I hung back even farther as the dark silhouettes of the huts of the tanners’ clan hove into view. I waited amidst the brittle grasses, heart pounding, as Tansan and her cohorts disappeared amongst the huts.
Did I dare proceed? Why not? I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
But even as I thought it, I knew that was a lie. My fur tive actions, prompted by my imagined whiff of venom and preceded by the arbiyesku’s reserved greetings to the two visitors, were clear indicators that I was intruding where I may not be wanted.
The thought didn’t stop me from picking my way care fully in the dark around a myriad of broken water buckets and urns to enter the tanners’ compound.
I heard voices raised in passionate discussion. My pulse sped up. Bonfire light flickered from the compound’s cen ter, and I smelled dung-fagot smoke and the reek of fer mented maska milk.
Slowly I edged my way around a hut and peeked into the center of the tanners’ compound.
Young men were crouched on their haunches around a bonfire, or sat upon upturned barrels and urns. On the out skirts of those gathered youths sat the nerifruku: stooped and wizened old women, cavern-chested old men, potbel lied youngsters, fathers, and nursing mothers, all bearing grotesque scars on their cheeks. I knew they belonged to the nerifruku by those very scars: Black carbuncle sick ness is a disease common amongst tanners, and those who survive are left disfigured and have the ability to strip the foulest hides with no danger of reinfection. Perhaps that intimacy with death, combined with the physical ugliness of the survivors of the disease, was what made the tanners’ clan of Xxamer Zu bold enough to host . . . whatever it was they were hosting. Something dark and dangerous, I felt sure.
Though perhaps that was merely my own trepidation coloring my perception. Perhaps the gathering in the tan ners’ compound was benign, a distraction from the reality that their skills as tanners were largely wasted because the impoverished Clutch primarily needed the tanners to work the salt pans, while bayen lords imported perfumed leath ers from the coastal capital instead.
Skills are like crushed grapes: Used well, they become wine. Left untended, they turn sharp and caustic as vinegar. Everyone needs a sense of worth to be worthy.
A pear-shaped maska drum was being passed about. Women, as well as men, sucked from the long metal pi pette that protruded from the drum, and the smell of the fermented drink hovered over the air like a film of sour milk.
I watched Tansan and her group join the gathering. They didn’t discreetly sit on the outskirts. No. Tansan confidently picked her way to the very center, where room was made for her—though I heard several grumble while she did so, and many of the men shot her annoyed looks.
I didn’t have a good view; I crept back through the dark, located an abandoned wooden bucket, and returned to my vantage point. Carefully I climbed onto the upturned bucket.
An adolescent wearing a plait of jute about his forehead was speaking. “. . . should call down the myazedo from the hills. It’s time. Past time.”
Myazedo. That unfamiliar word Savga had used to de scribe her mother.
“Foolish words, Shwe,” a bull-chested youth snapped. “We need the support of the people first—”
“We have to strike
now
, before the new overseer is es tablished. We can’t wait.”
“We aren’t organized enough yet to hold the Clutch. Temple’ll send the Emperor’s curs, and they’ll rip out our guts.”
“When
will
we ever be able to stand against Temple?”
“When we have the choice,” a young man sitting beside Tansan said. I recognized him as one of the two visitors who’d escorted Tansan from the compound. Was it he who’d carried the smell of venom upon him? (If, indeed, I hadn’t imagined the scent.)
I leaned forward, straining to see his eyes and any telltale marks of venom that they might bear. I almost fell off my bucket.
“And we’ll only have the choice when we have our own land,” the young man beside Tansan continued. “We’ll have choice when we have our own infirmaries, and a place where we practice the old ways alongside the new. A Clutch is blood and veins for the body of Temple. As long as we swim in that blood, we have few choices.”
“We should leave our land?” Bull Chest said. “Travel who knows where to set up a Hamlet of Forsaken?
These
are our fields, our harvests. We stay here and fight.”
A spate of arguments broke out. Voices rose. Tansan merely listened, heavily fringed eyes roving over the gath ering.
When the arguments showed no sign of abating, she rose to her feet. She stood there. Didn’t say anything, didn’t do anything, merely stood, statuesque, magnificent. For a moment—just a flame flicker of time—her image wavered in the shadows thrown by the firelight. In her stead, I saw a dragon.
Xxelteker sailors talk of shape-shifters, creatures made of sea mist and the blood of drowned sailors. I thought I saw something that night, some portent of dark Djimbi magics, some shape-shifting thing blended from flame light and moon luminescence and Djimbi blood. But the mo ment passed, and I knew, with a shiver, it was one more symptom of venom withdrawal.
