Chapter 18 – Beyond Where I Knew

	Leaving the Basin was more difficult than I’d ever thought it would be.  Every step took me farther from my otterfa, from my family and the entire world I’d known until now.  But that wasn’t the whole reason I was so unsettled. For a long time now, I thought I’d been prepared to follow Finnegan and Odina south.  I’d been considering it, if I’m being honest, since he agreed to go with her.  But if I could put that part of myself- the immature young man inside me who wanted so desperately to cling to my first love beyond all reason- if I could put him aside, I’d really started thinking hard about it since the reality of what could happen to my tribe when they lost their land set in.
	I would never have a better worst-case example than Odina’s life.  And that wasn’t being cruel, the woman by her own admission had called what had happened to her family ‘pointless’.  Even she seemed to think the struggles she’d endured, the deaths of her mates, had all been a terrible waste.  In a very real way, Sawyer’s recent death was a continuation of that same ongoing tragedy.  
	Odina’s tribe, like Uki and Kissima’s tribe, had fought back violently against the incursion by the Otherwolves onto their land.  The bear tribe had done everything a mighty nation of our people could do to win a war, they had allied with one another, they had chosen to do so from the most defensible land either tribe had, and they had fought to the bitter end.  Odina’s tribe had taken a more guerilla warfare approach according to her, and they had also failed.  For both tribes, war had been a mistake that had cost them dearly.  Odina’s tribe was scattered and without land, and although Uki and Kissima had managed to hold onto theirs through little more than attrition, they were too few to rebuild.    
	My father had chosen to remain out of the Otherwolves’ war with their mother country, opting to remain neutral in a foreign conflict.  And that was really the only ‘mistake’ you could say he’d made, if you wanted to call it that.  When the Otherwolves began to move into our region following the war, he extended a cautious hand of friendship, had traded goods and information, tried to adopt the use of some of their inventions.  He’d even learned their language and been certain to teach all of his children both how to speak and how to read some of it.  He knew, long before I’d even been born, that we would have to make peace with the settlers.  He’d earnestly tried.
	It seemed the only right answer any of our tribes could have landed on was to accept the settlers as my father had, and assist them in their war.  Send our people to die in their conflict.  And even then, I wasn’t entirely certain that would have saved us.  After all, you had to have coin to purchase land.  It’s possible we may have been able to avail ourselves of the same land claim laws the Otherwolves were now using, but that meant we would have had to log or farm, or plant orchards the way they were.  Prove we were ‘using’ the land as they deemed proper.
	The laws this nation of outsiders was enforcing were designed in every way to steal from us.  They were crafted carefully to ensure that very few tribal peoples would have the legal right, let alone ability, to retain our homeland or protect it from being taken away.
	As I set out south, heading deeper and deeper into the heart of their empire, I felt hopelessly torn over these people I’d soon be surrounded by.  Although Finnegan was both half wolf and Amurescan, he was technically an ‘Otherwolf’.  His nation was, after all, where they had first come from.  Where they were still emigrating from.  He might have been an outcast in his homeland thanks to his ‘half savage’ breeding, but he chose to define himself as one of them in his manner of dress, his affect and the very way he viewed himself.  I hadn’t forgotten that when I’d first met him, he’d scowled at being told he looked like a wolf.  He still got a little defensive whenever Uki called him one.  He might have hated his father and loved his mother, but he didn’t love what his wolf lineage meant in his home culture.
	Finnegan, whom I was closer to than any Otherwolf I’d ever known and who I cared for greatly, did not want to be seen as a ‘savage’.  I’m certain he wouldn’t have said it that way, probably didn’t even think about it like that.  It was likely just an unconscious thing, a bias that had festered in him alongside the rest of his self-loathing.
	I knew the feeling all too well.
	Whether or not my family had intended to, and I thoroughly believed they hadn’t, I’d always been made to feel self-conscious about my size.  When something so fundamental about yourself, something you could not control, was on display for all the world to see all the time. . . it became a fixation.  I’m certain Finnegan felt the same way about his wolfish looks.  You could see it in the way he would frequently smooth back his fur, try to straighten the scruff around his neck, to ‘fix’ his features.  Just like I’d cross my arms over my torso when I sat down, slump to appear less tall, or suck in my stomach when I was moving through a crowd.  
	We had enough troubles now without admitting how inwardly divided I’d become on the subject of Finn’s people.  I suspected he knew, he was clever and- after all, how could he not?  He understood what my tribe was facing.  He was planning to help us find some way to avert it, by whatever means.  But ignoring the fact that his people, or the descendants of them who’d settled here anyway, were essentially forcing us into further and further-flung corners of our own land, was easy enough when it was someone I cared about.  Someone who’d never personally contributed to any of that, who’d in fact lived under some of the same sort of oppression and suffered injustices by the same sort of men.
	Ignoring my frustration, my anger with these people when I was soon to be surrounded by them?  That was a whole different thing.
