getting a new father?”
“And you will live among us,” Lan added.
Quick marriages were commonplace—especially in night-tossed longhouses—when there was no certainty of longhouses meeting again. Ktwala’s sudden marriage didn’t surprise Maharai. Her trust in the Wheel Clan had grown since morning, and she was glad the Wheel Clan king was taking Ouis and her along. Still, she didn’t want to be without the rest of her sisters. “Are any of my kinswomen coming with us?” she asked Lan. “Will I see my grandfather again?”
“Yes,” Lan said. “Other women will come with you.”
“I saw the way your eyes ate up Tolika. Tolika is coming as well? Gidea won’t like that.”
“They will not be far from each other,” he said. “Both longhouses will be bound together.”
Maharai clapped her hand. “You’re a very organized people,” she said to Lan.
“More than you know,” he answered and walked outside. “Come.”
She called for the other boys to come but Netophah rested his hands gently on her shoulder, warm hands wet with the blood of fish he had recently hooked. “The girls come our longhouse, meet our women. The boys, with our warriors, the men’s feast. Travel tonight, all men. Travel tonight, all women. Tomorrow all together, meet again.”
“Ah!” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow? And don’t worry. You’ll learn our language soon now that you’re my brother. I’ll teach you.”
They stepped outside the cave under a sky that had gone blue-gray and she walked with Lan toward the Wheel Clan longhouse, admiring its watchtower and its ramparts encircling the longhouse watchtower.
* * * *
Inside the gathering room of the royal longhouse, the Iden and Wheel Clan women feasted. The Iden longhouse always smelled of animal dung and urine, but blood, pharma, sweat, and the odor of corpses pervaded the Nahas longhouse. Even the aroma of sizzling hot spices, fermented meats, honey beverages could not blow away the odor of death. Old Jion had told her of the great Peacock chief’s longhouse, a chief named Tsbosso, whose longhouse had ebony carvings and walls covered with animal skin. She couldn’t imagine it being any lovelier than the interior of a Wheel Clan longhouse, the home of a great king who was to become her father. She placed Eala in her mother’s lap and looked around the gathering room in amazement.
Jion had called the Wheel Clan “the masters of the lathe.” But Maharai had never imagined the perfection and charm that now shone in the Nahas longhouse. The low-lying steps near the hearth on which the women sat: the pegs, grooves, and carvings of decorative bone, ivory, wood, and polished crystal placed neatly in shelves; the woolen hangings; etched trays; wheeled toys; and the tiny swinging cots in which the Wheel Clan babies slept so peacefully.
Lan introduced her to an older woman with long, graying red hair. The woman was sitting beside Ktwala and all the other women surrounded them. “Her name is Donie. We call her ‘Rain,’ in our language. She is much-honored among us.” Lan pointed to a woman with crescent-shaped eyes sitting to Rain’s right. She seemed about the same age of Gidea. “That is Satima, a Waymaker foundling married into our clan. She speaks your language. She will also help you understand our clan.”
“Your men don’t look like your women,” Maharai observed. “Did you steal all these women? And where are your old mothers, and your old fathers? Why is Rain the only old one I see? Does the Wheel Clan kill their old ones to preserve food?”
Lan blinked. “Are you serious?”
“I am.”
“These women all married into our clan at the beginning of the war. As for the old ones, they live in steward longhouses far from trouble.”
“They’re sent away from their home longhouses?”
He squeezed her shoulder gently. “Maharai, I have duties to attend to. Rain will explain all.” He bowed then walked down the corridor to the left.
The old woman had a pale face and kind green eyes. I like her, Maharai thought. But why is this particular old one still here? Shouldn’t she have been sent away like the others? But perhaps she’s the king’s mother and he did not wish to send away his mother.
* * * *
Psal was waiting for his patient—a young warrior rescued from the Orian longhouse—to wake from pharma-induced sleep when Lan entered.
“Firstborn,” Lan said, “the king demands you and Ephan battle by my side.”
“Am I a warrior?” Psal asked. “No, I am not. I will not. The king cannot insist that studiers battle.” A small hearth had been built into the sick rooms as well and now Psal lay his surgical knife on the rectangular white stone in the middle of the red coals. The blood on the knife sizzled away. “Am I—a studier—to harm others? No! I will not do it.”
“A chief should learn to harm others, Firstborn.”
“Take my part, Lan, or cease speaking with me.”
Lan did not immediately answer. He stood near the Studier’s Hearth, staring at the embers. Then, like the glowing stone, his face lit up. “Firstborn, I have an idea. Can you not use the ancient covenant to protect this people?”
Psal grimaced. The Principles always gave him a headache. The Master of the Wintersea had given his students so many possible interpretations of the Creator’s Principles of Reconciliation that Psal hardly knew what they meant. The fact that the spiritual laws hadn’t allowed for a Firstborn not being heir of a clan didn’t exactly make him respect them. “There is nothing in the seven principles about studiers learning to kill.”
“Doesn’t it declare that if a Firstborn marries into a clan, the clan cannot be harmed?”
Lan’s interpretation of the Principles was always exasperatingly muddled. And now—studier’s son that he was—he was reciting them. They rolled from his tongue like a scroll:
To those who would be holy, hear the laws of the Creator:
Let not Samat usurp your pleasures and your sorrows. Guard the doors of your heart against his wiles. Do not allow him to overtake your senses or rule your mind. The Malevolent One lies near and far, in small matters and in large. He roams the world like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Therefore, hear the Creator’s laws and do them:
If you find a night-tossed child, you must by no means leave it bereft but you will take the child into your home and rear it as one of your sons and daughters. You shall in no wise allow Samat to allow you to ignore the poor and the outcast. If you find a foundling marked as outcast, feed him and do not search out the nature of his crimes. Nevertheless, let him not enter your longhouse that his guilt does not defile you. If you meet the poor, you shall give to them all they ask of you, whether thing living or non-living, whether thing tangible or intangible. For the Creator’s eye is upon the orphan and the outcast, and the poor are Children of the Creator as you are;
If you fight your enemy and he falls weak at your feet, you shall in no wise leave him bound at nightfall, no not to living, dead, or non-living thing. You shall in no wise allow Samat to lead you to sin. You shall in any case provide your enemy shelter and leave his feet, torso, and hands unbound.