Gradually all eyes turned to Tansan, and the debates rag ing about the fire petered to a stop. Some of the men—a goodly portion of them—looked annoyed. One called for her to sit.
Tansan didn’t flinch. She waited, unhurried, as wind soughed over the rooftops. The stars glittered hard and bright above her, like thousands of teeth in a dark grin.
When she finally spoke, her voice held such intensity that the fine hairs on my neck tingled. “Even if all the rishi of Xxamer Zu haven’t heard of the myazedo, they know they need to possess their own land. They know they are hun gry. What the myazedo must do is create a situation so the people can rise up together. It is our duty to start this.”
“And what exactly do you suggest we
do
?” a man called, his tone derisive.
“Strike the daronpuis’ stockade. Disable every winged dragon, save one or two that we hide in the hills. If we cripple the escoas, we break the holy wardens’ link with Temple.”
“You want to do this without Chinion’s knowledge?” one of the women cried. “Without his permission?”
“Chinion is off base. He won’t return for months.”
“He’s at one of his myazedo camps—”
“And maybe doesn’t know that the old Roshu lost over seership of this Clutch, and that we now have an untried Lupini as an overseer.”
Tansan was correct: Ghepp
was
an untried overseer, and on top of that a Lupini, a gentleman lord, instead of a Roshu, a retired warrior from the Fa-para army, sur rounded by his own regiment of loyal ex-soldiers. Ghepp’s father had been a Roshu-Lupini, a gentleman lord who, after years of governing his Clutch, won the title of Roshu upon successfully participating in a skirmish upon the Xxelteker frontier. He’d fought in the skirmish alongside a regiment of soldiers he’d trained beforehand, hand picked Re lords all.
Ghepp had none of that.
Tansan raised her chin. “Chinion is not infallible. He should have left a chain of command which would’ve al lowed us to govern ourselves without him.”
There were outcries from many of the men in the crowd; she continued, voice strong. “But Chinion
has
left, and any day now the new Lupini will start selling us off to pay the old overseer’s debts. We’ve all heard the murmurs coming from the Clutch center: The poaching will start soon.”
“Go back to your suckling babe!” a man called out. “Leave these matters for those who should speak of them.”
She rounded on him. “For the last few weeks you’ve done nothing but dance around this fire with your useless words while poaching season has crept closer. Which guild clans in this Clutch will be affected this year? Whose children will be shackled and sold off? Yours?”
She addressed the crowd. “Will we stand by and do noth ing yet again? No. We should claim our land now, while there are no soldiers in this Clutch!”
The young man beside her cleared his throat. “There are soldiers, Tansan. The new overseer didn’t discharge all the paras who remained after the Roshu withdrew. As we speak, he weeds through them, picking some to remain armed and employed. And there’s another thing, hey-o.”
He looked slowly around his audience. “The new over seer is recruiting soldiers from amongst the rishi.”
Bull Chest slapped his thigh. “Hey, what a chance! Half of us must join. We’ll be given arms by our enemy, and we’ll have access to the daronpuis’ stockade!”
Excited mutters of agreement from many. Tansan raised her voice above them. “You talk as if we have time! Where is this time, I ask you? The poaching will start soon! How many more nights are we going to talk these same words, chewing them over and over like maht? We need to act
now
.”
“And will you take responsibility for this decision?” someone shouted. “When Chinion returns, will you step forward and say, ‘I took command after you left’?”
Tansan’s eyes reflected the fire. “Absolutely. Wolves don’t waste all their time howling. They hunt. We are wolves, and
now
is the time to hunt.”
Several men demanded that Tansan sit. A few of them rose to their feet. Keau placed a hand on her arm and tried to tug her back to the ground. Alliak of the arbiyesku stood and raised his voice above the clamor, saying a decision had to be reached that night, Tansan was correct, they couldn’t wait any longer—
Something hit me hard in the back. I went sprawling to the ground, pain blazing across my ribs. I couldn’t draw in a breath. Dust was kicked into my eyes and I instinc tively doubled over to protect myself, but hands grabbed me, hauled me roughly onto my feet, and pinned my arms behind my back.
I drew in an agonizing breath as I was force-marched toward the bonfire.
Discussion in the crowd abruptly died as my captor pushed me forward. All eyes turned toward us, and the an ger and conflict that moments before had been ricocheting wildly about found hostile focus on me.
“I found her back there.” Behind me, my captor jerked, as if gesturing. “Listening to everything.”
Exclamations from faces twisted by scars and outrage.
The man with the bull chest stepped forward. “Who are you, aosogi-via?”
