“—encroach farther than they’ve yet been!” This from Forestlodge’s chieftain. “We have seen Chepiś outside their own places. Even those cursed beasts they’ve Shaped have been ignoring the bounds.”
Tokela frowned, snared from ache to apprehension beneath mere utterance of that name.
“Disregarding what territories our ancestors set long ago would mean breach of truce.” Palatan’s voice resounded, firm. “That can be dealt with, if you’re sure you’ve seen more than a few together.”
Several voices rose at once, all in protest but none of them definite.
“SwimmingKin are late this year!” Nechtoun’s voice carried, muting the others into grumbles. “Every summering, the changes have come. Unnatural ones, and our Land cries out while we sit, doing nothing! The Chepiś are not so idle, I promise you, whether they breach truce-laid bounds or no!”
“You blame Chepiś for a Sun-drenched day when you wish for Rain’s touch, old friend.” Galenu sat beside Nechtoun, but in this they were clearly not in accord.
“Who knows what they’re Shaping in their cold dens?” Nechtoun retorted.
“Everyone knows they want our places, to make and Shape into their own abominations!” another elder snapped. “They’d have our people as slaves!”
“Chepiś don’t take slaves,” Galenu retorted. “Those are ahlóssa tales, nothing more, meant to frighten. I can’t listen to such ignorance.”
“It is well known that stoneClan takes slaves.” Another chieftain, from dryLands by her regalia. “So naturally, that Clan’s chieftain would—”
Several hisses.
Galenu stiffened. “We do not keep slaves!”
“Surely your—what do you call them? Boundlings?—would dispute the distinction—”
“Enough!” Sarinak’s staff rose and came down with a crack upon the wooden board. Cups rattled, contents sloshing. “We were speaking of Chepiś and their predations, not midLands customs!”
Boundlings were outliers, of a kind; miscreants and lawbreakers, or so Tokela had heard—and thusly not allowed a Clan. Still, Tokela wondered at the anger making the accusation—and Galenu’s equal ire at the voicing of it.
For, despite the enforced change of topic, Galenu’s voice shook. “There are Chepiś that take what isn’t theirs, just as with our own People. Not all of them are our enemy. We would do well to remember that—”
“We would do well”—this time Nechtoun interrupted in anger—“to remember what they did to our Land!”
“Long ago.”
“Not long enough!” Inhya snapped, and a host of voices rose in agreement.
“We still suffer from their predations!”
“Just look at the despoiled places—"
“A’io, like Šilombiš’okpulo!”
“I have made trade with Chepiś,” Galenu protested. “Have called some friend!”
Galenu not only made stories, and sketches, but was friends with Chepiś? Tokela frowned, tilted his head to better hear.
Sarinak gave a disagreeable snort. “And so, you tread where you shouldn’t, stone-chieftain.”
“I wasn’t aware that Mound-chieftain had the authority to tell not only dawnLands, but midLands, where to tread.”
Sarinak refused to be baited into anything resembling indignation. “I should think an elder of any Land would have sense to see trouble when it openly stalks him.”
“Trouble?” Galenu countered. “How is it trouble to welcome wisdom from another People?”
“But they aren’t,” Nechtoun inserted, “People!”
“Come now, you can’t mark them all with the same hue. Just as our own agreements, tribe to tribe, are crafted to allow a Skybow’s wealth of ways and colours and customs.” Quite pointed. “If some Chepiś make overtures of friendship, is it sensible to meet those with fear or superstition?”
“You drag all of us in your wake, yet still refuse to perceive the folly of your actions,” Inhya said, flat. “We a’Naišwyrh are still dealing with the consequences of your ‘friendship’ with outLanders.”
Tokela found himself hunching like hareKin beneath a winged predator’s shadow. Ai, and he’d teased Madoc about the egocentricity of wanting concerns aired in open Council, never dreaming his own would be fair game.
Almost angrily he pulled his shoulders straight, snuck a glance at Madoc.
Madoc wasn’t paying attention. Done with worrying over Tokela’s possible hearthing claim, or ogling the fancy dress of the adults, he’d dug a thick spinning thread from his belt pouch, winding a game of spiderKin about nimble, grubby fingers.
“—Hoop turns different, of late.” Sarinak’s admittance seemed reluctant. “It is worrisome.”
“But have Chepiś broken the truce?” Palatan stood abruptly, and it seemed for a half breath that Fire’s reflection glinted, copper-cobalt, behind his Forest-hued eyes. “I hear talk, talk, talk about sightings and speculations. If they have broken truce, if they have come into our Land in disallowed ways, then we will act. If.”
Silence.
“Let us offer orison,” Inhya’s voice drifted soft and heavy as a winter blanket, “that it need never come to that.”
“Yet our own history,” Galenu had mastered his own ire, determined to make his point, “sets forth what can happen when we refuse to deal with outLanders.”
“Then,” one of the desertClan males pointed out, and Galenu rolled his eyes.
“It seems to me,” a chieftain ventured, from fenClan by her garb, “dealings are not wise, period.”
More murmurs, mostly in agreement.
“I have seen them,” fenClan’s leader added. “Not in numbers, n’da. But they do take fishKin from our estuaries without asking, without reverence. They trade overmuch with Riverwalkers, but we have nothing to do with them.”
Tokela was now the one creeping to the edge, ears straining.
“Is there such a thing,” Našobok drawled, “as overmuch trade?”
“If it brings outLand menace, a’io!” the fen-chieftain snapped. “I would not expect such as you to understand.”
Tokela’s snarl was silent, but heart-meant.
Below, Našobok merely shrugged. “Yet I see you wear the fruits of Riverwalker trade upon your shawl fringe, and fancy work hanging upon your nose and ears. Or has fenClan suddenly found a source of Matwau-mined milkrock in the bogs?”
She stiffened, looked as if she would retort, then turned away, those ear dangles bouncing.
Nechtoun shifted in his chair. “Surely, Galenu, you cannot be so lost to reason as to welcome Matwau in your lodge.”
Matwau? Tokela thought they’d been speaking of Chepiś.
“How would they fit?” A lesser chieftain from dryLands frowned. “A’io, we see them, sometimes. They’re sturdier than Chepiś, but similar enough. Too big for any proper dwelling. And the smell of them!”
“They do smell strange,” Galenu admitted. “But perhaps we smell and
