Don't Throw Deep in a Rocky River

Aoda Eouzan stood before them, wings folded behind her back, iridescent chitin carapace shining where the sun caught the green parts. She threw the soldiers the sloppiest afterthought of a salute Brochwel had ever seen.

"Of course I know him," Aoda said, moving to stand too close beside Brochwel. "Baltasar is a little shy, especially around the ladies, but he's a decent sort."

The soldiers' faces couldn't agree on a response. A few, including the veteran of Brochwel's blade, didn't seem to care, while a couple rolled their eyes and one looked crestfallen.

"Well ..." the veteran said. "If a counter-intelligence specialist vouches for you, I've got nothing further to say. My apologies, citizen. I was mistaken."

"N-no worries," Brochwel managed.

It was all he could do to keep his knees under him as the soldiers turned and went on their way. The crestfallen one glanced back, forlorn, at Aoda for a moment before hurrying to keep up with his unit.

"So, how does a servant like you get himself questioned so often?"

"It's the hair," Brochwel said as he got his breath back. "Apparently he crossed blades once with a foreign soldier who had a similar look."

"Really?" Aoda looked him up and down.

She gave him a jeweler's examination: close up, slow, turning him with gentle nudges to see how he caught the light. The assay finished with her standing back a bit, in so doing bumping a passerby, who turned and started to voice his anger until he saw whose shoulder he had collided with and thought the better of it. Aoda's expression tightened while she rolled a ducat across her knuckles, back and forth, metal clinking against chitin.

"Just some opponent? Not a Flaxen knight?"

"That's right."

Brochwel knew he was taking advantage of her wording to basically lie, but her job was taking in enemy agents. How was he supposed to unpack the truth in that situation? Maybe Tecca had a reason to feel just as locked out of honesty, but he couldn't imagine one, at least not now. Not while the person in front of him had the authority to drag him off to prison in an instant if he messed up. He had to focus.

"Just some warrior he fought once."

She stopped rocking the ducat around, nodded to herself, then stuffed the coin back into a streamlined pouch at her hip. "Then we're dandy. It's you and me."

"Me and you for ... what?"

"Hanging out. You're not going to break my heart and say you're busy, right?"

Brochwel hesitated. He hadn't spent that long wearing the mask yet, but Tecca considered Aoda (and all other odonarans under imperial employ) mortal enemies. Brochwel could justify a chat as probing for intel, but anything else? He stopped to sanity check: Tecca hadn't flirted with him since their first meeting, was recruiting him for a military operation, and still hadn't even told him her full name. He didn't know any way to describe their relationship besides: professional.

"Come on. If not for me, you would be spending the rest of the afternoon in an interrogation room," She said, wearing the cheekiest smile Brochwel had ever seen.

"Sure. I could join you for a couple hours. Where are we go—" Aoda clamped an arm around Brochwel's waist and flew directly up. "—IIIIIIING?"

Aoda's path shot to just above roof height then switched to level flight in a nearly right-angle turn. The acceleration shamed every horse Brochwel had ever met. He hyperventilated as the shingled rooves slipped below, then behind him at a speed that was just unfair. He had not been ready. A city was not supposed to recede and shrink noticeably as he watched. His stomach filed its complaint, threatening to void breakfast if this continued.

Near a flat bit of plain where the festival tents were going up, they alighted at the top of a little dirt trail leading down to a gravel bar at a turn in the Ramaley River. Maurcoret stood about an hour's walk away. As Brochwel recovered, he realized he had spent the flight with his arms wrapped around Aoda's midsection holding on for dear life.

"Sorry," he said letting go. "I'm sure you had a good grip, just falling from that height would kill me."

"It's fine."

"I would appreciate a warning or a slower launch next time." Not that there would be a next time.

Aoda put a hand on his shoulder to stop him starting down the path to the river. "Sure. But this time we couldn't afford any delay. Watch."

She pointed downstream. There appeared to be something moving up the bend. A line of foam moving up the river. As it drew close, Brochwel realized that it was a series of waves ten feet high moving against the river's flow, crashing over rocks, sending up spray where it washed over the great bones of one of Sirigin's smaller beasts embedded in the outside wall of the river's embankment. Roaring water drowned out all other sound. So this was the tidal bore.