I took a painful breath and spoke as strongly as I could. “I’m from the arbiyesku.”
Faces swung toward Tansan, and her eyes turned venom black. I felt for her; it was unfair that she alone was blamed for my uninvited presence when Alliak, Keau, Piah, and Myamyo from the arbiyesku stood beside her. But even in Xxamer Zu, where the Emperor’s patriarchal ways had been watered down by regional isolation and Djimbi cus toms, it appeared that women were still easiest to fault, and men were assumed blameless.
“Is this so, Tansan?” Bull Chest barked. “She’s from your clan?”
“She must have followed us.” Tansan didn’t deign to look at me.
“Why?” The question was directed at me.
I thought quickly. “I overheard talk about the myazedo amongst the children. I wanted to learn more. I’m afraid of this poaching. I’m afraid for the children.”
My gambit had been to turn the focus away from me and back to the debate that had raged moments before. Small hope. Bull Chest again addressed Tansan. “You were care less, allowing yourself to be overheard and followed. Can she be trusted?”
Tansan’s face was cold as she looked upon me. “She’s new to us. But she can be watched. We’ll make certain of it.”
“You can start by watching her while you remove her from here. If she says one word to anyone, cut her tongue out.”
Tansan bristled. “The meeting isn’t over. We haven’t come to a decision.”
“We’ll meet again tomorrow.”
“A decision
has
to be made tonight—”
“You’ve brought a possible traitor amongst us! You’re not in a position to demand when a decision should be made!”
Tansan’s face went hard as granite.
Piah quickly stepped forward. “So we meet again tomor row, when a decision will be reached. This is good.”
“Tomorrow,” Bull Chest agreed, but no one in the crowd moved to leave until Alliak grasped my arm and marched me away from the bonfire.
It wasn’t until we were well away from the tanners’ clan that Tansan spoke.
“Can you, aosogi-via? Be trusted?” Although her words were indifferent and she walked with supple ease, she con veyed the impression of bristling anger.
“You’re my clan,” I said hoarsely. “I’d do nothing to harm any of you.”
Alliak’s hand tightened around my bicep, and no one said a word after that. Tansan’s question turned out to be rhetorical, anyway; when we reached the women’s barracks, she lay down beside me to sleep and bound her left ankle to my right, and her left wrist to my right one.
“There’s no need for that,” I hissed, glancing at Savga, curled asleep between Fwipi and Agawan.
“I disagree, debu Secondgirl,” Tansan murmured.
She closed her eyes to sleep, cool as a crescent moon.
I, on the other hand, lay awake until well past middle-night. Seething.
Disoriented by panic, I thought I was back in the drag onmaster’s stable domain on Clutch Re, and that it was the morning I was to leave for Arena. I stared wild-eyed at the young, potbellied Djimbi girl squatting beside me, grinning.
“You came back,” the girl said. “Did Mama return with you?”
I remembered where I was and where I’d been the night previous. I glanced down at my ankle and wrist. The leather thongs Tansan had used to bind us together were gone. “We came back together.”
“She’s gone to fetch water, then. Fwipi-granna said so, but I wanted to check.”
Savga helped me sit. The rest of the barracks was empty, and the sounds of early morning activity sifted through the woven-reed walls. I stiffly rose to my feet. Savga rolled up our sleeping mat, then slipped herself under one of my arms.
“Is my claimer awake yet?” I asked hoarsely.
Savga shrugged. She, more than anyone else in the arbi yesku, disliked the dragonmaster. “Come on, I’ll help you outside.”
Outside, sunlight was pouring like yolk sauce over the compound, gilding green-whorled limbs and ocher earth alike. Babies crawled about the ground. Women raked charred kadoob tubers from the previous night’s coals and darned the holes in the jute sacks the clan used for har vesting. Men examined dented hoes, sharpened scythes, re turned from the latrines.
The dragonmaster was nowhere in sight. But Piah was, and Alliak, both of them lurking near the bottom of the barracks stairs. Watching me.
I saw Fwipi sitting upon the ground, Agawan toying with a dead bird laid beside her. With Savga chatting at my side, I stiffly descended from the barracks and, ignoring the two men at the foot of the stairs, approached Fwipi.
Fwipi squinted up at me. A partially plucked pyumar sat upon her lap like a naked, wilted child. Feathers and down were strewn about her knees and feet and across Agawan. Agawan stared at me, little fingers clutched round the foot of the dead bird beside him.
“Sit; pluck pyumar,” Fwipi ordered. “Savga, get a sack and gather these feathers.”
