People of the Owl(101)

“We agree.” He paused. “You can stop seeing Three Stomachs without regret? This thing between you, it hasn’t gone to the heart yet, has it?”

She laughed at that. “No, Uncle. It hasn’t gone to the heart. I don’t mind locking hips with him, but I would hate to be married to him. I think he only has a single thought in a day, and not a very interesting one at that.”

“Good. He shouldn’t be much of a problem. He has had affairs before and never made a pest of himself afterward. If you gently tell him that you can’t see him anymore, he should just shrug and walk away.”

“Indeed, Uncle? You know a lot about him, then?”

Mud Stalker chuckled. “Let’s just say that he has proven useful when it came to placing women in compromising positions. Depending upon the woman, and depending upon the nature of her indiscretion, a great deal of leverage can be acquired by the party who happens to ‘stumble’ over them in the act. Politics is partly flexibility, partly being smart, and partly leverage.”

“I will remember that.”

“Good.” He made a smacking with his lips. “A runner went to Wing Heart tonight from Jaguar Hide asking for the Owl Clan’s support in safe passage to Sun Town. What one of our kinsmen overheard at the canoe landing was that Jaguar Hide wants to make peace between our peoples. He evidently still thinks that Owl Clan is preeminent.”

She already guessed where this was headed. “You want me to find out what this is really all about?”

“I do. And I want to know if it is to our advantage to let Owl Clan make this peace, or whether we can use this as an opportunity to cut yet another support out from under them.”

“Such as?”

“Such as allowing Elder Wing Heart to promise safe passage, then ambushing Jaguar Hide on his way home.” He made a gesture. “Not that we would have to do it, mind you. Deep Hunter would have more than a passing interest in bringing that Swamp Panther cutthroat to justice.”

She nodded. “I see.” A hesitation. “My husband and I don’t talk, you know.”

“That is another reason for interrupting your affair with Three Stomachs. At least until the whispers dry up. We don’t want him to find out. If he does, he could become completely alienated, and, as much as I would love to humiliate him and Owl Clan, it is a bit soon for such a revelation.”

She glanced at him. The notion of taking Three Stomachs to her bed had been bothersome in the beginning. What if she did conceive? And what if the child were stillborn? Given the man’s incredible potency, she had convinced herself that it had been a combination of bad luck and his wife’s infertility that had led to the five dead infants his wife had delivered, but what if it wasn’t? That she hadn’t caught in three moons was starting to worry her—as were the cramps during the weeks of her heightened fertility.

That thought having lodged between her souls, she cocked her jaw. Just how deep did Mud Stalker’s hatred run? Deep enough to place his own kin at risk? She shook her head, unwilling even to consider that the uncle she had known and looked up to all of her life could even contemplate such a thing. No, he was acting in the clan’s best interest—and in hers and her sister’s.

Leadership depends on these kinds of things. The words lingered in her thoughts. A leader cannot be like the rest of the people. More is demanded of him. To be a leader means giving up part of yourself for the rest of your clan.

She had taken those adages into her souls as her infant body had taken her mother’s milk. With the exception of a few times as an adolescent girl lost in daydreams, she had never questioned it. Now she found herself a confidante of the Speaker, her mother in line to be named clan Elder, and married to the Speaker of Owl Clan, dolt though her husband might be.

I am in the center of my clan’s leadership.

“You have grown silent,” her uncle noted.

“Thinking about what it means to be a leader, Uncle. About the things we have to do. Until now I have never really understood the words I have heard all of my life. About a leader’s responsibility to her people.”

“And now that you understand?”

“It is a terrible burden, Uncle.”

“Yes?”

“One I will carry.” She felt a tingle in her loins, and tensed against a cramp that didn’t intensify. “I will see what I can learn from Salamander about Jaguar Hide’s purposes in coming here.”

“Good. I am so proud of you, Niece. So very proud.” He made a gesture. “You should know, your grandmother is dying. She may not last the night.”