Lovu

  After escaping from Kamvor, Lovu and Topal’s course was set. Akil was in Ngopeman, so that’s where they had to go.

  Ngopeman rested on the Yai river – the largest river on the southern peninsula. It began in the mountains marking Hangkiti’s western border and flowed eastward toward the ocean. In its final stretch, it meandered to its northernmost bend before taking a nearly straight shot south where it emptied into the sea at Lavote. It was so large that only five bridges crossed the river, all in major cities. The Ngop fiefdom covered the northern bank of that northernmost bend with Ngopeman being one such major city, so they were a long way from their goal.

  The fastest route would normally have been taking the Vor Highway back to Lavote, crossing over the Yai there, then taking another Highway north alongside the river. However, they had barely made it out of the capital once already, so going back would be suicidal. Instead, they planned to wrap clockwise around Lavote to give it a wide berth. To do that, they needed to cross three other fiefdoms, starting with Lelpi – Vor’s neighbor to the northwest. All in all, Topal estimated that it would take over a month of consistent travel.

  So, they walked.

  The first week was spent escaping the Yufe foothills. They moved quickly and with as little rest as possible to put distance between them and Kamvor. Topal even performed the ritual to cover their tracks when they left their campsites for the first two days, just to make sure they were untraceable.

  “How many of those do you have left?” Lovu asked, pointing at the stone coins she used in the ritual. He recalled her mentioning that they were expensive, but didn’t know what that meant for them in their current situation.

  “Seven left in here,” she said, shaking a little pouch.

  “Oh, that seems like plenty for this trip then. Can they do anything else?”

  “What’s this?” she asked, squinting at him playfully. “The good little Advocate wants to learn more about the wicked Kumam?”

  “I am not so foolish to hold her reputation against her after all I have seen,” he said, puffing out his chest, only to wince at the effort. Tama’s beating had settled into his bones, making every movement ache. “I may have learned much about her relationship to Fam’e, but clearly my education was… limited in scope. I want to get a more complete understanding of how she serves her followers, especially if we are going to continue moving amongst them in the near future.”

  “Good for you,” she said, rolling her eyes as she put the sack away. “I know a couple of tricks with these, but most aren’t as useful as covering our tracks. They can track prey, find water, and lead me to the closest town, but I can do all of those on my own. I’ve only used it once, but they can also make us look like other people for a while, so we can still go into town if we need to. The only other really useful thing I can do is…”

  “Is what?” he asked only after examining their surroundings. Normally, her going silent was a sign that something dangerous was nearby, but he couldn’t see anything.

  “Not something you want to know about,” she eventually finished. “I may have given you shit about being scared of her, but Kumam isn’t entirely harmless.”

  It didn’t take him long to think of a few examples that might warrant such a response. All he could think of was Tama’s warm breath on his face and the wrath in her eyes. The swelling in his face was just starting to go down, but the bruises on his body still ached.

  “Besides,” she continued. “Those’re just what I know how to do. If you’re interested in learning more about her in general, there’re a lot of other uses, even if I don’t know how to perform the rituals myself.”

  “Oh?” Lovu said, his interest piqued again. “Like what?”

  “Well, she can help replace lost limbs. People who lose an arm or leg can get one from an animal grafted back in its place. The people who know how to do it are usually pretty secretive but offer their services to anyone willing to pay or owe a favor. It’s pretty common to see in the poorer parts of town.”

  While she was right that he had never even heard of that being done, he did recall seeing people with animal limbs while they were in Lavote’s slums. Not learning anything about Kumam’s other rituals made sense, but that one in particular bothered him. “That is interesting. As an Advocate, I was taught many healing rituals including rebinding severed limbs – so long as they are still intact – but we have no equivalent to what you’re describing. It was a maxim of sorts that we couldn’t replace that which was lost, only help the body mend as it would with time.”

  “Huh… so what do nobles do when they lose something?”

  “Nothing like that,” he said, still wondering why such a useful ritual would be excluded from his teachings. “It is very rare for nobles to lose limbs, with the exception of Honors. Even then, while they may sustain injuries in the line of duty, they usually receive treatment quickly enough to not suffer permanent loss. I have heard that there are artisans who craft prosthetics for the rare occasion they do, but those who purchase them tend not to show them off. I do not personally know anyone who has actually suffered something like that. Only rumors.”

  “Yeah, that’d track,” Topal scoffed. “More focused on image than anything else.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “I suppose that is one way to look at it,” Lovu agreed. “Do you know of any other rituals?”

  From there, she counted off as many others that she had heard of, but it was a short list, most of them were innocuous tricks related to surviving in the wilderness, and most she couldn’t actually verify existed. All she had were rumors of her own.

  “You really don’t seem to know much about her after all?” Lovu wondered out loud getting a swift punch in his shoulder.

  “And why the fuck would I? I just use her tricks when I need to, it’s not like I worship her or anything.”

  “Then… how do you get her to answer your calls?” Lovu asked in confusion. “Simply knowing the words and patterns for Fam’e’s rituals isn’t enough to call on her. She only answers to Advocates who have earned their first Wound.”

  “Couldn’t tell you. That’s more in your wheelhouse than mine.”

  “Is anyone able to call on Kumam?”

  “So long as you learn how and have one of these,” she said, pointing at the pouch of stone coins on her hip.

  “Hmm. And where do they come from? Do cultists make them and spread them around?”

  “Pfft, what?” Topal laughed before seeing his reaction. “You’re being serious?”

