Mrem were light on their feet-and she especially, being a Dancer. He went on, “I was just trying to figure out everything we’ll have to do once we start moving.”
“You can’t know everything ahead of time,” the priestess said.
His mouth twisted wryly. “That’s something I already do know. But the Liskash can ruin us- will ruin us-if they catch us by surprise. So I have to work out as many ways to keep that from happening as I can.”
“We will know-we may know-some of what they do before they try to do it,” Enni Chennitats said. “Seeing some way into their sorceries is one of the things the Dance is good for.”
“You dragged the truth out of Grumm, sure enough.” Admiration filled the talonmaster’s voice. Admiration for the Dance, or for this Dancer here? Rantan Taggah wondered. Here, at least, he didn’t need to wonder long. For both, and especially for the lithe, comely priestess.
When there was time, he ought to do something about that. But there wasn’t, not right now, and there wouldn’t be for quite a while. The Clan of the Claw bubbled like stew in a clay-daubed basket over a big fire. (The clan females still had a few precious proper pots won in trade with the now-vanished city-states of the Hollow Lands, but only a few. You could be as careful as you pleased, but every now and then a pot would break. None of the nomads had the trick to making real pottery-those baskets were as close as they came. If one of the refugees who’d escaped the inrushing New Water knew the art…Rantan Taggah found yet another thing he needed to check on.)
How was he supposed to remember pots when he didn’t even have the time to think about Enni Chennitats? The clan had carved out this domain south of the Hollow Lands a couple of generations before, grazing their krelprep and other herdbeasts in the flatlands here during the warm season and taking them up into the hills to forage when the weather got cooler and wetter. Now they would have to keep going at all times of the year. The Liskash weren’t likely to let them rest and graze their animals as they pleased. Rantan Taggah swore under his breath. What had Aedonniss been thinking when he made the Scaly Ones?
Here was a priestess standing beside him. He asked her the question. Gravely, she considered it. “There is no sure answer to that,” she said at last. “Dancers have debated it for…for as long as there have been Dancers, I suppose. Some say the sky lord put them on earth to give us a proper challenge, and to keep us from fighting amongst ourselves so much. Some say they are not properly part of creation at all, but only Aedonniss’ waste, which he forgot to cover as he should have because he’d worked so hard making the things he truly wanted.”
Rantan Taggah laughed. “Yes, I’ve heard that. Godshit!” He laughed again, louder. “I like it.”
Enni Chennitats held up a slim hand. She stepped closer to him, which made his heart beat faster. “But there is another possibility. I have never heard that it is forbidden to speak of it with someone who is not a priestess, but I know we hold it close. I will ask you to do the same.”
“Of course,” Rantan Taggah replied at once, intrigued. “What is it?”
“It could be that the Liskash truly aren’t part of Aedonniss’ creation,” Enni Chennitats said in a low, troubled voice. “It could be that some other god, a dark and wicked god, made them for purposes of his own, purposes that stand against everything the sky god stands for. We do not talk about this much, even among ourselves. It frightens us. It makes us think the world may be a larger, stranger, more dangerous place than we care to imagine. But it seems to explain some things the simpler ideas cannot.”
“A dark and wicked god…” Rantan Taggah weighed the notion. After a few heartbeats, he dipped his head to the priestess. “Yes, I can see how that might be so. And he would have made the Scaly Ones in his own fashion, as Aedonniss patterned us, the true people, after himself. That is a very large thought.”
“Which is why we hold it close,” she told him.
A smerp hopped by. When the breeze shifted and brought it the scent of the two Mrem, it squeaked in fright and dove under a thornbush. Rantan Taggah felt a great tug of memory. When he was a kit, how many smerps had he chased while he was learning to hunt? How many of them had got away under thornbushes or between rocks or down holes in the ground? How proud had he been when he finally caught one? And how horrified had he been a moment later, when it bit his hand, jumped free, and fled?
“Are we even smerps to Aedonniss?” he wondered.
“I doubt it, but he does not hunt us for the sport of it,” Enni Chennitats answered, following his chariot of thought perfectly.