	I was lucky in that my father had taught us from a young age to be as accepting of Otherwolves, ‘Carvecians’ was what they chose to call themselves, as possible.  That acceptance came with a few exceptions of course, the most important of which was not to marry outside the tribe, which I was both simultaneously avoiding and also flagrantly violating by skipping the whole ‘marriage’ step entirely and just diving into bed with one of them.  But there had been other warnings.  Avoid doing trade with them for goods our shaman needed, never sell ritual items or share recipes for tonics, never be alone with one of their men because so many of them carried pistols, and never take part in any of their religious ceremonies.  Their holy men were well-known for attempting conversion and that often meant creating spies of our own people, either forcing or coercing them into confessing ‘sins’ their tribe were committing.  
	Including, according to Uki, allowing people like Finn and I to both live together, and marry.  If my father was any indication, that practice had not existed in every tribe or been acceptable to some, but it had probably been a lot more widespread before this ‘Faith’ Finnegan kept speaking of had come to our land.  He still seemed prickly about the idea of us expressing any physical affection towards one another in Otherwolf territories.  Which would be particularly hard now that I’d spent a few weeks in the safety of the Basin, no longer needing to hide it from my family.  I’d gotten so used to the little comforts we shared, to know I’d have to keep him at arms-length again. . . .
	And those were only a few of the many, many reasons I was fearful of going south.  The journey itself did not worry me.  It probably should have, we were traveling through the winter, over dangerous terrain I knew not at all, with little more than Odina’s limited experience in the south to guide us.  She seemed at least to know where we were going.  A week into the trip, we arrived at the ‘horse town’ she’d spoken of, a place several acres larger than Broen that was easily the most populated land I’d ever set foot on.  And still, she and Finnegan insisted, it was a ‘tiny’ settlement compared to where we were headed.
	It was there I would first re-enter Otherwolf society with my eyes far more open than they had been earlier this year, when I’d come through Kingsdale.  Back then everything had seemed exciting and new, intimidating to be certain, but splendid.  I’d been an onlooker, just passing through someplace foreign and interesting, taking it all in but not really understanding most of what I’d been seeing.  
	I wanted some of that innocence and wonder back.  I wanted to look at all the new kinds of people I’d never met before, gawk at the sights and sounds, and not have to worry which ones might be Jackwalds.  Whom amongst them might follow this ‘Faith’ of theirs and prefer to see people like Finnegan and I hanged.  
	What tribes had lived on this land before this town had been built. . . .
	We didn’t spend long in that first town.  One night to rest in one of their buildings, which I have to admit had been nice.  We’d gotten a real room at an inn, one the three of us could share with Odina taking the bed to rest her leg and Finn and I sleeping on the floor near the hearth.  We were all sharing a tent in the wilds too, and I’d gotten over the lack of privacy around a woman remarkably fast.  Maybe too fast. . . Odina, like many tribal women, did not have the sort of modesty the Otherwolves found necessary.  So while Finn had flushed in his ears and spent a good deal of time staring intently at the ground whenever she undressed, I’d found myself wholly unaffected by it.
	The thing is, every woman I’d seen undressed to this point had been a family member.  Odina was not.  I’m not certain if that was supposed to make a difference, but Finn seemed shocked I felt no reason to avert my eyes from her naked body.  Maybe it was just a cultural divide.  Maybe I just didn’t see Odina in ‘that’ way.
	Maybe it was something else entirely.    
	It was heinous of course, but we had a decent amount of coin now thanks to what we’d found on the eight men we’d killed and buried.  Uki had turned out every pocket and then some.  I wouldn’t have had the stomach for it, I’d never even seen the men from the time we’d fought them until they were in the ground.  But the coin would serve us well on our trip.  
	We used it to purchase another pony and a larger horse, for one.  Finn seemed very glad to have a pony again, choosing an Appaloosa mare that was white with brown spotting.  He was instantly taken by her, doting on her like she’d been his for years, and he proved to be a decent enough rider, to boot.  He admitted he’d not gotten as much practice as most men in his country, not having the means to keep one himself back home, but he was certainly no stranger to a saddle.
	I was much less enthusiastic about getting up on a horse again.  I would have rather forgone it entirely, but a week of travel on foot had in fact proven harder on my body than anticipated.  And Finnegan assured me I’d want one once we got to the city, that the streets would be absolutely filthy in a large city like Arbordale, there could be broken glass or worse, and if we needed to make a quick getaway anywhere, and on and on. . . .
	So I relented.  There was actually a retired carriage horse, (I guess that’s like a wagon, but only for people?) that was large enough to support my weight.  He was a slow, gentle gelding, unassuming dapple grey, and despite my initial uncertainty, we got on well enough after the first few days traveling together.  I rode him as little as possible, still feeling far too large for a horse, but to his credit he didn’t seem to mind me much.
	I will admit, the horses made the next stretch of the journey go much faster.  It helped that we’d made it to major roads and we seemed to be missing most of the snow.  We were past the mountains though, so that had a lot to do with the favorable shift in weather as well.
	The next important settlement we arrived at was a land called ‘Gavensdale’.  I was beginning to notice a theme with the Otherwolves’ names for places. . . .
	We entered the land, according to road signs, several days before we reached the actual city.  Odina assured me this was often the case.  Like for instance, the place they’d been calling ‘Arbordale’ was actually a very large area, a ‘Province’, they called it.  The city of Arbordale was a smaller portion of the whole, a densely-populated chunk.  This ‘Gavensdale’ was much the same.