The waves raced out of the river's head into the great spillover area below the falls. Rocks and rapids vanished under the churning water. But having come this far, spreading out into the scablands' lake took the last of the tidal bore's energy. The waves ebbed to nothing and orderly flow resumed, pulling water back toward the sea. In about a minute, the treacherous rocks around the river's entrance reappeared.

"And ... no illegal launches. Used to be a favorite trick of smugglers sending goods downstream." Aoda hunted for a pen and paper, realized that she had left them behind somewhere, then mimed jotting a note. "That's enough work for the day."

This river was nothing like the wide, calm one that flowed around Tragaron. "Wow."

"Worth the express flight to see, right?"

"How does that wave get so far inland?"

Aoda shrugged. "Ask a river scholar ... do they have scholars who just study rivers and lakes? Are those a thing?"

"I don't know. That was incredible though. Doesn't look like the fairground's ready for visitors, what are we ...?"

Aoda bent down and reached into the shrubs by her feet. A bit of rustling later, she came back up with a big smile and a bundle that had several harpoons and the business end of a fishing rod jutting out.

"You prepared that ahead of time?"

"Yeah. Is that a problem?"

"No, just another surprise."

A more pleasant surprise than a dead bird, to be sure. Brochwel followed her down to the river. The river took a wide turn here, and had gouged its path into the terrain. The bottom was rocky but bursting mosses and other tiny plants that clung low enough that the tidal bore couldn't rip them away. Scenic, in that rugged, untamed nature way. They had this stretch of river to themselves.

Questions flitted around his head. Here was a member of the opposition who had always caused the Flaxen Order a headache despite being few in number. His former colleagues had always chalked that up to the advantage of having freedom of movement in the sky, but Brochwel wondered if there was more to it. How to ask ...

"Where are you from, Baltasar?" Aoda said as she handed him the harpoons.

"Lemskode." Easy enough lie. Not a part of the world he knew well, but the Order had enough maps of the continent that he could at least name a small northern township. "And you?"

"Just some lake. Has the Gigot family had you travel a lot?"

"Not until recently. Could I try the fishing rod? I'm not much of a fisher and the water's still super cloudy from the wave."

"I can't entrust an old, delicate rod to 'not much of a fisher'. Just aim for the blue darters."

A few frilly dorsal fins peeked out from the surface now and then. Several fish fighting the current. Brochwel waited until Aoda cast her line before selecting a target. He felt the shaft of the harpoon in his hand. Thin, light, and narrow. Meanwhile Aoda kept offering vague responses to his questions and then handing him ones that demanded specific answers.

"Is the horse you were riding when we met titled under your own name, or do your employers lend it to you?"

"The Gigots own it. How long have you worked in ... counter intelligence, I think the soldier said?"

"A while." Aoda had her eyes on the river, but the fishing rod didn't move.

Wasn't the fisher supposed to bounce it around a little to mimic ... something? Sir Ambrose, among others, sung praises about quiet moments fishing by a river with a friend, but what exactly was the point? Sharing a moment? But they were talking past each other and not catching anything from the river either.

Might as well throw deep. Brochwel picked a fin jutting from a ripple midriver, a bit upstream.

"What's patrolling like, you know, in the sky?" Brochwel asked before tossing the spear. He thought it a general-interest enough question.

Muscle memory took over, but not evenly. His left leg stepped through, pulling his whole frame into motion. His right arm described an elegant arc. He leaned forward with the throw. His index and thumb released, but the rest of his fingers were accustomed to holding onto an atlatl that added leverage for better range. They released late, so the harpoon plunked into the water several inches from the fish, which sped away upstream.

Pulling the harpoon's trailing cord, Brochwel discovered that he had successfully harpooned a rock, breaking the metal tip.

"Sorry, I'm not very good at this ..."

When he turned to apologize, he realized Aoda had reeled in her line while and wasn't fishing. She was looking directly at him with a peculiar smile.

Then Brochwel realized she had probably been watching him the whole time, even while she had appeared to study the river. The compound eyes that wrapped the side of her head weren't just for sensing motion.

"For a servant, you keep asking about military matters. And, though you missed, you move like someone who has had years of experience and professional training to throw a spear. Care to explain yourself, Baltasar?"