Chapter 08: Silverglades Survey

Ty dropped her lantern, only just keeping it from hitting the ground with a last second swing. She extinguished its fire with a huff and walked away before anyone could say a word.

They'd already said enough.

"You're the only one who can do this for us."

"You owe me."

"Kayin's unavailable."

It didn't feel like enough justification, not by the seventh hour of rambling through the swamp, tension rising with every failure. Eventually, someone would snap, and with Alex so unusually quiet today, Ty could feel herself sinking down the inevitable path.

Not yet, though. She bit her tongue as she wondered, again, why they were here for such a fruitless mission. The first two rituals, Ty had admittedly attuned to the wrong cordance, largely wasting both opportunities. But on the third, though she'd forgotten a step here and fumbled a step there, the smoke should never have come up so feeble—especially not in the Silverglades, where every sapling and toad sang together in resonance.

And finally, after ten agonizing minutes of flawless execution, their fourth ritual had earned them pitch black odorless smoke.

It was maddening.

Under a blanket of calm gray clouds, the air was sticky with dew, and every step through the bog invited more water past Ty's boots, up her leggings. When they stood still, she felt all the more encircled by the splashes, the slithering, the strange skittering across the water.

She turned abruptly and exploded.

"So you drag me fifty leagues away from Ijhe'Yi into a crocodile infested swamp, we execute a perfect ritual, and we have absolutely nothing to show for it. Am I missing something?"

The three others had yet to detangle themselves from their final position. Alex wiped down her tool and pocketed it carefully before she faced Ty with a sneer, an undignified gash in the art of her face. Of course, Alexandera had had no better use for those two dawntide hours than to perfect an elaborate square mosaic of paint, kohl, and powder.

"We were not quite perfect," Alex said, "or did you not feel it?"

Ty didn't grace her with an answer.

"No, and that's the problem, isn't it?" Alex asked.

Ty said, "Maybe the problem isn't the pyromancy, but the architect. Or is it the leader?"

"Did you want to be leader, Ty?"

Alex didn't let Ty get her instinctive 'no' out—somehow she had already tuned her out to occupy Onawa with the map yet again.

That was Onawa, of course, though Ty still wasn't used to the shock of short brown on her friend's head. It wasn't rational, sure, but somehow Ty felt like Onawa had cut off more than just her hair, maybe a piece of their childhood, and she hadn't even asked Ty for her opinion.

These days, Ty could hardly recognize her sisters.

She joined Dayo on a firm patch of grass under a blackgum. The Ibasi's empty stare could not hide her boredom.

"So do you watch with no understanding, as I do?" Ty asked.

"Sadly, even less," Dayo said.

There was some humor in Dayo's upturned eyes, though there was something else less pleasant there, too—the familiar face of impatience.

At first, Ty had seen Dayo's wrinkled forehead and wide, staring eyes and thought her a very bothered, serious kind of woman, with her cleanly pressed cloak and perfect zolo puff hair—the kind who loved discipline and tutted at shenanigans. But a day's travel together had revealed a pleasant, if not forthcoming, squadmate, and Ty wondered if she had lazily conflated Dayo and Kayin into the same austere, uptight character.

A muddy frog leapt past the two of them, and they watched it chase down some grotesque skimmer spider.

"I only found the map with Xifo'Geadda's help, so I left the Study Solis not much wiser."

Dayo nodded, but said nothing.

"Did you enjoy your blood moon hunt?" Ty asked. Alex still hadn't told her anything of it.

"It was a new experience."

"Alex said the report is restricted under Council orders. Is that true?"

"It must be."

Evidently, temple life did not raise diplomats.

Ty pressed on anyway. "What was your bounty?"

"Adequate. Two D-class trophies, and the interest of the Crown Regent."

"The Crown Regent? What for?" Ty asked. She might have been too excited, for Dayo seemed to catch herself.

"You'd have to ask Alex."

They turned towards Alex and Onawa. Onawa had sprawled out over a boulder, while Alex briskly paced a figure eight pattern around her in some focus calibration ritual.

"Ah, or perhaps it would be wiser to not," Dayo said.

The secrecy could drive a mystic mad.

Ty considered Dayo again, who seemed content to watch in silence. She stood as still as a tree, her lean silhouette comically bulging with a beaded bag packed with supplies.

Ty tried again.

"Did you bring any field provisions?"

Dayo's eyes widened, showcasing a pair of long eyelashes. Her stoic face could be quite beautiful when it lit up with such excitement.