	We began to reach the outer edges of the city by the second week of travel, and at that point I was feeling pretty confident of myself.  The streets we were passing through seemed much the same as the ones I’d seen already.  One, sometimes two-story wooden buildings ringed by fences and porches, cluttered, often muddy roads bustling with wagons, livestock and people going about their day.  Like in the towns I’d visited so far, there were more canines than not, of various shapes and sizes.  Some of them very small, which made me nervous.  And seemed to make them nervous, too. 
	I was easily the largest person everywhere I went.  That had generally been the case back home too, (the ‘mastiff’ had come close, but actually the biggest person I’d met other than myself in quite some time now had been Uki, which made sense).  For the first time in my life, it felt like a boon.  People on the whole gave me a wide berth, even going so far as to steer carts or animals away from me.  Half a year ago, that would have made me feel bad.  Unwanted, in the way.  But after facing real threats from strangers, after being hunted for so many months?  I didn’t mind.  
	I was also armed now, which I’m sure was contributing to that.  These people didn’t know I could barely use the firearms I had, or that the lean wolfdog walking alongside me was far more lethal with them than I’d ever be.
	Not that Finn was visibly armed.  Since he was supposed to be playing prisoner, he was no longer wearing his thigh holster or his pistol on his person.  He kept close to my side, though.  If anything went down, the pistol I carried was for him.
	I was getting a taste of what he must have gone through from the time he made landfall here.  And apparently before all of this, if Odina’s papers were correct. Finn had been a wanted man for some time now, and it took a toll on the nerves.  We were constantly on a state of high alert whenever we went through populated areas, always second-guessing who we interacted with or why anyone was taking note of us.  
	My father was right, I must have gotten a confidence boost lately, or this all would have completely unraveled me.  But whereas before I’d thought every person who saw me, whether I knew them or not, were thinking unfavorable things about me, now it was like. . . who cared?  The stakes were so much higher than all that.  All that really mattered was whether or not they wanted to do us harm.
	But even given all of that, I thought I was doing pretty well.  We navigated the first of the ‘suburban’ areas of Gavensdale, (as Finnegan called them) then entered an area of what in the warmer months were likely fields and farm land, sprawling along well-traveled country roads, now slick with melting ice and mud.  Farmhouses and cabins the likes of which I’d seen up north were much more densely-packed here, but it was still all familiar to me. There were even a number of other tribal folk I’d seen doing trade on the roadsides and in the towns, which comforted me.  It wasn’t much different than the way my own tribe would sell our fish, as I’d been doing not so long ago.
	Odina explained that many of these tribes, most of them coyotes, foxes, wolves and what we called ‘tree hunters’, (races like mink and weasels) had fought in the Carvecian war for independence.  So they were much more accepted in Otherwolf society and had been able to keep some of their land.  It helped that many of them also had counterparts in Amuresca across the sea, so they’d been readily accepted by the settlers.
	I’m certain there were great divides between, say, a wolf from Amuresca and a tribal wolf from our land, but I suppose to the settlers, all that mattered was that they looked similar.
	It didn’t upset me to see them interacting peacably, integrated into this landscape that my otterfa’s tribe was so far failing to find our place in.  I’m not sure if I should have been envious, frustrated or angry, I’d certainly been prepared for all of those feelings.  But actually, I was just glad to know our peoples were finding ways to endure, however they could.  I was concerned for them. . . the Otherwolf culture could be invasive and stifling, I worried they might be sacrificing traditions in order to fit in.  But I wasn’t about to blame them for that, either.  People did what they had to to survive.  
	And. . . here’s the thing.  At its best, there were so many ways we could be benefiting one another.  The treatment that ‘apothecary’ had given me for the wound on my shoulder, for one.  We had our own tonics and treatments we could be passing on to them, too.  I liked the way they constructed buildings, for someone my size it was infinitely better to have larger spaces and be able to construct them anywhere.  Bear tribes were usually limited by where we could find caves or other natural-occurring shelters large enough to suit us.  And it was impossible to dig a pit home large enough that I could fully stand up in it.  
	Judging by what I’d seen and. . . smelled. . . around me in their towns, the Otherwolves might have benefited from some of the oils and grooming practices my people had perfected throughout generations to keep our fur suitable and clean in each season.  If they could stomach the thought, our clothing was often better suited to the elements here, as well.  I can’t tell you how many women I saw moving about these towns, gathering their strange garments around themselves, who would have been far more comfortable in a fur-lined parka.
	And then there was pie.  Spirits, I loved pie.
	Otherwolf bread in general was just a marvel.  I probably ate two whole loaves of bread in the first hour I spent in Gavensdale.  And then a pie.
	Finnegan laughed so hard at me he was snorting into his hands.
	I’d actually lost a lot more weight over the last few months than I had throughout any winter before.  It was usual to lose weight in the winter of course, I’d put some on in the summer and fall in preparation for that, but this journey. . . this whole endurance trial over the last few months had been harder on my body than I’d realized.  And it wasn’t just about conserving heat through the cold any more.  I’d begun to feel physically weaker.  Considering my enemies were more than just fish now, I made a concerted effort to eat well when we reached civilization.
