Authors: Kate Elliott
Those without breath are without life. Yet she smelled no decay, nothing putrid. No bugs crawled. No vermin had begun to feast. And the vultures had vanished.
Air pulled in her lungs as she sucked in, then exhaled. Her own breath made mist smear the mirror's surface. She was still living, then. She had not been devoured.
She scanned the heavens, but saw no birds, no messengers of any kind from the gods. The sun had shifted higher. Somehow it had become midmorning.
The cloth rippled under her knees as wind pressed through the grass. Both her hands hurt: Blisters bubbled
on her skin. This was demon's cloth, dangerous to mortal kind, and thus doubly valuable. They could actually hope to trade it for what they needed most: life for their tribe. Husbands. A tribe without women cannot be called a tribe: It loses its name and its heart and must be cast to the winds in the manner of a lost spirit. But likewise, in different manner, a tribe without brothers and uncles and sons and husbands cannot hang together; it will unravel, fabric that cannot keep its binding.
“Kiri!” Mariya stood at the crest of a hill, holding the reins of both horses.
Kirya gave the hand signal for her cousin to keep back.
The mantle clasped just below the hollow of the throat. The brooch had a complicated design, a set of interlocking circles molded of silver, and it radiated heat. She dared not touch it with her bare skin. She cut away the sleeves of the dead woman's tunic and wrapped her hands in the cloth. When she touched the clasp with wrapped hands, it did not burn her. Simple cloth, it seemed, was proof against demonic sorcery. She unhooked the clasp and pushed the halved parts to either side, revealing a throat deeply bruised at the hollow.
A drop of blood beaded on the skin. The body shifted. She started back, but it was only the movement of limbs slipping as the lifeless hands that had been resting on the belly of the corpse fell to either side. It was only a stray drop of blood that had been confined by the pressure of the broach.
Her hands still wrapped, she tugged the cloth free, then folded it in lengths and rolled it up, tying it with a strip of cloth. The blisters on her skin rubbed painfully, and her hands, lips, and face stung with the pressure one might feel when she steps too close to fire. Sweat ran cold and hot in waves. But she had captured the demon in the cloth. She had taken a treasure so precious that it could alter the destiny of her tribe.
There was nothing else worth taking. The dead woman
wore a belt of mere hempen rope, a poor woman's garment and in any case very worn, and no rings, no necklace or armband, no anklet. She didn't even carry a mirror, as all proper women did.
Kirya paced a spiral around the corpse, opening the path out sunwise until she found a spot where grass had been trampled. A horse had stood here, hooves leaving their print, grass torn where the animal had grazed. But the hoofprints vanished as abruptly as the vultures had, as though it had taken flight. There was no trail she could follow to pursue so valuable a prize as a stray horse. No doubt the woman's other belongings had been slung on the horse as well. Somehow, she had fallen, and the horse had run away. Perhaps she'd been overtaken by a demon and her breath devoured out of her while she struggled. It was too bad they'd lost the horse.
“Kiri!” Mariya was not patient. Daughter of the tribe's leader, she expected to sit in authority over the tribe in time. This knowledge had made her impulsive and anxious rather than persevering and pragmatic.
Kirya bound the mantle with strips of plain cloth until no part of it could touch skin. She fashioned a loop out of the ends. She whistledâwheet wheet whooâand Mariya released the gelding. He trotted up and nuzzled her. Hands still smarting, she grabbed the saddle and swung on. With the bundle slung from her quiver, she rode back to her waiting cousin.
Kontas was a good boy but absent-minded for all his eleven years. When Kirya had done the morning milking, she had to call for him. He was playing dice with his cousins Stanyo and Danya.
“You should be helping with the chores, not playing. You two boys take the herd off away from the tents to
graze.” He grinned at her, never one to take a scolding to heart; she gave him an affectionate clout on the head. “Pest! Go on! Danya, go help Feder with the turning. I'll send Asya over to help you.”
Danya ran off. The boys chivvied the bleating sheep and goats farther into the grass. Four of the six dray beasts followed with placid amiability, while Nimwit and None-in-the-Skull kept ripping up the grass where they stood, oblivious of the movement around them.