She dropped her bag and knelt to rummage through it; one hand rose to blindly offer various snacks to Ty's grabbing paws.

Ty said, "Trail mix, bison hind jerky, okay, good—wait, is this a grape tart?"

She tore away the palm leaf wrap and tossed it aside, enthralled by the hand pie she held up like a trophy.

Of course, it was a trophy. Xifo'Kyta baked it only once a week at the Firepit, and she insisted that all tarts be consumed in the dining hall—no carry-outs.

"Didn't she make you eat it while she watched?"

"She did. Twice." Dayo flourished two more tarts, one in each hand, with a blinding grin. "But I had more."

Ty laughed again, this time in a thrilled bewilderment.

"Why did you take so many?"

"I was full, but then I saw them." She held up both beautiful pastries up to make her point. "It was so late past sundown, I thought it would be harmless to take several. I only realized the taboo once I saw the large chef stop another student. So I sat down and ate one. And then she said to eat "both", so I had to eat one more."

"Wow. A song-worthy heist."

"Thank you."

Dayo didn't seem so aloof anymore. Rowan insisted that that would be the case, though her face remained mostly unreadable. Still, the decadent, sour, slightly stale tart in Ty's mouth galvanized her with hope—maybe Dayo would band with her to resist the mind-numbing drivel of Alex, Kayin, and Jhun.

Ty savored the light flakes of pastry on her tongue; Dayo's friendship would be one worth cherishing.

They exchanged a few caravan rumors and trifling laughs until finally Onawa cried the outset call. As the sun neared its peak in the sky, the squad began its trek towards their fifth site.

"How many of these are left? We've spent all day walking and standing around, but not much getting anything done."

Onawa stopped in her tracks. Ty waited for the backlash, but Onawa's response surprised her.

"Why not find something else to do? You're rangers. In the Silverglades. Come now."

Ty shared a look with Dayo. No, neither of them knew exactly what Onawa meant, but it wasn't hard to assume the environment's high resonance would spawn some interesting trophies. . .

After a few seconds of thought, Ty could hear a distant memory.

"Aiya, Luna told me I should look for something while I was out here. A tree that had some sort of lichen that's good for our horticulture project."

"A tree? Of what kind?"

"Hm." Ty thought about it. "Oh, right, I have a dichotomous branching guide!"

Dayo's bemusement only deepened.

They didn't have a moment to get into it—Alex pushed the pace relentlessly through a jungle whose trees grew denser, the grasses higher, and the fog thicker. The sounds, movement, life around Ty tickled her like resonance sometimes could, even without a drop of spellfuel in her. For the first time in her life, she wondered if auramancy could feel as natural as Alex and Onawa claimed.

If only it would help Ty find her tree. By the time the squad rounded on their destination, Ty was just starting to understand that two types of nearly identical cypress dominated the swamp around them, and neither seemed to be the pine she needed.

Alex and Onawa dropped their backpacks on a fallen trunk and dragged a few logs and boulders together to stage a burn area. Ty groaned to belatedly acknowledge what their arrival meant for her: the ritual, again.

"Okay," Ty said, "so what happens if this doesn't work yet again? Time to go home, right?"

Alex's smile tightened. "We'll discuss it."

These words almost convinced Ty the ritual could be less tedious, painstaking, and excruciating than it had been the first four times. She watched Onawa take the point, Alex the sentry's position, and Dayo her drummer's seat. Ty sat at Dayo's feet to face Onawa, unhooked her lantern from its staff, and placed it in Onawa's open palms.

"Don't sweat all over it," Ty pled.

"Aiya, Ty, shush," Onawa said, her teeth gritted to cage a smile.

The two sisters inbreathed together and pushed with their auras, raising the lantern rose from Onawa's hands to hover between them, and, with a two beat lead-in from Dayo, they took their first steps. Full stride sunwise; half; full; full; half; full stride. Then, after three repetitions, Onawa's chin tilted just so, and Ty, checking her feet to confirm she was back in her starting spot, followed Onawa through a new cycle, clockwise this time.

With each rotation, the flame in the lantern flickered, and Alex hummed her approval. They repeated it once, twice, then three times. By the end of the fourth, Ty let herself be tickled by the fancy that Onawa might signal the ritual's completion, only to be quietly disappointed as they began anew.