	Some of it was likely that I’d been wounded several times, now.  The injury on my shoulder was a memory, just a scar mostly obscured by my fur at this point.  The two wounds on my arm were fresher, the knife slash had knitted well, thanks in no small part to Kissima stitching it closed, and my forearm was beginning to mend too.  The shot I’d taken had been spread out by the dense, protective parka I’d been wearing, but they’d had to dig a few pieces of the lead out of me and those spots still ached, the healing skin stretched thin and furless over them.  
	Healing took energy, and energy took food.  So I leaned pretty hard on Finn to eat better once we were able, too.  His wound was much cleaner than mine and looked smaller, but far deeper and in a much more dangerous area of his body.  He would never, ever admit to how much pain he was in, but I could see it some nights, when he settled down to sleep.  He’d sit there as he stripped his shirt off to clean it, eyes squeezed shut, gingerly scrubbing the spot before pressing salve into it.
	Finnegan insisted he was an ‘easy keeper’, and indeed in all the time I’d known him, I hadn’t noticed much of a difference in his physical form, other than tousled fur and the obvious injury.  He’d subsisted on a fairly lean diet before all of this according to him, so he wasn’t worried about tightening his belt.  But I got him to indulge in some pie with me.  He seemed to prefer the kinds with meat in them.
	And Odina was, as ever, a mystery.  The woman asked for nothing and provided nothing, other than guidance and the occasional cryptic conversation.  I felt I’d finally gotten something of a window into who she was of late, but if I’d held any hopes that it would deepen our relationship, those were quickly dashed.  She was simply not generous with insights about herself.  I’d never spent so much time with someone I understood so little.
	The mountain lioness had been guarded in every attempt to talk to her about her son.  And I’d tried.  It was beginning to feel invasive even bringing the subject up, considering how little she seemed to want to speak about it.  But I felt I had to, at least to ask how she was coping, because I worried every day that she was suffering in silence and I simply couldn’t let that be.
	Finnegan told me numerous times to stop.  He was probably right to say so.  It was just so hard for me to understand why we couldn’t talk about someone we’d just lost.  In my tribe, it was how we’d gotten through death, even my mother’s death.  By telling stories, by recounting our time with her and speaking our hopes for her spirit aloud.
	It was during one such conversation with him that we elevated our plan in preparation for entering the city.
	“I know I don’t need to tell you, the master of constantly worrying about other people’s feelings, that people deal with death in different ways,” Finn sighed, flicking a small wooden skewer into a public fire basin as we passed it.  We’d just had sausage from a street vendor selling roasted meat, and it had taken him far too long to finish one.  I was on my sixth.
	I glanced back briefly at Odina.  She was a ways off behind us, watering the horses at a trough.  The street we were ambling down was particularly busy, so I was pretty certain she wouldn’t hear us.
	“I understand that, obviously,” I insisted, “but it’s so awkward acting as if it didn’t happen.  We traveled with him for so long-“
	“I know,” he said, nodding slowly, “I get that.  Look, you’re getting better about it, I know it’s easy to slip up.  You just need to accept that the woman doesn’t want to unburden herself.  She doesn’t want our help with this.  She’s handling it in her own way.”
	“Is she?”  I pressed.
	He gave an uncertain quirk of his muzzle at that.  “I don’t know,” he admitted.  “I mean, fixating on anger, on revenge, probably isn’t the most productive way to uh, be-“
	“Exactly,” I said.
	“-right, but,” he continued, “pot, kettle, you know?  At least in my case, I’m not exactly one to lecture people on that.  And I don’t personally buy the whole fable of revenge being a hollow thing.  Sometimes the scales need to be balanced.”
	“I don’t know what good killing this man is going to do,” I muttered.
	“Well, he’s a slaver, for one,” he pointed out.  “At least we’re pretty sure he is.  I swear to God, if there’s another link in this chain and I’m wrong again. . . .”
	“We don’t exactly have any plan for dealing with him except ‘kill him’,” I said uncomfortably, the words hardly sitting right with me.  We were literally traveling across the country to murder a man.  In my view, the goal of getting our hands on citizenship papers was far more important than this plot of Odina’s.  And even Finn seemed unenthusiastic about it.  He’d certainly tempered his passion for the idea, since he’d found out his father might not be as involved as he’d previously thought.  Which proved Odina’s point that his outrage had been, in most part, based on personal grievance against the man and not the acts he was committing on others.  But I suppose that was understandable.  You could be angry about the fact that people were suffering somewhere in the world, but to travel across the ocean to right a wrong, you had to have some kind of personal stake in it.  
	“I prefer to be flexible in my planning,” Finnegan said easily, leaning against a fencepost.  “We don’t know who this man is or what kind of organization he’ll have around him, although I suspect- considerable.  We’ll have to get the lay of the land when we arrive.”
	“Citizenship papers first,” I pushed.
	“Yes, of course,” he glanced about briefly, before reaching over to where my hand was hanging and entwining our fingers for a moment.  Even the brief contact relaxed me.
	“You’ve been a lot,” I thought about my statement for a moment, “calmer.  Since Odina showed you those papers.  I know this whole thing hasn’t turned out to be what you thought it was, but I have to say, I think it’s been good for you.”
	“I’m forced to agree,” he admitted ruefully.  “There’s a part of me that’s angry, obviously.  More bitter, I guess?”
