it. "The scroll was too damaged. Or maybe someone damaged it on purpose. I don't know. If that's the case, then our only chance of ending this is to find the Shaman who summoned it."

Miyo chewed on her lip thoughtfully, her eyes trained on his carving. "And Imnek thinks it's Poalu?"

Natquik shrugged in obvious doubt. "The thing is, Poalu is not nearly powerful enough to invoke the kinds of spirits that scroll detailed. Many of them required a blood gift."

"A blood gift?" Miyo was revolted, and she let it show in her voice. Natquik shook his head in anticipation of her misunderstanding.

"A gift of the Shaman's blood, not someone else's. It's a symbolic bonding ritual between the Shaman and the spirit. It gives the spirit physical presence in this world and ties it to the Shaman. But the Shaman has to be pretty powerful to keep the spirit tied."

"What if he's weak and tries it anyway?" Miyo ventured, and he shrugged as he spat on the bone disc.

"I don't know if he could even summon the spirit. Perhaps if the spirit's powerful enough, he could. But then I don't know if he could control it."

"And Urumkai's convinced that it has to be this kind of spirit?"

"I don't know what Urumkai thinks. But it certainly fits the pattern. Spirits who are summoned with blood are likely the kind who'll seek out blood."

She shuddered at that thought. At all the deaths, and how violent they were. Whoever had summoned this spirit had to be evil. Glancing up at her movement, Natquik nudged her and scooted closer, resting his arm against hers. Unconsciously, she leaned into the contact, appreciating the warmth of his coat through her wool sleeve.

"I need to talk to Urumkai," Natquik continued, bringing the bone close to his eyes in order to squint at the gouges he'd made. "There's something he's working hard to keep hidden. And I think it might be the key to solving this whole thing."

"But you said Urumkai wouldn't talk to you."

"He won't." He flashed her one of his most charming grins, still charming despite his fatigue. "I'll just have to sway him with my natural charisma." Then with a frown at his bone, he added: "This isn't angling right."

"Here." Reaching over him carefully, she took the bone in one hand and his knife in the other. Surprised, he offered up no fight as he watched her, wide-eyed. "You're going to need a little more than charisma for someone like him. Urumkai's not a young Omashu girl."

"Maybe I can impress him with my waterbending," he quipped, but his attention was obviously on her hands as she shaved the bone between her fingers. "How…?"

"We do make things at the Temple, you know." She smiled at his expression, which was somewhere between shocked and mystified. "I admit, never used bone before. But I've used a knife." Twisting the disc in her hands, she furrowed her forehead. "Are you smoothing this as you go?"

"That's just a product of the grain. Bone acts like that when you scrape the knife parallel to the layers." And then his hands were on hers, adjusting her fingers to point out the tiny details. "See here, where I've cut against it? Bone fractures if you use a transverse force. It's much better to stay with the grain."

Naqtuik circled an arm around her shoulder to hold it for her to see, and suddenly she was in his embrace, leaning against his neck. The task forgotten, she let him take the bone and knife from her, listening intently to him talk on something she cared nothing about. But she loved the sound of his voice and the feel of his throat, so happily, she let him lecture her on proper bone carving technique.

Eventually he must have realized she wasn't paying attention, so he lapsed into silence, his arms around her still as he went about carving the bone. She occasionally reached up to correct his hand—the entire reason his angle was off—and he'd laugh above her ear and go on scraping.

"You should let me talk to Urumkai," Miyo said after a long silence, and the comment surprised him enough to make him pause in his work. "Let me talk to him about his thoughts on this spirit."

"And why would that work any better than me asking him?"

She wasn't sure if it would. But she didn't want Natquik harassing Urumkai about this. Not after the threats yesterday. "Because if you ask him, you'll pretty much have to admit you've seen the scroll. And he's already decided he won't tell you anything. But as far as he knows, I'm completely unaware of what's going on. He'll be off-guard, and he might let something slip. If he doesn't, then I can play ignorant and he'll be none the wiser about the scroll."

"I don't think I want you doing that." Natquik's voice was low, and she knew it was because of what may have happened the day before. But he didn't really know what happened, and she wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer.

"I need to do something here, Natquik. I can't just stay in this hut, feeling useless. Urumkai invited me to his home on the bluffs for tea, and that's as perfect an opportunity as any for me to gather information. Please, just let me try."

