Listen to the Water | FULL SERIES | Wattys 2022 Shortlist | ✔

(26) Ande: Mask of the Enemy

I don't realize how tense I've been until news from the Gods' Teeth arrives. A Glauclin messenger streaks in from the open ocean, out of breath after a hard sprint from around Rapal.

"The Alliance is massing," she signs. "The first ones to leave went north."

The diversion must have been successful. I expect to be more nervous that it's time to make our move, but the anxiety that's plagued me for the last eight days has overshadowed anything that grips me now. After eight days of uncertainty, doing anything—even something as nerve-wracking as infiltrating Rapal—is all kinds of relief. I've always handled action better than waiting games.

Everything is already prepared for this moment. We've been planning for eight days; everyone knows their role and alibi, their direction and speed to swim. I meet with Yaz, who shoots me a reassuring smile. She's so ready to move, her fins are vibrating. In a moment more, we've been joined by a pair of Glauclins that Ruka trusts explicitly. I look around for Casin. There's one more thing I have to do before I leave.

Casin is hovering nearby. With reluctant hands, I undo the braided belt around my waist and hand off both my daggers in their sheaths to her. She belts them on. I feel acutely vulnerable now, but the old, familiar sense that I'm useless without a weapon has lost some of its teeth. There's no way I could take a Kel two times my size like this, but after all the training Ruka and Yaz have put me through since before we left Underfarrow, I can at least self-defend.

"I'll keep them safe," signs Casin with a tight smile.

"Thank you."

With a final sign of good luck to one another, we part ways. The Glauclins remain alert to the water, but it's nothing compared to Yaz, whose movements almost give me secondhand anxiety for how closely they resemble those of a predator. I can tell even without seeing it that she's faster than any of these Kels. Red signal squid Kels are nearly all like this, she's told me. They have to be, to survive as deep-sea hunters of some of the ocean's most dangerous squid. It's the same reason most of them know the healing song.

We need that power on our side. The alliance me and Taiki are building will be mostly mid-water Shalda, at least at the beginning. That's simply who we're able to gather easily, and who we can convince to join us besides. Mid-water Shalda aren't fighters, as a general rule. While they can watch for danger, gather more of their own, and keep people fed with their skill at raising Nekta, they won't be the ones keeping any large group safe as we sing down the islanders. They won't be the ones to defend Roshaska in the event of an attack. The native Roshaska residents can, but if all goes well for Taiki, our people will quickly outnumber those.

Maybe Yaz's people can be allies the same way as Makeba: no need for our morals to align so long as our goals do. I know she's not on great terms with her own family, and me and Taiki have had a less-than-friendly run-in with Devir before, after he left the Sandsingers. That's all the experience I have with red signal squid Kels—Signals, Taiki calls them—but I'm sure that can't be the sum total of how their people are.

That's a conversation for another time. We're only half a morning's swim from our first destination, and Ruka warned us not to chat about anything relating to Underfarrow or other resistance activities while in open Ashianti territory. Apparently there are Kels out here who can get close enough to see and hear you while remaining almost invisible in the sunlit waters, and Kels who simply use the cloaking song to do the same. Ruka warned us to be careful unless we're literally surrounded by guards—and sometimes even then.

We swim away from Rapal. Away at an angle, rather, circling the city at a distance, so that it takes us half the morning to reach an area where our escorts finally hold up a hand. Like Ruka, they've detected something in the water. I wonder if it's a smell, and to what degree the Alliance—or even Rapal—uses such signals to establish territory. The way Sar responds to pungent contaminants in the water has made me wonder whether that's another sense shark-Kels as a general population have more of than me.