	“I thought,” I said, “after what Odina told you, you’d be in a much darker place than you seem to be.  You’re, uh. . . what is it you say?  You’re ‘rolling with it’ well.”
	“I think that’s a Carvecian expression,” he made a face, “certainly sounds like one, anyway.  And yes, I guess I thought I would be, too.  I was furious for a few days after she told me.  Hopeless, frustrated beyond all reason.  Realizing that man would have no comeuppance.”
	“So what changed?”  I asked, curiously.
	“Nothing,” he replied evenly.  He reached over and patted my shoulder, his palm lingering a moment or two.  “I just. . . have you.  You’re a good influence.”
	I didn’t bother fighting back the smile that brought.  “Finn,” I said quietly, “after this-“
	“Wait, hang on,” he said quickly.  “I should try. . . what is it?  I can do this one.  “Aksa. . . nu. . . vit nua?”
	It took me a moment to realize what he was trying to say.  “Oh,” I said, “It’s ‘Aksanuvit ek nua’.  ‘I have you’.  You’re close, but if you forget to include the possessive ‘ek’, you’re essentially just saying you are me.  Which is strange,” I chuckled.
	“So the possessive part is in a statement of affection, too?”  He asked, clearly trying to file the information away.  I’d been doing my best to teach him Nontawlik over the last few weeks, but I was probably a bad teacher.
	I nodded.  “It’s an exception in some ways, I guess.  It can change the meaning of the feeling you’re expressing, we use the same word for many feelings, but your relationship to that person, how close you are, is important to knowing the difference.”
	“I’m bad at this, sorry,” he admitted.  “It’s more complicated than I thought it was going to be.”
	“Trust me, your language is a lot more complicated than you might realize, too,” I laughed lightly.  “There are exceptions everywhere.”
	“You’re amazing, though,” he said with a lopsided smile.
	“I’ve been practicing it since I was a cub,” I waved a hand.  “You’re just starting.”
	“I meant in general,” he smirked.
	I snuffed, scratching at my neck ruff.  “Don’t do that,” I muttered.  
	“What?”  He asked teasingly, leaning to bump his hip against mine.  
	“Alright, enough with the moon eyes,” Odina’s voice obliterated the moment.  The mountain lioness had tied up the horses and was making her way towards us, something strange-looking held in one of her hands.  She was still limping, but hadn’t needed the crutch in some time.
	“What is that?”  I asked, eyeing the odd metal loops she had dangling from her hand.  I recognized chains, but not the larger pieces. 
	“Another thing I confiscated from the Jackwalds’ possessions,” she said, turning the thing over in front of her, clearly looking for something.  “In addition to some of their badges and papers, in case we ever need those.”
	Finnegan sighed from beside me, his posture slumping a bit.  Whatever she’d brought out, he seemed less than thrilled about it.  “There’s a release pin where they join with the links in the center,” he said, pointing it out to her.  “I hope you found the key, too.”
	“I’ve tried the four on the Captain, one of them works,” she confirmed.  “But we’re not going to lock them, alright?  Just for show.”
	Finn reluctantly turned, tugging up his coat sleeves and tucking his hands to the small of his back.  Odina approached him and I watched, mystified, as she fiddled with the little metal collars, eventually getting them open and fitting them around his wrists.
	Finnegan gave a sidelong glance over his shoulder, his tone jeering.  “You clearly don’t have much experience with these.”
	“You clearly do,” she leveled back.  “Been arrested much, Ambrose?”
	“Not arrested, no,” he replied with a smug grin.
	I have no idea what the back and forth was about, but Odina rolled her eyes at him, which was the most expressive the lioness ever got.   
	“What are they?”  I finally just asked.
	“Manacles,” Finnegan replied.  “They’re to restrain me.  Or make it look like I’m restrained, anyway.  What do you normally use for your marks, Odina?  Rope?  Shite chafes, you know- ah!  Please put them over my shirt sleeve, at least.”
	“We didn’t normally take jobs for live marks,” she said, clapping the last of the ‘manacles’ shut around his wrist.  “It’s only for a short time, don’t be such a cub about it.”
	“Why do this now?”  I asked.  
	“We’re going to need to charter passage on a ship to make the final leg of the journey,” she said.  “The Roseline River can take us all the way to Arbordale from here, and it’ll be far faster and less dangerous.  But we’ll need to convince a Captain to take us aboard and if our cover story is going to work. . . .”
	“Bollocks,” Finnegan grumbled, “I’m going to have to wear these for the whole trip, aren’t I?”
	“I think we’ll be able to afford private quarters on a cheap enough ship,” she assured him.  “Might have to settle for a cargo or a fishing vessel.”
	“So long as we’re not going to sea,” he said, testing his restraints for a moment or two.
	“We can’t risk a new story now,” she said in a serious tone.  “Your papers could be everywhere by now.  With that kind of reward?  We run the risk of you being recognized by other hunters, by local authorities. . . we need to make it clear you’re in custody.”
	“I get it,” he said.  “You’re right.  Just let me gripe.  And Tuli?  I have another thought.  Hear me out on this, alright?”
	“Alright,” I said, listening.