"All right," he said softly. Setting the bone down beside her, Natquik pulled his arm away in order to reach for something under his coat. With a little wrangling, he removed a sheath from its hidden belt and laid it along with his knife in her lap. "But you take this."

"Natquik," she breathed, picking up the knife. The sheath was a soft brown leather, worn dull where it had rested continuously against his skin, and the narrow bone hilt, wrapped in blue leather and bluer beads, stuck from its top.

She remembered now. It was the same knife that Yan-lin had used to kill Hikoshu, though likely it had been mended and sharpened many times since then. "What would I do with this?" She shook her head to rid it of the bad memories and tried to hand the sheath back. "I can't use a knife."

"You just told me you could." He pushed it back at her, his expression grave as he settled back on the cot. "I don't know what he did to you yesterday, but I'm not going to let it happen again. So you carry this knife, and you keep yourself safe. Understood?"

Swallowing, Miyo nodded and tucked it between her crossed legs, where it stuck ominously against her thigh. She'd never use it, but if it made him happier, she would carry it.

Natquik was obviously rattled, rubbing at his neck in agitation as he retrieved his unformed bone. "I'll be going up to the bluffs tomorrow to talk to the hunting party that just came in. So you can visit him then, when I'm close by."

"You need to sleep," she said, but he waved her off.

"I'll sleep after the wedding." Then, with one very serious, very pained look he added: "I can't let you get hurt, Miyo."

Wordlessly, she crawled into his lap to hug his waist.

o~o~O~o~o

The ocean breezes were sharp so high up on the bluffs, their salty air mixing with the cold off the tundra to create a beast that scoured at one's eyes and skin, wearing a man down more thoroughly than the ever-blinding ice would alone. That was one of many reasons why Natquik could never tolerate the extreme reach of the watchtowers. For him, the world was either on the ice or on the sea—it could not be both.

But the sentries of the watchtowers had long ago grown accustomed to living somewhere on the border, in a world that was too warm to be tundra, too high to be ocean, and too isolated to be civilization. And Kiviak was most certainly one of them. Though he'd been just a child of three when Natquik had come to the North for the first time, and had been barely a teenager of fourteen when he'd left for the last time, Kiviak had become a man since then, grown into his own.

And he greeted Natquik like a man on the narrow ice parapets of the watchtower, as they grasped each other's elbows and exchanged a few welcoming words. Kiviak's tousled hair, forming a brown mane around his head, whipped in the biting wind, forcing him to hold it back in order to regard Natquik.

"What are you doing up here?" he asked as he leaned against the fancifully decorated balustrade—a balustrade which Natquik supposed he'd probably fashioned in hours of boredom. Kiviak had always had an artistic flair; perhaps if he'd lived a generation ago, or even three generations ago, he would have become a great philosopher Shaman or artisan. But after the war, after the death of the Era of Beauty in the north, the chiefs had only demanded practicality in their Shamans. And hardly anything Kiviak did was practical.

"I'm actually looking for Poalu," Natquik said with a frown, leaning against the smooth, round wall of the ice building. In front of him, past Kiviak's shoulder, the endless blue of the Kaiyun-Ki Strait met with the sharp blue of the sky. It was a breathtaking view, expansive and daunting. "Hinaat told me he was likely to be up here with you."

Kiviak crossed his arms over his chest, his gloved hands disappearing under the fur of his apprentice coat. Which, like everything else on him, was kept in immaculate condition. The two stripes that ended at his waist were a pure white, as if newly sewn just yesterday. "You're not going to start a fight with him, are you?"

"What?" Natquik couldn't hide his surprise. "Wh- no, why would I?"

"Well," Kiviak furrowed his brow, his eyes half-hidden under the mess of shaggy brown hair, "isn't this about him and Sahani?"

He shook his head. Yet when Kiviak didn't continue, he felt bound by etiquette to pursue the comment. "What do you mean?" Even though he didn't care. Even though they could have secretly eloped, and all it would matter to him was how much it might embarrass both of their families.

