Belmyre carried Vaenuth across the desert sands yet again. They had reached the Expanse a few days ago, and one of her three scouts had found the Slither tribe across the dunes. Instead of travelling west from the Nokire passes, she had kept a northern passage until her scouts found their friends. She watched the dipping horizon as she rode; at her sides, Banno and Tagg did the same, the former in a wagon, the latter in a horse’s saddle.
“Think Hulean will be there?” Banno asked.
Tagg chuckled, and Vaenuth looked over at him. “Hopefully the snakes ate him,” he said. “So we don’t have to deal with him.”
The canvas covers and pacing shapes of Slither guards came into view soon enough, and Vaenuth ordered her caravan to set up camp a hundred feet away. Her group was still a skeleton crew. A few of the survivors from Logren had disbanded in Rainrest, and Vaenuth had only hired enough to replace relevant job postings. She was going to Rema soon enough, and had no idea what might come of that—until then, she’d keep her group small, and conserve her wealth.
“Get all of the supplies we brought to trade into one wagon,” Vaenuth told Banno. “Even if it’s weighty. We’ll wheel it towards them, rather than taking a large group.”
The same group of Slithers had appeared, the pale female and her mate, and a pair of guards wielding wooden rods. They waited in front of their caravan. Banno dismounted as Vaenuth did, and went to arrange the trade wagon as she had said. Tagg stepped closer to her. “Armed, or unarmed?” he asked.
“Unarmed,” she said. She didn’t see Hulean, but that was the only factor she felt uncertain of. She sword remained tied to her saddle; she didn’t touch it. Louder, she called, “Where my trunk? Which cart?”
“Here,” came the reply, from Scallin, one of their newest recruits. Vaenuth removed her small jewelry bag from that. The Slithers had not seen her adornment yet, only her sand robe and the tattoos on her neck. The only piercing she didn’t remove was the ring in her lower lip, the skin would close too quickly if she left it out for as long as she travelled in a day. It was uncomfortable in the heat and dusty environment, but she didn’t want to have the same lips she had when she’d been a slave. She put in her earring and hooked on her thin silver chain. This was her, let the Slithers see it.
Across the sand she strode, as Banno brought up a heavily laden cart and Tagg provided security with another one of their vets, a woman named Poress. As they moved out of their makeshift camp, the Slithers began to move down the slope from their dune. Hulean appeared at last, striding out of their camp with a clear beat in his gait.
The two groups met in a sandy field of dry grass and wind-blown rocks. Banno led the wagon a round way to keep it on safe sand, but the Slithers were more interested in Vaenuth, their small almond eyes watching her and their indecipherable faces making expressions at her. They bobbed their heads, something they hadn’t done before.
“I taught them that,” Hulean said, with a laugh. “Welcome to the tribe once more, Vaenuth.”
Vaenuth smiled and returned their bow. She grabbed the folder of trade symbols from Banno and chose out her words. “Thank you. Wait. Us.”
They replied, “Thank you. Trade. Us,” using their own word carvings, the wooden ones they had used last time. They had saved Vaenuth and Banno from the Scalelands tribe, without any real need to do so, and Vaenuth felt uncomfortable with their thanks, but she just bowed again. The female Slither had taken an interest in her before, and seemed to be happy once more. Her thin, forked tongue poked out, tasted the air, and then retracted, while her eyes slowly blinked. Her sail, the long hanging flap of course skin that helped her keep her body cool, flapped at her back with her movement as she displayed the words, “We. Like. Appearance.”
Vaenuth wasn’t really certain what they meant, until the female lifted her small, scaly hands and gently touched her own face and shoulders. “Will you. Trade. That?” they asked.
She shrugged. “We. Brought. Dye.” She showed them. They didn’t recognize the word for dye, so Vaenuth grabbed a small leather pouch from the wagon and showed them how the powder inside, mixed with even her spit, started to form a paint. She used it on her arm, drawing a dark orange line. They bobbed again, and the male touched the female. He hissed something to her, interrupting it with the occasional click. The female replied.
And so the trading went. Some other Slithers were invited out of the camp to peruse their wares—Vaenuth assumed they were those with the best skills in various fields. They paid using gemstones, herbs, and even some rare foods they had caught, such as meat of the famed sand fiend. Vaenuth had never seen one of the mythical creatures, but the meat was cut in slabs large enough to bespeak such a beast, and she had tasted it before. It was unlike any meat she’d had before.
They dealt with the Slithers for a little over an hour and a half, and then agreed to try to reconnect the next year at the same location. Vaenuth had encountered another desert caravan out of Nokire a few days before; this desert prologue was a high traffic area and was profitable for the Slithers no matter who came here. Vaenuth wrote down in one of her notebooks that she was to return to the Expanse in the 9th Moon of the 1479th year. She could not predict where she might be then, but she would try.
Hulean decided to accompany them, to Tagg’s frustration. He explained, “I want to study the Slithers, but my place is not with them. Not yet.” Vaenuth let him rejoin her employ, despite his past deceit. He had successfully teleported from Rainrest to the Expanse and met with the Slithers on his own.
As she turned to walk back to her caravan, she watched the female Slither paint orange and blue lines on arms and the top of the male’s head. She made a circular pattern, and it struck Vaenuth yet again that the Slithers were so much more than serpents. They were capable of art—who knew of what art she was already unaware?
Banno smiled at her as she reclaimed her saddle.
“What?” she asked.
He shrugged. He was sweating, she noticed. Big drops of water collected on his forehead and he wiped them into the strands of black hair he kept bound behind his head. “You’re more comfortable with them than humans,” he said.
She smirked. “Of course I am,” she said. “But I’ve things to do. Back to Nokire. Then to Rema. It’s been half a year now, hasn’t it? This time, we’ll be seeing parts of the capital that we haven’t before. The Iron Palace. Have you been?”
Banno snapped the reins he held and the caravan began to shift across the dunes once more. “When I was much younger. Never got inside, but I could see it. You’re sure it will hold the answers you seek?”
“I am,” Vaenuth said. Yesterday, according to her records, had been the Emperor’s birthday. If the propaganda was to be believed, he was 275 now; the capital would probably still be celebrating when they finally reached its metal gates. As they started south once more, she asked, “You’re not sure?”