As they neared the end of the fifth, Onawa's eyes fixed on the lantern, refusing to meet Ty's, Ty began to fear this calibration ritual might take longer than usual. This was the worst part—the uncertainty. Unconnected as she was, Ty couldn't track the progress of the fire. Onawa could, but she was too focused on her auramancy to signal anything to Ty. Not that that mattered, anyway; if Alex found out how much Onawa was carrying Ty through the ritual, there would be no end to the lecturing.

A few cycles past the seventh, Ty felt her endurance waning. She could have gone for another hour, yes, but for what? Certainly not Alex's secret pet mission.

Ty extinguished the flame, and a steady stream of smoke rose in its stead. Onawa dropped to inbreathe the smoke, but already Ty recognized the scent.

Pure cedar. All jv̇gwah, no arghalos.

Nobody spoke. Onawa's badgering aura made clear her frustrations with Ty—yes, that had been a little early. Ty stared at Alex, the leader's lips pursed in thought and eyes unmoving from the lantern. Would she reprimand Ty?

After an eternity, Alex sighed.

"Clearly something is wrong. Shall we try once more on a different cordance, then?"

Ty raised an eyebrow. "Okay, which one? Are we just ignoring the maps entirely now? I'm thrilled you asked me to spend two hours at the Study Solis retrieving those. You know how much I hate that place."

"Well. . . hm."

"So you weren't exaggerating," Dayo said, the humor clear in her dark eyes.

"I wasted an hour before Xifo'Geadda helped. She had to go deep into the archives for these."

"Who made them?" Dayo asked, her curiosity rising.

"Rangers, I presume."

"Who?" Dayo insisted.

"You wouldn't know the names."

"Do you assume so?"

The haughtiness in Dayo's voice gave Ty pause. It strained Ty's skills to discern how genuinely serious the Ibasi was being.

"No, I just haven't heard of them myself. And I know a lot," She added.

"How old are these maps, then?" Onawa asked, suddenly interested in the conversation. "Not pre-shift, right?"

"Pre. . . Shift. . ." Ty dragged out the words as she dragged a memory forth from the depths of her mind. Xifo'Geadda had warned her something of a map shift, with the disclaimer that there were no better alternatives.

"These are pre-shift maps?"

"It's all Xifo'Geadda had!"

"And you didn't say anything?" Onawa asked, the disbelief obvious.

"I didn't know that was so important. There were no other options. You said you needed to do this no matter what, and here we are. I didn't even know we were doing resonance checks today."

Ty stomped into a puddle, splashing the others more than she'd intended.

"If you'd given me more to work with, Xifo'Geadda might've given me something better than these old maps!"

Alex shook her head. They stood in silence, minus the cacophony of buzzing and clicking critters all around.

Ty shaped her resentment into righteous reason.

"You're the leader. You should have told me what to be prepared for. But no. In fact, you still haven't told me anything about this mission. You treat us like mindless soldiers in a fake war. Maybe that's why you've failed every hunt you've tried to lead since you got here."

"Failed?" Alex asked. "Did I fail on Komo Island, where I led us to Tals'Iolani's most favorable judgments?"

"That was Rowan, not you. You led us straight to the decoy dens, remember?"

"Bah, we brought back cluster coconuts, Komo clay, and saltberries. What else have I led? Our blood moon hunt? An absolute success."

"From what little you tell me, perhaps."

"I'm verboten."

"Yes, of course. See, you hide behind secrecy because the truth is shameful," Ty said. "Onawa, you know something, don't you?"

Alex stepped forward. "She knows what she must, because it's useful for her to. But this is sensitive information above your station."

"Aiya, Alex."

How could her sisters hold such trivial secrets? Alex always thought there was such a noble duty to the secrecy, and Onawa always tried her damnedest to follow suit.

"Useful for what?" Ty continued. "For the course trial? Or for today?"

Onawa's thick eyebrows jerked together to betray her knowledge. Ty had struck gold.

"For today?" Ty repeated, drawing another bubble of truth to surface on Onawa's face—this time a lick of her lip.

"What does it matter?" Alex demanded.

"I want to know! So this is connected to your blood moon hunt? Why not just bring Kayin, then? I'm sure she knows more than I do."

Alex and Dayo shared some kind of look. Onawa's eyes locked with Ty's, as empty as the brain behind them. Ty let out a cough that wrapped around a chuckle.

Alex said, "Cast ward check."

"Don't try to distract me, you heartclot."

They gathered round in a circle and compared cast wards, each as pristine as the next. It was the standard design of the zyuga, featuring a perfect rose quartz set into silver—more than enough for whatever resonance they could possibly cast in a day. Ty had taken no chances this time, after the last scare. She shuddered to think what might have happened if Rowan had actually fallen ill.

"Are we done, then?" She asked. "Since the maps are useless."

But it was too late. Alex had caught the thread of an idea, and Ty could see behind her fiery eyes the looms spinning away to weave a plan into reality. The leader grinned obnoxiously as she caught Ty's growing dismay.

"There remains so much we could do, Ty."

"Like go home, you mean."

"No. Look, we've confirmed so far that we need to test different cordances. Can you imagine how many possibilities there truly lie before us?"

"I don't care to." Ty couldn't begin to guess, but she wasn't prepared to admit that. "Too many, I'd bet."

Alex clapped in excitement.

"Exactly. But by testing the most common cordances, we can bring back information that the Xifoclaste might find useful in narrowing their eventual search."

"And why would we do that?" Ty asked. "Nobody's taught us how to survey for resonance. We don't know what we're doing here."

"We cannot return empty-handed!" Alex yelled.

"Why not?" Ty yelled back. "Why are we here? Who's expecting anything from us? The Council?"

Unusually, Alex had no quick answer.

"No, the council had—"

"The crown regent, then."

"Why must you be such a pest?" Alex asked, looking to Onawa for help that was slow to mobilize.

"You're the one keeping secrets," Ty replied. "Like how are we even in the Silverglades? This is a restricted area. So who sent us here?"

For some reason they all looked to Onawa, who shrugged.

"Alex didn't tell me."

"More importantly," Alex said, "This mission was approved by the Council, so nobody has to worry. You do not need every bit of information, Ty."

"But do you need to keep it from us?" Ty asked.

"Remember the raid? You trusted me then and it worked. Can we not just do that again?"

"That was a raid. This is not. We have time, space, ample opportunity to explain the situation."

Onawa whispered an explanation to Dayo, who seemed more amused than bothered by the argument thus far.

Alex began to respond, but Ty cut back in.

"Yes, yes, Alex, twelve captives without a single loss in one night. You've already reached your yearly quota of flaunting your feat. One perfect night doesn't justify everything you've done since."

She almost allowed Alex to speak.

"And forget the damned prophecy for one night. You've stripped that elk to its glands, and all of our ancestors cringe when they watch you dig back in again and again for an excuse to elevate your own importance.

"We were only kids for that raid. As dumb as we were, we could afford to not know. But we're rited now, and we need to know what the hell it is we're doing here. Not just you. All of us."

A new critter had joined the screeching around them, and with it, a surprisingly deep tone to its aura.

After a painful minute, Alex sighed.

"Aiya, the truth is, nobody told me what the mission was, exactly. But the Crown Regent sent us out here to survey. How can we return empty-handed?"

Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place for Ty. "So the Crown Regent sent you back out to the Silverglades after your blood moon hunt. Is this a follow-up, or an atonement?"

"Why does it matter, Ty?!" Alex's frustration could only be matched by Ty's.

"Why didn't you just tell us?"

"Because the Crown Regent told me not to. Is that not enough? But why can you not just trust me?"

"I can't spend the rest of my days on unknown missions, living in the dark. At a certain point, you have to give us the respect we deserve."

Alex couldn't meet her eyes anymore. "I understand your perspective. And I would understand if you left."

Anything but to admit she was wrong.

"But Ty, I need you. As I always have."

Ty scoffed, trying to find some way to shake off the uncomfortable sincerity from Alex. Ty had found her fury all but extinguished, maybe because of the ridiculous begging eyes that Onawa sent from Alex's side.

Ty put a hand out to Dayo. The Ibasi returned only a quizzical stare.

"Aiy, sorry, friend. I imagined you were Felix for a second. Could I have another piece of jerky?"

"Of course," Dayo said. She found another strip in her bag, this time whitetail venison. "And plenty for the rest of the day."

Ty accepted the jerky with two grateful hands.

"And you're okay spending it out here?" One last chance at an out.

"It has been quite easy."

Ty sighed and looked to Onawa and Alex. "All right, then. You'll owe me if I stay, right?"

"We established that before the outset," Alex said.

"Twice, then. Once for coming here, and once for staying."

". . . Fine," came Alex's eventual answer.

"First favor: Help me find a mature bog pine with lichen."