passed in which the dispute curdled on like a sour taste.
'What would content you?' In the face of her piercing gaze they agreed it was foolish not to have settled the matter much sooner: a piglet delivered to the owner in recompense for the lost meat; a stout pen built by the owner to avoid another incident, together with two baskets of pears, fifty tey of barley, and a bundle of sour-wort leaves in exchange for the produce lost.
The placement of boundary stones must be reconsidered. Accusations of theft years old, suspicion still festering. Two bolts of good dyed linen cloth filched a mere ten days ago. Inheritance squabbles were the worst; she knew that already from her years as
a reeve. One group dragged on its self-serving arguments for so long she lost her temper and let them know in detail the scope of their manifold faults. How they then scrambled to seek a grudging solution, having lost face so nakedly before the entire assembly!
Night came on, and torches were lit, and still they came, patiently waiting their turn, more folk straggling in from distant villages to set up awnings as they accepted a place in line. Yet she did not tire. The pleas and arguments, even at their worst, were like nourishment.
A man was accused of hexing a fatal illness onto a woman's three children; he had become outcast and yet he was innocent of the deed.
'There's an old feud here,' Marit said as torches crackled, 'that you are all covering up. I want the truth.'
The truth can be ugly. It was at last revealed that the woman knew who had poisoned her children: her husband had done it himself, because he knew that another man had fathered two of them and he did not want the shame and dishonor revealed as they grew into their adult faces. But his clan was powerful and wealthy — by local standards — and she was afraid to accuse him and yet must accuse someone — a man of no wealth and no connections — lest she herself be condemned.
'I wish I was dead with my little ones,' she sobbed.
So on through the night, so many grievances smoldering over the years and decades that folk did want, no matter the cost, to bring into the light. Marit wondered if the truth would ever be known about the man dead in the surf at Curling Beach. Maybe he was best left dead, his dying a mystery. Is this one of the truths that Guardians must learn? That the truth does not always bring closure?
Yet folk will go on with life, as a new day will dawn.
'But I don't want to marry him!' exclaimed the young woman, a strapping, beautiful creature with such an immense weight of self-satisfaction that it was like swallowing honey laced with garlic. 'I want to marry his brother.'
'His brother does not want to marry you,' observed Marit, who did not even need to call for the brother's testimony. He was a handsome lad, one she would have liked to have tumbled when she was younger, but his embarrassment was apparent. 'He was a kalos at the temple, not a suitor. He slept with you in the courtyard of the Devourer.'
'Yes! Oh! Yes!' She gazed adoringly at the hapless youth. He looked away, helplessly, toward his disgusted family.
'Lust does not make a marriage.' Yet she thought of Joss as she spoke the words. Had it been only lust she'd nurtured for Joss? They had spoken of bearing a child together. That was cursed serious, especially for reeves who served the gods and the Hundred; they didn't expect a normal life. 'Daughter, you think too well of yourself. Refuse to marry the young man offered to you and have your clan look elsewhere. That is your right. But do not pretend that the worship shared in the Devourer's temple is meant to be carried outside the temple walls. The gods recognize that we are human in our greed and our lust and our joy and our striving, in the ways in which we fight and hate and nurture and love, in the ways we tend our fields with hard work or steal that which belongs to others when we know it is wrong. The laws of the Hundred allow us to live in harmony when otherwise all around us might fall into chaos and conflict. Marriage is for the clan. Desire belongs in the Merciless One's precincts, not in the village street.'
The young woman burst into flamboyant sobbing, aware of how fetching she looked in her misery. Her doting friends led her away.
'Make the marriage, or do not,' said Marit to the clans. 'But I advise you to make your decision quickly. Seal the agreement, or make a clean break and go your ways without blame. This is a small matter. Don't let it fester until it becomes a big one.'
In the end it took three days to get through all the cases people were willing to bring before her. In the afternoon of the third day Warning paced up to the rock and dipped her head, and Marit said to the assembly, 'Now I must go.'
They offered their thanks and, as they would with a reeve, a bundle of provisions for her trouble. She wanted nothing else, nor did she expect it. They had given her their trust; there was no better gift.
She and Warning rode into the sky as the gathering watched her depart. Down to the shore they flew. Was that a pod of mer-lings skimming the ocean's surface just beyond Curling Beach, where the waves formed tunnels? Was that smoke coming from caves along the northern shore just beyond the the thin ridge that connected the peninsula to the mainland? Did an outpost of delv-ings make their home in these far reaches, as Fothino had implied?
It was as if she had entered the Hundred at long last and now must leave it to return to lands where rot had wormed its way deep into the heart of what had once been solid.
Our thanks to you, Guardian.
For days onward these words sustained her.
You could know a lot about the wildings' moods from their ears. As they walked along a deer track through one of the thick stands of woodland where Shai now felt safest, Brah's ears rose, flicked, and lowered halfway. Sis (Shai had started calling them Brah and Sis, names which amused them) was up in the trees, unseen, but she hooted softly. Brah brushed an ear with a hand, to say, 'Do you hear?'
Shai did hear a sound like a murmur vibrating through the soles of his feet: they were coming to a big river.
They had trekked for over a month, first creeping and crawling through cultivated Herelia, stealing fruit from orchards and forgotten radishes from last season's gardens, and later hiking through forested hills until they reached what Shai figured was the Haldian plain. Twice, in the hills, they'd been caught out by local woodsmen, but both times he'd managed to drop to the dirt before being spotted while the presence of a wilding caused the folk to stammer formal greetings and back away.
Brah tapped Shai's shoulder in the gesture that meant: Move.
After a while, they halted at the woodland's edge and looked over cleared fields to a well-maintained road and, beyond it, a swift-flowing river. The current looked plenty strong and it seemed deep, too, cut by powerful waters with a hard blue tinge. Beyond the river lay more woodland, changing color as the afternoon shadows deepened, yet this wall of greenery made him uneasy: It was like seeing foothills and sensing that behind them lay mountains as mighty as the Spires, a wilderness impossible for humankind to penetrate.
Sis dropped out of the trees with a fearsome display of incisors. Her hands moved through gestures so fast that Brah flicked his ears in dismissal as if to say: 'No use, he can't understand you.'
But Shai did understand. 'Is that your home?'
20
Brah snorted and punched him on the shoulder — hard. Shai had to take a step back to absorb the blow, but he grinned. Among the Qin soldiers, he had learned that you only slugged your friends; your enemies you went after with a sword.
Sis tapped his arm three times: Alert. He checked for branches, the position of his feet, anything that might make a sound — all in an eyeblink — before dropping behind a screen of foliage just as six soldiers strode into view on the road, spears ready, swords in sheaths. Two were archers. They marched on upstream, vanishing as the afternoon shadows lengthened.
Now.
