“On our way here, we passed a grove with a few cherries still clinging to the branches. We grabbed as many as we could before we had to…”
Conversations broke out as people cleared a path through the longhouse for Kwahseti and Gwinodje, who hurried past without a word to anyone, heading straight as arrows for Zateri’s chamber in the center of the Wolf longhouse. Wind-blown gray hair spiked up around Kwahseti’s face. Gwinodje looked very short and thin striding beside her. Her heart-shaped face had reddened in the cold air as she’d crossed the plaza. Both wore half-frightened expressions.
When they reached Zateri’s fire, Kwahseti shoved gray locks away from her catlike nose, and eyed Hikatoo severely. “Who sent you?”
Hikatoo bowed to her. “Matrons Yi and Inawa.”
Suspiciously Gwinodje asked, “You are not Wolf Clan. Why would they send you?”
Hikatoo’s boyish face fell into stern lines. He spread his feet. “Matrons Yi and Inawa wish you to know that they have found witnesses.” He took a deep breath and calmly met each of their gazes in turn, before continuing, “And I am one of them.”
Twenty-five
Dusk came as a mournful solace to the long day. Tired, her headache pounding, Baji listened to the meltwater pouring from the roof of the rockshelter where they’d made camp. It drummed outside, sounding like the clattering hooves of panicked white-tailed deer.
Baji propped herself on her elbows in the warm nest of blankets, and her long hair scattered like black silk over Sky Messenger’s chest and arm.
“I think Trade is the answer,” Sky Messenger said. He had his fingers laced beneath his head. His eyes focused on the soot that blackened the roof above them. Many campfires had burned in this shelter, though they had not built one. In the heart of Hills country, they couldn’t risk being seen. “Trade is peace.”
“Trade?” Baji asked. “Why?”
The rockshelter stretched two body-lengths across and a single body-length wide, but rose five body-lengths over their heads. Like a dark gray eye-socket, it seemed to peer out into the densely forested hollow that surrounded them. Leafless cottonwoods and quaking aspens crowded near the mouth of the rockshelter. The location was, for the most part, windless. As a result, old autumn leaves clustered at the bases of the trees, contrasting sharply with the white bark of the aspens. The musty scent of moldering vegetation seemed concentrated in the rockshelter.
“The most important reason is that it’s the answer to food shortages. If one village has a good summer and stockpiles lots of crops, it will be beneficial for them to be able to Trade that surplus for other goods they need—say Spirit plants, buffalohides from the west, salt, dried seafood, pots.”
Baji paused as she thought about it. Where he lay at the foot of their blankets, Gitchi shifted to prop his white muzzle on his forepaws. His yellow eyes fixed intently on the world outside, concentrating on seeing through the waterfall of runoff and beyond the shining rivulets that poured down the hillside into the aspens.
“That sounds good, but the truth is no one will be willing to Trade food unless they are certain they’re safe. It’s the grouse and the egg. Which comes first? Peace or Trade? We all hoard food because we expect to be raided. If we keep our surpluses hidden in a variety of locations, we know we can still feed our peoples through the winter even if half is stolen.”
As the brightest campfires of the dead appeared in the sky outside, their gleam played through the waterfalls and flickered over the rockshelter like cast handfuls of silver dust. Sky Messenger turned his head to look up at her, and his round face bleached to pale gray. The flicker danced in his short black hair.
“Baji, we can’t go on like this. You know we can’t. We’re all starving.”
“Not all of us. This winter, the Flint People have food.”
“But only because you were ravaged by the plague that decimated your country. If half your population hadn’t perished, you’d be just as desperate for food as everyone else.”
“True.”
“We are all weakening. Even the Hills People.” His wide mouth tensed. She could see his teeth grinding beneath the thin veneer of his cheek. “Every time Atotarho wipes out a village and enslaves the women and children, it compounds his problems. Next year there will be one less village growing food he can steal, and more slaves mean more mouths to feed.”
“That’s not how he thinks of it. To him more women and children mean more people to cultivate, plant, and harvest the crops—and more warriors to guard the Hills nation.”
Gray mist rolled in the low places outside, seeping down the hills toward the dark hollows below. She could just barely see the starlike points of enemy villages visible through the dense weave of trees.