The day after her ordeal with the Slithers, Vaenuth slept. Early the third morning, she climbed out of bed at last. When she finally dressed in her sand robe, covering her torso of tattoos, and left her tent, Tagg was sitting outside her tent polishing his iron sword with an oily cloth. “Banno?” she asked, quietly. She wiped her eyes. She was sore. Her whole body was sore.
“Vae? You’re awake!” Tagg’s sword vanished into its sheath, and he stood up, deftly. “Uh, yes, he’s asleep too. Or, still, I guess. And, Vae?”
“Yes?” she had armed herself, though her hands shook a little as she had buckled the sword belt around her beige clothes.
“The Slithers are still here,” he said. When she tensed, he continued speaking. “The friendly ones, of course. The first tribe. I think they’re waiting to see you, but I don’t know what they want. Banno was awake earlier today and tried to speak with them, but he couldn’t understand their letters.”
She was dressed as comfortably as she could, while still wearing the sand robe, but her thoughts of meeting the Slithers gave her another idea. She stepped inside her tent again, and shrugged out of her robe. Tagg had followed her in, she realized, when he coughed quietly and said, “Do you want me to wait out—”
“It’s fine, Tagg,” she said. Nothing he hadn’t seen before, riding around half-naked in the steaming forests of Numa’nakres. She grabbed her white binding and began to wrap it around her chest. She would meet the Slithers as flat-chested as one of their own females. “Ready?”
Tagg watched her toss the sand robe back over her shoulders. “Wait, to meet them? Already?”
Vaenuth laughed. “Yeah, now. We’ve been sitting here for two days now. We have to reach Logren, and start heading wet-way.” That was a term they had invented; dry-way or wet-way described the two lands they explored.
The Slithers had settled down far closer to Vaenuth, laying around before sunrise with their arms and tails spread and their sails extended, big ridges in the desert sand pulsing heat and welcoming the cool temperature of the dirt. Only two came to meet Vaenuth, two whom had met her before already. The dark one was the male whom Vaenuth had assumed to be the leader of the tribe. She didn’t even know if the Slithers had a patriarch or not. Their tribe could make decisions by vote, for all she knew. Beside the leader approached the female Slither that had asked to touch the white human, forcing a human smile. The expression looked nothing like a friendly thing, on the reptilian face. Despite the pale complexion, the scales, angled teeth, and orange slit eyes, seemed to hold no human joy.
“Welcome,” Vaenuth said, and displayed the rune symbol of the trade language.
The Slithers bobbed up and down, and displayed a few words. “Happy. You are. Healthy.” The male delivered the characters, carved upon dry papyrus pages, and clenched his fists together.
Vaenuth had already chosen out her next words. “Thank you. Saving. Me.” She bowed the stiff bow of a man. She didn’t know if the Slithers had any such customs, or could understand why she bowed. She showed them a regular set of glyphs, trade symbols used very frequently when dealing with the Slither tribes. “What do you want?” The phrase was dumbly simplistic, but was usually used to ask for a price for a requested service or good. Hopefully it was clear that she was offering a gift. She tried to find the symbol for glyph, as she waited for them to find their symbol.
“Trade. Promise.” They displayed, and pointed away from the rising sun, toward the Logren Rivers. They were asking if Vaenuth had promised to trade with the people there.
Vaenuth nodded. “Yes,” she displayed.
“No. Steal. Trade.” The symbols were somewhat disjointed. Vaenuth had once encountered a wealthy trade tribe, a band of Slithers that only ever traded with humans, that had a scribe write out whole paragraphs in the trade language to please their human merchants.
Vaenuth comprehended the meaning of her rescuers words. “Too high,” she replied. Again, a sentence for trade negotiations. She stepped toward them, but neither reacted adversely, so she took another step. “You saved my life,” she told them. She looked through her pages and chose out a long set of symbols. “Please. Meet. Place. Months. Later. Gift. Then.”
The male hissed and looked at the female who interrupted him with a few clicks. For a while, they talked with each other.
Tagg was trying to figure out what she had said. “Are you certain? Can you afford that?” he asked. A venture into the Expanse was no cheap affair, between manpower and supply costs. Not to mention whatever it cost to buy a gift for the Slithers.
At last, the female reptile tried to grab for their papyrus pages directly and the male relented, saying, “Agreed. What place? What time?”
Vaenuth found a map—thankfully, maps were one thing that both people groups shared. She grabbed a piece of charcoal from her pack, found a good edge on it, and drew a line indicating where they would travel. “Meet. On. Path,” she told them, with trade characters. They marked it on their own map. The Slither tribes were nomadic, and without careful planning, it was difficult to the same one twice, especially if they didn’t want it.
They planned to meet in two months time. The two Slithers bobbed to Vaenuth again, lowering below her eye level and clasping their hands together, before returning toward their own camp. It was almost day, and the tribe would likely stay there until the following night before setting out. Slithers preferred to be nocturnal, due to the daytime heat.
When Vaenuth and Tagg returned to their own camp, Banno was awake and looking at another map. “It’s three days to the Logren Rivers,” he told Vaenuth. He looked tired, and he had a huge bruise under one eye, where the Slithers had knocked him out cold. “Safety, I hope, or at least, our job.”
Vaenuth nodded. “Let’s get going then.”