Nation

stay in the land of Locaha?”
    “The fall of a drop of water,” said Daphne’s lips before she had finished hearing the question.
    “And the soul who makes his own soul…he was in Locaha’s land?”
    “Yes. He ran faster than Locaha, though.”
    The dark, piercing eyes stayed fixed on her for a while, and then it seemed that she had passed some test.
    “You are very clever,” said the old man shyly. “I would like to eat your brains, one day.”
    For some reason the books of etiquette that Daphne’s grandmother had forced on her didn’t quite deal with this. Of course, silly people would say to babies, “You’re so sweet I could gobble you all up!” but that sort of nonsense seemed less funny when it was said by a man in war paint who owned more than one skull. Daphne, cursed with good manners, settled for “It’s very kind of you to say so.”
    He nodded and headed back to his fellows, who had clustered around Cox.
    Mau approached her, smiling. “Their priest likes you,” he said.
    “Only for my brains, Mau, and even if he had them for lunch, I’d still have more than you! Didn’t you see that gun he’s got now? It’s a Pepperbox. One of Father’s friends had one! It has six barrels. That’s six shots without reloading! And he’s got an ordinary pistol, too!”
    “I shall move fast.”
    “You can’t run faster than bullets!”
    “I shall stay out of their way,” said Mau with infuriating calmness.
    “Look, don’t you understand? He’s got two guns and you’ve got one spear. You’ll run out of spear before he runs out of gun!”
    “Yes, but his gun will run out of bang before my knife runs out of sharp,” said Mau.
    “Mau, I don’t want you to die!” Daphne shouted. The words echoed back off the cliffs, and she blushed crimson.
    “Then who should die? Milo? Pilu? Who? No. If anyone is going to die, it should be me. I’ve died before. I know how it’s done. No more discussion!”

Duel

    B EHIND THEM THE HUBBUB of the meeting had stopped.
    Silence fell over the war canoes lined with faces; the cluster of Raider chiefs on the shoreline; the people who had crept out to watch from the cliff. The sun was too bright to look at and was already boiling all the color out of the landscape. The world was holding its breath.
    There would be no count, no signal. There were no rules, either. But there was tradition. The fight would start when the first man picked up his weapon. Mau’s spear and knife were on the sand in front of him. Ten feet away, Cox had laid down his guns only after a lot of argument.
    Now it was just a case of watching the other man’s eyes.
    Cox grinned at him.
    Hadn’t every boy dreamed of this? To stand in front of the enemy? And they were all here together, under the white-hot sun, all the lies, all the fears, all the terrors, all the horrors that the wave had brought, all here and in mortal form. Here he could beat them.
    And all that mattered was this: If you don’t dare to think you might, you won’t.
    Mau’s eyes creaked with staring. He was nearly blinded by the fierce sunlight, but at least there were no more voices in his head—
    Except…
    It is a good day to die , said the voice of Locaha.
    Mau’s arm shot out, hurling the handful of sand into Cox’s eyes. He didn’t wait—he just grabbed his knife and ran, listening to the cursing behind him. But you can’t cheat when there are no rules. He’d picked up his weapon when he’d put his spear down. He didn’t have to say he’d chosen the sand itself. It was a good weapon, too.
    Don’t stop. Don’t look back, just keep running.
    There wasn’t a plan. There had never been a plan. All there was was hope, but there was little enough of that, and there was something the ghost girl had taught him on the very first day they met: Guns did not like water.
    The lagoon was where he belonged right now, and he fled for it, dodging and weaving as much as he dared. The water was his world. Cox was a big, heavy man, and water would drag at his clothes. Yes!
    He heard a shot fired, and a bullet sang past his head. But here was the lagoon and he dived in when the water was hardly above his knees. He would have to come up for air, but surely the man would not dare to come in after him?
    Out toward the middle of the lagoon, where the damaged canoes were drifting, he stopped and made use of their cover to grab some more air. Then he peered around the canoe to find Cox—and he was right there on the