She hooked the stool under her arm. With the leather sack sloshing with warm milk over a shoulder, she trudged through the scatter of tents that marked their tribe. Her cousin Estifio sat cross-legged on a threadbare rug outside his wife's tent, embroidering the sleeve of a man's shirt. He grinned as she paused to admire the intricate line of vines wound around dainty flowers.
“A wedding shirt,” she said. “For Mari?”
“I was thinking for trade. But I'm down to my last needle.”
They looked at each other. Thread they could spin, and plants collect for dye, but they had no blacksmith nor any tribe obliged to offer them the services of a blacksmith.
“Uncle Olig can make you a bone needle,” she said.
He shrugged, his way of passing off disappointment. “His bone needles are very fine, but not fine enough for this delicate work.”
“If you finish it before the confluence ends, you can trade for needles and the best dyestuffs.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
Estifio's wife Yara, together with Uliya Tomanyi, knelt on a mat, pressing felt into the distinctive linked-circles pattern passed down through their tribe for generations. They were talking intently, heads bent together. Yara's son slept in a sling on her back. Uliya's two little girls tied knots beside Asya, Uncle Olig's granddaughter, who was concentrating so hard that she was biting her tongue. Kirya sighed. They were good girls, very serious,
but she could not imagine how Uliya would ever get husbands for her girls, or what Asya could expect as the last descendant of her tent, with no aunts or mother to bargain for her.
Yara and Uliya glanced up to see her, and started as if they'd been caught whispering secrets. What were they plotting?
With a grimace, she hitched the heavy sack a little higher, walking on. Uncle Olig sat on a rug under the awning of what had been his sister's tent, she who had been cousin once removed to Kirya's aunt and mother. Wood shavings littered the rug as he planed the inside length of a shaft of wood.
“Kiri, that gelding kicked Manig again.”
“I don't know why Manig keeps going near him. Is he hurt?”
Not far away, Manig Tomanyi was stewing glue from the deer she and Mariya had killed.
“It was just a warning kick. If that bad-tempered beast had meant to cripple him, he'd have done so. Here, little one, come try this now.”
She set down her burden. Grasping the wood at the center, she set one tip on the ground and leaned into it as the old man examined the way the lower limb bent.
“Would you take off more wood?” he asked her.
She flipped the bow and leaned on the other end. “This end is stiffer. Who is the bow for?”
“Asya is ready for a bow with more draw. That one thereâ” He pointed toward a composite bow braced into shape and curing.
“Yes, I know,” she said with a laugh. “Mine will be ready in a few months.”
He smiled. “A good bow demands patience.”
“Let me get this to the churn and I'll come back,” she said to the old man, handing back the stave.
Little Danya was twisting the rope that turned the drill, and Feder the Cripple bent over the wood he was shaping into a bowl, whistling in time to the rhythmic
whoosh whoosh of the turning. He could sing, too, and his ancient winged kur with its horse head, stylized wings along the neck, and two strings sat in its place of honor in the small wheeled cart on which he got around. He had been a fighter before the incident that had crippled him; his saber rode in a sling alongside the precious kur.
He didn't look up as she passed. He didn't need to. “Ei, ei, Kiri! Here's a tune for you today. I can hear it coming out of your ears!” He swung into a new tune. With a smirk far too knowing for her tender age, Danya altered the pace of her twisting to match the words. “ âWho is that handsome youth walking through camp? His sister is looking at me, but he pretends not to see me.' ”
Her ears burned.
Orphan was scraping the last hide, stripped to the waist, skin gleaming. He was a very good-looking youth, a few years older than Kirya and Mariya, but of course to even think of an orphaned lad who did servant's work was impossible.
“ âWhy is that handsome youth hanging around camp? His sister brings cheese and boiled meat, but he pretends not to see me.' ”
Orphan had showed up at the edge of camp about two years ago, silent and empty-handed, and at first they hadn't been sure if he was a demon because although he was black-haired and dark-complexioned like Mari, he had twisty eyes, pulled at the ends as though drawn like a bow, a sure sign of demon blood. But he spoke their language in the same way they did, and he asked what work he could do in exchange for a bit of food and worked so hard day after day and month after month that eventually they simply accepted that he belonged to them now. After all, what other tribe was desperate enough to take in an orphan?
