Chapter Text
After dinner, Reth asked me to join him on his walk to the store room before I had the chance to ask him for the same. Perhaps I misjudged him and he planned to tell me all along. He looked more tired than normal and the entire walk he talked about nothing but his Lettuce Soup recipe, explaining it to me in excruciating detail. He really was bad at this stuff. All of Kilima had to know he was up to something.
When we got behind the closed door of his storeroom, he finally cut to the chaste,
“Boy am I glad to see your face right now. Can I just stand here and look at you for a while? It’ll make me feel better.” He grabbed my hands and I’ll admit, for a moment, it felt nice. Until I realized what he was trying to do. I pulled my hands away.
“What’s going on?”
He shook his head and said, “Can’t talk about it right now. Still looking.” He grazed my cheek with his hand and stepped closer to me, pushing my back against the door. “Yup, that’s my favorite person right there. Good to see it’s still on.”
I waited for him to get to the point. He grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes, “So, guess who has two thumbs and needs your help again?”
I rolled my eyes, “And this is my surprised face.”
He smirked and his eyes looked like he may stop everything and make out with me. “And what a cute face it is.”
“And what happened?” I pushed him a few inches away. Not too far, but enough to regain my ability to think.
“Well, I guess Ashura didn't believe my totally convincing lie last time. And after I cooked a whole dinner for him... He's been keeping a closer eye on me now. Constantly checking up on me.” Reth rubbed the back of his neck. “It's been impossible to get my work done, and the shipments are starting to suffer.”
We had avoided the topic of his side hustle since we had to steal the package back from Eshe. It was strange to hear him talk about it so casually.
“Think I'm gonna need to temporarily change bases for a bit,” Reth said with a puppy-dog face. He even turned his ears down.
“Why don’t you try telling Ashura the truth?” Ashura may have been a retired battle-hardened soldier, but those days were long behind him. Just a few days prior, he had opened up to me about his son who was following in his footsteps, and, I might have been imagining things, but he did not seem proud. In fact, he looked remorseful. If anyone would accept the truth about Reth and find a way to help him, it would be Ashura.
“Sure,” Reth said, “that would be the smart, responsible thing to do. Unfortunately, I already did the stupid, Reth thing to do.”
“It’s not too late…”
“I may have uh… already hidden all the merchandise.” He smiled sheepishly and shrugged, “Wouldn’t want to waste all that hard work, y’know? Guess I’ll have to just keep lying through my teeth. Even if it is giving me panic attacks!”
His pitch was heightened and his breath was quickening. I wanted to help calm him, but I was also mad that he was being such an idiot. “It’s not too late.”
He shrugged and rested his forehead against mine. “I wish that were true.”
We stood there like that for a moment while I considered how to convince him to tell Ashura, but my whole head was buzzing where our foreheads touched and it was hard to focus. Before I was able to come to a conclusion, he said,
“Anyways, I appreciate you hearing me out. You’re a good person, Serena. Probably too good a person for me.” He pulled away from me and looked to the makeshift bed he setup with a few blankets and wooden crates then back to me. “I’ll see you later, okay?”
I wanted to be mad at Reth for not being honest with Ashura, but he couldn’t even be honest with his own sister. Honestly, it was shock he was honest with me at all. He didn’t have to tell me what was going on, but he did, and I knew then why Reth had been in Bahari Bay. He must have gone out there to hide the merchandise and picked up crabs and oysters as a cover.
Which meant, wherever he hid the packages was close enough to the beach that it wasn’t too out of the way for him to get the crab and oysters. As it happened, there was a cave nearby to where I normally went fishing for the unicorn fish. So, I thought I would be able to get there from Hodari’s without drawing attention.
However, Najuma stopped me before I left Pulsewater.
“Hey,” she was rubbing her elbow and looking at her shoes, but she couldn’t have been talking to anyone but me. Was she on to me?
“Hey,” I said back, adjusting my pack on my shoulders.
“It’s done.”
I let out a large breath I didn’t realize I was holding. She was not onto me. She was following up on the situation with Willow. “How did it go?”
Najuma shrugged. “I dunno. Easier than I expected.”
“You don’t really look happy…”
She shrugged again and I pulled her into a hug instinctively.
“What did Willow think of your singing fireworks?”
Najuma looked up with a shy smile, “Seemed like she liked them.”
“What about the dinner?” Reth had given Najuma a simple recipe and ingredients to cook them a special steak dinner.
“She ate it?”
“And… how about your dad?”
“He at it, too.”
“I mean how did she react to your dad?”
“Well,” Najuma heaved a deep breath and pulled out of the hug to pace. “They went off alone and talked for a while. I didn’t see them come back.”
“Have you seen your dad since? I didn’t see him in his workshop this morning.”
Najuma shrugged, but her look of disgust said enough.
“That’s promising.”
“If you say so.”
I pulled her into another tight hug. “Thank you for helping me.”
Najuma shrugged in my arms before giving my back a small pat. After we finished, Najuma went back to her workshop and I continued east to the ruins.