	“Odina’s worked in these parts before,” he said.  “It’s unlikely, but someone might know her.  You’re a newcomer here, so we’ve got the element of the unknown.  I want you to pretend around anyone who seems dangerous that you don’t speak Amurescan.”
	I blinked.  “Uh. . . .”
	“That’s not a bad idea,” Odina nodded.
	“People are a lot less careful around you with their words if they think you don’t speak their language,” he told me.  “I know it might be hard, but give it a try.  I’m not saying don’t talk to most of the people we meet, just anyone who seems. . . you know. . . threatening.  If you’re feeling left out, speak to Odina in Nontawlik.”
	“Okay,” I said, seeing his reasoning.  “I can try to remember that.”
	“Good man,” he said, rolling his shoulders and testing his restraints once more.  “Alright.  Shall we away?”

	I thought I was doing well, adjusting to my surroundings admirably, until we made it into the actual city.  And then my entire view of the world shifted.
	I’d heard the Otherwolves could build structures taller than trees.  I’d heard of streets paved in stone, of ‘carriages’ and ‘ships’, and settlements so dense with people, any trace of nature was buried and gone.  It was another thing to actually see it all.
	It was utterly astonishing how much they were able to construct from stone.  Every other building was made from bricks or at least had a foundation made from them, which I knew and had seen before, but to see so much construction of these formidable buildings in one place was jaw-dropping.  Bricks, rock walls, cobbled streets, they were all made of earth.  They would not rot away like wood, they would take generations to crumble.  They were in a very real way re-shaping the terrain to their specifications.  It was becoming easier to understand how these people were bowing the world to their whim, while we were still living and working around it.
	Everything was in squares and rectangles, all hard angles.  I found it unnerving.  I understood the utility of course, boxing properties and fields in around roads to make the most of the land.  I suppose when you parceled out land so rigidly and attached a price to it, this was the result.  A world of structured grids.
	When I say my view of the world shifted, I mean it.  This place did not look like the world I knew.  The world I knew sloped and curved, had no hard borders between the wild and the places I’d called home.  Even the Tawnahowac village more bled into the landscape or was carved into it in the places it allowed.  We would stamp down the earth and fight back growth or predators from the forest when they became troublesome, but it always found a way to make its presence known.  
	Here, I couldn’t imagine anything growing.  No feral Ursark would wander these streets.  The sky was blotted with drifting smoke, the feral animals all penned or harnessed, there weren’t even hills.  How they’d managed that one, I couldn’t tell you, but everything felt. . . flat.  Sporadically I saw stone steps leading up to buildings, or down into what I imagined must be cellars and basements.  More hard edges.
	Even the largest towns I’d seen so far hadn’t been like this.  They had roads, buildings, pens, sure.  But everything had been constructed loosely around the land.  Here, it was like when the land didn’t conform to what they had in mind for it, they forced it.
	What I was truly unprepared for wasn’t even the assault on my eyes, but my other senses.  The sounds, the smells.  It was like the Otherwolves had taken the idea of penning animals, where their filth had no choice but to collect and their feet stamped down anything that might grow from the soil, and applied it to themselves.
	Finn was right about the mud.  But I hesitate to call it that.  It wasn’t mud so much as a slurry of mud, melting snow, animal dung, rubbish and offal.  And probably a lot of other things I didn’t want to reflect on too long.
	“And this is the nice part of town!”  He announced chipperly as I got up on my horse, finally having had enough after I’d stepped in something I suspected contained runoff from a nearby butcher’s shop.
	He and Odina had mounted up long ago when we’d first entered the city, Odina leading Finn’s horse since he couldn’t direct it with his hands bound.  He was leaning back in his saddle, wearing a grin he had no right to, given our surroundings.
	He inhaled deeply through his nose, before giving a chuckling, “Ahhh.  Smell that?  Tannery nearby.  I’ve missed the city!”
	I knew he was being intentionally sarcastic, but still.  “How,” I coughed, getting a mouthful of the scent he’d just caught on the wind.  Definitely a tannery, I knew that smell well enough from preparing hides back home.  But this was. . . concentrated.  “How. . . can anyone. . . stay here for more than a short time?”
	“This is the market district,” Odina said calmly from in front of me.  “Most people don’t live here, save the shop-keeps.”
	“People live here?!”
	“The residential districts are a bit less crowded and somewhat cleaner,” she offered.
	“For those that can afford to live there,” Finnegan snorted.  “Wager to guess the suburban sprawl’s a lot less cobbled and a lot more crowded.  And we’re not even talking the slums.”
	“ ‘Slums’?”  I called to him, raising my voice over the loud bellowing of a crier we were passing, standing before a small crowd with a red and yellow flag behind him, bearing an odd symbol with several phases of the moon on it.
	Finnegan gave the man an uneasy look, before glancing back at me.  “Like the Risers.  The poorest, cheapest area in a city.  Usually wherever most of the runoff goes, on the back-end of the industrial district.”
	“Here it’s near the ports,” Odina said.  “We’ll be hitting there soon.  You’ll know when the cobblestones start cracking.”
	“You think it’s bad now,” Finn shook his head.  “Wait until you see what the roads look like without paving.”
