A filth-encrusted bark container—for bodily wastes—rested near the door. Prisoners could only sit and stare at the blackness and worry about their futures.
Dzoo leaned her head back, closed her eyes, and conjured the image of the blood-streaked young man. Again she looked into his two stone eyes and felt her soul sway. She clung to that moment, feeling the few tendrils of Power slipping around her.
Feet sucked at the mud outside.
Ecan said, “Has she tried to escape?”
One of the guards responded, “I don’t think she’s even moved, Starwatcher.”
Ecan flipped the door hanging aside and ducked into the lodge carrying a leather sack. He wore a woven bark rain hat and cape. “I thought you might be hungry.”
She studied him as droplets of water sprinkled the dirt floor. “That surprises me.”
“What does?”
“That the needs of another would occur to you.”
Ecan roughly tossed the sack to the floor in front of her. Carved shell and bone jewelry flashed from his arms and ankles. Beneath the cape he wore a beautiful knee-length buckskin shirt dyed red, black, and white. Designs of Killer Whale, made from polished stone beads, winked in the faint light. He’d obviously bathed. His hair hung down his back in a long damp braid.
He paced before the door curtain. “You’ll find a water sack and several seaweed cakes in the bag. Enjoy them or starve; I don’t care.”
Dzoo opened the bag. She pulled out the elk-bladder water sack first and took four swallows. Trickles ran down her chin and dripped onto her cape. After days of almost no food or water, she had to ration it or her stomach would rebel. She set the water aside and reached for the seaweed cakes. They’d been wrapped in thick layers of bark to keep them warm. She gave Ecan a wary look. Why this strange kindness?
He kept pacing.
Dzoo took a bite of the cake and chewed it slowly. It tasted salty and delicious.
Grimly, he said, “You are fortunate. Both Chief Cimmis and Matron Astcat remember you. I think if you offer to help them overcome the present crisis with the Raven People they might be inclined to spare your life.”
Dzoo watched him as she chewed. She hadn’t noticed before: raindrops coated his pointed face. “Why would I do that?”
“Cimmis has ways of making people do as he wishes, Dzoo. I wouldn’t toy with him if I were you. Staking a person down, cutting a slit in his belly, and pulling out a length of intestines to roast in a hot fire is currently considered the most gruesome manner of—”
Dzoo laughed softly.
Ecan stalked across the room and knelt in front of her. He smelled fragrant, like cedar bark. Did his slaves store his clothing in a cedar box? “Your lack of humility is liable to get you killed before I can—”
“What?” she asked. “Use me for your own purposes?”
Ecan hesitated; then, as though it had just occurred to him, he touched the hem of her buffalo cape. “If I thought I could use you, Dzoo, believe me, I would.” He moved his fingers tenderly over her cape. It was an intimate gesture, like stroking a lover’s hand.
Dzoo leaned toward him and whispered, “Go ahead. Take me here in the dirt. A man’s soul is never as vulnerable as when he is panting atop a woman. After you lay spent, I shall have more of you than just your seed.”
Ecan stared at her, but drew back his hand. “Will you help me, or not?”
“What would you have me do? Witch your enemies? Or give your son wings so he can fly back to you?”
“Both.”
Dzoo wiped the crumbs from her fingers onto her leather leggings. “Are you really surprised that Cimmis isn’t already organizing a war party to run down the mountain and bring your son back?”
Ecan smiled. “Not exactly. Apparently, Cimmis fears I will betray him to get my son back.”
Dzoo drew her knees up and braced her arms atop them. She finished her cake and reached for another. “Perhaps we have something in common after all.”
Ecan’s handsome face turned stony. “Don’t even think it, Dzoo. He would kill me in less than a heartbeat if he even suspected I might do something like that.”
“Then you must work very hard to keep his trust.”
Ecan glanced at the door and listened for movement, afraid they’d been overheard. In the plaza, someone laughed. The guards shifted. One of them murmured something he couldn’t hear.
Dzoo whispered, “You look like you just met Gutginsa’s spear, Starwatcher.”
His green eyes narrowed. “I believe Gutginsa’s spear is pointed at us now, in this world. Not after we die. I believe it more today than I ever have.”
He turned suddenly, and a thin sliver of light glinted on his water-slick rain hat. Before he exited into the pale gray gleam, he gripped the use-polished doorframe. “You understand, don’t you, that I will do whatever I must to save my son?”