She reached out, placing a sympathetic hand on his arm, concern mirrored in her eyes. “Panther, that doesn’t mean you don’t have a clan. It was a long time ago. You could go back, you know. A family doesn’t cease to exist just because of a mistake made when you were a young man.”
He patted her hand. “Precious Rosebud, how naive you are. That angry youth died that night. He turned his back on his world and went out to find a better one. Oh, I tried, believe me, I did. My travels took me a great many places. I rose among the highest, and fell to the lowest, and look as I might, I found people to be the same every place I went. Some might be a little meaner than others, some braver, others happier, but as a whole, people everywhere are people. We are indeed the children of Okeus, all wretchedly flawed and noble at the same time.” He chuckled. “Even when we’re at our best. Which isn’t often.” “Is that why you never married? Because you were a man without a family, without relatives? Would no one make a place for such a man?”
“Hah! Gain enough fame, Rosebud, acquire enough wealth and influence, and people will forgive you anything. They see only the gauds of a War Chief, not the man beneath the feathers and copper. But a man ought to be able to stomach himself. I awakened one morning with the knowledge that what I had become was a loathsome monster. In the end, the only person I betrayed was myself.”
“You still didn’t answer my question. You’re very good at that, you know. Avoiding answering.” She leaned over, checked the acorn bread with a fingertip. “Why didn’t you marry? You hinted that you could have if you’d wanted, that people would have overlooked your being kin less
Once again her patient gaze defeated him. “I loved a woman. I couldn’t have her. She was promised to another. Unlike Red Knot and High Fox, I didn’t have the courage to run off with her.”
He glanced down at his callused old hands, knotty with swollen joints and flaccid skin. “I could never see beyond her. No other woman would do. She became, well, an obsession. People with obsessions are never quite sane, not whole, like a bird flying with only one wing. In the end, they tend to fall out of the air.”
She nodded. “So this affair with Red Knot is more than just a simple puzzle to you, isn’t it? It’s still part of your obsession.” She gave him a measuring glance. “Does Nine Killer know?”
He shook his head, eyes still on his wrinkled hands. “Sometimes I think Ohona sent Sun Conch to me on purpose. If I can solve this thing, make sense of it, perhaps I can lay my obsession to the side for once.”
“And maybe it will blind you. Have you thought of that?”
“Oh, yes, I have, Rosebud. If anything, it has made me more cautious in dealing with Red Knot’s death.”
“I see.”
He finally met her eyes. “I would appreciate it if you would keep this conversation between the two of us. There are already enough rumors passing from lip to lip. What I have just said is because of the kindness you have shown me. I thought I owed you an explanation.”
“I will keep your confidence, Panther.” She glanced cautiously at Sun Conch, still obliviously twining her cordage. “And the name of your clan?”
He shook his head wearily. “They are dead, Rosebud. In reality, if not in fact. No, I’ll suffer your belief that I am a pariah rather than allow that name to cross my lips again.”
“As you wish,” she said in clipped tones.
He wondered why her words stung, and why the open wound in his soul hadn’t closed, even after all these years.
Twenty-four
Snow fell from the sky in big fluffy flakes as Panther walked across the plaza, Sun Conch at his heels. The cold nipped at Panther’s bones. The snow fell so thickly it coated his shoulders, and whitened his already gray hair. Each step crunched underfoot.
Around him, the long houses looked like humped whales, their arched roofs blanketed in white. The sooty thatch around the smoke holes looked as if the monsters puffed blue wreaths of smoke through their blowholes.
“I have my doubts about this, Elder,” Sun Conch said uneasily.
“It was inevitable,” Panther confided. “The biggest surprise is that the summons was this long in coming.”
“I still don’t like it. Why now? Why in the Weroansqua’s Great House? It doesn’t seem right.”
“Because there is no other place, Sun Conch. This meeting must occur where authority can be demonstrated. Given what’s between us, we must meet in a setting that at least hints of equality.”
Panther paused outside the Weroansqua’s door flap long enough to knock off most of the snow, and bent down to duck into the warm, smoky interior.