	The answer was nearly half a foot deep of slush and refuse.  Here, the horses, carts, and the people unfortunate enough to be on foot. . . which were quite a few more than had been in the market district. . . moved at a slower pace, carving and stomping their way through what must have been at one point recently a fresh coat of snow, sullied by the ever-present muck.  It was hard to tell if the weather was the primary culprit.  At least if it were dry, it might have been easier to manage.  But the melting ice and snow also helped cover some of the filth and disguise the far more dilapidated buildings in this district.
	Here, at least, nature was making its presence known.  But that didn’t comfort me.  Where the market district had been loud, glaring and overwhelming, this place was tired and sad.  There were just as many people about, although the ratio of canines to others was far lower.  Rats, mice and squirrels were the most prevalent, alongside many of the other peoples I’d seen so far.  Depressingly, this was also where I’d seen the largest population of obviously tribal people since we’d made it inside the city limits.  
	Many of them were otters.  We were close to the river, so that wasn’t strange.  But it made my heart sink, all the same.  Very few of them reminded me remotely of my family.  Almost all wore Otherwolf clothing, with remnants of tribal jewelry or the occasional marking in their fur to denote their lineage.  But it was dreadfully hard to tell, in some cases, which ones had once been part of a tribe, or what tribe they may have belonged to.  
	Frozen clothing was strung between houses, and structures I would hesitate to call homes of any kind.  The roads were cluttered with barrels and drying racks for the many fisherman who must have lived here, signs posted with scrawled sale prices that would fetch these families a quarter what I would sell my fish for up north.  Cloying smoke rose from the open doors of structures with no proper ventilation, there were makeshift businesses on every other porch and basement for basic necessities, but very few of the well-maintained shops like we’d seen at market.  And one road in particular, Finnegan simply would not traverse.
	“Please,” he begged, “I’d rather we go around.  I know it’s a little bit out of the way, but-“
	“It’s fine, we’re already close to the docks,” Odina said, re-directing her pony.  “It won’t add much more time to our trip.”
	“Is it dangerous?”  I asked, peering down the street in question.  Despite the fact that it was a few hours from dark, it was already lantern-lit.  It seemed busy, and somewhat livelier than most of the others we’d been down so far, in this area.  I could distantly hear music from a few of the buildings and there were colorful adornments hung in many of the windows.
	“It’s the Red Lantern District,” Finn murmured.  I couldn’t see his face since he was riding in front of me, but I saw the way his shoulders tensed.  “Or their equivalent of, anyway.  Every city has one.  It’s where people go to buy. . . whores, Tulimak.  And drugs, and whatever other pleasures are in demand.”
	 “Oh,” I said quietly.  I could understand why he wouldn’t want to see a place like that, given where he’d come from.  I couldn’t go to him, so instead I asked, “How are you doing, Finn?”
	“I’m fine,” he insisted, glancing back at me.  “I’ve lived in and traveled through cities my whole life, Tuli.  Hardly the first time I’ve been reminded where I came from.”
	“Is this. . .” I glanced around, “. . . worse?  Than the ‘Risers’?”
	He sighed.  “It’s a different kind of bad, I’ll put it that way.  Poverty’s shite no matter what flavor it is.  The Risers was older, more decaying.  But we had our ways of making it bearable.  We had our own collective, you know, to try to keep the streets as clean as possible, keep the mud from backing up into people’s homes.  The women would even grow things in the empty plots sometimes, use the muck to our advantage.  We’d figured out ways to survive there.  Here,” he glanced around, “I just don’t think they’ve had the time to solve those problems, yet.  It’s a newer city.”
	Looking around myself, it was hard to imagine these people would have time to do anything other than survive, if they were even managing that.
	Is this what was going to happen to the land around our river some day?  Was this the future my tribe had to somehow adapt to?
	By the time we reached the water, the sun was dipping low in the sky.  But that didn’t mean the docks were any less bustling.  If anything, it seemed people were in a hectic rush to get the day’s work done before darkness fell.  I recognized the frantic pace from the many times back home we’d had a huge haul of fish to handle before night set in.
	It was hard to say what the river had ever been.  It was certainly larger, or at least wider, than the one near my village, but it was so thick with boats of all sizes here, I couldn’t discern what kind of a river it might once have been.  Save one unusual feature.
	“Is it the sun setting, or does the water seem red?”  I asked aloud.
	“That’s why they call it the ‘Roseline’,” Odina explained.  “All the Otherwolves’ ships stir up the clay that’s usually at the bottom into the water.  Our people used to call this river ‘Inknawotinak’.”
	“Can’t say I know that one,” Finn said.
	“It means ‘cupping hands’,” I explained.
	“This river forks and wraps up around the mountains,” she said.  “It comes from the mountains, in fact.”
	“I’ve never been this far south,” I said, looking as far down the shoreline as I could see, at the vast array of boats, barges and ships.  At least, those must have been ‘ships’.  I’d heard them described in the past, had imagined their size, but I hadn’t pictured the forest of ‘trees’ rising up out of them.
	“Alright, Odina,” Finn said.  “How do we book passage in a place like this?  I can’t imagine there’s a Harbor Authority.”
	“I haven’t the faintest,” she admitted.  “I’ve never had reason before.  Let’s go and see.”