That was something. Rantan Taggah wondered if it was enough. The Liskash didn’t hunt Mrem for the sport of it, either, but hunt them they did. And when the Liskash did not hunt Mrem, the Mrem hunted them. What else did being blood enemies mean? Liskash and Mrem even smelled wrong, alien, to each other. Like any kit, Rantan Taggah hadn’t hunted only smerps and other mammals. He’d gone after lizards and small snakes, too. (One of the first lessons kits learned-those who lived to learn it, anyway-was how to tell snakes that squeezed from the ones with poison in their fangs.) He remembered how strange their blood and flesh tasted after he made a kill. They were different from him in a way smerps weren’t.
He hadn’t fully understood the difference then. He did now.
“Someone coming to see you, Talonmaster,” Enni Chennitats said quietly.
It was Zhanns Bostofa. Of course it was. Zhanns Bostofa thought himself important enough to see the talonmaster whenever he chose. And he wouldn’t be happy with the dispositions Rantan Taggah had made for his herds and wagons. No matter when Rantan Taggah placed them, Zhanns Bostofa wouldn’t be happy with it. The talonmaster was morosely certain of that.
And he was right. The heavyset male tore into him as if Zhanns Bostofa led the Clan of the Claw and Rantan Taggah were a lowly herdsmale. Rantan Taggah listened for a little while. Then he said, “That will be enough of that.”
Zhanns Bostofa stared at him as if he were a krelprep that had suddenly opened its mouth to display a daggertooth’s fangs. “How dare you speak to me so?” Zhanns Bostofa demanded. With his deep, resonant voice, he might have made a better talonmaster than Rantan Taggah-or at least a more impressive one. Rantan Taggah was convinced there was a difference between the two. So was the rest of the Clan of the Claw-with the evident exception of Zhanns Bostofa.
“How? Because you’re wasting my time, that’s how. You should be getting your bundor and hamsticorns ready to move. The clan decided that was the better thing to do after the Dancers showed how Sassin had magicked poor, sorry Grumm into believing the lies the son of a serpent hissed in his ears. If you don’t want to come with us, you can stay by yourself-but how long will you last against the Liskash with only the handful of fools who stay with you?” Rantan Taggah enjoyed the rare pleasure of being able to say exactly what he thought.
The snarl of rage on Zhanns Bostofa’s face took in both Rantan Taggah and Enni Chennitats. “The way the two of you seem so friendly, I shouldn’t wonder if the Dance was faked to get the answer you wanted.”
It had never occurred to Rantan Taggah that a Dance might be faked. Zhanns Bostofa had taught him something, but not something he’d wanted to learn. He wanted to walk away from the black-and-white male and find someplace quiet where he could try to wash himself clean.
But, shocked as he was, his reaction was as nothing beside that of Enni Chennitats. Her pupils filled her eyes, as they would just before she sprang for a kill. And behind their blackness flamed raw, red rage.
“Fake…a Dance?” she whispered. “Fake the power we have through Assirra and Aedonniss? Come with me, Zhanns Bostofa. Come tell Demm Etter that you think she told a lie about the word the Dance gave us. Come on. I want to watch while you do that. I want to see how much of you is left afterwards.” She reached out to grab the male’s arm.
He sprang back before she could. He might carry fat around his middle, but he could be nimble when his hide was on the line. And it was. He knew it was. “Here, now! Watch what you’re doing!” he said in some alarm. “I didn’t say anything about Demm Etter.”
“You said the Dance was false,” Enni Chennitats answered implacably. “How could it be false unless the senior priestess made it false?”
Zhanns Bostofa made an unhappy noise down deep in his throat. “I might have been hasty,” he said at last-more of an apology than Rantan Taggah had ever got from him, or ever expected. But Rantan Taggah was a rival, not a priestess.
And, being a rival, he clawed Zhanns Bostofa while the other male was down: “You might have wanted to piss on things so they’d smell more like you. Next time you need to piss, go find a dry patch of dirt, squat, and cover your piddle with dust the way you’re supposed to.”
He wondered if that would provoke Zhanns Bostofa to fight. He hoped so. Tearing some strips off Zhanns