"He's my friend, Natquik," Kiviak said, staunchly refusing to give in to idle gossip, as duty required of him. Though just by his mentioning Sahani, they both knew he was quite eager to tell. "But, you know, he really thought you were gone. That Sahani wasn't going to have to marry you. And, then, they grew close…"

"Yeah, I know." Natquik shrugged, scanning the bluffs again in disinterest. "It's all in the past, though, so I really don't care."

"Well…that's forgiving of you. I mean, if it were me, I would be a little upset to find my future wife in love with another man."

Natquik snapped his eyes back to him, his mouth slightly agape. Was Kiviak trying to bait him into a fight? He avoided Natquik's gaze, and the comments were made as if without thought. But it definitely sounded like Kiviak was tempting Natquik into fighting Poalu for Sahani's hand. It was juvenile, making him reconsider how grown up he really thought Kiviak was. Yet if Poalu wanted to fight for Sahani—again—he would have to issue the challenge himself, instead of having his friend try to coerce Natquik into it.

"What about you, Kiviak?" He just changed the subject. "You have a future wife lined up yet?"

He looked up at that, his expression morphing into one of guilt. "Me? No. Not many women come up here to the bluffs."

"So no one's approached you?"

"Well, a few."

Kiviak was in a strange position. Certainly not unusual, but definitely strange. As the son of Hinaat, who was the youngest sister of Tuluk, he was part of the Royal Household. But as he was also the eldest son of the youngest daughter, he fell outside of the strict patrilineal descent of the Northern chiefdom. Which meant that he was free to marry any woman he wanted, provided that she was not already engaged and was of a Northern clan. The only problem was that as the eldest son of Tuluk's only remaining sibling, and the eldest remaining cousin to Sahani, he was for all intents and purposes still in line for the title of chief. And tradition dictated that Northern chiefs be married to the children of the Southern chiefs—a way to bind the two tribes together.

Fortunately, Natquik supposed, Kiviak had one thing most of them didn't have: an escape clause. So long as Sahani stood to become chieftess, he would not be bound by tradition to marry a specific person. He was, essentially, free to choose whoever.

"You want my advice," Natquik said instead, "you should make them those ice flowers. You know, the kind you used to make for Atua's daughters back in the South? Naishi loved those."

Kiviak grinned at that memory, rubbing self-consciously at his neck with a gloved hand. "Yeah, I worked all summer on those." It was one of two summers he'd spent in the south, which had been more or less miserable for a young man accustomed to the refined life of a northerner. "The ten-petal blooms weren't bad, but a realistic thousand-petal bloom? I nearly cut up my fingers."

Natquik chuckled and shook his head. He really had done a number on his fingers, which actually took more than one healing session to fix. But the finished product had been spectacular, and Naishi had squealed in delight, wearing it pinned in her hair until it finally melted.

"Urumkai wasn't all that impressed, though," Kiviak continued, pushing his hair out of his face. The wind simply blew it back in the way. "Said I was wasting time on small stuff in the south."

"Urumkai has never thought much of anything outside of hard, fast, and lethal waterbending." Which meant, in that respect, both Kiviak and Natquik had been failures. "Actually, now that you've mentioned him, I have a question."

"Oh?" His light blue eyes were curious.

"He seems a little on edge lately." Natquik smiled wryly to indicate his sarcastic understatement, and Kiviak laughed, bracing his hands against the balustrade.

"You mean more than usual? Yeah, these strange deaths apparently have him upset. Then with the hunting parties coming in the day before yesterday, he's been pretty stressed."

"But he also seems quite a bit more…defensive than usual." Defensive was also an understatement, though his tone wasn't joking. "Yesterday, he went to have a talk with Miyo—the Air Nun."

"He must've given her a real avalanche, then," Kiviak said, not quite noticing the serious turn of the conversation. "You know how much he hates talking to women."

"Actually, that's my question. Is he still…?"

Now Kiviak easily caught onto the implication, his expression darkening. Overhead the shadow of an isolated cloud rolled by, darkening the tundra as well. "No. I don't think so. I mean…maybe. But not an Air Nun."

The fact was, Miyo was being very tight-lipped about what had happened between her and Urumkai. But whatever it was, it had resulted in her slamming her hand through ice and then sobbing into his chest for an hour. Given what he had heard of Urumkai's past—given the rumors of Urumkai's tendencies toward young, vulnerable women—his mind had immediately jumped to one conclusion.

