“Oh, I forgot. Here. Catch.” He tossed her the cornmeal bag, then the onions, dried slices of pumpkin, and a bag of sunflower seeds. “Is there anything else you want?”
“Yes. My pack. I don’t trust you with it.”
Sparrow handed it around the fire. “The corn cakes are gone, Dust. I’m no longer a threat.”
Blue Raven looked up. “I hope I am not responsible for that. I ate two on the trail today.”
“No,” Dust Moon said with a shake of her head, and her voice changed, growing more menacing. “The things you are responsible for are far graver, Walksalong Headman.”
Blue Raven saw her expression, and his smile faded. He cut off the rabbit’s right hind leg and began stripping the meat from it, letting the muscles drop into the cook pot. “What things, Matron? Perhaps if we discuss your accusations, we can come to some—”
“I doubt it. You and your people are beyond my understanding.” Dust Moon tossed her long gray braid over her shoulder, then drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around them. As darkness covered the forest, the temperature plummeted. She could already see her breath.
Blue Raven finished the last rabbit leg, added it to the stewpot, and set the stripped bones aside.
“Hand me the pot.”
“Yes, of course.” Blue Raven gave it to her, and said, “I realize there are many differences between our peoples, Matron, but we are all the children of Falling Woman. We agree upon that. Let us begin there.”
Dust lifted a brow. A peacemaker. Beware, old woman.
She dumped the rest of the onions and pumpkins into the pot, then added half the remaining sunflower seeds, and thrust the pot at Sparrow. “Make yourself useful. Pour some water into this, and into the teapot, and hang them on their tripods over the flames.”
Sparrow lifted both fists and shook them, then grabbed for the pot before she could do anything dangerous with it. He untied his water bag from his belt, and began filling the pot, but he didn’t quite succeed in smothering his smile.
She glowered at him, but spoke to Blue Raven. “Very well. We’ll begin there, Headman. How could you steal one of Falling Woman’s chosen people, a Power child—. and a relative of yours, since we are all descended from Falling Woman—and then decide to kill him?”
Blue Raven pulled his elk hide more securely over his shoulders. Two owls serenaded each other across the valley, their calls lilting on the cold breeze. He solemnly responded, “Matron, three people in my village died after the arrival of the False Face Child.”
Dust didn’t respond. She contemplated the tight line of the man’s jaw. “What happened to them?”
“Truly? I do not know.” Blue Raven picked up a stick from the woodpile and tapped it on the ground. “Rumbler said he’d killed them, but I—”
“How?”
“Let the man finish, Dust,” Sparrow said, and lounged back on his elbows. White hair spread around his shoulders like a luminous cape.
She repeated, “How?”
Blue Raven said, “I don’t think the boy did it, Matron. The first to die, Matron White Kit, had seen almost seventy winters. The other two, both warriors, had just returned home from battle.”
“So White Kit may have died from old age,” she said, “and you think the other two died from injuries they took while murdering Rumbler’s family?”
He laid his stick across his knees and frowned at it. “I thought it possible. Unfortunately, only one other person in the village agreed with me.”
Dust’s heart twinged. “Little Wren?”
He nodded. “At the village council meeting, when everyone else was shouting for death, she cast her voice for life.”
“Of course she did,” Dust said softly.
A frigid gust of wind blasted their camp, and Blue Raven pulled his elk hide up over his head, holding it closed beneath his chin. Firelight danced through the brown and golden hairs framing his face. “I pleaded with the matrons for leniency, but by that time terror had swallowed their senses; my words might have never been.”
“Your niece is a brave girl, Blue Raven,” Sparrow said and stirred the cook pot. The aromas of rabbit and pumpkin circled their heads. “I pray your people don’t kill her for it.”
Blue Raven clenched the stick. “They will have to kill me first, Silver Sparrow.”
“As I understand it, Headman,”—the lines around Dust Moon’s eyes crinkled as she smiled—“that’s precisely what your relatives have in mind.”
Elk Ivory twirled an oak twig in her fingers, watching Acorn stride up the trail toward her. Scattered triangles of light shone on his drawn face. They had dragged their war canoes ashore at the place where Blue Raven’s tracks joined the two strangers. That had been two days ago. They hadn’t moved since.