	As it turned out there were a lot of people in this city, at these docks in particular, who wanted to very loudly proclaim their business.  And a sizable amount of them were looking for passengers.  The docks were a cacophony of sounds, competing with one another to literally bark and call out over their competition.  The trouble was going to be in choosing the right one, not finding them.  
	“I suppose when there’s only one of two destinations, North or South,” Finn chuckled, “this sort of thing’s a lot simpler.  I like the look of that one.”
	He couldn’t point, but I saw what he was nodding his head towards.  It was, unsurprisingly, one of the largest ships here.  It was docked further out, sporting a black-tarred hull with yellow trim you could make out even from far away, but along the shoreline was a similarly black and yellow sign, proclaiming in letters large and clear enough for me to read, ‘Arbor Express’.  A stoat in a white shirt, suspenders and striped britches stood beneath the sign on a raised, makeshift platform, speaking loudly and too quickly for me to understand him through the noise surrounding us.
	“It looks large enough to take our horses,” Odina agreed.  “And it’s clear where they’re headed.  Seems fine.”
	“-departing in two days, two days, gentlemen, that’s right,” the man’s ramblings came into focus as we approached.  Now that we were closer, they seemed far more intentionally rushed, like he wanted to get a lot of information to you very quickly.  Hardly surprising, given the harried nature of this place.  “Guaranteed ten-day trip!  This vessel has made over four hundred voyages, gents, four hundred voyages.  Yes that’s right, bunks available now, stow your cargo, stow your wife!  No, but seriously gents, we’ve got hold space a-plenty for your beasts and servants-“
	He seemed to notice us suddenly, and slowed only for a moment before stabbing a finger out in my direction and calling out, “Big fellow!  My what a big fellow!  I’ll have you know we can accommodate any man, woman or beast!  Passenger bunks are spacious and our chef is generous!”
	“Can you ‘accommodate’ a prisoner transfer?”  Odina asked the man, guilelessly.
	That seemed to slow the stoat up, finally.  He stepped up to the edge of the makeshift stage he was standing on and gave us all a once-over.  At length, he gave a sniff and lifted his chin towards Finnegan.  “Dangerous?”  Was the one thing he asked.
	“Not so long as he’s in our custody,” she replied evenly.  “I have one of the mightiest bounty hunters from the North Country here guarding him.  Your ship will be safer with him on it than not.”
	It took me a moment to realize she was talking about me.  But I wasn’t. . . .
	Oh.
	“If your coin’s good and your papers check out, you’re welcome aboard, ma’am,” the stoat said with a crack-toothed smile.  “Won’t be the first time we’ve aided the law in bringing scum to their final resting place.”  He pointed down the dock.  “Go on and talk with First Mate Anderson.  He’s the fellow with the stripes.  Can’t miss’im.”
	First Mate Anderson was a lanky skunk with a slight paunch and dress similar to Finnegan’s, when I’d first met him.  Complete with it looking better from a distance than it did once you got in close and realized how worn and cheap it probably was.  But he was a pleasant enough fellow, if a bit nervous around me.  He went over the rates with Odina, for passage to Arbordale for both us and our horses, and he pulled out a pair of spectacles to look over our papers.
	“Oh, God,” he blanched, nearly losing the top page while looking in Finn’s direction, alarmed.  “Multiple murders?”
	“That a problem?”  Odina asked.  “Your man down the dock assured me you’d moved people bound for the gallows before.”
	“Yes, I mean, no,” he cleared his throat after a pause, tearing his eyes away from Finnegan, who was playing the part of an angry felon fairly well.  Or maybe he was just actually angry at being called a murderer.  “I mean, it’s not a problem,” he clarified.  “I just. . . didn’t expect. . . he’s so unassuming.”
	“Oh, I’ve been doing this a long time,” Odina said, “and let me tell you, the ones like him?  The types you’d just pass on a street corner and never think twice about?  They’re the worst.”  She leaned forward and snapped suddenly in the skunk’s face, startling him.  “Just like that.  Show their true colors when you’re least prepared.”
	The skunk blinked rapidly, then swallowed.  “Oh my.”
	“So obviously, we’ll be needing some kind of private room we can keep him separated from the other passengers in,” she said, leaning back and glancing at Finn.  I swear I saw the hint of a smile there.
	She was enjoying this too much.  Finn was definitely not feigning his foul mood anymore.
	And I had to question the logic in making him out to be dangerous to someone we were hoping to book passage with.  Although I suppose he’d already agreed and it would certainly ensure we were left alone for the duration of the voyage.
	Still.  If this was her sense of humor I was finally seeing, it was. . . well, I suppose in fitting with the rest of her, pretty dark.  But then that was hardly surprising.
	Odina went on to haggle the cost with the skunk, and the two eventually landed on something they both found agreeable.  We’d be staying in an area of the crew quarters that was usually reserved for pickling barrels and ale, but had recently been cleared for use as several bunks, since the return journey to Arbordale for this ship was more about moving people than goods.  That’s how the skunk explained it, anyway.
	It didn’t sound like it was going to be spacious, and it wasn’t our own room, but what mattered was it was our last link in the chain to Arbordale.  The place this whole journey had been leading towards.
	And we were going together, unified in purpose.