Lovu

  The next morning came without pomp or circumstance. Topal nudged Lovu awake with a sharp toe in his side before dropping a pair of worn boots at his side. They were clearly hand-me downs from Helye, but he took them far more willingly than any clothes he had ever bought himself. When he tried to discard the disgusting tattered kohi pelts, Topal snatched them back up and slipped them into her pack.

  Together, they snuck up through the trapdoor. Helye was nowhere to be seen, but the sound of steel on steel from outside made his whereabouts obvious. Following Topal’s lead, they snuck out, disappearing into the forest. It was just after dawn, so a light mist hung in the air as they left little Ya’upuk behind. In no time at all, they were back into the heart of the wildlands with civilization nothing but a distant memory. Lovu was content to mindlessly march onward but around noon, the events of the previous night finally took their toll and he started to lag behind. He limped along as best he could until they reached the next safe place to rest.

  Stopping by a small stream – much smaller than the others they had used in the past – he leaned back against a tree and closed his eyes. Unfortunately, that didn’t last long before a cold splash on his face snapped him awake. Some of the frigid water even went up his nose, causing him to cough and sputter.

  “No sleeping,” Topal said, rearranging her pack. “Only sleep when we camp for the night.”

  “Another Scar rule for the wildlands?”

  “No. Common sense.”

  “You could have just said that,” Lovu said, wiping his face dry.

  “I could have but would you have listened?” she said pointedly.

  “Are you upset because I blessed the village?”

  “I told you it was a bad idea, and you being too tired to make good progress is just the first consequence catching up to you. There’re still a dozen more ways for it to bite you in the ass.”

  “I didn’t ignore your warning,” he said, resting his head against the tree again. “I heard your concern, took it seriously, and decided to help them in spite of the consequences.”

  “That’s worse,” she spat back. “Being stupid is one thing, but intentionally choosing the worse option is suicidal.”

  “What would you have me do?!” Lovu sat up to face her. “They are suffering and if everything you have told me is true, my family is in no small part to blame! Regardless of who caused the problem in the first place, if I just sat by and let it happen when I had the power to help, I would be an active participant in their plight. For someone so bothered by the injustices caused by others, you seem very resistant to someone trying to rectify them.”

  “Because you’re not fixing shit!” Topal shouted back, stomping closer to him. “Even if you stop them from starving now, what about next year? Or the year after that? The next time a blight or levy leaves them hungry, they’ll be right back in the exact same situation. Their hunger isn’t even the real problem, it’s the fact that they will always be hungry. Feeding them once isn’t going to change anything.”

  “It will keep them alive,” he said calmly, staring up at her without moving.

  “Yeah, just long enough to turn you in for a reward that will all go straight toward staving off hunger again,” she spat, returning to her pack, where she pulled out the knife she used for skinning her prey and started to sharpen it. “I’ve seen enough to know that most people are either evil, stupid, or both. Lords and their kin are basically all evil first and foremost, but plenty are stupid too. The rest of us tend more toward stupidity – hunger will do that to you. None of the folks back in that village, not even Helye, will think for a second about selling you out, even if it’ll hurt them in the long run.”

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  “What about you?” Lovu said, scorn edging into his voice. The longer she spoke, the more he felt his temper rising. “As much as you go on and on about hating nobles, you haven’t shown yourself to be any better. You urge me to put myself above others, to leave people suffering, and you shun those around you. Even with Kut, all you could do is look on in anger as she broke down coughing.”

  “Wait. That’s not-” she said, trying to cut in, but all of the anger and frustration he had built up over the past few days bubbled to the surface.

  “And you look down on those around you, but how much better are you?” he shouted, tears welling up in his eyes. “You’re only helping me now for the reward I promised. But I’m sure your needs are soooooo much more important than theirs. How about you-”

  She launched herself at him, dropping the knife and reaching for his face fast enough that he didn’t have a chance to react. Her hand clamped down over his mouth, stifling his shouts as he thrashed ineffectually against her. Her free hand effortlessly grabbed his flailing arms, holding them in place as one knee pinned his thighs to the ground.

  His anger turned to fear as he realized that he pushed her too far. The scars peeking out from under her scarf were inches from his eyes, reminding him just how dangerous she could be. Struggling for a way out of her grasp, he finally looked at her eyes and saw that she wasn’t looking at him at all. Her head was turned to the side, staring off into the trees.

  Following her gaze, he saw a familiar hulking mass of feathers in the distance, slowly moving toward them. A yirko. Every ounce of fight drained out of him as he stared in horror. It flowed between the trees like water, brushing the hanging limbs out of the way but gliding past the trunks, leaving them practically untouched in its wake.

  He expected it to have a head, or legs, or anything at all that might make it feel real, but there was nothing real about it. It was simply a hulking mass of feathers and meat that crawled over the ground like a slug, silently swallowing everything it passed over.

  They were directly in its path, but there was nowhere to go as it inched closer. Lovu took a deep, even breath, careful to not even make the sound of inhaling. The moment he dreaded most came all too quick as it deformed around the tree he was pressed up against and swallowed them both, exactly as it had everything else.

  To his surprise, it didn’t feel like anything at all. There was no warmth or chill like you’d expect of a living creature, and even though he could feel slight pressure, it felt like barely more than a silk sheet being dragged over his skin. As his lungs reached their limit, he was happy to feel that sheet finally give way as the warm summer air greeted him again.

  With every ounce of self-control possible, he let out his breath a bit at a time until his chest was screaming for air. Only then did he start taking more in. Just as gradually as it had approached, the Yirko continued, fading into the distance.

  “I’m going to use your reward to buy a merchant’s license,” Topal said as she dropped her hand from his mouth and stood up. Lovu was still so fixated on the Yirko that he just stared up at her in confusion.

  “What?”

  “That’s why I’m helping you,” she said numbly as she started collecting the knife she had dropped. “You’re right. I may be evil for now, but I’m not stupid. I’ll help more people in the long run that way than I ever could if I spent it all on food right now. I don’t want to ignore people, but if helping them stops me from reaching that point, it will never be worth it. Same goes for you. If you’ve got any possibility to become the next Voice or High Advocate or whatever, dying before you do will just mean someone evil will take your place and they’ll undo any good you tried to create.”

  Lovu looked at her blankly, his mind still numb from the whiplash. The fear had sapped every ounce of anger he once held, so he just sat in silence as he worked her words over in his mind.

  “You may be right,” he said eventually, “but Fam’e teaches that our greatest strength is in our fellow man. On your own, you may be able to do more by turning a blind eye to those around you, but you are still only one person. I may have only made Helye’s life a little bit easier, but in doing so, I have given him and everyone else in Ya’upuk the opportunity to spread that goodwill in kind. If any of them help even a single other person, the cycle can continue, and my kind act will ripple into countless other lives.”

  “That assumes they actually help someone else,” Topal said, finally sheathing the knife. “Like I said, most people are evil or stupid, and either is enough to stop your goodwill in its tracks.”

  “Perhaps,” he said as the tension drained from the air. “But if I am good consistently, I will find enough people drawn to Fam’e’s path to justify any false starts.”

  “Sure, keep telling yourself that,” she said, turning away from him. “Just don’t get yourself killed until you pay your debts.”

  With that, their spat came to an end. Lovu still had thoughts, but there was no room to change her mind then and there. Instead, he let his mind wander until he latched onto a new question. “By the way, how did the Yirko come here? I thought you said running water was safe.”

  “Smaller creek. Less water, less safe.”

  “Of course…”