Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
from her hand to the covers, squeezed to a solid mass and spotted with blood.
For the briefest moment he felt the burning of Daca's hand on his own face.
“Maybe I will too,” he said, with a boasting tone, the best he could do as a
match for the courage he knew he didn't have in him. “Become paltin, I mean.”
She had laughed.
“There's water,” she whispered. Blood still bubbled in her mouth but she hadn't
drawn any fresh for some time.
Rubbing the cuts under her nose, offered his arm again. “Stone water.”
“First you forget yourself and now you can't smell good water.” Her words
were a sigh against his arm. “Little brother, you are quite hopeless.”
Water meant people. He left Oimit with her honor blade fixed in her good
hand, the point pressed against one side, the tip just under the skin to help hold
it where her spine would be easily severed. A fall forward and she would be dead
by her own hand.
There must have been the scent of water, but a passing thing only. The
freeborn woman had none out that he could see or smell, the two children either.
A stash, perhaps, and food as well. She was building a shelter, a patched cloth
fastened to make a tent within a fissure in the spire. Stone piled at the front and
stone dust rubbed into the weave to disguise the look. The children were inside
and the flap tucked down before she left again.
Near to an hour’s search had shown nothing more then what he saw in front of
him. The sugar was gone, only the tracks of the woi packs remained in the wind
blown patterns of stone dust and clay. The veil had risen a little to show most of
the teeth of the Mouth back the way he had come, the Sourrin freehold quite
near.
He watched the woman as she gathered more stones. She blended well into
the background, and away from the shelter, moved as a Warrior does when they
wouldn't be seen in enemy territory.
The youngest child was a girl; she folded without a sound, the older boy as
quietly. Standing in front of the shelter, he waited for the woman to return. The
only sound from her was the stones she dropped. A weapon was in her tunic, one
hand went towards it, but she turned the movement into a sign of submission as
she knelt.
A simple work knife in one pocket, no markings on the blade. “A pouch of the
water,” he said to her. “Bring it here.”
She brought the water from out of the tent, then eyes down, stood quietly as
he drank. Relieved at finding the two alive, he wondered, or regretting it? She
had left them alive after checking them. What did she hope?
The mirsasitin hunted that night. The old mother, he recognized the cry.
Occasionally, she struck with the shrieking rip of her claws against stone and the
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca