When Kwahseti and Gwinodje stopped before them, Adusha bowed and remained down for a long time before she straightened to face them. In a soft voice, she said, “I offer my deepest condolence for your recent losses, matrons. Let me tell you that the Bear Clan requested this meeting. We beg that you hear what we have to say.”
“We will hear you, Adusha. Please follow Matron Gwinodje to the council house.” She extended a hand toward the round log structure squatting to the left of the plaza along the eastern wall.
Adusha looked at the hundreds of people crowding the plaza, and swallowed hard at the hatred that contorted her relatives’ faces. Canassatego Village had just finished burying its dead. Their hearts were raw. They had no love for these women who, as members of the Ruling Council of the Old People of the Hills, had undoubtedly given the orders for the attack that killed their loved ones.
Kwahseti walked to Yi’s side and gestured for her to follow Adusha and Gwinodje. Yi complied.
As they walked, Yi spoke in a quiet voice, for Kwahseti’s ears alone, “Where is Matron Zateri?”
“High Matron Zateri is not available today.”
Yi gave her a look that would have frozen lava. “Are you telling me that she refuses to meet with us? That is unaccept—”
“You have no rights here, Yi. None at all. If our High Matron deems it unnecessary to—”
“The former Bear Clan High Matron is dead.”
Kwahseti stopped dead in her tracks to stare wide-eyed at Yi. “Dead?”
Yi glanced around, studying the inquisitive faces of the people crowding in around them. “Let’s keep walking. There may be Bear Clan members standing close. They need to hear this from their own clan. I just wanted you to know that I, too, keep my promises. I gave you my oath that I would do what I could to help you.”
Kwahseti stared dumbly at Yi, not certain what to say. Kelek is dead? She felt herself deflating like a water bag being emptied.
In a friendly gesture, Yi slipped her arm through Kwahseti’s, and they continued toward the council house as though close companions of many trials—which they had been until recently.
Blood pounded in Kwahseti’s ears. “How did it happen?”
Yi murmured, “The Bear Clan has honor. We brought forward the witnesses. When they grasped the problem, they took care of it.”
“Because they wished to avoid a blood feud with the Wolf Clan?”
Kwahseti stood one head taller than Yi. When Yi tilted her head to look up at Kwahseti, the bruised crescents beneath her dark eyes shown purple. She’d endured many sleepless nights of late. “No one wanted it to come to that, least of all our clan.”
As they rounded the curve of the council house and the leather door curtain came into view, Kwahseti asked, “So, she’s dead. What now?”
Yi’s head waffled. “That remains to be seen. Are you of my lineage, or have you founded your own lineage, as well as your own nation?”
Kwahseti’s chest moved with a low disbelieving laugh. She walked ahead, leaving Yi to catch up with her. Four guards stood outside the entry, including War Chief Waswanosh. She dipped her head to him, drew the entry curtain aside, and held it back while Yi entered the council house. Yi exchanged a potent glance with her before she stepped inside.
Kwahseti turned to Waswanosh. “For the moment, this is a closed council meeting. Let no one enter without permission from a member of the Ruling Council.”
“Of course, Matron.”
Kwahseti let the curtain fall closed behind her. As it swayed, dawn light flashed through the council house, illuminating the three circles of benches around the central fire, and the fifty council members seated upon them. Yi had not waited for her. She’d resolutely marched down the central aisle alone and gone to stand beside Gwinodje and Adusha in the orange gleam of the flames. They made an interesting trio. Gwinodje’s slender frame looked childlike standing stiffly between the two taller women. Gwinodje and Adusha both had coal black hair that almost disappeared in the darkness, while the silver threads in Yi’s hair glittered like sunlit webs.
Kwahseti silently walked forward to take her place on the first ring of benches with the other elders from Riverbank Village. Chief Riverbank sat to her right. He had seen fifty-four summers. Wispy white hair clung to his freckled scalp. He was a large man, larger than life, black-eyed, ominous, and slow-talking, he’d lost his entire family in last moon’s plague, then he’d been forced to abandon his village, leaving it to be burned to the ground. Yet he looked at her with clear calm eyes, ready for anything. Over the past five summers, since Kwahseti had become the Village Matron, she had come to appreciate him greatly. He would speak his heart. Always his heart. He engaged in neither guile nor fits of temper.