“ âWhy do the flowers bloom so, everywhere around camp? If I offer the flowers at the entrance to his sister's tent, will he pretend not to see me?' ”
Orphan glanced at her, and away at once, since it wasn't proper for any man not related by blood to stare at a woman. She forced her gaze away from the rippling muscles of his back and swung around behind her aunt's big tent. Feder's song faded to whistling.
Her aunt was weaving in the shade of the awning. Seeing Kirya, she set down her shuttle. “There you are, Kiri. Take that milk to Edina. Then you and Mari take an offering to the holy Singer's tent and get his blessing for the marriage. Then go round to see if the Oliski tribe has come in. I want to talk to Mother Oliski as soon as she is ready to negotiate.”
“Yes, Aunt. Can I take the little ones? They'd like to see all the different people.”
“There'll be time for that later.”
“What about just Kontas, then? He's old enough toâ”
“No. I don't want them underfoot to get in your way or say the wrong thing. We need the blessing of the Singer if we hope for a marriage.”
Mariya had her head down, polishing the silver necklaces, bracelets, and headpieces that made up the riches of the tent.
“The cloth I found might be a powerful gift, Aunt. We can expect something better than the Oliski tribe's castoffs.”
“Did I ask for your opinion, Kirya?”
“No, Aunt, you did not.”
“Then do as I say.”
“Yes, Aunt.”
Beyond the shelter of the awning, her youngest aunt, Edina, was hanging strips of meat to dry in the sun, singing the first verse of a child's counting song over and over because it was the only verse she knew. The churn had already been set up for the sheep's milk. Kirya poured the milk into the churn, savoring the rich aroma. She unhooked the ladle from the churn and dipped out a portion for herself. After drinking it down, she licked her lips.
Wind sighed in the canvas of the tent, inhaling and exhaling. She carried a ladleful of milk into the tent.
Mother lay on her side, propped on pillows, but she was asleep. The illness had ravaged her, a nest of agony inside her bones. She so rarely fell into a true sleep that Kiri couldn't bear to wake her even for a sip of strengthening milk.
Back outside, Mariya had gathered up a leather bag with the best haunch of meat inside, as well as a length of backstrap sinew suitable for presentation to the holy one. Defiantly, she wore the beaded nets, and she gave Kirya a strong stare to warn her not to say anything, so Kirya said nothing, just slung the bag along her shoulders and headed out toward the distant smoke of gathered fires. Mari hurried along behind.
In any confluence, tribes sited their camps according to an unspoken order. A tribe as weak and poor as theirs had to set up their tents on the fringe of the confluence grounds, well away from the well-connected and rich tribes around which the councils and settlements and marriage offers would pool. They had to tramp through tall grass for quite a ways, passing well-guarded herds of sheep and horses, before the sprawl of the major encampments came into view, and then they had to trudge through the lesser granddaughter tribes and the tribes losing position owing to raids or famine in their herds and inward to the positions of greater importance.
Each tribe had roped off the ground it claimed for its own, leaving wide strips of grass separating camps. They circled in spiral-wise, to get a good look at the banners and rugs and young men of the many tribes assembled so far. There were plenty of banners, and beautiful rugs, and attractive young men laughing and joking and embroidering and practicing with their sabers and whips. Showing off, as young men did in such company.
Of the Vidrini tribe they saw no trace.
Young men kept their eyes lowered as the two girls passed, but masculine gazes brushed them, and heads
turned after they had gone by to track their passage. Mariya had that effect on men. Kirya smiled wryly, aware that she was like a stone point placed next to an iron-tipped arrow: serviceable enough, but not the first thing you would reach for.
Two Singers had traveled to this confluence, their presence marked by tall poles wound with streamers. They dared not approach the Sakhalin tribe, whose head-woman's tent stood at the center of the huge encampment. The least of the Sakhalin servants might count herself higher than the Moroshya headwoman. But the Singer out of the Konomin tribe had a humbler station, and anyway they had made offerings to him before and gotten blessings from the holy man for two of their arrows. He was old, no longer in the full flush of his power, and because all of his sisters were dead, he lived in the tent of a niece, its awning visible from here.