Though I fished for the unicorn fish at Beachcomber’s, I usually was able to forget that the Temple of the Gales existed despite its close proximity. The path to the cave had a wide open view of the steps to the temple. I had not been back since the first time with Elouisa, Caleri and Zeki. I realized I might be able to find a way to the other islands with the glider Najuma made me.
I would come back another time for the Temple of the Gales.
More pressing matters required my attention. Reth was giving himself panic attacks trying to hide the truth from Ashura, when he should be telling him the truth. The man had been in a war and had done things to this day he was not willing to share. If anyone could understand what it meant to do something horrible for a just cause, it would be him.
I knew it had to be this cave because when I was new to the area I had seen one of Reth’s aprons there. Reth was never good at covering his tracks. It was a miracle he had been able to keep the charade going this long. When I saw the packages tucked up next to some old, rotting barrels, I knew exactly what I needed to do. I grabbed all the packages I could find, combing the cave three times to be sure, and put them in my rucksack. Just like the package which contained Tish’s medicine, these packages were equally mundane. Brown packages with simple twine ties around them. Auni must have carried a hundred or more of those a day.
When I got back in town with a newfound respect for Auni’s strength and stamina, I snuck into Reth’s storeroom from the underground.
If Ashura was going to check the storeroom any time, it would be after Reth went across the square for dinner. So, making sure the packages were there in time was critical. Though the packages appeared like any other, the sender and addressee names were particularly suspect. And, even if Ashura couldn’t figure out the names were Grimalkin, despite being one of the eldest Majiri in Kilima, a stockpile of packages was not exactly normal for a chef.
Reth usually went straight from the kitchen to Jel’s after he finished cleaning the kitchen. He saves the dishes for last so he can go directly over. That meant, I had to get them in there after he put the final ingredients away for the night but finish in time to make it to dinner without being suspiciously late.
I waited under the trap door so I could go after I saw him lock up or, if he never showed, by 6:30 and risk him catching me. I never arrived to dinner after 7:00 unless something drastic happened, so I couldn’t dally.
Thankfully, I did see him come and lock up. Only after talking to another person who was definitely not Ashura. They had much higher tone of voice. I couldn’t make out what words they were saying, but I could hear the muffled voices. My stomach twisted. I didn’t know who he was talking to or what about, but I had a bad feeling about it.
Eventually, the voices stopped and soon after, I heard the loud click of the lock engaging. I waited about ten minutes, just to be sure. Then I went up and arranged the packages carefully in a very conspicuous spot on the desk directly across the main door. I noticed a hand-written recipe for a spicy lettuce soup idea. His handwriting was endearing: slightly bigger than it needed to be and he capitalized all the Rs, except for one which he wrote in a cursive style.
A part of me wondered if Ashura gave him all the chores so eventually Reth would get so overwhelmed that he would break and be honest. Ashura was not stupid. He had to have been onto Reth since before I arrived. More than anything, Reth needed to be honest with Ashura so he could stop sleeping in the storeroom. And to stop giving him so many chores.
Once everything was arranged perfectly for Ashura, I left through the underground through Zeki’s shop. I made sure to pick up a few supplies I genuinely needed, like eggs and cooking oil, then went next door to Jel’s.
Reth tensed the moment he saw me, but he tried to hide it by rubbing the back of his neck. Or maybe his neck genuinely did hurt. His face was hard to read, either way, he looked uncomfortable.
Or maybe it was just me that was uncomfortable.
“So, Tish, what have you heard? Najuma said they went to talk but didn’t come back,” I said.
Tish looked at me and checked in with Jel who stiffened before he shrugged. She suppressed a giggle to say, “Both Hassian and Auni heard it. Reth overheard them talking about it today at the Inn.” She turned to her brother.
Reth struggled to contain his own laughter, “You should have seen the look on Hassian’s face. Apparently it was quite… loud.” He chuckled.
“That’s good then?” I asked Tish who giggled while nodding emphatically and I found myself overcome with the same laughter. All of us laughed together, feeling the collective relief.
“Soooo….” Reth looked at me expectantly, “you gonna say it or?”
“All we’ve done so far is get them talking again.”
“And don’t you feel better for it?”
“I can’t help but feel it’s all too good to be true.”
Reth wrapped his arm around my shoulder, “Just admit it so we can eat. I made bouillabaisse.”
I rolled my eyes, but my stomach betrayed me. He squeezed me a little tighter before letting me go and dishing up a bowl for everyone. All I could think about was if Ashura had entered the store room yet. Or if this would be the one time he didn’t check and I would have to explain what I did.
“Why do you keep checking the door?” Jel asked me with a concerned look while we were all eating in silence. “Should Reth pour another bowl?”
Tish tensed looking back and forth suspiciously between Jel and me. My heart rate quickened. I did not like knowing what the other person knew and keeping those secrets. There were too many secrets lately. My heart rate quickened and when I looked up again, everyone was staring at me with confusion.
“I— I um…” words were evading me. I was holding secrets for Tish, Jel, Reth and what felt like half the world. The crushing reality of what might happen if I spilled one thing and the floodgates that might open freaked me out, so I jumped to my feet and said, “I gotta go!”
I ran out of the room, leaving my half-eaten bowl on the counter.
