might breathe in their wisdom.'
'Wisdom, you say?' said Osidian. Then -'
'Hush, bow your heads, they're here.'
The curtain lifting let in enough light to spill the three men's shadows across the floor. Carnelian registered the tracery of the design before resolving one into the roundel of a woman's pelvis. Up through the opening the skull of a baby was squeezing, its bony face upturned, its eye-sockets welling red earth. More oozed everywhere into the cracks of the mosaic so that it seemed to Carnelian he stood upon a raft afloat on blood. The floor swept up into a wainscot of ribs. Bony buttresses reinforced a wall that was an undulating gleaming mass of femurs jointed into each other. Halfway up, more tiny skulls patterned a band with their eye and nose holes. From this band a dense leg-bone arabesque rose to a ceiling of shoulder-blades and arm-bones knitted together in a swirling spiral. Carnelian imagined this must be what it would be like to be in the hold of one of the kharon bone boats that ferried the Masters across the lake in Osrakum. Darkness suddenly returned and he was left blinking a fading, ghostly impression of the scene.
Thin morning light entered again while, at the same time, something was shuffling past so close Carnelian could feel its clothing brush against his leg. He became aware of the shape's odour of sweat and ferns; of the smell of hair. The light pulsed with each lift and drop of the curtain. The women rustling past were bent forward, swathed in blankets so that he could not glimpse even a sliver of their faces. Among them, uncovered, men revealed their matted hair all pebbled with salt and tangled with feathers. A clinking drew Carnelian's eyes down. Above their brown and calloused feet, the ankles of the women were swollen white by carcanets of salt.
Carnelian realized he was staring. Looking sideways he could make out that Fern had his head bowed. Carnelian turned enough the other way so that, the next time the room lit up, he was able to see Osidian, his chin up, striving to put imperiousness in his eyes. Seeing that struggle to deny humiliation, Carnelian chose from love to emulate Osidian's powerless defiance and, lifting his head, stared out fiercely.
More and more Elders were crowding in. Women were helping each other to sink to the floor. Their wrists were knobbed, their gnarled fingers ringed with more salt.
In the niches sunk between the wall buttresses of bone, the men were seating themselves cross-legged on platforms and removing their shoes.
A nudge from Fern urged Carnelian to shuffle to the left. He reached his hand up to Osidian's arm and gently urged him to move. Leaning forward, Carnelian looked past Fern and saw Loskai had joined the end of their line.
The curtain behind them fell closed and did not lift again. Cradling fire, flickering-faced girls stepped carefully among the sitting women touching to life lamps that hung around the walls. When the girls flitted away, Carnelian was faced with the aged, perhaps thirty of them, the lamplight trembling shadows in the folds of their robes and skin, glinting their wealth of adorning salt, pricking points of light into their eyes. He itched under their silent scrutiny. Without releasing him, their heads drew together setting off a rustling of talk. Many pointed and there was much shaking of heads that set the salt discs in their ears tinkling.
Carnelian could feel the rage swelling up in Osidian and sought to release its pressure by turning to Fern for help.
'Please give us…' he began whispering to his friend. The room fell silent.
'… their words,' said Carnelian, excruciatingly aware everyone was listening.
An old woman directed a mutter at Loskai, to which he replied before turning to Carnelian, barely concealing a smile. The Elders forbid you to speak to Fern for he stands before them accused.'
'I've no doubt who did the accusing,' said Carnelian, and was pleased to see the man's face sour.
A woman rattled out angry words Carnelian struggled to understand. Something about keeping silent.
Loskai gave a nod and looked first to one then the other of the Standing Dead. 'Here you'll speak only if you're spoken to.'
Carnelian tried to keep from his face any sign he had understood anything of what the woman had said. A glance reassured him Osidian was managing to contain his anger.
A woman Carnelian recognized as Harth fixed Fern with bird-bright eyes. 'Why have you endangered the Tribe by bringing us these Standing Dead?'
She spoke slowly, with emphasis, so that Carnelian found her words easier to decipher.
'Have you nothing to say, child? Have you no explanation for why you have betrayed us?'
Fern curved as if the woman were piling stones on his back.
'Why?' she barked, jerking her chin up when he hesitated.
Fern answered her in a low voice. 'I'm no longer sure, my mother.'
Carnelian knew that last word well enough for, as a child, it was what he had called Ebeny.
'You're no longer sure?' said Harth, mimicking his tone. She looked round at a woman, Fern's mother, head bowed, hands clasped in her lap. 'Do you hear, Akaisha? Your son's not sure why he's brought the Tribe to the brink of disaster.'
Harth pointed here and there among the Elders. 'Ginkga and Mossie, Galewing and Kyte all waited for you in Makar until they could wait no longer. You realize they were forced to come through the Leper Valleys without protection?'
As many of the Elders pursed their lips with disapproval, Fern and Loskai hung their heads.
Ginkga spoke up. Tell us what happened, children, so that we might not judge you unfairly.' Her fierce eyes belied her gentle words.
The Elders cocked their heads to listen as, hesitantly, Fern and Loskai took it in turns, sometimes interrupting each other, to tell their tale of robbery all the way down the road from the City at the Gates.
'We were moving along the high road,' said Fern, sliding his hand through the air as if it were in a groove. 'We'd no reason to suppose there was any special danger.'
Loskai stabbed a finger at him. 'It was his brother, Ravan, who saw the Bloodguard and Fern himself who found the Standing Dead among the sartlar.'
Many of the Elders recoiled at those last few words.
'All the bloodshed stemmed from that,' said Loskai, looking eagerly into their faces.
'Among the sartlar, you say?' a woman asked, her eyes wide with disbelief.
Fern joined his nod to Loskai's. Carnelian could see as well as they that the Elders did not believe them.
Fern leaned close to hold a finger up to Carnelian's neck, asking him permission with his eyes.
Carnelian gave the slightest nod and bit his lip when he felt Fern's touch upon his scar. As his friend described how he had found them among the slaves bent by ropes and smeared with bitumen, the Elders shook their heads and began arguing among themselves. A couple of the old men, one of whom was the man Harth had said was named Galewing, fumbled on shoes and came to see for themselves. Osidian impaled them with a glare so that they did not dare approach him. One remained transfixed looking sidelong at Osidian but the other, Galewing, came to peer up at Carnelian's neck. Carnelian could smell the man and see the light catching the carving in the salt beads threaded on his hair. They clinked as he turned to the Assembly and confirmed Fern's claim to general amazement.
Harth rose and took a few steps towards the Standing Dead, her face moving in and out of shadow. Her bird eyes fixing on Osidian and, then, Carnelian.
She turned to Loskai. 'Ask the Standing Dead why they were among slaves.'
'My mother wants to know why you were hiding among slaves,' said Loskai.
His mother, Carnelian thought. He could tell by the way Loskai kept his eyes on Harth, how much he was in awe of her.
'We weren't hiding. We were being taken to be sold as trophies.'
Startled, Loskai translated this and as his mother understood, her mouth fell open.
'How could this happen?' Loskai asked for her.
Carnelian grimaced, fearing that at any time Osidian's apparent passivity might crack. 'It's complicated… politics… the Masters
…'
Harth interrupted him. 'Ask them if it was others of the Standing Dead who did this to them?'
Loskai asked, Carnelian gave a nod and the Assembly burst into a fevered discussion which took a while to