I lowered myself to the arid ground. Fwipi’s fingers vig orously yanked feathers from pimpled bird skin.
“So. What do you think? Is my memeslu girl bad crazy?” Fwipi asked.
I didn’t know what memeslu meant—
seditious,
no doubt—but understood that Fwipi was talking about Tansan.
I licked dry lips. I stank of pipe smoke from last night’s gathering, could almost taste it on myself. “So you know where Tansan went last night. And that I followed.”
“Tansan takes a chance, talking dangerous talk. I’ve seen people killed for less. She’s young, hasn’t seen what I’ve seen, hasn’t felt loss and grief and the back of a para’s sword.”
“She’s felt other things.” I carefully extracted the bird’s foot from Agawan’s determined grip and lifted the dead pyumar onto my lap to pluck.
Fwipi scowled. “Many think like her, but are afraid to speak their minds. Too long we’ve been afraid, and why not? Hiding, being silent, these can protect you from the para’s sword. It’s not the Djimbi way, to fight, to be aggres sive. But maybe Tansan is right, hey-o. Maybe it’s time we changed our thinking. But maybe not. Maybe that will only lead to more deaths.”
I scanned the compound again. Where was the cursed dragonmaster? I had to tell him about the myazedo meet ing, so he could slip into the Clutch center and warn Da ronpu Gen; the last thing I wanted was for every escoa on my Clutch to be crippled by an angry faction of my own people. And with the warning the dragonmaster carried would go the request—no, the demand—that the practice of poaching be stopped. And trolling.
That
needed to be stopped, too.
Piah and Alliak sauntered closer and brazenly watched me. There was no way I’d be able to leave the compound and inform Daronpu Gen myself.
It was then that the children working the kadoob tract came running into the center of the compound, their eyes glistening with alarm, their mouths agape.
“Daronpuis! Paras!” they shrieked.
Holy wardens? Soldiers? Coming to the arbiyesku?
At once, mothers dropped what they were doing, gath ered up infants crawling about the ground, and herded their children into the barracks, calling loudly for those within earshot to hurry up, come, come! The old men who had been languidly stropping scythes and machetes moments before scrambled stiffly upright, spat into their palms, and slicked their biceps, that they might look sleek and strong. Fwipi rose to her feet, down spilling from her lap like pan icked mice.
“No. Not now, not this.” Fwipi’s face turned pallid, which made her whorls stand out. “Savga, Savga! Where is the child?”
“What’s going on?” I rose to my feet, pulse racing. I looked at Piah and Alliak; they were arguing; Piah had snatched a machete from one of the old men, was waving it in the air. Alliak was trying to wrestle it from him.
“Into the barracks, quick,” Fwipi hissed at me, bending and scooping up Agawan. “Take pyumar with you! Fast, now, fast.”
Heart pounding, I grabbed the plucked birds by their rubbery feet and followed Fwipi up the wooden stairs to the barracks. I shot a look over my shoulder, seeking the dragonmaster. There he stood, under the lintel of one of the men’s beehive-shaped domiciles. Our eyes met across the dusty compound.
“Savga!” Fwipi cried as the young girl came stumbling across the compound, eyes wide. “Quick!”
“We should run,” I gasped, dead birds heavy and lank against one thigh. “Hide in the fields.”
“Paras would return for us, this day, the next, the day after that. We’d be beaten, then, for making them work so hard. Beaten bad. I saw a man crippled, saw a child’s arm snapped like a twig. I watched a woman die from such a beating. . . . No. We don’t run.”
I threw one last look toward the dragonmaster. He’d dis appeared back inside the hut.
A line of daronpuis came marching down one of the dusty paths leading into our compound, their porphyryand-emerald robes startling against the drab background.
Oh, Re.
I ducked into the barracks.
Inside, the children held themselves very still, some crowded onto their mothers’ laps, others holding a sibling tight. I immediately thought of pundar, the camouflage technique used by dragonmaster apprentices within Arena, where only stillness and a cape the color of earth protected one from being mauled by a wrathful bull dragon.
Hiding, being silent, these can protect you from the para’s sword,
Fwipi had said.
How appropriate that daronpuis wore the greens and purples of a bull dragon.
Savga was crouched with Oblan and Runami beside Ob lan’s mother, who was nursing her babe to keep him quiet. Savga’s eyes, shiny as flakes of polished obsidian, darted about nervously.
We moved quickly to the center of the barracks, where the women and children had clustered, as if cohesion could somehow protect each individual from harm. Leaning heavily upon me with one arm, holding Agawan against her with the other, Fwipi sat beside Savga. She wrapped a bony arm about the shoulders of her grandchild and placed Agawan on her own lap. Savga buried her face against her greatmother’s long, thin breasts.