But even as defenseless and self-doubting as Miyo had been in the last few weeks, would she have allowed something like that? And would Urumkai have done something like that to an Air Nun? It seemed completely implausible, and yet…

"But he's stopped?" Natquik pressed. Kiviak's doubt made his own suspicions feel foolish, but he had to know for sure. Before he let her make any visit to Urumkai alone.

"Well, I don't know," Kiviak turned elusive, shrugging as he straightened from the parapet. "I mean, I'm not a pretty young girl. But I haven't seen or heard of anyone. Not in a long time."

"Miyo wants to pay him a social visit. Alone," he finally said, deciding to allow a little honesty. Kiviak frowned at that admission.

"She shouldn't."

"So he might?"

"No," he quickly backtracked, "no, but…Natquik, she's not one of us. I don't know what she wants to visit with him about, but if she's going to pry, or start asking questions—"

"About?"

"About anything!" There was definite frustration in his voice, that was rapidly matching Natquik's own frustration. "Then he's going to get upset. It's just…it's not her place."

They lapsed into silence at that, the sharp wind cutting between them to scour at the ice watchtower. Natquik watched the younger man in undisguised annoyance; yes, he knew how ostracized she was. Partly from her own desire to hide her weakness, from the fact she no longer felt like an Air Nun. But also because she was a stranger here, as much of a stranger as he himself had been at one time. The North was not kind to outsiders. And no matter how much he wished she could belong in his world, she never could.

Their silence was eventually broken by the arrival of a third person, someone who slipped out of the dark portal to Natquik's left and onto the narrow ledge that circled the tower. "Kiviak, I went ahead and ran those three nuiq by the other tower, but Due wasn't—"

The third man—Poalu—cut off abruptly at the sight of Natquik, whose own gaze grew cold at his arrival. Despite their very distant relationship, Natquik and Poalu bore an uncanny resemblance; everyone had commented on it at one point or another. Somehow they had both inherited the high cheekbones and the tapered jaw of their grandfathers' family, as well as the same swarthy skin, darker than most men of the North. Even the manner in which they held themselves was the same, like a general sense of informality or an amiable disinterest in being too serious. And given that Poalu was twenty-four, not much younger than he, most people would easily mistake them as brothers.

However, despite their similarities in appearance, they were nothing alike in personality. While Natquik closely mirrored his own lackadaisical demeanor, Poalu had a much shorter temper, given to rash decisions and tantrums. To him, Poalu was simply spoiled, but certainly Sahani loved something in him. Maybe what he saw as tempestuousness she saw as passion. Or maybe their bizarre likeness had convinced her Poalu was someone she could love. Regardless, Natquik supposed they had something else they shared—they were willing to do anything for her.

"Poalu," he said with a pleasant smile, though his words were stiff and he didn't rise from his reclined position against the wall. Poalu ducked his head with the same amount of reluctance, wearing a smirk that showed off his own dimples.

"Natquik. Kind of surprised to see you up here. I guess they don't have you doing much since they demoted you." The question was filled with an easy-going humor, as if the comment were wholly innocent. Yet he tugged at the sleeves of his parka as if to straighten it, or to draw attention to the bone ribbing that marked him as a warrior. In contrast to the layman's coat that Natquik now wore.

Natquik's smile never faltered. "To be honest, I'm kind of surprised to see you here, too. Since my back's turned, I had thought you'd be off making advances on my soon-to-be wife."

"Well, someone has to keep her company while you're fooling around with the airbender."

Though their voices and expressions were still amiable, their words were clipped. Irritated. Natquik glanced up at the sky pensively, clasping his jaw in his gloved hand. "I see. So if your petty jealousy is making you imagine I'm having some torrid affair with an Air Nun of all people, then I have to wonder, will you try to steal her next?"

"I'm sorry, which part was I supposed to be jealous about? Was it your southern upbringing, or your women's bending?"

"Hey!" Kiviak interrupted sharply, and they both turned their half-disguised glares to him. He still sat against the parapet, his arms across his chest as he jerked his head toward the ground below. "You two take it to the snow if you're going to start anything. I've got enough to worry about; I don't need any broken limbs or split heads."

"We're not starting anything, are we, Poalu?" Natquik knew it was dangerous taunting him. But he didn't imagine the other man would do anything; not when he risked the chance of losing.

