“Their souls? Why? Is there something wrong with them?”
“Put it like this: Would you trust some Serpent you didn’t know to cleanse your souls? Say, perhaps, some Wolf Serpent whose ways you couldn’t differentiate from witchcraft? A strange Serpent from way up north? One who did things you didn’t understand? Sang strange songs, made you bare your souls to him?”
“I would be more than a little frightened.”
“So are these Wolf Traders,” Wing Heart added. “The last thing I need is for them to bolt in the middle of the night and take those loaded canoes with them.”
“There’s risk in that.”
“There’s risk in everything.”
“What if someone takes sick? What if after they’ve been rushed through cleansing, something goes wrong? People will say that you didn’t take enough precautions.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
He nodded, that slight smile returning to his lips. “Well, there is already talk.”
“Talk? We’re back to talk?” Which of course was what he’d come to tell her in the first place.
“My cousin, Fork Tail, and his party returned from his trip down south last night. He has several nice pieces of that white Panther sandstone. Not as many as he would have liked to have, but enough to still make the trip profitable. It will allow Rattlesnake Clan a chance to offer something at the same time you have to rid yourself of all those canoe loads of exotics.”
“Good for you.” She noticed the reserve behind his bland eyes. “But …?”
Clay Fat shrugged. “There were complications. He couldn’t load his canoe with all the stone he wanted. It seems that some of the Swamp Panthers ambushed him. In the fight that followed he wounded at least one of them. A youth.”
“Kill him?”
“He doesn’t know. Apparently the dart was sticking out of the boy’s belly when he ran away. As to how serious it was, Fork Tail couldn’t tell.”
“These things happen.” Wing Heart spliced more fibers into her cord and continued spinning it along her thigh. “If we’re lucky, the kid just got nicked. Were others involved?”
“Apparently a party of youths.”
“So there’s no chance the boy might have gone off and died before anyone found out?”
Clay Fat gave her a shake of his head for an answer. “You had better circulate the word to Owl Clan that the Swamp Panthers will probably retaliate. My clan is already spreading the word through the lineages to the camps in the south.”
“Is that all the bad news you’ve got?”
“Of course not.” His thin lips widened in a smile. “You should know that Mud Stalker is nearly foaming at the mouth. He and Back Scratch were in the process of tightening their grip on leadership in the Council until your son paddled into the middle of their plans. He had come to think you were toothless, and all he needed to worry about was Deep Hunter. Then White Bird floats into Morning Lake with his barbarian friends, and Mud Stalker’s world is upside-down. It’s all that Mud Stalker can do to keep from popping the veins in his head.”
“Cane Frog wasn’t happy either. She and Deep Hunter would have been overjoyed to wrest control of the Northern Moiety away from me, let alone take a chance on gaining leadership of the Council.”
Clay Fat was watching her through his expressionless brown eyes. “Very well, Wing Heart, you’ve pulled the proverbial hare out of the hollow log yet again. What about the endless tomorrows? You have two sons, the last of your lineage. White Bird has a great future ahead of him, but you can’t risk him on another venture like this one. Somewhere, sometime, some barbarian is going to kill him, or his canoe is going to be swamped in a spring flood, or he’s going to catch some foreign disease and die. Beyond the protection of our city, the world is a dangerous place. Tens of tens of things could happen. Somewhere out in those distant places something will eventually get him.”
She nodded, aware of just how frightened she had been of exactly that.
“And it’s not like you have a lot of choices.” Clay Fat tilted his head back to stare up at the thatch overhead. “Mud Puppy is your only other child.”
“Would to Mother Sun I had had a daughter out of that mating with Thumper. I could marry her to some daring young man and send him upriver. If he didn’t come back, I could marry her again, and again, and again, until one of them got it right and brought me back another four canoes of Trade.”
“You wouldn’t even need that,” he told her. “You would have an heir. A daughter to carry your line on into the future.”