“After every Abbassin Shinchiwouk, we dread this.” Fwi pi’s voice was toneless. “Some years our ku goes untouched. Some years we hear that another clan lost a clawful of their kin. Rare it is that no one is visited by poachers after Shinchiwouk. Rare it is that the overseer hasn’t lost many wagers in Arena and doesn’t need to pay off a debt.”
“There’s a new Clutch overseer,” I said faintly. “There are no debts.”
Fwipi stared at me with dead eyes.
What was Ghepp up to?
I could not sit there, blind, while our fates were being decided. I rose to my feet and went to the door, my chest tumescent with panic.
I peered past the door frame. Outside, the arbiyesku’s Great-elder, Yobif, was kowtowing to one of three daron puis in the dusty center of the compound.
Shades of history. Flashes from my youth. I smelled hot metals—copper, iron, bronze, the odors of blood—and re membered seeing my father’s severed tongue, dust coated and ghastly, upon the ground.
Stiff and awkward with age, Yobif rose from where he’d knelt, banging his forehead repeatedly upon the ground before the daronpu’s sandals. Yobif talked quickly, hands clasped, shoulders obsequiously bowed, smile thin and desperate, head bobbing with every second word. The dar onpu he addressed brushed him away with a flick of a bangled wrist.
The paras all wore the nationally recognized uniform of a soldier: boiled leather skirt and plastron, faces corded with sinister cicatrices dyed blue, hair in double topknots that protruded from each forehead like the blunt horns of a young jungle buck.
Alliak must have dragged Piah out of sight. The two were nowhere to be seen. Neither was Myamyo.
A daronpu slid a scroll from a gilded ivory pipe at his waist. The paras withdrew their swords from their sheaths. The blades rasped from their scabbards as if the metal were sighing with expectation, thirsting for blood.
“These named shall now step forth, as Lupini Xxamer Zu requires,” the daronpu boomed, and his voice carried clear into the barracks and I heard breaths held, felt fin gernails dig into palms. “Arbiyesku Xxamer Zu Korshan’s Yenvia, commonly called Runami.”
Screams and wails erupted within the barracks. The daronpu continued his recital outside.
“Arbiyesku Xxamer Zu Rudik’s Rutvia, commonly called Oblan; arbiyesku Xxamer Zu Keau’s Waivia, com monly called Savga—”
I turned slowly, as if swimming through soft lard. Saw six-year-old, cant-eyed Savga with the upturned nose and delicate mole beside her left nostril hurl herself at her greatmother, watched Agawan tumble from Fwipi’s lap to the floor. Savga clung tight to Fwipi’s neck, wailing.
“—and the hatagin komikon and his wai roidan yin,” the daronpu finished, and it took me several moments to un derstand what he’d said.
I was on that list. I would be sold into slavery.
“Come forth now and there will be no bloodshed,” the daronpu said. “For every person that resists, eight shall be punished.”
Fwipi’s snail-colored eyes met mine. She struggled to her feet as around her women ululated and raked their arms in grief, swaying upon their knees, throwing themselves facefirst upon the floor. The summoned girls were surrounded by a tight knot of aunties, cousins, and nieces. Savga, too, was lost from sight amidst a roiling knot of grief-stricken women.
Fwipi stood before me, eyes empty.
“You must stay with them, hey-o. You will be their mother now. You alone can offer them love, shelter them from harm. Know this, Kazonvia.”
Savga’s Tiwana-auntie was wading toward me, her nos trils flared, her slii-blackened lips tight. Savga clung to her, quaking and shrieking.
I would faint; I was sure of it. This could not be happen ing, not now, not here, not after all I’d gone through.
Tiwana-auntie stood before me, women swaying and rocking on either side of her, blood from their raked arms on their cheeks, hair from their heads hanging like black cornsilk between their fingers.
Tiwana-auntie’s rheumy eyes burrowed into mine, eating at my soul, searing my heart.
Slowly, she pulled Savga from her neck.
“No, no! Don’t let them take me. Fwipi-granna, no!”
Savga’s weight in my arms: heavy, sweaty, unwanted. Limbs slight and stiff with fear.
“Mama!”
The shriek in my ear sent my senses reeling.
Fwipi touched Savga’s head, then turned her back on her grandchild, staggered several steps away, and fell, as if hewn down at the knees. She was caught by bloodied hands.
“You are her mother-only now, Kazonvia,” Tiwana auntie rasped. “Remember this.”