“You wait.” Madoc kept rubbing. “Soon I’ll be grown enough to put your face in the dirt and hold you there!”
“N’da,” Tokela replied, serene, “you won’t.”
“Will.”
“Not likely.”
“Very likely.”
“Big trees fall the hardest, Madoc chieftain-son.”
Madoc made a half-hearted pass at him, somewhat hampered by the close surroundings. Tokela easily ducked.
“And move slowly.”
Still grinning, Madoc laid his head against Tokela’s shoulder. Tokela smiled, rubbed his knuckles against the bright tangles. This was more like it: normal, comforting, quieting the hollow, breathless buzz in the pit of his belly.
Nevertheless, his eyes slid back to take in River.
“Kuli was looking for you,” Madoc said. “He wanted you to give him a story. I told him you’d likely be off doing errands again for grandsire Nechtoun. So. You owe me.”
“Do I?”
“Mm-hunh. He and three other little ahlóssa would be trying to crawl in your lap just now if I hadn’t deflected them.”
“So instead I have one huge ahlóssa in my lap.”
“Mm-hunh.” Madoc was either unaware of the sarcasm, or chose to ignore it. “I’m glad Kuli is leaving. I’m tired of him in our den.”
Tokela chuckled. “At least he doesn’t crawl into your bedshelf.”
“He does when you aren’t around.” Madoc bared his teeth and wrinkled his nose. “And he kicks like an unbroken colt.”
“Not too long ago you were doing the same thing.”
“Kicking?”
Tokela gave a soft snort and nudged Madoc. “You still do that. N’da, crawling into my bedshelf.”
“When you’re there.”
When on the scent, Madoc was difficult to shift. But Tokela had no limit of practice. “Why are you here? Aška will have at you for hiding away.”
“They’re all off to Council. Didn’t you hear the drums calling Council?”
Tokela shrugged.
“You didn’t hear, did you?” Madoc eyed him, long-suffering in his tone.
Tokela shrugged again.
“Some things are important, Tokela. Like this. It’s open Council! Even the Yakhling leader is invited, and the wyrhling—”
“Your Uncle Našobok.”
“When I say that, Aška always corrects me. She says my sire has no brother.”
A cool, close fury lit behind Tokela’s gaze. He quickly flattened his gaze, peered out over River’s glittering surface before Madoc could ken any disturbance.
He’d heard it before, after all. Why should it bother him now?
“I was hoping you would come with me.”
“With you? Where?”
“To Council.” Madoc nudged Tokela’s shoulder. “You know all the best places to sneak and hide, all over.”
“Why?” Tokela slid his gaze towards Madoc, raised an eyebrow. “Council is only ever elders blowing smoke and making talk about too many things.”
“But if we’re the sons of Mound-chieftain, then perhaps we need to know those many things.”
Tokela peered sidelong at Madoc, one eyebrow rising.
“Ai, brother, I really, really would like to go. And I know you know the best ways to sneak in.”
“You seem so certain, little brother.”
Madoc sat very tall, looked down his broad, Sun-burnt nose at Tokela. “Hunh. And how else did you find out about Kuli’s hearthing here, before me?”
Both Tokela’s eyebrows rose.
“Or that Anahli was sneaking about with a oških from deepForestClan last time she was here?”
Little trickster. “I shouldn’t have let that slip from between my teeth. And you shouldn’t have done, either.”
“It was an accident!”
“Your loose tongue will be the death of you. Or me.” Tokela didn’t go out of his way to glean gossip—quite the opposite, in fact. Most times he barely processed what he heard and saw. But the places Tokela had found to get about unobserved often attracted those who… well, wished to be unobserved.
“You didn’t mind telling me how Uncle Našobok”—deliberate, with an endearing grin—“was allowed back in the compound after he rescued Grandsire Nechtoun in that bad storm five winterings ago.”
Tokela held up his hands in capitulation, chuckling.
“So we’ll go?”
“We’ll go, we’ll go. But it’s likely to bore the spit from your mouth.”
“I can take it.”
Tokela shrugged again, gave him a shove. Madoc scooted over, allowing Tokela to uncurl from his perch.
“Do you think they’ll talk about me? Us?” Madoc quickly corrected.
“Ai, very important Council business, that,” Tokela drawled.
“It might be. You don’t know.”
“HERE. MAY I?”
Horsetalkers seldom let a stranger touch their hair, but Čayku asked so politely, with the light in her eyes so admiring, that Anahli tilted her chin and relinquished the long, burnished braid she was plaiting.
Čayku knelt, humming a soft tune beneath her breath. Her fingers proved quick and nimble and, at the last, dipped into the oil pot at Anahli’s knee—she’d been watching. Anahli thought on that, fancying the sensation. It was the only time those fingers faltered, unfamiliar with this sort of hair dressing. But after, but with another dip of oil, Čayku left a glistening trail from Anahli’s knee to midthigh, and paused.
“We use oil for other things, in dawnLands,” she said, eyes fastening to Anahli’s. “Would you Dance with me?”
“Now?” Anahli leaned back on her hands and pressed her thigh into Čayku’s palm. “Or later?”
“Both.” A smile darted across Čayku’s mouth like burrowKin beneath an overhead shadow. “We must ready ourselves soon enough, and later, of course, there will be competition.”
“Of course.”
“Dancers a’Naišwyrh are fierce.”
“My People are fierce in all they do.”
“So I’ve heard.” The smile came back and lingered, as Čayku slid her hand upward. “I hoped you would show me.”
“WATCH YOURSELF!”
Madoc was out of sight, had run on ahead through the trees. Tokela gave a quick twist, managed to avoid running his old uncle over, calculated then commenced a new route.
Instead a strong hand grabbed his braidlock. “To where are you away, sister-son?”
Not for nothing was a ahlóssa topknot called a “handle”. Tokela gave up any hope of swift flight. Nechtoun had quite the grip, liked to boast that his body had softened, and remained strong as an old sap-sweet tree.
“I’m hungry, Uncle.”
Nechtoun wasn’t alone, either. His companion was an elder, much slighter and shorter—and somehow familiar. Obviously of some importance, even if peculiar. Where Nechtoun wore a quilled and beaded leather jerkin over his woven woollen tunic, with narrow, hide leggings tucked into tall, fur-lined boots, the newcomer wore a high-necked, sleeveless tunic and