  “I did not think it was that ridiculous of a question…”

  “The coin question is fine; it was the cultist thing that got me. I don’t know what they told you back in the temple, but nobody really takes Kumam that seriously. The vast majority of people are like me. Some know more about her and her tricks, but they mostly keep to the wildlands. They have better things to do than organizing cults.”

  “Oh…” he said, immediately recalling his lessons at the temple. He had spent dozens of hours hearing horror stories of the Mother of Cruel Night’s children and the evil they unleashed on the world. “We were taught that her followers were constantly plotting the downfall of Fam’e and Hangkiti. I always thought it was a bit extreme, but given recent events…”

  “Huh…” she said, quietly mulling that over herself. “Well, I’ll be honest, I can’t say for certain that some of those experts didn’t want to stick it to the Voice enough to side with Phakfi. At the very least, I’ve never heard of anyone going that far. Either way, to answer your question about the coins, nobody knows where they come from.”

  “What? Then where did you get them?”

  “People just find them out in the wildlands,” she said, pulling one out and turning it over in her hand. “The farther out of cities you go, the more common they are. If you spend enough time out here you’re bound to find a few. Over the past decade, I’ve found almost two dozen. Some people say Kumam herself leaves them behind, but that seems a bit far fetched.”

  “So they are quite rare?”

  “Yup. If you ever see one, grab it. Even if you don’t plan on using it yourself, Scars and merchants pay well for them. They’re more valuable to me as a navigator than they sell for, but I can quickly turn them into cash if I need to.”

  “You mentioned they were expensive before. How much specifically?”

  “Usually about 50 fuvre apiece,” she said, holding the coin up proudly, but Lovu put on a neutral smile.

  “Oh, that is quite a bit,” he said evenly. That amount would cover less than a week’s worth of food for his villa’s staff, but he did not want to bring that up in that moment, knowing exactly how she’d respond.

  “Yup, and I’m one of the better people I know at…” she trailed off as she looked at his face. “Are you fucking with me?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, still keeping the neutral fa?ade up. As a member of the royal family, his thoughts and opinions carried a great deal of weight. Before he was allowed to attend royal feasts or other meetings with the lower nobility, he had been trained to control his emotions to avoid showing anything inappropriate. While he wasn’t as good at it as his father or Fitmi, he took pride in everything he learned and considered himself decent at keeping up appearances.

  “You are fucking with me,” Topal said, looking at him in disbelief. Her tone seemed more confused than angry. “What’re you really thinking?”

  Unfortunately, his training had always been with other nobles, who also had the self-restraint to not say anything in the moment if emotions did slip through. It was very unusual for someone to actually point it out so bluntly.

  “O-oh, I…” I’m not in the Residence anymore. Maybe this isn’t the best approach after all. “I-if I am being honest, 50 fuvre has never seemed like a lot to me, so I was caught off guard but did not want to seem like I was rubbing that in.”

  “Huh… I was right,” she said, but didn’t seem bothered. If anything, her eyes looked satisfied. “Not saying anything was probably a good move.”

  “I’m sorry, I am a bit lost. Why did you point it out then?”

  Her face steeled over, as if she was putting on a mask herself. “Curiosity. Whenever merchants negotiate, they talk in circles and never really say what they mean until they know what the other person needs. Someone I know once said that they fight with their words the same way Scars fight with swords. So, in order to succeed as one, you need to learn how to defend yourself just as much as you need to find holes in other people’s defenses.”

  “That is a novel way of looking at it,” Lovu chuckled. “Although, most nobles are not quite so violent-”

  *Crunch* Ip it ishn’t my prished pig,

  His smile vanished as he felt hot breath on his ear. He snapped his head around to see Tama but found nobody there. “O-or perhaps they are after all.”

  “I haven’t really gotten many chances to practice dueling that way myself,” Topal said, skipping past his reaction. “There are only a handful of merchants who ever gave me the time of day, but I paid attention any time I was around them during negotiations, so I’ve picked up a bit. I just wanted to see if my hunch was right.”

  “I see… what gave me away then?”

  “Most of the time you don’t act like a noble. You move delicately and don’t emote much, but you don’t feel cold and disconnected the way merchants get when they’re negotiating. Sometimes though, it peaks through, like when we met the Honors back in Kamvor. Just now you did the same thing, so I wanted to see if it was related.”

  “Very observant,” he said, his pride a little bit wounded at having been seen through. He hadn’t been scolded like that since he was a child. “Perhaps I have been growing complacent.”

  “You’re doing it again,” she said, eyeing his face. “Stop it. It’s creepy.”

  “W-what?”

  “It’s weird when you’re all cold and still like that. You’re way more tolerable when you’re being straightforward.”

  “O-oh… okay, I’ll try to stop, although it is sort of second nature,” he said, trying as hard as he could to act “naturally”, but it felt wrong on his face. Apparently, it showed as she chuckled at him.

  “You’re trying too hard, but you’ll figure it out. I’m honestly jealous you had someone to teach you. It’s one of the few things I don’t really know how to improve before I actually become a merchant. I can practice on my own all I want, but it isn’t the same.”

  Suddenly, an idea popped into his mind. Despite what she had said before about being confident he could repay her, he still wasn’t so sure. At least not in terms of money…

  “If you’d like, I can help give you lessons,” he said, earning a look of surprise. “After all, I have spent more than enough time being trained on how to keep up appearances. I might as well put that to use.”

  “Shit… that’s actually not a bad idea,” Topal said, her eyes burning as she considered it. “You got yourself a deal.”

  “Great. We’ll start once we camp down tonight.”

  Next, here is a more detailed map of Vor specifically.