also walked in that direction. She looked at Ouis who sat on his mother’s lap. “Rain, if I can’t go outside, may I explore your longhouse? Since I’ll be living in it?”
Permission given, Maharai strolled toward the corridor on the left. I will explore one corridor, she told herself, then I’ll return to the gathering room, and walk down the other. The smell of pharma and death grew stronger. She entered a large room where warriors on blood-stained sleeping mats stared unblinking at the ceiling. She had seen death before and understood that the warriors were preparing to die so she smiled down at them, and stroked or kissed their foreheads. In the next room, a smaller one, a young warrior lay half-awake, one of his arms missing.
“You have only one arm?” she asked him in the Peacock language.
Surprisingly, he understood her. “Psal removed it.”
She kissed his cheek. “One arm is as good as two if you practice well. Don’t worry.”
He smiled and she rose, bade him goodbye, and continued walking down the passageway.
With the exceptions of Netophah’s and the king’s chamber, the Wheel Clan used painted or embossed curtained screens instead of doors. Behind one of screens, Maharai heard Psal’s voice. Tip-toeing toward it, she peered over it into a room where metals, stones, gems, tools, bottles, clay jars, and parchments cluttered shelves and baskets. Inside were the two studiers she had seen earlier. Psal was lying with his back on a wheeled mat, his dagger on the ground by his side. His trousers were pulled up to his knee and he was rubbing his leg, a strange shriveled thing. The pale girlish studier stood in front of a window looking out at the darkening night. They turned to her as she entered and exchanged surprised glances.
“Girlie, are you lost?” Psal asked in the Peacock language.
“Only little children get lost. Does your leg hurt?”
He picked up his dagger and sheathed it. “Girlie, I understand that you Peacocks are an inquisitive people, but—”
As he struggled to get up, she held her hand over his unruly black curls and ran her fingers through them until he pushed her hand away. The other studier, whose name she couldn’t remember, held an open clay container which smelled like the odor that lingered around Psal.
“We’re brother and sister now,” she said to Psal. “Yes, yes, we are! You and I and Ouis and Netophah. We’re brothers and sisters.”
The boys glanced at each other, and the pale studier approached Psal with the cup.
She examined the pale studier. “I suppose you’re our brother as well, since you’re the king’s adopted son. What did they call you?”
“Ephan.”
“Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Ephan!”
They looked at her in silence, and she suspected they considered her a nuisance. She grabbed the clay cup from Ephan and looked inside it. “Should I rub my brother’s leg with this?”
“It’s Emon bark soup,” Ephan said.
Maharai held the cup before Psal’s face. “Drink it all up. Now!”
Psal’s staff was leaning against a window. She pressed the cup into Psal’s hand then walked toward the staff and lifted it. “Oh, how heavy! And…Peacock markings! It says here…the great Chief Tsbosso gave it to you. I’ve heard of him. Old Jion says he’s our kinsman. Well, actually, our kinsman’s kinsman’s kinsman’s kinsman.” She bent toward him, whispered slyly. “We aren’t supposed to like him, though. Some ancient grudge or other.”
Ephan reached for the walking stick, but instead, she swung it like a club, dashing across the room battling an invisible warrior and overturning the baskets and jars in her path. After an extensive battle with the unseen-yet-now-conquered warrior, she said to Psal, “Old Jion says our warriors take herbs to make them lose their minds when they fight. It must be wonderful to lose one’s mind and fight with all one’s heart, recklessly, cruelly.” Again, she swung the staff. This time much too near Psal’s head. “Is that what that is? A brew to make one cruel? Old Jion says the Wheel Clan has become a victim of its own concoctions. Is that true?”
Psal stood up. Immediately she stood at his side, her arm around his waist. “If you used your staff, you wouldn’t be in such pain. Your staff must carry you, not you it.” She pointed to the concoction in his hand. “I will not move until you drink.”
He quickly finished the drink, then pushed her toward the door. “Leave now.”
She did not leave. She watched as he put on a pair of strange-looking boots. “Where is your hospitality?” she asked. “Show your sister your granaries and your animals. Everything! I wish to see everything.”
Ephan said something in the Wheel Clan tongue and Psal nodded. Maharai walked into the hallway and peeked into the adjoining room. It contained twelve large poles like lamp stands.
“Ah!” she said, “This is what a keening room should look like! Old Jion always told me…but to see the crystals all lit! What new things this day brings!”
“Girlie,” Psal said, rising. “We have.…”
“Ah, yes! I know! You have to join the warriors. Let them wait. The third moon is not yet high. Or will you stay here to keen the women? But Old Jion says Wheel Clan women can keen towers without men.” She grasped his hand tightly, looked into his eyes the way she always did whenever she wanted something from her doting grandfather, smiled. She studied Psal’s face; Ephan’s agitated sighing proved she had caught Psal’s will and could bend it however she wished. I will be able to command Ephan soon enough.
“Yes,” Psal said. “I suppose the moon is not yet high.”
“Tell me about keening, then.”
“Keening involves much.” Psal began explaining keening in so leisurely and intricate manner that Ephan started pacing.
“Ephan,” Maharai said, “Adopted Brother. Don’t be so worried. The feast will wait. There will be boar meat and fruits for all.”
Ephan laughed.
“One has to know how to shape the crystals,” Psal said, “to know their symmetries and counterparts, the angles and positions of the sockets, the carats, how to make different tones, and how to receive music. It isn’t a thing easily learned.”
“I’d like to enter. May I?” Maharai asked, then stepped into the keening room.
Psal followed after her and pointed toward the tower base. “That’s our tower. Inside are the twelve keening trees. The ones outside are spares. For longhouses we encounter. They like to be lit, too. Just to be involved. Sometimes they help us perform very complicated keens.”
“Even from here?”
“Oh, they don’t mind. They’re near to the tower, even in here. They know how cramped it gets under the tower stairs with all those branches, trees, crystals, and parchments inside. But when there’s a council meeting, we return them inside to the base of the tower.”
Ephan was laughing and looking at Psal with his mouth opened.
“Don’t
