The Broken Land(64)
Sky Messenger paused, seemed to think about it, then went on eating as though she hadn’t spoken at all.
Twenty-six
Hiyawento clutched his white arrow in both hands and walked across the Bur Oak plaza behind Koracoo. Two guards flanked him, their eyes roving the mass of refugees who’d started to knot up to watch him pass. None of them knew who he was, thank the Spirits. To them, he appeared to be a man of the Standing Stone nation, which made the white arrow he carried all the more interesting. They whispered behind their hands and pointed, but no one made a hostile move toward him. Behind them, along the palisade, dead bodies were stacked like firewood, awaiting burial. The fever must be taking a great toll. Snow had collected on the gaunt faces, filling in the hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. In the growing darkness they seemed somehow unreal.
“Now, listen to me,” Koracoo said when they stood beneath the porch of the Deer Clan longhouse. “To the matrons you are less than dirt, something to be scraped off their moccasins. They won’t even meet with you in the council house. High Matron Kittle and two clan matrons have agreed to sit at the same fire with you. Three refused. That’s the best you’re going to get. You will do well to speak as little as necessary, and listen as much as possible.”
“What about Chief Bur Oak?”
“He won’t be there. Be happy you’re still alive. The chief was not in favor of that.”
He nodded. “I understand. Once again, I owe you more than I can ever repay.”
Koracoo walked forward, pulled aside the entry curtain, and ordered, “Sit on the mat across the fire from our high matron.”
She remained standing outside with the two guards while Hiyawento ducked beneath the curtain and into the firelit warmth of the Deer longhouse. It was smaller than the longhouses in the Hills nation, stretching only five hundred or so hands long. Around twenty fires burned down the central aisle, and he could make out firelit faces watching him. Many were ill. Coughs and moans laced the air. He walked sunwise around the fire and seated himself on the empty floor mat between two elderly women. The woman to his left looked to have seen around forty-five summers. Short black-streaked gray hair fell around her gaunt face. The white wolf tracks on her blue cape marked her as the matron of the Wolf Clan in Bur Oak village. The woman to his right was Hawk clan. Interconnected red spirals encircled the top of her white cape. She was much older, perhaps sixty summers, with white hair and a deeply wrinkled face. He must know them. He’d grown up among the Standing Stone People, but he didn’t recognize them.
He focused across the fire on High Matron Kittle. Despite her extraordinary beauty, her gaze was like a burning stick thrust in his vitals.
She opened her hand to the Hawk Clan matron. “This is Matron Sihata and”—her hand shifted to the matron of the Wolf Clan—“this is Matron Dehot. You, however, are dead to your people. You have no name here. If we refer to you at all, it will be as the ‘nameless one.’ Is that perfectly clear?”
“Yes, High Matron.”
Kittle lifted her perfect chin and stared down her straight nose at him. “Deliver your message.”
He placed the white arrow on the mat before him and braced himself. “The Ruling Council of the Hills nation would like to know if the Ruling Council of the Standing Stone People is prepared to have all of its villages destroyed. As Sedge Marsh Village was.”
First, Kittle’s large dark eyes blazed like sunlit jet; then her mouth contorted into a killing rage. She sprang to her feet with her breast heaving and shouted, “You can tell High Matron Tila and Chief Atotarho that if they ever threaten us again, we’ll—”
In a very quiet voice, Matron Sihata broke in. “If it pleases the High Matron, I would ask a question.”
Kittle clamped her jaw and glared. “Of course.” She grudgingly sat back down.
Matron Sihata smoothed the red spirals on her cape for a few moments, clearly letting emotions settle, before she asked, “Why you? Why did they send you?”
Hiyawento tilted his head, reluctant to explain, but answered, “Because I was born among your people.”
“Then they believed they were sending us one of our own, a man who might make it into our villages before we realized who and what he was?”
“Yes.”
Kittle leaned back carelessly and gave him a cold smile. Her beautiful face was inscrutable, but there was a diabolical gleam in her eyes, as though something amused her greatly. “What a tragedy. They consider you to be one of our people, and we consider you to be dead. It seems you have no nation, Nameless One. How does a man live without a nation?”