Poalu shrugged as if apathetic. But his mouth twitched and his eyes flared under his brows. "If you ever feel like you're man enough to take me, you're free to do it. Any time."

"Doesn't seem to me like I have anything to prove."

"Didn't you need to talk to Poalu about something?" Kiviak asked in obvious impatience. Natquik looked over at the younger man, then nodded, pushing up from the wall.

"Yeah, I did. We can talk in the watchtower." He gestured to the door, but Poalu didn't move. Instead, he spread his hands to take in the parapet with mock candor.

"Whatever you have to say to me, you can say in front of Kiviak."

Kiviak seemed to think differently, avoiding their eyes as he ducked in between them. "That's probably not such a good idea. Listen, Poalu, just find me after you're done with Natquik, all right?" And before either could protest—if either of them would—he disappeared inside the door, leaving them alone on the sun-bathed rampart.

"So," Poalu said, shoving his hands in the pockets of his hunter's coat as he took Kiviak's spot against the parapet. The coat's bone ribbing emphasized his torso, making his chest look larger than it actually was, and the wind yanked at his wolf's tail, pulled haphazardly high on the back of his head. "What's so important you had to come find me at the watchtower?"

"I was just curious. About why you were in the library three or four weeks ago."

He stared for a long moment, his mouth drawn into a guarded frown. "Why should I remember that?"

"Come off it, Poalu. Most hunters can't even read Water Tribe script, let alone care to step inside a library. So whatever it was, I'm sure you remember exactly why you were there."

"And how is it your business, Natquik, what I do?"

"Your response is striking me as awfully defensive."

"And your questions are striking me as awfully nosy." He scowled, crossing his arms across his chest as he hunched further into his coat. "I don't answer to you."

"Someone was in that library and someone was looking through scrolls that weren't meant for them." This got his attention; Poalu unconsciously straightened, the scowl melting away as he found some point on Natquik's shoulder to study. The cagey expression was difficult to miss. "Frankly, I don't think you're strong enough, or even enough of a threat, to be the one poking about. But I keep coming back to the fact that you were in the library, and someone else who had no business being in that library was in there, too."

"What do you mean, strong enough?" His voice was low and shaky, and his eyes narrowed in a menacing manner. "What is it you think I did?"

"I think you might be the one killing all these Northerners."

Poalu studied him quietly, creating between them a tense silence that was augmented by the distant break of the ocean, audible even at that height. Then, finally, he threw his head back and laughed—a harsh, demeaning laugh, lacking any mirth.

"Why would I want to kill anyone?"

"If you think I'm wrong, then you tell me how to interpret the evidence. Tell me what you were doing in that library." Natquik was neither annoyed nor frustrated by his response. All he really wanted was an answer; it didn't even have to be a good one.

"I was in there looking for a way to get rid of you." Poalu spat the response. He'd gone back to glaring so hard that it nearly swallowed his chilly eyes. "Looking through all of the old records, seeing if there was any way to absolve this arrangement and save Sahani from this marriage."

Natquik arched an eyebrow indifferently, though inside, his stomach jumped. "And did you find anything?"

"If I had, do you think you'd still be getting married in six days?" At that, his heart sank in defeat. Poalu didn't know it, but he had just as much invested interest in getting out of the marriage as he. Nor would Poalu ever know that; so long as he was engaged to Sahani, Natquik would be both happy and grateful.

"What a shame for you. But hey, maybe you'll get lucky. Maybe whatever's killing the northern men will get me too. Would make this whole affair a little less messy, right? Don't have to challenge me and end up being humiliated. Don't have to worry about the repercussions of killing me yourself. I'm sure Sahani would love you even more for stepping in to console her."

Poalu's glare deepened at that suggestion, but Natquik didn't wait around to hear his protest. Brushing past him, he headed for the open door. "Thanks, anyway. That's all I needed to know. I'll see you at the wedding."

"I still have six days," Poalu said behind him, his voice filled with portent. Natquik hesitated at the door, starting to glance back, then thought better of it.

Poalu would not kill him. For all of his bluff and posturing, he didn't have it in him to hurt anybody. But if he knew of any way short of that to stop the wedding, Natquik would welcome it.

After all, he still had six days.