Ishikk
POV: ishikk
Summary
Ishikk, an aging fisherman of the village of Fu Abra on the Purelake, wades through warm shin-deep water with five fish in his buckets — four of them dull common ones — toward a meeting that has been months in the making. Vun Makak has blighted his fishing today, he tells the passing washerman; sun and tides send it.
At Maib's place inside the village he meets the three foreigners he has been working for: a thick-limbed bald Makabaki he privately calls Grump, a stiff soldierly Makabaki he calls Blunt, and a scarred tan-skinned third he calls Thinker. He delivers a fifth empty monthly report: no one in Fu Ralis, Fu Namir, Fu Albast, or Fu Moorin has seen the white-haired, clever-tongued, arrow-faced man they hunt — even with the warning that he dyes his hair and wears disguises. The foreigners briefly squabble (Blunt suspects there might be something to a Purelake "stumpy cort" fish that could locate the man; Grump dismisses the whole thread as superstition) and then drop into another language to continue. Ishikk listens with half an ear: he never has been good with other languages and doesn't need them to catch fish.
The foreigners hand him a pouch of spheres and more instructions and splash off toward the lake's edge in their thick foreign boots. Grump mutters in his own tongue as he goes — "Where are you, Roamer? What a fool's quest this is." — and then a sentence Ishikk doesn't understand at all. Ishikk chuckles to himself, picks up his buckets, and goes to check on his traps. Maybe he should let Maib catch him, he thinks. He's getting old, and a little settling might be pleasant. The hunt for Hoid is not his concern.